Best Of

Some people hold white working class people in incredibly low regard.
Almost as if they're a different species.

Not me, I hold all members of the working classes in incredibly low regard.

Have you ever considered standing for political office?

I have in the past but realised my sense of humour would get me into trouble.

But think about all those freebie suits and shoes you could get.

But the politics of envy would kick in.

I'd get criticised for turning up to parliament or a constituency surgery wearing £700 Louis Vuitton shoes, £500 Turnbull & Asser shirt, and £3,500 bespoke suit, and that's me slumming it.

Edit - And I haven't even mentioned the watches.

How the heck are you spending £500 on T&A? My shirts are only £165 from Hilditch & Key and that’s a far better brand

Some people hold white working class people in incredibly low regard.
Almost as if they're a different species.

And you wonder, with many that do, how few generations of ancestors before them they had white working class people who worked hard to get subsequent generations “up” in the world to the point the current ones are in a financial/professional/social position to feel that they can look down on them.

On the contrary such people tend to exalt their working class roots. My right on friend (a professor of Gender Studies at a major university no less) self-identifies as working class because her grandparents were Welsh miners.

Looking down on Reform voters doesn't equate to looking down on the WWC, no matter how much people like Lee Andrrson tries to equate the two.

I have met far too many people who are seriously rude about the “white working class” who are second generation “money”, and usually not much to shout about. They are desperate to pull on the supposed behaviours and attitudes of upper middle and upper classes to an almost comedic effect and their theatrical dislike of hoi polloi is grim. I know a chap, have done since we were 5, whose grandfather was from a Birmingham slum, sharp as fuck and made millions in arms deals, starting with buying excess British army boots and selling them for double the cost to the Middle East. If you met this chap you would think he was a grotesque character of a rude duke but his manners are all book learned. He’s an uneducated buffoon who is rude to waiting staff and the like. He’s one example of so many people like him who want people to think they aren’t anything to do with the WWF.

I have had, since university, idiots ask me why I’m such good friends with x and y because they are, you know, a bit common/rough, uneducated. Honestly it would be funny if it wasn’t so sad that people whose parents and grandparents worked their way “up” suddenly feel they have to mock or hate the WWC to make themselves feel better.

There is a subset who do, as you say, embrace their “real” roots to give them cred but many more are utter shits who knock others in an attempt to elevate themselves.

Ah, so you look down on the nouveau riche. How very upper-middle class of you.

No, I don’t like people who are rude to people and look down on others for shitty reasons, in my experience there is usually a pattern to their backgrounds and it’s not cool. I don’t give a damn where anyone comes from, their accents, earnings, education but I’ve had the misfortune to have known too many who do. So instead of trying to find something to hit me with maybe you might agree that the sentiment is correct?

So you think that I should look down on them too?

Oh god, yes, look down on, or alternatively disapprove of, people who are shits to people because of some misplaced belief they have that they are superior and because their superiority is built in such fragile foundations they have to put down people in a worse position to bolster their own fragility and insecurity. It’s not controversial.

The fact that these people aspire to be something and in doing so feel they need to mock others is not something that should be free from mockery and dislike. If you had a doctor start with you, where you know, because you had seen their application that they had been the first of their family to university and done well becoming a doctor then started slagging off patients for being less educated, less worldly I would hope you would pull them up.

My point was that I found found, and yes it’s anecdotal, that there is a spcertain section of society that are worse for knocking the WWC and they are usually less removed from the WWC and it’s not ok. I’m not sure why you think this is a reason to attack and not agree unless you have been so insultaped that you have never come across this phenomenon, considering your education, global exposure and life I can’t believe you haven’t.

Every tier in society looks down most aggressively on the tier just a tiny bit below it.

“An arriviste, certainly, who can't shoot straight and in Jopling's damning phrase 'bought all his own furniture', but who at any rate seeks the cachet. All the nouves in the party think he is the real thing” (Alan Clarke on Heseltine).

That is just 'sophisticated conversationalism' though. It's not actually true.

Alan Clarke’s quote is sophisticated conversationalism, or the idea that every tier looks down on the one directly below?

I’d say the latter is absolutely the case. As is the reverse: every tier in society most ardently resents the tier directly above them.

For an example of looking down, take the instructive case of the upper-upper-middle Topping decrying the interior decor of the mid-upper-middle Leon yesterday. The perfectly chosen words “it’s not even Elephant’s breath”. For an example of proximate upwards resentment listen to any Tory moaning about smashed avocado and latte supping.

In both cases there is the perfect mixture of class warfare and class betrayal.

Further, noblesse oblige and its modern exemplar (affected upper-middle concern for the WWC) only operates with a gap of several tiers. You don’t see Sainsburys shoppers expressing sympathy for the more gamey opinions of Tesco shoppers.

I object! It is much subtler than that. I went to a comprehensive, and my paternal grandfather was a chippy in a tinmine, and my Mum was very working class, and my maternal grandmother was slave labour - a bal maiden, age 10 - almost below working class

My proximate origins are very proletarian, and yet I have - to be frank - the life experiences and outlook of someone exceptionally uppper class, and not British at all. This is what annoys classic PB Anglo poshos like @StillWaters and @TOPPING

In some obscure way they cannot quite place, I outrank them. They can't understand it, and they dislike it

I've encountered this elsewhere, FWIW, not just on PB

I thought people disliked you because you were unpleasantly racist and exploited sex workers, I didn't realise it was because you outranked us socially.

Some people hold white working class people in incredibly low regard.
Almost as if they're a different species.

And you wonder, with many that do, how few generations of ancestors before them they had white working class people who worked hard to get subsequent generations “up” in the world to the point the current ones are in a financial/professional/social position to feel that they can look down on them.

On the contrary such people tend to exalt their working class roots. My right on friend (a professor of Gender Studies at a major university no less) self-identifies as working class because her grandparents were Welsh miners.

Looking down on Reform voters doesn't equate to looking down on the WWC, no matter how much people like Lee Andrrson tries to equate the two.

I have met far too many people who are seriously rude about the “white working class” who are second generation “money”, and usually not much to shout about. They are desperate to pull on the supposed behaviours and attitudes of upper middle and upper classes to an almost comedic effect and their theatrical dislike of hoi polloi is grim. I know a chap, have done since we were 5, whose grandfather was from a Birmingham slum, sharp as fuck and made millions in arms deals, starting with buying excess British army boots and selling them for double the cost to the Middle East. If you met this chap you would think he was a grotesque character of a rude duke but his manners are all book learned. He’s an uneducated buffoon who is rude to waiting staff and the like. He’s one example of so many people like him who want people to think they aren’t anything to do with the WWF.

I have had, since university, idiots ask me why I’m such good friends with x and y because they are, you know, a bit common/rough, uneducated. Honestly it would be funny if it wasn’t so sad that people whose parents and grandparents worked their way “up” suddenly feel they have to mock or hate the WWC to make themselves feel better.

There is a subset who do, as you say, embrace their “real” roots to give them cred but many more are utter shits who knock others in an attempt to elevate themselves.

Ah, so you look down on the nouveau riche. How very upper-middle class of you.

No, I don’t like people who are rude to people and look down on others for shitty reasons, in my experience there is usually a pattern to their backgrounds and it’s not cool. I don’t give a damn where anyone comes from, their accents, earnings, education but I’ve had the misfortune to have known too many who do. So instead of trying to find something to hit me with maybe you might agree that the sentiment is correct?

So you think that I should look down on them too?

Oh god, yes, look down on, or alternatively disapprove of, people who are shits to people because of some misplaced belief they have that they are superior and because their superiority is built in such fragile foundations they have to put down people in a worse position to bolster their own fragility and insecurity. It’s not controversial.

The fact that these people aspire to be something and in doing so feel they need to mock others is not something that should be free from mockery and dislike. If you had a doctor start with you, where you know, because you had seen their application that they had been the first of their family to university and done well becoming a doctor then started slagging off patients for being less educated, less worldly I would hope you would pull them up.

My point was that I found found, and yes it’s anecdotal, that there is a spcertain section of society that are worse for knocking the WWC and they are usually less removed from the WWC and it’s not ok. I’m not sure why you think this is a reason to attack and not agree unless you have been so insultaped that you have never come across this phenomenon, considering your education, global exposure and life I can’t believe you haven’t.

Every tier in society looks down most aggressively on the tier just a tiny bit below it.

“An arriviste, certainly, who can't shoot straight and in Jopling's damning phrase 'bought all his own furniture', but who at any rate seeks the cachet. All the nouves in the party think he is the real thing” (Alan Clarke on Heseltine).

That is just 'sophisticated conversationalism' though. It's not actually true.

Alan Clarke’s quote is sophisticated conversationalism, or the idea that every tier looks down on the one directly below?

I’d say the latter is absolutely the case. As is the reverse: every tier in society most ardently resents the tier directly above them.

For an example of looking down, take the instructive case of the upper-upper-middle Topping decrying the interior decor of the mid-upper-middle Leon yesterday. The perfectly chosen words “it’s not even Elephant’s breath”. For an example of proximate upwards resentment listen to any Tory moaning about smashed avocado and latte supping.

In both cases there is the perfect mixture of class warfare and class betrayal.

Further, noblesse oblige and its modern exemplar (affected upper-middle concern for the WWC) only operates with a gap of several tiers. You don’t see Sainsburys shoppers expressing sympathy for the more gamey opinions of Tesco shoppers.

I object! It is much subtler than that. I went to a comprehensive, and my paternal grandfather was a chippy in a tinmine, and my Mum was very working class, and my maternal grandmother was slave labour - a bal maiden, age 10 - almost below working class

My proximate origins are very proletarian, and yet I have - to be frank - the life experiences and outlook of someone exceptionally uppper class, and not British at all. This is what annoys classic PB Anglo poshos like @StillWaters and @TOPPING

In some obscure way they cannot quite place, I outrank them. They can't understand it, and they dislike it

I've encountered this elsewhere, FWIW, not just on PB

I understand this thought process, when I was at school I was from a set a lot of my peers couldn’t get their heads around. I hadn’t been to one of the traditional feeder prep schools to school (all of us Jersey chaps were eyed with suspicion), wasn’t from the UK but also wasn’t “foreign”. I had more money than a huge chunk of them, but had a different outlook. I was at a co-Ed prep school so had girl friends at neighbouring girls boarding school from prep school whereas girls were a mystery to most, my parents backgrounds were confusing as they didn’t understand why they hadn’t just done what their parents were doing with their backgrounds and living where they “should”. There is nothing as confusing to English people as people who don’t fit into a box. But then I consider myself culturally and proudly English even though I’m not on many measures.

Yes exactly

I've met absurdly posh people in my time (and worldwide, as well as the UK). Roughly half my best friends are now centi-millionaires, with one billionaire blah blah blah

About ten years ago I noticed that when I explained my life, and experiences, to normal bog-standad posh English people - the Toppings and StillWaters of this world - they would get quite agitated, in a weird way. Then I realised that they couldn't put me in a "social class" box which made them feel superior. "What, you've never done a proper day's work in your life?" "You literally travel the world in luxury for free?" "And you bought your house by writing a book?"

They would often revert - if insecure - to remarks about clothing, or schooling, or whatever (cf Topping on interior decoration). It was a search for a way to feel better when in truth they felt a tiny bit inadequate. Like seeking a toe-hold on a slippery cliff. When most of their self-identity was embodied in their self-perceived poshness, here I was challenging all that and perhaps making them feel the looming drop beneath

If it's any consolation to these flannelled fools, I feel the same if I meet an artist who has made it spectacularly in wealth AND esteem. I search for a reason why I am still better than them, I usually revert to my extravagant sex life and multiple near death experiences

But beneath all this self-romancing clobber you're a cliched reactionary old geezer muttering over his lamb chops and Daily Telegraph.

Some people hold white working class people in incredibly low regard.
Almost as if they're a different species.

And you wonder, with many that do, how few generations of ancestors before them they had white working class people who worked hard to get subsequent generations “up” in the world to the point the current ones are in a financial/professional/social position to feel that they can look down on them.

On the contrary such people tend to exalt their working class roots. My right on friend (a professor of Gender Studies at a major university no less) self-identifies as working class because her grandparents were Welsh miners.

Looking down on Reform voters doesn't equate to looking down on the WWC, no matter how much people like Lee Andrrson tries to equate the two.

I have met far too many people who are seriously rude about the “white working class” who are second generation “money”, and usually not much to shout about. They are desperate to pull on the supposed behaviours and attitudes of upper middle and upper classes to an almost comedic effect and their theatrical dislike of hoi polloi is grim. I know a chap, have done since we were 5, whose grandfather was from a Birmingham slum, sharp as fuck and made millions in arms deals, starting with buying excess British army boots and selling them for double the cost to the Middle East. If you met this chap you would think he was a grotesque character of a rude duke but his manners are all book learned. He’s an uneducated buffoon who is rude to waiting staff and the like. He’s one example of so many people like him who want people to think they aren’t anything to do with the WWF.

I have had, since university, idiots ask me why I’m such good friends with x and y because they are, you know, a bit common/rough, uneducated. Honestly it would be funny if it wasn’t so sad that people whose parents and grandparents worked their way “up” suddenly feel they have to mock or hate the WWC to make themselves feel better.

There is a subset who do, as you say, embrace their “real” roots to give them cred but many more are utter shits who knock others in an attempt to elevate themselves.

Ah, so you look down on the nouveau riche. How very upper-middle class of you.

No, I don’t like people who are rude to people and look down on others for shitty reasons, in my experience there is usually a pattern to their backgrounds and it’s not cool. I don’t give a damn where anyone comes from, their accents, earnings, education but I’ve had the misfortune to have known too many who do. So instead of trying to find something to hit me with maybe you might agree that the sentiment is correct?

So you think that I should look down on them too?

Oh god, yes, look down on, or alternatively disapprove of, people who are shits to people because of some misplaced belief they have that they are superior and because their superiority is built in such fragile foundations they have to put down people in a worse position to bolster their own fragility and insecurity. It’s not controversial.

The fact that these people aspire to be something and in doing so feel they need to mock others is not something that should be free from mockery and dislike. If you had a doctor start with you, where you know, because you had seen their application that they had been the first of their family to university and done well becoming a doctor then started slagging off patients for being less educated, less worldly I would hope you would pull them up.

My point was that I found found, and yes it’s anecdotal, that there is a spcertain section of society that are worse for knocking the WWC and they are usually less removed from the WWC and it’s not ok. I’m not sure why you think this is a reason to attack and not agree unless you have been so insultaped that you have never come across this phenomenon, considering your education, global exposure and life I can’t believe you haven’t.

Every tier in society looks down most aggressively on the tier just a tiny bit below it.

“An arriviste, certainly, who can't shoot straight and in Jopling's damning phrase 'bought all his own furniture', but who at any rate seeks the cachet. All the nouves in the party think he is the real thing” (Alan Clarke on Heseltine).

That is just 'sophisticated conversationalism' though. It's not actually true.

Alan Clarke’s quote is sophisticated conversationalism, or the idea that every tier looks down on the one directly below?

I’d say the latter is absolutely the case. As is the reverse: every tier in society most ardently resents the tier directly above them.

For an example of looking down, take the instructive case of the upper-upper-middle Topping decrying the interior decor of the mid-upper-middle Leon yesterday. The perfectly chosen words “it’s not even Elephant’s breath”. For an example of proximate upwards resentment listen to any Tory moaning about smashed avocado and latte supping.

In both cases there is the perfect mixture of class warfare and class betrayal.

Further, noblesse oblige and its modern exemplar (affected upper-middle concern for the WWC) only operates with a gap of several tiers. You don’t see Sainsburys shoppers expressing sympathy for the more gamey opinions of Tesco shoppers.

I object! It is much subtler than that. I went to a comprehensive, and my paternal grandfather was a chippy in a tinmine, and my Mum was very working class, and my maternal grandmother was slave labour - a bal maiden, age 10 - almost below working class

My proximate origins are very proletarian, and yet I have - to be frank - the life experiences and outlook of someone exceptionally uppper class, and not British at all. This is what annoys classic PB Anglo poshos like @StillWaters and @TOPPING

In some obscure way they cannot quite place, I outrank them. They can't understand it, and they dislike it

I've encountered this elsewhere, FWIW, not just on PB

I understand this thought process, when I was at school I was from a set a lot of my peers couldn’t get their heads around. I hadn’t been to one of the traditional feeder prep schools to school (all of us Jersey chaps were eyed with suspicion), wasn’t from the UK but also wasn’t “foreign”. I had more money than a huge chunk of them, but had a different outlook. I was at a co-Ed prep school so had girl friends at neighbouring girls boarding school from prep school whereas girls were a mystery to most, my parents backgrounds were confusing as they didn’t understand why they hadn’t just done what their parents were doing with their backgrounds and living where they “should”. There is nothing as confusing to English people as people who don’t fit into a box. But then I consider myself culturally and proudly English even though I’m not on many measures.

Some people hold white working class people in incredibly low regard.
Almost as if they're a different species.

And you wonder, with many that do, how few generations of ancestors before them they had white working class people who worked hard to get subsequent generations “up” in the world to the point the current ones are in a financial/professional/social position to feel that they can look down on them.

On the contrary such people tend to exalt their working class roots. My right on friend (a professor of Gender Studies at a major university no less) self-identifies as working class because her grandparents were Welsh miners.

Looking down on Reform voters doesn't equate to looking down on the WWC, no matter how much people like Lee Andrrson tries to equate the two.

I have met far too many people who are seriously rude about the “white working class” who are second generation “money”, and usually not much to shout about. They are desperate to pull on the supposed behaviours and attitudes of upper middle and upper classes to an almost comedic effect and their theatrical dislike of hoi polloi is grim. I know a chap, have done since we were 5, whose grandfather was from a Birmingham slum, sharp as fuck and made millions in arms deals, starting with buying excess British army boots and selling them for double the cost to the Middle East. If you met this chap you would think he was a grotesque character of a rude duke but his manners are all book learned. He’s an uneducated buffoon who is rude to waiting staff and the like. He’s one example of so many people like him who want people to think they aren’t anything to do with the WWF.

I have had, since university, idiots ask me why I’m such good friends with x and y because they are, you know, a bit common/rough, uneducated. Honestly it would be funny if it wasn’t so sad that people whose parents and grandparents worked their way “up” suddenly feel they have to mock or hate the WWC to make themselves feel better.

There is a subset who do, as you say, embrace their “real” roots to give them cred but many more are utter shits who knock others in an attempt to elevate themselves.

Ah, so you look down on the nouveau riche. How very upper-middle class of you.

No, I don’t like people who are rude to people and look down on others for shitty reasons, in my experience there is usually a pattern to their backgrounds and it’s not cool. I don’t give a damn where anyone comes from, their accents, earnings, education but I’ve had the misfortune to have known too many who do. So instead of trying to find something to hit me with maybe you might agree that the sentiment is correct?

So you think that I should look down on them too?

Oh god, yes, look down on, or alternatively disapprove of, people who are shits to people because of some misplaced belief they have that they are superior and because their superiority is built in such fragile foundations they have to put down people in a worse position to bolster their own fragility and insecurity. It’s not controversial.

The fact that these people aspire to be something and in doing so feel they need to mock others is not something that should be free from mockery and dislike. If you had a doctor start with you, where you know, because you had seen their application that they had been the first of their family to university and done well becoming a doctor then started slagging off patients for being less educated, less worldly I would hope you would pull them up.

My point was that I found found, and yes it’s anecdotal, that there is a spcertain section of society that are worse for knocking the WWC and they are usually less removed from the WWC and it’s not ok. I’m not sure why you think this is a reason to attack and not agree unless you have been so insultaped that you have never come across this phenomenon, considering your education, global exposure and life I can’t believe you haven’t.

Because you are engaged in snobbery and virtue signaling at the same time.

Busted on both.

Okay.

Tough gig here.

It truly is. Not as tough as the 29 hours a day, 12 days a week my father spent down the mines to afford to send me to school where they taught me to refer to him as “my father” rather than “old baastad” so eventually I could come on a website and virtue signal and be a snob at the same time. Hard times.

That got me thinking of the Andrew Gold song "Oh What A Lonely Boy". Always liked it.

Don't mind me. I watch people like a hawk but I'm harmless.

Some people hold white working class people in incredibly low regard.
Almost as if they're a different species.

And you wonder, with many that do, how few generations of ancestors before them they had white working class people who worked hard to get subsequent generations “up” in the world to the point the current ones are in a financial/professional/social position to feel that they can look down on them.

On the contrary such people tend to exalt their working class roots. My right on friend (a professor of Gender Studies at a major university no less) self-identifies as working class because her grandparents were Welsh miners.

Looking down on Reform voters doesn't equate to looking down on the WWC, no matter how much people like Lee Andrrson tries to equate the two.

I have met far too many people who are seriously rude about the “white working class” who are second generation “money”, and usually not much to shout about. They are desperate to pull on the supposed behaviours and attitudes of upper middle and upper classes to an almost comedic effect and their theatrical dislike of hoi polloi is grim. I know a chap, have done since we were 5, whose grandfather was from a Birmingham slum, sharp as fuck and made millions in arms deals, starting with buying excess British army boots and selling them for double the cost to the Middle East. If you met this chap you would think he was a grotesque character of a rude duke but his manners are all book learned. He’s an uneducated buffoon who is rude to waiting staff and the like. He’s one example of so many people like him who want people to think they aren’t anything to do with the WWF.

I have had, since university, idiots ask me why I’m such good friends with x and y because they are, you know, a bit common/rough, uneducated. Honestly it would be funny if it wasn’t so sad that people whose parents and grandparents worked their way “up” suddenly feel they have to mock or hate the WWC to make themselves feel better.

There is a subset who do, as you say, embrace their “real” roots to give them cred but many more are utter shits who knock others in an attempt to elevate themselves.

Ah, so you look down on the nouveau riche. How very upper-middle class of you.

No, I don’t like people who are rude to people and look down on others for shitty reasons, in my experience there is usually a pattern to their backgrounds and it’s not cool. I don’t give a damn where anyone comes from, their accents, earnings, education but I’ve had the misfortune to have known too many who do. So instead of trying to find something to hit me with maybe you might agree that the sentiment is correct?

So you think that I should look down on them too?

Oh god, yes, look down on, or alternatively disapprove of, people who are shits to people because of some misplaced belief they have that they are superior and because their superiority is built in such fragile foundations they have to put down people in a worse position to bolster their own fragility and insecurity. It’s not controversial.

The fact that these people aspire to be something and in doing so feel they need to mock others is not something that should be free from mockery and dislike. If you had a doctor start with you, where you know, because you had seen their application that they had been the first of their family to university and done well becoming a doctor then started slagging off patients for being less educated, less worldly I would hope you would pull them up.

My point was that I found found, and yes it’s anecdotal, that there is a spcertain section of society that are worse for knocking the WWC and they are usually less removed from the WWC and it’s not ok. I’m not sure why you think this is a reason to attack and not agree unless you have been so insultaped that you have never come across this phenomenon, considering your education, global exposure and life I can’t believe you haven’t.

Every tier in society looks down most aggressively on the tier just a tiny bit below it.

“An arriviste, certainly, who can't shoot straight and in Jopling's damning phrase 'bought all his own furniture', but who at any rate seeks the cachet. All the nouves in the party think he is the real thing” (Alan Clarke on Heseltine).

That is just 'sophisticated conversationalism' though. It's not actually true.

Alan Clarke’s quote is sophisticated conversationalism, or the idea that every tier looks down on the one directly below?

I’d say the latter is absolutely the case. As is the reverse: every tier in society most ardently resents the tier directly above them.

For an example of looking down, take the instructive case of the upper-upper-middle Topping decrying the interior decor of the mid-upper-middle Leon yesterday. The perfectly chosen words “it’s not even Elephant’s breath”. For an example of proximate upwards resentment listen to any Tory moaning about smashed avocado and latte supping.

In both cases there is the perfect mixture of class warfare and class betrayal.

Further, noblesse oblige and its modern exemplar (affected upper-middle concern for the WWC) only operates with a gap of several tiers. You don’t see Sainsburys shoppers expressing sympathy for the more gamey opinions of Tesco shoppers.

I object! It is much subtler than that. I went to a comprehensive, and my paternal grandfather was a chippy in a tinmine, and my Mum was very working class, and my maternal grandmother was slave labour - a bal maiden, age 10 - almost below working class

My proximate origins are very proletarian, and yet I have - to be frank - the life experiences and outlook of someone exceptionally uppper class, and not British at all. This is what annoys classic PB Anglo poshos like @StillWaters and @TOPPING

In some obscure way they cannot quite place, I outrank them. They can't understand it, and they dislike it

I've encountered this elsewhere, FWIW, not just on PB

I understand this thought process, when I was at school I was from a set a lot of my peers couldn’t get their heads around. I hadn’t been to one of the traditional feeder prep schools to school (all of us Jersey chaps were eyed with suspicion), wasn’t from the UK but also wasn’t “foreign”. I had more money than a huge chunk of them, but had a different outlook. I was at a co-Ed prep school so had girl friends at neighbouring girls boarding school from prep school whereas girls were a mystery to most, my parents backgrounds were confusing as they didn’t understand why they hadn’t just done what their parents were doing with their backgrounds and living where they “should”. There is nothing as confusing to English people as people who don’t fit into a box. But then I consider myself culturally and proudly English even though I’m not on many measures.

Yes exactly

I've met absurdly posh people in my time (and worldwide, as well as the UK). Roughly half my best friends are now centi-millionaires, with one billionaire blah blah blah

About ten years ago I noticed that when I explained my life, and experiences, to normal bog-standad posh English people - the Toppings and StillWaters of this world - they would get quite agitated, in a weird way. Then I realised that they couldn't put me in a "social class" box which made them feel superior. "What, you've never done a proper day's work in your life?" "You literally travel the world in luxury for free?" "And you bought your house by writing a book?"

They would often revert - if insecure - to remarks about clothing, or schooling, or whatever (cf Topping on interior decoration). It was a search for a way to feel better when in truth they felt a tiny bit inadequate. Like seeking a toe-hold on a slippery cliff. When most of their self-identity was embodied in their self-perceived poshness, here I was challenging all that and perhaps making them feel the looming drop beneath

If it's any consolation to these flannelled fools, I feel the same if I meet an artist who has made it spectacularly in wealth AND esteem. I search for a reason why I am still better than them, I usually revert to my extravagant sex life and multiple near death experiences

Some people hold white working class people in incredibly low regard.
Almost as if they're a different species.

And you wonder, with many that do, how few generations of ancestors before them they had white working class people who worked hard to get subsequent generations “up” in the world to the point the current ones are in a financial/professional/social position to feel that they can look down on them.

On the contrary such people tend to exalt their working class roots. My right on friend (a professor of Gender Studies at a major university no less) self-identifies as working class because her grandparents were Welsh miners.

Looking down on Reform voters doesn't equate to looking down on the WWC, no matter how much people like Lee Andrrson tries to equate the two.

I have met far too many people who are seriously rude about the “white working class” who are second generation “money”, and usually not much to shout about. They are desperate to pull on the supposed behaviours and attitudes of upper middle and upper classes to an almost comedic effect and their theatrical dislike of hoi polloi is grim. I know a chap, have done since we were 5, whose grandfather was from a Birmingham slum, sharp as fuck and made millions in arms deals, starting with buying excess British army boots and selling them for double the cost to the Middle East. If you met this chap you would think he was a grotesque character of a rude duke but his manners are all book learned. He’s an uneducated buffoon who is rude to waiting staff and the like. He’s one example of so many people like him who want people to think they aren’t anything to do with the WWF.

I have had, since university, idiots ask me why I’m such good friends with x and y because they are, you know, a bit common/rough, uneducated. Honestly it would be funny if it wasn’t so sad that people whose parents and grandparents worked their way “up” suddenly feel they have to mock or hate the WWC to make themselves feel better.

There is a subset who do, as you say, embrace their “real” roots to give them cred but many more are utter shits who knock others in an attempt to elevate themselves.

Ah, so you look down on the nouveau riche. How very upper-middle class of you.

No, I don’t like people who are rude to people and look down on others for shitty reasons, in my experience there is usually a pattern to their backgrounds and it’s not cool. I don’t give a damn where anyone comes from, their accents, earnings, education but I’ve had the misfortune to have known too many who do. So instead of trying to find something to hit me with maybe you might agree that the sentiment is correct?

So you think that I should look down on them too?

Oh god, yes, look down on, or alternatively disapprove of, people who are shits to people because of some misplaced belief they have that they are superior and because their superiority is built in such fragile foundations they have to put down people in a worse position to bolster their own fragility and insecurity. It’s not controversial.

The fact that these people aspire to be something and in doing so feel they need to mock others is not something that should be free from mockery and dislike. If you had a doctor start with you, where you know, because you had seen their application that they had been the first of their family to university and done well becoming a doctor then started slagging off patients for being less educated, less worldly I would hope you would pull them up.

My point was that I found found, and yes it’s anecdotal, that there is a spcertain section of society that are worse for knocking the WWC and they are usually less removed from the WWC and it’s not ok. I’m not sure why you think this is a reason to attack and not agree unless you have been so insultaped that you have never come across this phenomenon, considering your education, global exposure and life I can’t believe you haven’t.

Because you are engaged in snobbery and virtue signaling at the same time.

Busted on both.

Okay.

Tough gig here.

It truly is. Not as tough as the 29 hours a day, 12 days a week my father spent down the mines to afford to send me to school where they taught me to refer to him as “my father” rather than “old baastad” so eventually I could come on a website and virtue signal and be a snob at the same time. Hard times.