Social status: how important is it to you?

[Rogerborg]

I bow to Ste's superior knowledge of the current wheezes.

All I have are anecdotes, the singular of data. A chap who cheerfully boasted to a genuinely struggling relative that he was faking COPD while holding down a manual labour job. "Just don't blow into the thing, love, they can't tell, har har har."

Mr Ooh-Me-Back and Mrs Too-Fat-To-Work round the corner in their disability-adapted free house. Mr Back has let slip that he's at it. Yes, I've ratted him out, but no, sod all has been done about it: he does at least make a show of carrying a stick when he gets out of his free car to buy some fags, I'll give him that.

I'd say that those professional scroungers are high "status" in the sense that Boozy is on about. They've learned that the squeakier the wheel, the more it gets greased.

They're really the new nobility, the idle gentry. After all, "class" got started when one chap said to another "See, the thing is, I've just realised that I'm more deserving more than you. So I'll watch while you toil. Chop chop, peasant."
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[M.C]

I started watching this but turned it off: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Claim-Benefits-Useful-Information-Wasters/dp/B06XBTRV6P Might be quite educational I know someone who's faking it, as mentioned in other topics he went on the sick due to the housing benefit caps being introduced. Life-long sponger, best to keep them living cheaply as possible (JSA + grotty council flat)...

...no Mr Borg you can't gas them.

[Ste]

[Ribenapigeon]

[M.C]

[Itchy]

[Ribenapigeon]

[Itchy]

[Rogerborg]

[Ribenapigeon]

[Itchy]

[Itchy]

[Ribenapigeon]

[Ribenapigeon]

[Itchy]

[hellkat]

[Ribenapigeon]

[The Shaggy D.A.]

Wine snobbery, you say?

https://youtu.be/lwNYv510jF4?t=75
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Chances are quite high you are not in my Monkeysphere, and I don't care about you. Don't take it personally.
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[hellkat]

[Ribenapigeon]

While we're at it in anticipation of the weekend
https://www.vinspireuk.com/2015/10/sozzled-skits-top-5-wine-comedy-shorts.html?m=1

[hellkat]

I'm in an interesting position status-wise these days.
I perceive myself as pretty working class in British terms.

However, I remember my mum, who admittedly is a bit of a Hyacinth Bouquet type, saying years ago that in NZ everyone is middle class. This is true enough amongst the people round where we lived, as she managed to buy a house years ago in what is now a very high-status area (around the corner from a navy housing estate where we grew up) and recently sold it for a fortune. But there is, and was, even back then, a seriously poor benefit-claiming class there as well. Moreso now than ever before.

So there I am, in the middle of what-am-I? land; I feel like I come from a working class family (predominantly bakers & military-NCOs) but my mother has given me a sense of entitlement, whilst also removing the means for me to become so for myself (another story, I think most of you know that)

But (as a result of a fairly high intellectual capability) I tend to gravitate towards people slightly more educated and well-spoken than myself, although my accent separates me out from all English people of whatever class anyway And I don't perceive myself as one of the underclass, indeed I struggle to avoid behaviours that would put me back there for good: I nearly got bogged down in that mire with the last boyfriend, I ain't going back there. Ever.

Salt of the earth, or absolute scumbags, the working class is really only divided by those who have successfully managed to not work and blag a decent living at it, so yeah by Rogerborg's equation, they might be the new elite, but only amongst their own class, and by doing so, have put themselves below the rest of us who perceive ourselves as working class but who have to work hard for what we hae (often less than them wot scrounge).

But now, here in London, I have become a part of "respectable society" by volunteering myself (unpaid for the most part) in Good Works for several organisations where I often sit amongst Chief Executives and Chairpeople, am party to making some quite hefty decisions, and am on nodding/friendly greeting terms with several Sir This or Lady That (both left and right wing).

And yet ... and yet ... although they are very charming to my face, and I am encouraged to attend high-functioning events on behalf of the organisations I do this volunteer work for ... they don't directly befriend me or invite me to their personal soirees; they see me, and somehow keep me, at a level below themselves.

As soon as I am gone, I suspect that they forget me, because they have other things to do, other people to see, etc. I wonder if I occur to them at any other point in their lives when they are otherwise occupied (most likely if they are having a dump, and suddenly think "Oh, Sano, I wonder what she's up to today...".

But until I hove back into view, they are unlikely to have thought of me at all. No doubt if they saw me at a Party Conference, or somewhere out of context that they rated as important, then they might suddenly find a reason to find me useful again, and might perceive me differently.

And it is this that makes me realise that actually I do exactly the same thing to those I consider lesser than myself. I might meet someone and yet if I don't perceive them as being "the same as me", I reject something about them that even enables me to recognise them again.

I bumped into a man at the gym several weeks ago, and he was ever so friendly, as if he knew me, and said, Hello, how are you, how is your husband ... but I had NO IDEA who he was, until he pointed out to me that he delivered my curries.

He was just not interesting enough for me to waste my time recalling.

Or maybe I'm just a weirdo who doesn't mix well and can't network for toffee
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Not nearly as interesting in real life.

[hellkat]

Damn.

hellkat = Teffragette
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Not nearly as interesting in real life.

[Ribenapigeon]

[Rogerborg]

[dodsi]