I think I'm quite similar, not that I read enough anyway. I either enjoy a book or I don't. I can't really explain why. We did all the stuff about how characters represent certain sections of society when we read An Inspector Calls at school, but I can't apply that to other books I read. If I'm told that X was persecuting Y and Z was letting it happen because they were getting money from X, and X was created to represent News Int, Y is celebs and Z is the Met then it makes sense, and well done to the author for putting it there. But I wouldn't read a book and do that myself. Especially as the book, or any metaphors hidden within it is probably about stuff that I have no idea about.

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The upper hand is on the other foot now.

Keeping up appearances: Jane's husband doesn't have a job any more. . . and she can barely live with the shame
The children still have pony lessons, she's kept on the cleaner, but, financially AND emotionally, her gilded world is falling apart. One woman's story of how fragile our middle-class lives can be. . .

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z1Z8AYfTz2

So much shame, she's telling the readership of one of Britain's biggest selling newspapers about it.


So humiliating, I'm telling the readership of one of Britain's biggest selling newspapers about it.


So sick that I'm telling the readership of one of Britain's biggest selling newspapers about it.


Which, as of now, due to its publication in one of Britain's biggest selling newspapers, is going to include every social event he attends.

What a massive, steaming, crock of shit.

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"Winterval is the favourite myth of the lunatic right who base most of their weekly columns on angry Brie-based dreams rather than looking out of their window." (Robin Ince)

To think that some people are moaning about their trivial concerns such as losing their home or worrying about where their next meal is coming from. We must all feel sorry for "middle class" folk who have real problems

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The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands - OSCAR WILDE, The Soul of Man Under Socialism

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/ar ... -posh.html

This arguably counts. Tulisa hoofed some boy band off the X Factor at the judge's houses stage. I saw their audition, and they.... well.... were not very good. Naturally, the Mail overlooks this and insists that it's because three of them went to private school, because, as we all know, the middle classes are the only ones who get discriminated against.

The middle-class terrorists: More than 60pc of suspects are well educated and from comfortable backgrounds, says secret M15 file

Some genuine reporting in the Mail, albeit the 'recovery' (paid?) of an MI5 document with the interesting bits left out. It concludes that the popular perception of Islamic terrorists as lonely, stupid sociopaths is a media invention. I'm struggling to think of a media organisation that would perpetuate such a misleading stereotype.

Why we women in the squeezed middle face a VERY bleak winter

For some reason, Diana Appleyard (yep, her again; mother of the joyless little nun who wrote this article about how uncouth her peers are when on holiday) seems to believe that the only people struggling this winter are going to be middle-class women. Because they can't afford a £300 dress from Jigsaw or a nice jumper from Karen Milan. Not when the Aga's costing a fucking fortune (let's be honest, they're not exactly the most efficient ovens you can get, and cost an absolute fortune to run).
What I don't get is why she can't get at least a part-time job. I mean, she's a freelance writer, and not a very good one. Surely the two can be balanced?

Mind you, she's a distinctly unlikable woman anyway. This piece of equally middle-class fuckwittery displays just how horribly shallow and stuck-up she really is. I'm guessing that she's struggling to keep afloat financially because her entire life seems to revolve around playing catch-up to her guffawing Sloaney mates in £300 wellies which they never get dirty.

The opening of that article made my teeth cringe. Little girl suggests to Daddy that he retrains as a bus driver. And? What's wrong with that? Oh, right - doesn't keep in with what Daddy wants to do. He thinks he's too important to do stuff like drive a bus, for heaven's sake. Gosh, no. I was unemployed for a year and I'm doing a job now that, to most of my former friends, is three steps down from what I did before the recession and you know what? I fucking love it. The pay is good, the people I work with are lovely and I love the fact that I used to keep my team leader terrified in case I picked fault with his people management skills (clue: the guy has the charm and personality of ebola and the brains of yoghurt). In a recession, you have to make sacrifices, yeah, but one of those will, ultimately, be the fact that one day you'll realise that maybe you just won't get a similar job to the one you had and that you have to start all over again. Yeah, it's kind of humiliating (especially if you had friends like mine - who practically all dropped me like a hot potato when they found out that I was taking a "demotion") but in fact, it's really rather cool. Yeah, the money's not the same as it was, but who cares? I have a job, I'm not signing on, I'm not feeling humiliated in a Jobcentre, dealing with some pissy little civil servant who loves to demean people (granted, that was the one occasion, I complained and strangely never saw that advisor in the Jobcentre again) and I've got my life back on track. This fuckwit and her husband could do far worse than that. Stupid woman. As my Grandmother would say: why aren't you dead from the fumes caused by the copious bullshit you spout?

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You couldn't make it up...that's what Littledick's for!

From that article


For working class families, of course, university tuition fees are no problem.

From Appleyard's article:



Better churn out some more entitled whinging for the Mail then, that'll keep the heating on for a while.

If she really must have expensive clothes why not check out the local charity shops? Or TK Maxx? Oh right, the clothes won't be this season's.

Rising fuel prices only affect middle classes:

Middle-class motorists hit hard as costs soar 14% a year

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... -year.html



Oh, do fuck off!

Ah, those scummy lower classes, inconsiderately driving small cars or not driving at all and therefore totally escaping the effects of petrol price rises. They should be subjected to a poverty just to punish them.

Nah, they're the ones driving BMWs that they got free on the DLA when they told the benefits people their badly-brought-up child was autistic, or else that they've bought from their £30k a year benefits, or that they've got from drug dealing. Everyone knows it's only white elderly men who drive modest cars that they've paid for themselves. Sometimes the lack of common sense on this board astonishes me.

While the impoverished middle classes are forced into poverty spec Ford Focuses. Many of them can't even afford the Ghia trim level. Oh, the humanity!

I drive a Ghia Focus
That said, it was cheap because it was almost on 90k miles when I bought it.

Also, I cycle to work 2 or 3 times a week. Oddly enough, that's cut my fuel bill quite a bit.

That said, I'm 'single' with no kids, so do I qualify for a tax rebate, as it's only families who have to pay it apparently?

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The upper hand is on the other foot now.