Are You Traditional Working Class n' that?

[Wildfisher]

the more important factor is how much time you have

Yes and what you do with it. I know plenty of folk who are not happy unless they are working and making money. Can't say many of them are content and all of them are continually complaining about being broke. Spending has the uncanny habit of expanding to take up available resources. Do you really need that new 3 pc suite , that  Sage rod, that new car?    ........  I suspect not. If you don't drink or smoke it's astonishing how little you can live on.

[River Chatter]

If you don't drink or smoke it's astonishing how little you can live on.

Perhaps you could shack up with Duncan Smith for a couple of weeks and show us all Fred!  You can pick up your £53 for week one at the post office... hurry though, there's a queue of time rich octogenarians gathering! :lol:  :lol:  :lol:

[Wildfisher]

IDS 50 quid / week claim may be a touch low, but that does not alter the fact that you can live on little if you choose to. Fags, beer, new fly rods, trips to NZ etc are luxuries none of us really need. If you can't afford them you can't afford them so you can't have them.  Food for example is not expensive if you watch what you buy. Eat less meat, no ready meals,  more cheap veg, cut out the fags and drink and you can live a long, healthy  and miserable life.  :lol:   

To be serious though we are all going to have to get used to less. This country is skint, our savings are being eroded, our incomes cut. Arguably it's a natural correction, false wealth based on inflated property values created false prosperity and debt. Nothing in nature grows forever. There is always a correction. We had it good, now we are paying the bill.

[Wildfisher]

Skintsville is just around the corner.

Since 2008 our governments have eroded the value of any savings you may have by more than the 10% the Cypriot government has taken from their depositors and that affects ALL savings, not just for folk with over 100K Euros as in Cyprus. I'm not making this up - an economist stated this yesterday on Radio 4 and was not challenged.  This is just the tip of the iceberg. Britain is not fixable, the only way national debt can be reduced is by inflation. This brings down the real value of debt nicely and it's the only way it can be done as has been made obvious by the furor over the very modest cuts that have been made so far.  Government debt is still rising. Basically  we are f****d.

[Inchlaggan]

From whom (or what institutions) are our governments borrowing these billions?
I've yet to receive a decent answer to that question.
In the simple terms that I understand, the lenders have to have the cash to hand in order to make the loan and then make a return on the interest charged and will thus become richer.
Can I be on their side?

[Wildfisher]

It's the "money markets" innit?   In other words smoke and mirrors. It makes no odds anyway, whoever the lenders are we are borrowing more than we can afford. That can't  go on as it is  and it won't. It's us who  are and will have to continue  paying  for it - the working and middle classes. "Quantitative easing" - or printing money as  it used to be called - drives up inflation, reduces the value of debt and savings. Mind you it could be argued that our savings  were artificially boosted in the first place and that this is no more than a correction.

[burnie]

What are these savings? poor wages through my life have meant I've had a comfortable life,interspersed with three spells of unemployment(must remember to thank that nice Mrs Thatcher for that).Endowment mortgage that was going to be worth a fortune,that ended up with me owing money to the blody lender. A pension that was going to be ok,that is now looking like I could be working up to I'm 65 and maybe part time afterwards and this silly quiz thing has me as established middle class, feel really sorry for the others.
We really do need a revolution,not just in the uk,but world wide to stop the money makers driving us into the ground. Some people earn more money working in the broken banks than the worlds top paid footballers, pop stars or actors. Maybe they're all over paid and we should share the money round better,but I think that is too late,Thatcher made everyone too greedy.

[bibio1]

The tax credit system that was put in place wasn't to help those with low incomes. Cynics would think it was put in place to subsidise business and allow them to pay below subsistence wages.

A full time job should feed you and put a roof over ur heed as a minimum. Politicians are complicit because it means unemployment figures are down.

Cheers

Paul

[zeolite]

My first time gave me "established middle class" but with some judicious choices I got to "elite". I denied I knew nurses, postal workers and lorry drivers.

However I neither went to a private school or elite university and have a distinctly blue collar background ( toolmaker father and farmworker grandparents). I consider myself a triumph of social mobility having gone from shovelling manure to hobnobbing with the social elite!

[burnie]

The way I was taught was if you needed money you made something then sold it, now the current thinking is you sell shares in virtual business that makes nothing. When I left school a careers advice bloke said " go into engineering,they'll always want something made".He was partly right,but the things are either made by a foreign owned company or made in China.