Louisa

People who buy a whole weeks shop in one go and then go back to the supermarket the next day cos they forgot the toilet roll. Unbelievable. Louisa.

The topic does not need to be dragged into every thread. I think the EDF Class Law tends to apply to the longer threads such as this, although this particular thread does contain class in its title which is red rag to a bull on this forum. Louisa.

Sometimes I think this forum is obsessed with class. Louisa.

Oddly on topic, fish do tend to fall into class categories too. How often do you find halibut on the menu at a fish and chip shop? (Well maybe the seacow I wouldn't know?). It's the ultimate posh fish, upper class in fact. Salmon is a funny one, once the staple middle class fish, it has somewhat gone downmarket since the 70s and alongside king prawns is kind of a aspirational working class fish these days. A true middle class fish would of course be skate or Dover sole, never available to buy from a standard supermarket- other than maybe M&S I know they sell lemon sole that's for sure. Louisa.

Well I for one was shocked to hear the posh couple on gogglebox bad mouth the royal visit to Australia as "not being news worthy" made me chuckle I must admit. I'd have had them down as right monarchy brown-nosers. Louisa.

AcedOut indeedy. We are all working class. It's just some of us carry on looking for bargains and fancy a normal down to earth pub, cafe, chip shop, and some others prefer to splash the cash and appear more wealthy/cultured/pretentious. Louisa.

I was told that the previous idea for a restaurant had been shelved and these guys called the black lab coffee house were interested? Think they have a shop in Clapham somewhere? As James points out though, surely a change of use would have come through had there been any truth in this? Louisa.

adonirum I haven't fallen out of love with ED at all. I just miss certain aspects of the old area. I may be cashing in for reasons aside from the changes we speak of, but that's beside the point. I certainly won't be able to afford Chiswick that's for sure. Louisa.

PokerTime "everything you want from a store with just a little bit more" Louisa.

XIX I have a PhD in the study of gentrification and the demographic changes it brings. Just kidding, I used to work in Safeway, Petts Wood for 22 years. Louisa.

:-O Louisa.

miga little or nothing can be done about the changes in this area. Unless a natural process of changing demographics occur again, which judging by house prices seems unlikely. What most people would like to see is a healthy mix of shops and services to represent everyone but of course this is not the case. As time goes on, all of the pubs and bars are now aimed almost exclusively at blow-ins, and if you look at the population, a lot of old-school folk are still around and now have nowhere to go as these places are aimed more at food and the prices are pretty high too. Iceland could be gone from here, this will force people to walk a solid mile out of this area to but frozen food in rye lane and then have to walk it back again! Working-class blow ins cle is a bit of a misnomer. The blow-ins who sold up here and moved to new towns and the countryside are spread fairly evenly whereas the zone 2 newcomers are covering specific neighborhood in a relatively small area. Louisa.

miga it varies, and depends on the individual in question- are they party animals longing for Shoreditch on mummy and daddy's trust fund? Or a posho family praying for Richmond? Typically, we would be talking about the likes of Islington, Stoke Newington, Clapham, Balham, Putney, Fulham etc. Louisa.

El Pibe, I'm glad you asked. Well if we look at a 'typical blow-in' we are kind of looking at a number of different strands here. Firstly, we have the aspirational Uni educated from a wealthy-ish background outside of the M25 (usually small town south-east), little bit trendy, reads the guardian, likes it a little edgy. They'll come here because they literally can't afford where they want to be. They may have even rented in a posh postcode previously. Then we have the wealthy (or they thought were) family who decided they could sell their 2 bed flat in Putney and get a 5 bed house over this end and start a family- and have enough change to stick a jacuzzi in the garden shed. I think these are the two prominent strands, but they're not set in stone by any means. Louisa.

Zeb, I think that Woodwarde road, although lovely, is a bit borderline and it still retains the se22 postcode. It's sort of almost the village but not quite, so it's not offensive to describe the road as a haven for the 'nearly but not quite' brigade. Melbourne Grove is actually quite hilarious. Close to the station, on top of grove vale and LL, it typifies modern blow-in lower middle class ED. Skanky old Victorian street cleaned up and made to look good, with properties selling close to or just over the million mark. Louisa.

To miga and Rolo Tomasi - this is a tough question. A blow-in tends to be the type who moves around different areas based on cultural and economic reasons. Therefore, they're less likely to stick around for more than 5/10 years maximum, they'll also be a lot more sensitive to house prices and crime stats. I think if you can move to within a mile of lordship lane and remain there for a decade at least you'll be considered a local. Of course this is becoming harder as house prices force people into further afield locations. Louisa.

Dulwich Village is middle class. East Dulwich is a mix of lower middle class and working class. Louisa.

The above points made so eloquently by Burbabe and nxjen are broadly correct. The pre-2008 explosion in house prices saw the wide eyed home owning working classes willing and able to cash in on the terraced they'd lived in since day one and swop it for something larger in the bordering boroughs of Kent and Essex. Who can blame them? This coincided with the blow-ins from wealthier parts of town looking for first time buy bargains double the size of the existing place they had been renting. I personally would argue the case that the recession did damage ED beyond repair and stalled the process of gentrification leaving the area in flux. Never quite making it to it's expected Clapham-like potential. This had left the middle class blow-ins in a bit of a quandary, they want the area to be more middle-class and are hoping this supposed economic recovery will allow that to happen or at least make them some more money with yet another property bubble. The park has always been more of a reflection of ED than the village IMO. Gentrified ED has allowed the park to take on a whole new persona which many outsiders would now immediately link to the village, which of course would be exactly what the aspirational blow-ins would want. A true villager would now be more comfortable visiting the park than they would have done 15 years ago. I tend to see less of a representation of working class folk in the park these days, but maybe that's just a reflection of changing demographics. Louisa.

wavyline girl absolutely agree with you, and I know I'm fighting a losing battle on here because of the way I express my arguments, alongside the fact most of the vocal posting community will no doubt be from a certain background. It seems a pity such educated people find it so difficult to understand the damage they have done and continue to do to whole swaths of London during this gentrification process, and they call me blinkered? They actually believe in their obviously flawed and to quote someone else, 'rose tinted' view of the world around them. The views expressed by Silvia are not unusual, the belief that the middle classes are saviours who create enclaves of niceness with equally nice cultured people moving in alongside them. Transforming a cultural desert (in their opinion). I actually believe that they genuinely think they are right, that they are doing the existing community a favour. I believe they are not. The final line about Peckham summed that particular post up well. As for PT's comment about the traffic cones, I think you need to not take the literal meaning of that out of context with the metaphorical meaning. Louisa.

MrBen you always speak so much sense. I'm all for a croque Monsieur and chilled glass of Pinot Grigio. And to eat it in such a pleasant environment as the village makes it all the more enjoyable especially on a sunny day. But oh well, I guess if you've lived in leafy home county safety all your life and you make the big move to the 'culturally redundant' about to be gentrified inner london suburbs, a pop-up Armenian khorovat pit fired restaurant in the back streets of Peckham is kind of edgy. Don't forget, these people find the village dull cos it's the sort of place they've grown up in. Louisa.

Can we include a former nurse who is now a pilot? Louisa.

And that's a fact. Louisa.

To be fair to me, "middle class" was cited in the thread name so could I possibly not respond? Louisa.

And PokerTime before those houses were constructed for the lower-middle classes the area was a predominantly rural poor locality with farm labourers and later clay-brick workers. So yes, areas do go into and out of class classifications, but ED was not a natural transformation, it was a economically driven shift back into poorer inner- London because homes were more expensive elsewhere and that shift has continued and now means literally no-one can afford to live anywhere in London pretty much. You take my comments out of context yet again PT, I didn't blanket describe the middle-classes as dull. The genuine middle classes who live in Dulwich Village in fact are the genuine ones who always were able to afford the village and stayed there! It's the aspirational Home Counties blow-in graduate types who are to blame. Painfully snobby, and homogenising culture and people as they spread across inner- London. Working class culture is far from perfect, but they are not in a position to drive property prices and transformation in areas based on wealth, unlike the blow-ins I refer to. Louisa.

Silvia78 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > > Who exactly 'dragged' you in Louisa? Obviously you > have too much time to be bored on the most holy > day. People generally wind me up by suggesting things which are obviously false. It is without question, I am not a fan of the new look ED and class topics make my blood boil. And for me to enter such a debate on a special day as this makes it all the more grating for me. > > I find this discussion so ridiculous. I am not > from England, therefore I wasn't brought up with > your incredible fixation with everything to do > with class! And no other country is obsessed with class? Canada, USA, India, South Africa, Japan, Russia.. And the list goes on. I find it normal that when people have > the means, the education and the will to be > surrounded by 'nice things and people' , would > want to do just that...moving to an area where > they can enjoy things that are relevant to them. And that's fine. But many of the people who chose to come to ED, came here when it wasn't dominated by said wonderful 'nice things and people' - it was a predominately working class area. These people came here because they couldn't afford those lovely expensive areas further south and west of us. Not only did they come here en mass to buy up housing stock, they also forced house prices up and many of the working class folk born and raised here of all colours and backgrounds were no longer able to afford to buy around here. Many of the shops and pubs they knew and recognised were taken over and aimed at the incomers. So yes, the new folk surrounded themselves with the things they loved, but they chose a cheaper area to do it in and displaced the existing community in doing so, rather than happily co-existing alongside them. > I don't understand people who feel nostalgic about > piss smell and dodgy characters. If you > do...please feel free to move to Peckham. Are you suggesting Peckham is full of dodgy characters and piss smells? And anyway, I wasn't being nostalgic about it. I was simply saying I liked it when we were a less pretentious neighbourhood with 'real people' and less of the old oneupmanship involving crappy boutiques no one goes in to buy, but more to be seen in. Ridiculous. Maybe middle class people should reflect that life existed before they came here. Before they transformed the area. These people even believe that they are more cultured. It's just embarrassingly middle-class and English and patronising and everything else that makes London ridiculously expensive and gives us as a country a snobby reputation abroad. Louisa.