The Great British Class Calculator...

[Louisa]

I think it's a very great British pastime to celebrate your class and background. I don't think this particular class calculator is especially accurate, and people will often naturally feel differently to the result they get from said test. I grew up in a very working class household, outside toilet, family of 4/5 crammed into small damp ridden Victorian property in Peckham. Culturally I feel more aligned to old working class London than this affluent middle class culture which has sprung up around here. But financially, I might no longer fit into that group any longer. It's all very confusing.

Louisa.

[holloway]

please don't tell me i'm the only precariat on this forum. agree with *bob* though, the test is heavily skewed in favour of home owners and the wealthy. i re-did the test and pretended i was a home owner but marked myself down on the other questions to give the impression i was a cultural and social yob, still came out as an 'elite' though. a load of tosh as my farm labourer mates would say.

[Sue]

numbers Wrote:

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> Agree with jah. Loada bollocks and bollocks to it

> all.

>

> Cringing when I see people post their category on

> Facebook. Only the British eh!

Xxxxx

Ah come on numbers, it's just a bit of fun.

Like what Family Guy character you come out of a quiz as (Damn. I wasn't Brian :)). )

[Chillaxed]

Fun for me and you and most sensible folk, balls-deep serious for others.

[Cassius]

Done the long quiz - 72% economic capital, 50% social and 100% cultural - now have to ally that to be traditional working class!

[Louisa]

What does balls deep mean?

Louisa.

[????]

No Ethnicity dimension

No sexuality dumension

No regional dimension

Some groups look like what marketers call 'Lifestage' not class

Rubbish sociology and Heat type analysis from the BBC including a 5 minute session on the news last night.

Nice use of licence payers to dumb down and keep us chattering away about an irrelevance*

*none of this has anything to do with me being Established Middleclass

[Chillaxed]

Hmmm, used that phrase without thinking about it.

It's a general instruction issued by football managers to focus on the long ball.

[Louisa]

On I see. I do love fad turn of phrase. I might use this one at the WI meeting next week.

Louisa.

[Chillaxed]

Not sure it's caught on yet so you might want to keep it up your sleeve. Or wait until a few G&T's have been imbided.

[Otta]

I'm interested to know what they think going to gigs says about you.

[Saffron]

???? Wrote:

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> No Ethnicity dimension

> No sexuality dumension

> No regional dimension

> Some groups look like what marketers call

> 'Lifestage' not class

>

And no Education dimension? (I only took the short test... was the long one different on this?)

Also, it doesn't attempt to assess you in relation to your family's background, ie how you were raised. So, I can easily see how there are plenty of newly in debt, non-property-owning, postgraduate and postdoctoral workers who will probably fall into the Emergent Service Workers Class.

In reality, these people probably come mainly from middle class backgrounds, and could by the level of their education be expected eventually to attain a middle class standard by this test.

Agree, some of these 'classes' are life stages with no clear sociological value. They don't set the individual in context. However, this would give the perception that people can move fluently up the class scale (something the government often seems keen to emphasize), when in fact if examined in context they're not really moving at all.

[Saffron]

Chillaxed Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Hmmm, used that phrase without thinking about it.

>

>

> It's a general instruction issued by football

> managers to focus on the long ball.

...and there was I thinking it meant 'up to your bollocks in'. Tee Hee.

[alice]

???? Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> No Ethnicity dimension

> No sexuality dumension

> No regional dimension

because none of them have anything to do with class maybe.

[Huguenot]

It doesn't explore history, because it's irrelevant.

It explores capacity, aspiration and intent.

You are simply who you are. The only interesting question is what decisions you will make.

Louisa and El Pibe doctoring the results to present the personality they would be if they weren't who they are is largely neither here nor there.

Their decisions will be made broadly according to self interest. That self interest may be enlightened or myopic. Research doesn't care.

As individuals you are completely unpredictable, as data points you become completely predictable.

If 70% of you are into homeopathy, it doesn't matter whether you as an individual are, I simply get a 7/10 hit rate for my mental twit juice.

[Saffron]

alice Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> ???? Wrote:

> --------------------------------------------------

> -----

> > No Ethnicity dimension

> > No sexuality dumension

> > No regional dimension

>

> because none of them have anything to do with

> class maybe.

Or maybe because these things are as irrelevant as the rest of of the dimensions on the test.

[alice]

..so what would be relevant..

[Saffron]

No, my point was that they're ALL irrelevent. (See H's point above, re "mental twit juice".)

[alice]

so class is irrelevant?

[Saffron]

No, class itself may be relevant to many things.

However, it may be that this particular Class Calculator is measuring dimensions which are irrelevant to many of the individuals it attempts to measure, unless you're purely interested in distilling a complex social phenomenon like "class" into a numerical indicator.

[alice]

well i thought that was the whole point - 'distilling a complex social phenomenon like "class" into a numerical indicator.' and whether individual people considered certain questions irrelevant is irrelevant.

[Saffron]

Yup, works either way. ;-)

[ClareC]

Whatever happened to Ian Easy (hugs)?

[Otta]

Class when boxed like this is irrelevant.

[alice]

considering class irrelevant has a direct correlation with being a member of the established middle class