British middle class splits in two | FT World

FT research reveals a division in the UK's middle class with some professions powering ahead while members of the others struggle to maintain the lifestyle traditionally afforded by them. Sarah Neville visits St Albans to see how the trend is playing out.

[Noirvortex]

My mind heard 0:38 as "then there are the Klingons" instead of cling-ons at first haahah

[kristinesharp]

I find this hard to believe.

The country needs enough housing being built to accommodate all and built at 3x the earnings of those buying. Not people abroad who won’t be living in them. Otherwise you have the government paying inflated prices on housing a few people while everyone struggles. People should be able to have a basic 3 bd one bath terraced house or semi and 2-4 kids. If that isn’t the norm the gov has failed.

[jamesliston]

There is no middle class only working class and owner class

[jacmar]

Lawyers, Bankers? Some very high ranking ones, presumably. Most lawyers are not particularly well off, same thing with most ordinary bank employees. Yes, people in investment banking or the magic circle will be making a lot, but most lawyers deal with petty squables and divorces and earn little.

[lexijames]

Some things never change! I just watched a video about Victorian social structure and it’s the same thing as this!!

[colindoherty]

The bubble will burst Tory austerity cuts will bite us. When the interest rates rise many people will not be able to afford the mortgage repayments. Wages have not kept up with inflation. This equals real problems for a lot of people

[DeusShaggy]

Do not accept that the consequences of economic reform are simply conecidental, those with power and wealth plan all aspects of their own wealth management down to the exacting details.

[DoFeedThePigeons]

This is the biggest pile of bollocks I’ve ever heard there Is either rich or poor middle class does not exist anymore

[ayaanayub]

The government is sooo bad. Kick the torys out

[donaldtelfer]

This was uploaded in 2014. It is 2017 here, Denmark, in the past nine years about 75% of Nordea Bank's physical branches have closed. That suggests to me that by now 75% of the branch managers, and most of the branch staff, are otherwise employed or redundant. The commentator also was saying (in 2014) that lawyers were gaining ground financially, but now (2017) there is an expectation that lawyers also are becoming redundant vis-a-vis routine legal work, and for routine legal work they will be replaced by AI. One further detail is that a former head of Barclays is now at some risk of being imprisoned.

[martintozer]

Thumbs down. That last sentence did it for me: "Just keep being cling ons!".

[theduke]

I'm a medical student, hopefully i can say in the upper middle class and push higher.
As a child, my family all lived in one room. Now we climbed the economic ladder, so it's not only being born into privilege, but education + hard work pays off.

[michellesamuels]

There’s Royalty, Wealth, and Commoner. Wealth are the Upper Middle, and some Middle Class. The rest are Commoners, some Middle Class and Working Class. Royalty or Commoner.

As seen on Game of Sultans advertisement.

[fdcx]

Middle class is 5mins away in harpenden

[ianedmonds]

Calling people like teachers, engineers and architects Klingons makes me want to vomit.
These people actually benefit society. Bankers certainly don't and don't dare come out with the argument that these financial instruments they deal in create wealth. They don't. They just worm their way into everyday society so that when it's revealed they are worthless and the emperor has no clothes the government is forced to bail them out at massive cost to the teachers, engineers and architects and everyone else in society.
The deregulation of the financial sector is the worst thing ever to happen to the world.

[union]

One doesn't believe this to be correct.

[annwardley]

Very interesting When we left the UK in 1972 to live in Ontario we found much to our delight there is no class system here. I only met one Ontario snob she was from Bouremouth People we worked with were so helpful, our strong accents were thought cute and not common as muck LOL ex pat Sheffield

[atozer]

Interesting, even the estate agent is a closet snob.

[kynchan]

The rich borrow money to buy assets and businesses to make more money. Debt becomes the slave of the rich.

The poor use debt to survive or to buy distractions.

The middle class use debt to pay off their house, to maintain a state of comfort and further use debt to fund niceties like holidays and to appear rich.

Both the middle class and poor abuse the use of debt. Both have far too much consumer debt and as such become slaves to that debt.

Both the middle and the poor suffer to extremes when they lose their work because they rarely have any income to cover the gaps. The rich don't particularly care as they have many incomes, losing one source is not usually so devastating.

[ThinkAbstract]

Since when are the engineers cling on?