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Foreigners are in a special class in the UK, so you were already pigeon-holed.

The subtle signals are about who your parents are, which of the different educational streams you went through, and - more than anything - who you know. Clothes will display all of that indirectly, but the core is always about families and networks.

The idea that opportunities exist is very much a middle class mindset, and anyone who pursues it will inevitably run into the class ceiling. You can make a huge pile of money but it won't buy you entry into the upper classes. At best you'll be a nouveau "someone we can do business with" - or the technical help.

Under the considerable surface polish and politeness the defining characteristics of the upper classes are effortless social - not just professional - confidence, personal entitlement, and exceptionalism. Members are strongly encouraged to believe in all of the above from birth, and it's very hard for outsiders to understand this. There's also a curious affinity with more successful - let's say almost managerial - working class criminals.

I used to live in an upper class enclave, and it was quite astonishing how much time these people spent trying to screw each other over with disputes over family inheritances, property and land rights, various investment scams, and so on.

Okay so you've made a pile of money, but the people that think they've got a god given right to wealth from birth still thumb their noses at you and don't want to be friends. My question is, why should anyone care if clearly shitty people don't want to know them?

For the same reason people in the US care about what a bunch of high-follower Twitter accounts think of them. We're hard-wired to seek status even when that status is counterproductive and contrary to our instrumental goals.

The US has some of this, and it's much of what the prep school to Ivy League pipeline is for. "There is no door in this entire country that cannot be opened by a Choate graduate".

"Class", by Paul Fussell, is amusing, if dated.

What exactly is the “ceiling” one hits if one capitalizes on opportunities, succeeds in career and family, and makes a pile of money? That the 6th Earl Postlethwaite won’t invite them to tea at Shrumsbury Hall?

> They seem to think they will be working class for the rest of their lives and there's noticeable hate/resent for the rich.

Told to me by an Irish person:

You know the difference between an Irishman and an American? The American looks up at that big, shining mansion on the hill, and says, "someday... someday... I'm gonna be that guy". The Irishman looks up at that big, shining mansion on the hill, and says, "someday... someday... I'm gonna get that bastard".

On the other hand, it's hard not to feel like the American's reaction is the result of propaganda and a distraction from the fact that, today, he lives in a dilapidated trailer park and has no access to healthcare.

America has excelled in the manufacture of many things, but perhaps especially dreams.

Which explains the success of Hollywood.

Of course it's part propaganda, but it's also a result of history. Our borders were expanding for nearly 200 years and in the process we gained unimaginable amount of resources and land. For a long time, you could really get land ( cheaply or free ) and you could hope to improve your lot in life. Of course all that land and resources were a result of the mass extermination of the natives, but that was the reality. It's really fairly recently where we've pretty much stagnated. For most of US history, there was genuine reasons for the optimism of the american dream.

Hah.

As an American living in Ireland 8 years now....

Yup.

> If you're in dirty workwear and a hi-vis vest, you're pretty much considered bottom of the barrel

Disclaimer: my knowledge of British culture is horribly outdated, and mostly draws from George Mikes' "How to be an alien" and TV shows.

I always thought that truly high society in Britain sometimes wears rags, and the neat clothing was a sign of either working class or "new riches". George Mikes makes fun of this:

> On Sundays on the Continent even the poorest person puts on his best suit, tries to look respectable, and at the same time the life of the country becomes gay and cheerful; in England even the richest peer or motor-manufacturer dresses in some peculiar rags, does not shave, and the country becomes dull and dreary.

But it's not just his opinion; for example in the TV show "Traitors", set in postwar London, a character coming from a high society family derides someone for dressing "too well", signalling lower class/new riches, and because of how he pronounces "opera" (according to her, it's "opera" for the lower classes, and "op'ra" for the higher classes).

That's quite universal, I think. The aspirational and the nouveaus tend to overdo it. They're out of their element, so they either indulge their existing habits and aspirations, behave unnaturally, or overcompensate according to what they think it means to be "upper class". It takes three generations or so for the habits, attitudes, concerns, and sensibilities to sink in. By then, their children and grandchildren are likely to have squandered their wealth.

The whole point of 'peacefull' stratification is is that everyone internalizes it 'voluntarily'. If they (the underclass) didn't, and realized their power, saw it was nothing more than custom holding them back, it wouldn't work and other methods would be invented. There is a reason Britons proclaim to be non revolutionaries, that is very much in support of their stratification.

Your observation that the subtle cues seem to be the only thing keeping the classes apart is precisely the goal. This way it costs minimal effort to keep the stratification in tact.

The men in this picture may have opportunities, but I'll bet tens of thousands of pounds:

https://scontent.fqls1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/88175441_110...

they'll continue to make a career in entertainment, never transitioning to posing for banknotes like the woman in this picture:

https://dynaimage.cdn.cnn.com/cnn/q_auto,w_1100,c_fill,g_aut...

(Both backgrounds have automobiles and feature greenery, and the men in them all wear trousers. Are there any other similarities?)

Brave New World's "I'm glad to be a β" is funnier if one takes it as an observation, like Cleese's and the 2 Ronnies' 60's treatment, of the actual british class system as it existed in 1930. Having read the M-M-Mitford sisters as well as White Mischief, "everyone belongs to everyone else" may not have been ethnologically that far off of the faster upper class sets. Compare note 3,5 of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24250082 . On a grimmer note, an irish friend told me that the wide eyes of fetal alcohol syndrome were obvious in many faces of the generations before hers.

Is there a name for the "straight man" who motivates an infodump in fiction? In the Yes, Minister series, Sir Humphrey Appleby GCB KBE MVO (as he is now, Winchester) frequently has an excuse to infodump because Jim Hacker (as he was then, school unknown) went to the LSE and therefore couldn't possibly be expected to know how things are done. Fortunately for Mr. Hacker, Sir Humphrey platonically helps him to recall the ideals of government, e.g. "When there is a Labour government, the education authorities tell them that comprehensives abolish the class system and when there's a Tory government we tell them that it's the cheapest way of providing mass education; to Labour we explain that selective education is divisive and to the Tories we explain that it is expensive."

it is possible to go from working class to upper class

You can't really do that for "traditional" definitions of upper class (which isn't based on anything as simple as having loads of money).

And anyway - everyone is middle class these days. Nobody claims to be working class and there are so few actually upper class people that most people will never meet one.

> Nobody claims to be working class

I think "Working class" is a distinct thing from "Lower class."

At least here in the US, I know a fair number of people that would claim the label "Working class", though I doubt any of them would claim to be "Lower class."

"Working class" is a synonym for "Blue collar" to many people.

"Middle class" is less of a synonym for "White collar", but I think that distinction exists for some people.

There is a new housing development behind my house which like most in the UK now has a mix of social/shared ownership and more expensive traditional properties.

It's fascinating to see the differences. One side has flash cars, the other ordinary hatchbacks. One side is happy to wander around in a dressing gown during the day whilst the other is always smartly dressed. One side let their kids play in the street whilst the other has them in studying. One side is mostly trades people whilst the other works in offices.

Despite all the differences (or perhaps because of) it seems to work. I doubt either side would chose the situation but the fact the system forces them together is genius.

So to answer your point, no, everybody is not middle class.