Sunday NY Times piece on British Snobbery, for all you little plebs and gits

[Richard Hakluyt]

What are the British cultural implications of Harvey's Bristol Cream Sherry?  I just bought a bottle ($8.00) on a whim and am not sure what to do with it, or whose ranks I'll join once I start drinking it... 

No idea, I think it's only ever bought by widowed grannies.

My working class mother (widow and grandma aged 79) will no doubt be ordering her traditional two bottles for this Christmas 

It is regarded as a huge luxury treat by certain sections of the working class. The fact they they could afford it every week is ignored, instead "British sherry" (  ) , an almost gratuitously unpleasant drink, is bought.

[Sheilbh]

If I buy wine, coffee and canned food (but not clothes) at M&S, am I working class or middle class?

M&S. Solidly middle class.

Though I always find their food disappointing

[Richard Hakluyt]

I'd say that it is only lower-middle and middle-middle 

[Gups]

Meh, lots of different people buy food at M&S but very few do their weekly shop there. The nearest one to my work, attracts secretaries, shop workers, bankers, lawyers...

I don't think it says anything other than that you aren't on the breadline.

[Warspite]

Everyone can shop in Waitrose, but it is middle class to speculate about the value of a store on nearby house prices.

[Duque de Bragança]

What are the British cultural implications of Harvey's Bristol Cream Sherry?  I just bought a bottle ($8.00) on a whim and am not sure what to do with it, or whose ranks I'll join once I start drinking it... 

You're an elderly woman.

With terrible taste in sherry.

Sherry = Jérez so British sherry is a contradiction in terms (think of it as Garbon mistaking any sparkling wine for champagne). I'm not even a fan of sherry, since it's Port(o) über alles for me.

[Gups]

I don't know. Obviously, sherry is made in Andalucia, but Harvey's Bristol Cream is blended and bottled in Bristol.

[Richard Hakluyt]

"British sherry" is fortified wine blended in the UK or even fermented from imported grape must in the UK.

In this case British = Not Really

[garbon]

What are the British cultural implications of Harvey's Bristol Cream Sherry?  I just bought a bottle ($8.00) on a whim and am not sure what to do with it, or whose ranks I'll join once I start drinking it... 

You're an elderly woman.

With terrible taste in sherry.

Sherry = Jérez so British sherry is a contradiction in terms (think of it as Garbon mistaking any sparkling wine for champagne). I'm not even a fan of sherry, since it's Port(o) über alles for me.

There is no mistake.

[Capetan Mihali]

I've thought God broke the model for pensioners after creating British pensioners.  So along with my hypochondria, continual "moaning," and misty nostalgia for an imagined past, I'm sure I'll fit right in with my fellow Bristol Cream drinkers.  

Actually, my favorite memory from visiting London in 2006, other than a night on the town with Sheilbh, was spending a couple of hours at a cafe that appeared to have a 65+ admittance policy and house rules forbade conversation, smiling, and reading material other than tabloids.  But I was tolerantly allowed to sit ans stare at the frosted over windows for a couple hours drinking weak tea and smoking Mayfairs.

[Ideologue]

The communists tried to destroy classes in Poland but the attitude Sheilbh describes used to be very common and is reemerging again.

My grandmother used to tell me that before the war, her own mother could easily distinguish class in a poor Masovian village they lived in - noone had any money whatsoever, but the households that had a piano and the women going out to do gardening in white gloves (that they kept washing religiously despite it being quite futile) were considered upper class, unlike the rest - despite this (and a collection of old books) being pretty much the only difference.

So the people with more possessions were in the upper class? What an alien way of seeing things.

[garbon]

But in Britain class extends way beyond economic standing. It is about subculture. You can be very poor and still be solidly upper class or upper-middle, similarly you can be very rich and still very proud of the fact you're working class. In fact both are pretty common.

Which is totally alien here. Closest, would be old money vs. new money but that isn't a distinction that has any bearing except on the elite.

[Razgovory]

I remember reading in The Proud Tower that the British elite prided themselves on their long pedigrees while the exact opposite was happening in America, that the elite were priding themselves on being self made men.

[Martinus]

The communists tried to destroy classes in Poland but the attitude Sheilbh describes used to be very common and is reemerging again.

My grandmother used to tell me that before the war, her own mother could easily distinguish class in a poor Masovian village they lived in - noone had any money whatsoever, but the households that had a piano and the women going out to do gardening in white gloves (that they kept washing religiously despite it being quite futile) were considered upper class, unlike the rest - despite this (and a collection of old books) being pretty much the only difference.

So the people with more possessions were in the upper class? What an alien way of seeing things.

Everybody could afford piano or gloves. And they were all equally poor.

[Martinus]

But in Britain class extends way beyond economic standing. It is about subculture. You can be very poor and still be solidly upper class or upper-middle, similarly you can be very rich and still very proud of the fact you're working class. In fact both are pretty common.

Which is totally alien here. Closest, would be old money vs. new money but that isn't a distinction that has any bearing except on the elite.

To me it is perfectly familiar. Even during communism we had the term "intelligentsia" which pretty much served to capture the upper class in a supposedly classless society.