Posh People

I'm even more surrounded by posh people (all girls) in my office than I used to be - crikey, that was three years ago :(

My landlady is old money. She calls our house a "hayse". She is awesome.

I kinda favour neutering over culling.

Let's be honest, we're only really talking about posh women here aren't we?

Horse teeth = hot

http://www.bbc.co.uk/nottingham/content/images/2005/03/03/sean_bean_150_150x180.jpg

"Shall I fuck thee, m'lady?"

Depends. Long faces and patrician manners = hot.

But of course (xxxpost)

No, there can be something sweet and old-fashioned about super-posh boys, but only if they are of the non-braying type. They have amazing manners and stand up when you reach the table and stuff, but not in a weird way that makes it seem obvious and patronising. I normally don't care about this kind of stuff, but the accent gives it a nice costume drama edge.

Posh people search: The type who always, always get the tenor of an occassion right.

Is it posh people who say "darling" or is it everybody?

I think it's mainly women of all stripes. And men who like to think they're romantic. And stressed out husbands in TV plays about dinner parties.

And people in actor pubs

Actors do say it unfortunately

posh people say 'dahling', the rest say 'dollin'.

Isn't "dolling" a fetish?

YES - I have a posh man friend who says "darling" to just about everyone, including the waiter. He frequents Joe Allen.

There's a gulf between types of darling. There's 'Daaarling! We SAID we wouldn't mention that." "Daaahhling! Hello Sweetie, how aaaaare you?" "You alright darlin'?" and "Ello darlin'" to name but a few.

The last three put me in mind of Beryl.

"Oh, 'tis a darlin' mornin' to be sure, Mr Darraghmac"

I say "darls" a lot.

This is the thread where I'm...on the defensive?

Nah, I'm pretty goddamn certain I'm not posh. This RP accent, it's all social conditioning, guv'nor. Plus, I *never* use "darling".

old-money posh ppl in NZ speak with posh english accents. when i was at a fancy restaurant last week me and my friend got talking to the posh family sitting next to us, and my friend asked her whereabouts in england she was from... "i was born and raised in NZ"...

then why the hell do you have an english accent???

Whoever plays the Australian PM in The Dish has an English accent for public speaking but a pretty thick Australian one in private.

Embrace your poshness Louis. Just take the edge off when you're in slightly less well-bred company.

Relative to a lot of people I have a fairly posh accent too even though I grew up in Somerset, my mum's from Rotherham and my dad's a Bristolian.

Whoa, time out; I'm the middle-class son of a computer programmer and a primary-school teacher, hardly 'posh'. In voice alone can I be mistaken for one of them (and even then, not really). When attending Charlton games, my SE London underlay takes over completely. Fackinell, 'e's on twenny grand a fackin' week an' 'e carn even take a frow?

dude you went to westminster. own it!

as an academic scholar! and i've practically disowned it by now!

Oh they all say that

methink the landowner doth protest too much.

hahahaha, er, NO. There were only 8 or 9 scholars in each year of 120 (rising to nearly 200 in 6th form). xpost. argh, i really am on the defensive, aren't i?

yah. you raarrly raarly aaare.

(I would v much like to know what a real live astrophysicist thinks of The Dish but this is not the thread)

(sudden Bridget-Jones-induced worry that using "v" is v v posh, even on the interwebs)

dop posh people pronounce posh as "poash"?

^"Poash" with the same oa as Poach

You're thinking of French people, commonly mistaken for posh

LJ isn't posh. I did ask on one thread if we had any actual aristo types on ILE but I don't think I got an answer.

you don't have to be an aristo to be posh, mark, but i get your point.

No you're right - LJ, and me, among others, have sort of low-level poshness from private schooling but middle class or working class backgrounds which means we don't have any of the kind of old-money landowning brahmin or whatever type poshness that seems to be what people really mean by the word.

I only knew of one person in my year at school who did come from a properly privileged background and he was African royalty rather than British aristocracy. Though I did have a friend at school who owned an office block.

I'm not sure that having a private school education necessarily gives someone low-level poshness (or poshness of any kind), and neither does money. I was at school with girls whose families were dripping in new money, and they were rough as old boots, while one of my most aristocratic friends came from a family who lived in their massive inherited house without two ha'pennies to rub together, no heating, and a grandfather who was barking mad and lived up a tree in the garden.

In posh trumps, a massive inherited house and barking mad grandfather trumps education and money every time.

De rigeur, old chap

Hmm, I dunno CJ - I think 5 years education at a private school can't help but rub off on even the most brassic young scholarship waif, though yes, I guess it doesn't have to manifest itself in any sense of poshness. But the vast majority of the people I went to school with share an accent, a sense of entitlement and a life experience that's different from that which state school kids go through.

xpost - Matt DC OTM as long as the massive inherited house goes back at least 300 years - new money any time in the 20th century is still new money.

I did ask on one thread if we had any actual aristo types on ILE but I don't think I got an answer.

Who needs aristos when you've got M.White?

"the kind of old-money landowning brahmin or whatever type poshness that seems to be what people really mean by the word."

they don't mean that, they mean it more broadly. private schooling does, for most people, confer poshness, ie an accent, certain manners, etc.

people like to think that "old money" is significantly different than new: it's basically a fallacy, and new becomes old very quickly. not to mention the fact that true aristos are as rough as they come, and if you think about it, the older the money, the rougher, if anything.

*most* aristos don't *seem* to have two ha'pennies to rub together because *they are fundamentally mean*. to service an estate costs money: but most of them are hardly "old money". the "great houses" are largely mid-19th century.

the number of people who live in a house older than 300 years is ridonculously tiny, and 99.5% of brits have a far wider definition of what 'posh' means.

I'm not sure what the difference in life experience is between middle class state schoolers and public school kids really.

xpost to Mark C

It's the buggery, mostly.

Apart from that, I mean.

Yeah I was exaggerating for effect. So "posh" to most people implies a mode of behaviour rather than a background? Interesting.

It's the buggery, mostly.

It gives you such a sense of entitlement

i went to a middle class state school and although there may have been little actual difference between us and the public school lot (a lot of my friend's were from liberal families who were opposed to the principal of private education but could have afforded it) but there was definitely a perceived one. we kept it real yo.

So "posh" to most people implies a mode of behaviour rather than a background? Interesting.

-- Mark C, Tuesday, November 13, 2007 1:11 PM (55 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

it's hardly an either/or. but the whole *point* of public schools was/is to manufacture a standardized behaviour set from people of regionally/socially different backgrounds.

It's also to ensure a steady stream of business to Jack Wills and Cath Kidston, too

a standardized behaviour set

Somehow, I got away with being the clown, the jape, the jester. It helped that I wasn't fully aware of how fabulously wealthy 95% of my classmates really were.

My poshest friend doesn't seem that posh at first sight - he's amazingly scruffy, drives a battered old car and is usually pretty filthy. But his family owns half of the Yorkshire Dales (well a *lot* of land there), 3 trout farms, and live in a sprawling pile in the middle of nowhere. His 70-odd years old mother is by far the poshest person I've ever met - she speaks in a mixture of posh Yorkshire, Latin and French and wears ancient banana-yellow trouser suits and floppy hats. I once witnessed her explaining to a water-board official on the phone that they didn't have to pay water rates 'as long as a descendent of Queen Victoria is on the throne'. They are fantastic people, really genuine and not at all stuck up.

Lots of people OTM - posh is not money, education or ostentation. There are very few genuinely posh people around.

she speaks in a mixture of posh Yorkshire, Latin and French

ok this is awesome

It IS. She is fabulous.

Does anyone know the Peabody Trust? Their properties are all around me in South London, and seem to be full of posh people that have 'fallen on hard times'.

I just wonder if this is a unintentional side effect of their accommodation strategy or a main objective.

the whole *point* of public schools was/is to manufacture a standardized behaviour set from people of regionally/socially different backgrounds.

That's pretty much what I was saying, I think.

The poshest person I know had a father called Ovid.

Bob -- that is interesting. the peabody trust is like 150 years old and no, that wasn't it's original objective!!

"he's amazingly scruffy, drives a battered old car and is usually pretty filthy."

uh yeah, most properly old-money poshos are like this, notoriously...

it's not about ostentation *in some ways*, but it clearly is in others. but the idea you can ultimately separate poshness from money -- and to a certain extent education -- is ridiculous. money =! cash, of course.

Well there's obviously been money around at some point, but the point is that poshness survives when all the money's gone.

maybe for a generation, but -- nah, not really. to stay posh you kind of have to participate in their defining activities. it's the flipside of self-made men claiming salt-of-the-earth credentials long after they've made their first millions.

do we have this in america?

Is it even possible in America? The values are completely flip-side here when it comes to class - it's better to be the successful son /daughter of an immigrant than having a long heritage.

I guess the closest is East Coast DAR Gilmore Girls type crap.

i have met an amazing number of people whose ancestors were "on the mayflower"

Hmmm. Does that count, though? Long family heritages only seem to carry capital among other families with long heritages. My Dutch ancestors helped settle New Amsterdam in 1638 (their family estate being the second oldest still-standing building in New York City). If I said that to someone they'd shrug and say "whatever". I'd never be described as "posh".

What counts in America is what you own now! Isn't that the whole 'freedom from class' thing they teach in Social Studies?

Long family heritages only seem to carry capital among other families with long heritages.

well duh. it's not just heritage, but keeping the money. my impression is that posh americans don't tend to be recent sons of immigrants tho?

"well duh" as in it's only stupid britishers who even care about this bollocks.

do we have this in america?

-- homosexual II, Tuesday, 13 November 2007 15:52 (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

America doesn't need class, it has race.

Quite obviously the US is riddled with class divisions. What's questionable is whether that amounts to a class system. What's obvious is that class connotes very differently.

here's the point in the class thread where we say english "class" as signifiers of whatever is different from "class" as historico-economic category, which obviously exists in the US too.

But given that social mobility isn't nearly as volatile there or as rigid here as some people like to claim I'd say that the US has plenty of class-as-signifier action too.

Tracer, I have a Mayflower connection! Not documented, just anecdotal/family lore. Funny, though.

xpost

A lot of the Red State vs Blue State thing has been playing out on these lines for the last 7 years, surely.

The only class signifier in the US is what you own now. Manners, heritage, etc. etc., mean nothing. If you have money + that, then all the better. It's probably like that almost anywhere.

Manners mean something to some people. Just not the ones wot don't have 'em.

Big selling Hip Hop stars posher than Ivy League students then?

The concept of "posh" becomes sort of irrelevant at that point, I think. No one would describe, like, RZA as "posh" but it's not even germane -- in fact, isn't the point rather than they're rejecting the whole system and/or succeeding despite it, triumphing over it, "take that", etc?

Sure but there has to be some kind of unspoken system there for them to triumph over.

america has more separate power bases, so far as i can tell. the proverbial park avenue/hamptons set probably aspires to old-world euro 'posh' in ways that not all american rich folk go in for.

Sure but there has to be some kind of unspoken system there for them to triumph over.

-- Noodle Vague, Tuesday, November 13, 2007 4:28 PM (31 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

the brit public school, i was saying, kind of homogenized 'poshness' out of quite different sets: olde landowners, the industrial super-rich, london finance capitalists, and, a bit later, the civil service/colonial administrative class.

xpost

I agree it's v. complicated. More complicated than burt's "the only class signifier in the US is what you own now" allows for, which is why I'm disagreeing with him.

Big selling Hip Hop stars posher than Ivy League students then?

-- Noodle Vague, Tuesday, November 13, 2007 4:22 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

They're the same thing - they both affect American ideas of the upper class while being new money or recent children of new money (say, the child of the hip hop star going to an Ivy League school). There seem to be very few 400 year old Ivy League families out there, most of them squirreled away dying in the Northeast. I've only met one, a close family friend, and she's the last descendant of an old, wealthy New England family. These days it's more like the Astors, the Kennedeys, etc... late 19th, 20th century families that's the American upper class, and it's all just invented from thin air anyway.

Yr quite right about public schools in Britain quitney. Have you read The Uses of Literacy? It's a brilliant invocation of the post-war democratisation of the "administrative class", right and wrong.

yes, there are many codes of behavior for success, tied up in different industries, different politics, different ethnic backgrounds... but it all boils down having a shit-ton of money, really.

xps

they both affect American ideas of the upper class while being new money or recent children of new money (say, the child of the hip hop star going to an Ivy League school). There seem to be very few 400 year old Ivy League families out there

... all of which is largely true in the UK too

Yeah. Manners only matter to those who have them (and a few who might aspire/be intimidated by them, but you can't count on that for leverage), whereas money matters to EVERYONE.

I'm not sure American super-rich need to flash such a history of poshness as upper class Europeans, mostly because the US hasn't existed as long. Three or four generations is probably enough. But I'm still not sure it boils down to *just* having a shitload of money.

Three or four generations is probably enough in the UK as well, unless you're an aristocrat.

Most poshos in Britain haven't got a long ancestry of wealth and privilege either

oops xpost

I hear what you're saying burt but I think that's a patrician class you're referring to and it needn't be the same thing as an upper or upper middle class. And I think there are class signifiers beyond simply "what you own" in the US - accents or idioms maybe, where you live, the ideas you feel comfortable expressing, your whole world-view? I say this as an outsider who's never visited the country but it seems to me like those things often signify something.

V weirdly, I was raised with pretensions to some amalgam of manners/graciousness/decorum and there's no money in MY family & never has been. I think just the opposite -- they were like "You may have to be poor, but you NEVER have to be dirty, rude, or uncivilized." Maybe it's a Southern thing.

Not just a Southern thing

Well, whatever: it resulted in me growing up hearing "a lady always..." and "a lady never..." entirely too often.

it is funny how this shit gets confused in a particular locality: i grew up in a small town with a couple major industries. at one point i was surprised to learn everyone thought i was totally loaded -- these were the kids of plant managers, upper mgmt IT and finance honchos, etc. why? cos my dad was an academic? i played the violin? there was a lot of odd calvinist shit going on there tho.

anyway, money & social relations, IT IS A MYSTERY

I'm not sure American super-rich need to flash such a history of poshness as upper class Europeans, mostly because the US hasn't existed as long. Three or four generations is probably enough. But I'm still not sure it boils down to *just* having a shitload of money.

-- Matt DC, Tuesday, November 13, 2007 4:36 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

srsly, how many families in britain dyou think 'go back' to before the american colonies -- or even the industrial revolution?

if it's about not money, what the hell is it about? there is no 'posh' family that hasn't been very, very rich at some point.

argh posh as in proper upper-class rather than "that's a bit posh".

I don't think anyone is arguing that money isn't a prerequisite at some point, Enrique.

i think what i'm getting at is that 'impoverished' aristos have their funds 'tied up' rather than don't have funds. i have no idea how these things work socially, but eventually, if you can't fund your kids through school, can't play on that social level, you end up not being posh. it probably takes a generation or two.

They have land? Property?

Grandfather who was a disgraced Tory MP in the 60s?

Plus you have to have to laugh when you read about Jeffrey Archer or some arsehole like that, "I was in such desperate financial straits that I was forced to sell the flat in London and had to borrow 100 grand from friends"

You have to laugh when you read Jeffrey Archer.

i like this idea that there are "genuine" posh people

what does that even mean

intersubjectivity. it means they are regarded as such. it's not something you can do an objective test on.

It means that other posh people recognise them as posh.

People who unreflectingly have a posh world-view as opposed to social climbers, fraudsters, Jeffrey Archer etc.

i'm sure their great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather, claighbaildh, was seen as a thrusting young turk who just happened to be handy with a sword

till he was enobled.

You pretty much had to be posh to own a sword and be in a position to use it.

Also to get into the Royal Court and give the King blowjobs

the aristos of the 1400s were warlords. the tudors pulled off the great trick of buying them off, partly by creating high offices for them, in return for them giving up their private armies.

a posh girl, yesterday

http://img.timeinc.net/time/daily/2007/0703/amtudors_0402.jpg

Not just buying off either. The Reformation was great for marginalising yr political enemies.

property is theft

Someone on my Facebook list has a friend called "Dick.on Fetherston.ehaugh"

i almost posted something really stupid

I bought my lunch at Boots (as I do sometimes), the girl asked "do you have an advantayge card?"

I was in love for 15 seconds.

advantayge?

are you saying posh people work at Boots?

apparently.

They want to live like common people; they want to see what common people see.

When I was a kid, I thought the weirdly over-made-up women on the perfume counters were the poshest people on the whole planet.

since when is saying 'advantayge' posh?

You know what's really posh? Saying 'frands' instead of 'friends'.

I just assumed that guy was posh from his name.And waddyaknow, this is what googling his name brings up:

http://www.kinmel-estate.co.uk/html/history.html

two of my posh facebook friends are facebook friends with 'cash-in-my-pocket'. i have no idea what the deal is there.

I assume there are posh teenagers/students working at Boots in parts of the country.

[citation needed]

some posh kids get summer/gap year jobs innit.

since when is saying 'advantayge' posh?

yhtbthere

people love poshos. esp young posh girls. they think its charming. even when theyre being obnoxious. it can get you far, even if youre not from an oxbridge background just cos of how many people still buy into it.

http://idletigers.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/haines.jpg

We're in Boots with the Upper Classes now

I think we can all agree on the poshness of this woman:

http://www.topnews.in/files/images/Tilda-Swinton1.jpg