Oh, for heaven's sake.

Having been a features editor myself I realise that magazines commission this stuff just to annoy people and get letters (Is the British middle class an endangered species?) But I'll bite anyway. I would have done this on the article itself but it doesn't seem to have commenting available.

"Their three-bed house needs work...They own one 10-year-old car. 'We don't talk about money. We just know we haven't got much.'... The family summer holiday is one week in France.. 'I would like to have a decent holiday.'"


Oh please. One week in France? My heart bleeds. In what universe is that not a decent holiday? What do you want, three weeks in the Maldives? I would be irked even if it had said: "The family summer holiday is one week in Cornwall/ Kent/ Norfolk", as it's not only possible but easy to have a lovely family holiday there, but France?

Anyway, Hackney gets a shout-out as an increasingly middle class area, which is true: "The neat, middle-class enclaves of Edinburgh or Leeds, with their almost wholly middle-class streets and playgrounds, offer a different life from scruffier, more socially mixed but increasingly gentrified Hackney or Lambeth."

Disclaimer: I am myself almost certainly middle class, although it's hard to tell these days, but I would consider a week in France to be a top holiday, considering I am currently getting very excited about a possible off-season week at Butlins.