Everyone’s For Credit Crunch At The Middle Class Dinner Table
IN an article about how out of touch Gordon Brown is, credit crunch and how the economy is not what it was, Matthew d’Ancona writes:
Suddenly, the talk at middle-class tables is less about Poppy’s cello lessons and the simply divine Tuscan villa that Hugo has found: it is about bills, the credit crunch, banks collapsing, negative equity, repossessions, standing orders, school fees. The point is not that outright calamity has struck many people yet. It is that, for the first time in more than a decade, the chatterers fear it might.
The chattering classes have stopped talking about house prices to talk about house prices. It is an astute observation, and one that the Telegraph’s readerzzzzzz can chat about at will.
For us stood on the decking with our noses pressed to the patio doors, our ears tuned into the discordant noises of Timmy playing his oboe, the pop-pop-pop of lids being toppled from jars of medicines and Anthea practising her Thai on Monica the new Filipino maid, the middle class dining room is a vision on Hell.
Of course, no-one chatters about their kids and their stuff at the dinner table, at least no–one you would want to spend any time with, let alone listen to, unless you were researching a newspaper column or searching for an imaginaivce way to torture War On Terror detainees.
What the middle classes do is much like the rest of us do: they watch the telly.
If you want to see a sure sign that the housing boom is over, you can watch the demise of one of TV’s top dozen leading property hunting shows, Location Location Location, and catch up with hosts Phil and Katie as they lead middle class home owners around the country in Repossession, Repossession Repossession.
Pass the remote control…
Posted: 30th, March 2008 | In: Broadsheets, Money Comments (3) | TrackBack | Permalink
