Upper-class angst

Upper-class angst

Spare a thought for a new downtrodden group struggling to cope with the cost of life in modern Britain: the upper middle classes.

The Telegraph is doing its best to drum up sympathy for what it calls the "Coping Classes" - those struggling to cope with higher tax brackets, home ownership, and private school fees.

Yesterday it reported "Chekhovian despair" among this group as it said they were being forced to buy prosciutto from the budget store Lidl. Now it reports they are having to remortgage or take in lodgers to pay school fees.

It talks to John Houston, a tourism manager from Dorset, who lets out his three children's room during term while they are off at boarding school.

It even suggest that the children of Telegraph readers are being forced out of private schools by the sprogs of arriviste oligarchs and hedge fund yobbos.

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"With the cost of independent schooling having risen 31% over five years, compared with a rather more modest 15% rise in our salaries, the middle classes are being priced out of the private education market," it says.

It quotes the provost of Eton, Sir Eric Anderson, fearing that his school could one day be the sole preserver of "the sons of hedge-fund managers, sheikhs and Russian footballers".

Meanwhile, readers are taking playwright Alan Bennett to task for calling for the abolition of private schools.

"Sir - Alan Bennett might be better advised to direct his bile at his erstwhile socialist chums, who have engineered such a sorry decline in state school standards over so many years", says one.

There is more potentially grim news for the "Coping Classes". The Telegraph also claims that the number of people paying the highest level of income tax (40%) has almost doubled since Labour came to power, from 2 million to 3.7 million.

The 40% tax bracket is the latest Gordon Brown stealth tax, it says, because the threshold has not kept pace with rising earnings.

* This is an extract from the Wrap, our digest of the daily papers.

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