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Thursday 27 January 2011

Posh and Posher: Why Public School Boys Run Britain

I'm very well aware that I haven't posted anything in a while, and I just don't care. :-)


But, I'm watching a program presented by Andrew Neil that is really grinding my goat and I couldn't resist. If the program was to be summed up in a phrase it's simply: "The country is run by a political elite, and that's not the way it should be or the way it has always been."

And I agree with all of that, fine. 10% of the current cabinet went to Eton, and 66% were privately educated (compared to ~8% countrywide). But why? Well, Andrew Neil makes the point that people from a state-educated background simply don't have the chance. And he may even be on to something but he fails to back up his point other than simply saying 'networking'. 

Regardless of what the point is, it's a fact that the vast majority of the 'big 3' party members are Oxbridge educated and privately schooled. That's definitely not right, at all. Not on any kind of left-wing bent about social mobility or anything, but simply because that means that they're going to have similar thought-patterns, ways of dealing with situations and even political views. And to think people are whining that they're all the same party. 

But I simply refuse to believe that it would be impossible for me or you to make it in politics today. Harder? Almost certainly, but not impossible. Neil makes the argument that the meritocracy is dead, I say bull. Trade unions, political party conferences and, most importantly, OTHER POLITICAL PARTIES THAT ACTUALLY REPRESENT WORKING CLASS PEOPLE, would all love to have you, not based on who you know or which school you went to, but how good you are. 

Not that I agree with the socialists, the greens or especially the BNP, but they are the parties that represent the working class, maybe they're the ones me and you should be talking to.


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