Nice tongue-in-cheek effort, particularly so close to the end of the festive season.

Oh my god! They should be ashamed for being sent to Eton by their parents, espeically since it is one of the finest educational establishments in the country, and my god! They then went on to study at Oxbridge! Constantly recognised as two of the best universities in the world! Pfffff

It’s a pitty that the middle class all aspire to send their kids to Private / Grammar schools and want to their children to be educated at one of the Russell Group or 1994 Group Universities otherwise this class “war” might just work!

But alas! so many years of New Labours attack on aspiration hasn’t broken the will and desire of parents to supply and provide the best that there is for their children. Because that is what that class war is when you boil it down to the fundamentals, Labour hates aspiration, the public should be satisfied with their lot and get over it. If you want to be the best, if you want to push the boundaries and aspire to win then Labour will not support you.

Labour keep creating new ways to celebrate mediocrity, but if someone is genuinely exceptional they mistrust it, Labour say that everyone is special which is another way of saying no one is.

I wouldn’t mind if the Brummies ran the country as long as they changed the accent…

So you support attacks on the present Labour government then for being too Scottish? That’s a shame.

Bloody funny, good show.

Robtro: you’re mostly right about the Oxbridge point being a pretty weak attack (and this is speaking as a working-class boy who just truimphantly fell at the last hurdle in his Oxford bid), but Eton and Oxbridge are very different things. One is relatively meritocratic. The other is entirely based on being drawn simultaneously from the social elite and the economic elite.

The fact that our leadership is being drawn from an essentially narrow hereditary elite? That’s not a good thing. How good a school Eton is isn’t relevant; it’s a school that’s only open to a tiny elite group (and not even one based on intelligence or some pale imitation of it like the grammar schools), and so half the Cabinet stemming from it is a very bad thing indeed.

2
What merit is there about being sent to Eton? – about the same as being born with blue eyes. Then after attending Eton, you stand an excellent chance of being accepted for Oxbridge where, you will receive a very good education From Oxbridge, you will have a better chance than your rivals in gaining employment in almost any profession you choose, even though the degrees from most other universities are equal, Oxbridge has the status.
If we really do live in a meritocracy, the cabinet would come from a more diverse area than the Eton/Oxbridge connection. It seems, unlike most people on this site, you have failed to notice this bias.
Most of the people I know aspire to give their children a good education, but with the aforesaid bias, it becomes very difficult for the majority. I wonder how many of the majority are clever, creative people whose environment did not allow their talents to be nurtured

Funny you should pick Bournville. This area is represented by three Conservatives (two of whom went to the same school and one of whom has a wife who is going to be an MP after the next election). As recently as 2004, it was on an electoral knife-edge. In the last locals the Tories scored 51% against Labour’s 19%.

Cllr Nigel Dawkins is the Tory PPC for Selly Oak and will beat Steve McCabe who is the man responsible for dreaming up the Tory toff attack in Labour’s Crewe campaign/debacle. Nigel has recently been attacked from the right by the Labour candidate for Bournville for having an independent view on protecting Cadbury. Source.

Ha fucking ha………….

Replace “Brummies” by “Scots” and the whole article seems more plausible.

Britain’s politicians are drawn from a very narrow range of sources. The Tories glut of Etonistas we know about, but the Labour cabinet is also a pretty narrow affair, the scots plus the miliband bros and Mr & Mrs Cooper-Balls. I gather Nick Clegg and his rival for the leadership of the Lib Dems, Chris Huhne, both went to Westminster School.

It strikes me that the big weakness in attacking the Tories via Eton is that all the parties have a drawn their leaders from a pretty small pool.

@vicarious

I know it is attractive to think ‘they’re all the same’ (especially if
you wanted to downplay the wealthy and priviliged backgrounds
of the Tories), but Labour are far more ‘like us’ than the Tories. Of course the
bigger question is does this matter and it probably doesn’t as it’s not
like the Conservatives are promising tax cuts for priviliged millionaires and spending cuts and tax rises targeted on the poor is it?

Two thirds of the Shadow Cabinet are millionaires http://conservativehome.blogs.com/torydiary/2008/07/does-it-matter.html

60% of Tory MPs were privately educated (8% were educated at Eton alone). 18% of Labour MPs were privately educated (0.3% at Eton). 7% of the UK population are privately educated.

44% of Tory MPs went to Oxbridge versus 16% of Labour MPs.

9% of Tory MPs are female versus 28% of Labour
MPs and about 50% of the UK population.

http://www.parliament.uk/commons/lib/research/rp2005/RP05-033.pdf

The Sutton Trust did an interesting report which dug deeper into backgrounds of
MPs http://www.suttontrust.com/reports/PoliticiansBackgrounds_09-Dec-05.pdf

53% of Labour MPs were educated in state comprehensive schools (with
Ministers being slightly more likely to have dine than backbenchers) versus 20% of Tories.

Having gone to said school, I can assure there’s no way anyone from the vast majority of that school would’ve gone on to achieve much.

Eton and Oxbridge are very different things. One is relatively meritocratic. The other is entirely based on being drawn simultaneously from the social elite and the economic elite.

Not sure about this. I read somewhere that nearly every Old Etonian we’ve ever heard of – Boris Johnson, Charles Moore etc, – were scholarship boys who got in on the basis of a competitive exam and their parents didn’t pay. David Cameron being the exception.

@jay

Yes you’re right. Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson clawed himself up out of the ghetto, escaping from the rough surroundings of Ashdown House preparatory school. His father, Stanley, single-handedly overcame the disadvantageous start of attending the independent Sherbourne school and Exeter College, Oxford University to enable his son to escape poverty and have the chances in life he himself never had.

Yes – Boris was just a working-class lad who got where he is today through being given a chance to attend Eton by dint of his intelligence leading him to become a King’s Scholar and access means-tested discounting on his fees and allow his poverty-stricken father to be able to pay the fees.

A beacon of hope to all children born into poverty.

@2 : “Oh my god! They should be ashamed for being sent to Eton by their parents, espeically since it is one of the finest educational establishments in the country, and my god!”

Check out how Eton rates in the schools league table for A-level results before concluding it is one of the best educational establishments in the country. In fact, quite a few non-fee paying schools achieved better average A-level for their candidates than Eton did:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7827223.stm

What makes Eton so distinctive is not its A-level results but the cost of its annual fees: £26,000+

The OFT found several of the leading fee-paying schools engaged in anti-competitive practices to charge higher feees than would have prevailed in a freely competitive market, as in this call:

“The Office of Fair Trading has found that, during the period from 1 March 2001 to June 2003, 50 fee-paying independent schools (each a Participant school, together the Participant schools) infringed the prohibition (the Chapter I prohibition) imposed by section 2(1) of the Competition Act 1998 (the Act) by participating in an agreement and/or concerted practice having as its object the prevention, restriction or distortion of competition in the relevant markets for the provision of educational services.”
http://www.oft.gov.uk/advice_and_resources/resource_base/ca98/decisions/schools

Btw try this report of a research study at Warwick University:

“The UK’s most expensive private schools are producing pupils who achieve the worst grades at university, according to research. An eight-year study of graduates’ results by researchers at the University of Warwick suggests that the more parents pay in school fees, the less chance their children have of getting a good degree.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/2552523.stm

Oh dear. Two maintained grammar schools within walking distance of where I’m sitting achieved better average A-level results than Eton.