THe upper middle class favour immigration

I wasn't rude. I just don't understand the historical phenomenon you are describing and can't see the evidence for it but would be genuinely interested.

I’m sorry, I have no interest in engaging with someone as rude as you.

If you haven’t heard about the cultural revolution that took place in this country in the 1960s, I can’t help you frankly. Try getting off Mumsnet and reading a book.

I’m sorry, I have no interest in engaging with someone as rude as you.

If you haven’t heard about the cultural revolution that took place in this country in the 1960s, I can’t help you frankly. Try getting off Mumsnet and reading a book.

But how many are not working & have no intention of working? Are living on state benefits & accommodation without contributing? What are the actual figures?

I would still have an issue with dividing at age 11. My eldest DC has left school with “top grades”, no way were they operating at that level aged 11. I also don’t understand how children who are not all rounders are catered for - if a child is a maths genius but poor at English where should this child be placed? Perhaps this is dealt with just fine in granting grammar places, I don’t know how the system works.

What I would like to see is more social status being attached to non-white collar employment. Jobs requiring high levels of technical knowledge or high societal worth absolutely deserve it.

I don’t understand why every local school can’t be excellent, can’t have the same high standards of pastoral care and sporting and academic opportunities.

What are you talking about? Do you have any evidence at all? Who were the great working class artists who changed society before the 60s?

The fact is, our birth rate is currently dangerously low, to the point where we don’t have enough tax paying workers to pay for and care for our aging population. The easiest way out of this is immigration. It’s not just the UK - it’s an issue across all developed nations. If you want a peek at the future, take a look at what’s happening in Japan:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-66850943

All schools should strive to be excellent. However that doesn’t mean the brightest kids should be denied the opportunity of attending excellent schools that are more academically rigorous than other excellent schools. Why lump everyone in together?

No one moans about lack of equality in the German school system, and that’s very similar to the old grammar school system. Which still exists in Northern Ireland, by the way, and you don’t hear anyone from there moaning either.

Instead of abolishing grammar schools, why didn’t the champagne socialists in the 1960s and 1970s simply try to improve secondary moderns and make them equally excellent? No, they took a look at what was happening around them - how the art was influencing society, changing opinions and values, changing the status quo - and they decided no more. Maybe if the people producing that art weren’t for the most part grammar school boys, they wouldn’t have gone all out to deny that opportunity to others. Then again, the world would much poorer for it. As it is now that we no longer produce great art. Is it any wonder?

All schools should strive to be excellent. However that doesn’t mean the brightest kids should be denied the opportunity of attending excellent schools that are more academically rigorous than other excellent schools. Why lump everyone in together?

No one moans about lack of equality in the German school system, and that’s very similar to the old grammar school system. Which still exists in Northern Ireland, by the way, and you don’t hear anyone from there moaning either.

Instead of abolishing grammar schools, why didn’t the champagne socialists in the 1960s and 1970s simply try to improve secondary moderns and make them equally excellent? No, they took a look at what was happening around them - how the art was influencing society, changing opinions and values, changing the status quo - and they decided no more. Maybe if the people producing that art weren’t for the most part grammar school boys, they wouldn’t have gone all out to deny that opportunity to others. Then again, the world would much poorer for it. As it is now that we no longer produce great art. Is it any wonder?

I don’t understand why every local school can’t be excellent, can’t have the same high standards of pastoral care and sporting and academic opportunities.

Some of this thread is interesting and some of it is absolutely foul.

Apologies - I meant child maintenance. Sorry.

I totally see where you are coming from. I think the issue is that there are so few grammar schools that they do become insanely competitive - you have to have enough £££ to be in the correct area and then everyone tutors as everyone has moved to the area with the exact same idea. If there were more grammar schools there would be more places and hopefully genuine opportunity for students.

'Secondary moderns' could be better at pitching themselves as a superb option for middle class students - not every decent career needs a university degree.

The ills of society/lack of social mobility aren't down to the reduction in Grammar schools, i'd argue the imposition of some of the worlds highest tuition fees, including for non degree subjects, has had a far bigger impact, as has housing costs.
Add in successive Governments that have not invested in secondary education.

I totally see where you are coming from. I think the issue is that there are so few grammar schools that they do become insanely competitive - you have to have enough £££ to be in the correct area and then everyone tutors as everyone has moved to the area with the exact same idea. If there were more grammar schools there would be more places and hopefully genuine opportunity for students.

'Secondary moderns' could be better at pitching themselves as a superb option for middle class students - not every decent career needs a university degree.

If it was a bot would it be able to spell properly and create a coherent argument? I don’t know much about it but I would imagine a bot would get the basics right.

I suspect it’s more of a twat problem than a bot problem. It’s as though someone’s put 50p in the dickheads so they’ve all come out to share their dickishness for a while.

My mum massively benefited from 1950s grammar schools as did my PILs. I’m dead against them now - my friend lives in a grammar school areas where local prep schools promote themselves in the basis of their success in grammar school placing. That’s not social mobility, that’s entrenching privilege.

The working class are not thick. If they were, there would have been no need for the ruling class to (mostly) abolish grammar schools, which really did allow for social mobility.

There was far too much ‘levelling up’ in the 1960s, with those bright working class kids who had benefited from Eton-level educations actually changing the fabric of society. This horrified the ruling class and they made sure to put a stop to it, under the guise of ‘inclusivity’ (which basically meant the status quo). So-called ‘socialists’ despise the working class.

Right, because society has improved so much since. As have people’s life chances.

Racial prejudice always erupts at times of peak economic anxiety. The government ruins the economy then demonises any racial or minority group that is likely to be competing for wages against the white working class.
Then the same government makes a show of restricting the economic viability of those minority groups, pretending to 'save' the working classes - Brexit, 'restrictive' immigration policies , media hysteria and other extreme laws (Rwanda anyone)...

The same Conservative government that was screaming about curbing immigration was running mass recruitment campaigns in my birth country for nurses and teachers. All while telling us that immigration is the devil that is ruining this great nation.

This might be a new phenomenon here, but has been rehashed many times over in the US since the 1800s - Chinese, Blacks, Mexicans, on and on it goes...

The government has always been the problem, not immigration.