Why should going to Eton make you less part of 'real life'?

Cameron is a twat. He'd be a twat if he went to a crap comprehensive - just a less fortunate, more deprived twat.

linctash, what you say is absolutely right, the standard of state education is terrible, and I would send my children to private schools if I could. It is irrelavant if you are a man or a woman on these posts, I.m glad your commenting on it and challenging some of these women who appear to hate men, (wonder how some of them got husbands!).

Mayday, I agree with you. Just because Cameron went to Eton does not mean he would not make a good Leader, Nick Clegg went to Westminster school, one of the best public schools in the London, does that mean he too
could not run this country, most politicians have gone to public schools, so all this nonsense about what schools they went to is a waste of time.

UM, LINCSTASH, if your education was so fantastic why do you make so many spelling & punctuation errors?

It is simply not true that all state schools are dreadful. DS is at a grammar with 100% A-C levels at GCSE and 85% A or A* at both GCSE and A level. A very high proportion of the pupils go to Oxbridge.

And it's free!

do stop redefining your terms as you go along, Lincstash.
You were trying to avoid giving women any credit for building stuff - when I pointed out what they did do you arbitrarily decided these tasks didn't count. Which is a fairly typical strategy used to denigrate women's work by chauvinists.

@ SethStarkaddersMum

indeed they did make bricks, and lots of other side industries. Thats not labouring though, is it, if you read my original post, were talking about labouring - navying, humping sleepers and rails about digging by hand.

I like the way whomovedmychocolate put it. go girl, that does make sense and lets face it at the moment we need someone to come in and do some serious business management to get the country back to a reasonable level of debt.

women working on building of canals and railways - oh God, so many examples.
women and children made the bricks for many of the tunnels
The Canal du Midi in the south of France has a reservoir built mainly by local women.
most often women (and children) were involved in carrying stuff - eg carrying away spoil.
merely camp-followers - pah.

lincstash - you are not a proper Darwinian. We are conceptual animals. We are tool-building animals.

We are way past mammoths.

But you are clearly just bored, and want a laugh. Because that last post was so poorly thought out it was clearly written on the hoof. It doesn't cohere with anything you wrote earlier. So you are clearly just after a wind-up. Shame because culture and evolution and invention are interesting subjects.

And the issue of global, mobile wealth and power, and how that intersects with Britain's experience of bifurcation/disparity of wealth and power is similarly fascinating.

Britain has made the handling of mobile capital its primary wealth-generating activity. That has meant that Britain is not in a position like that of Scandinavian countries, which have a more economically homogenous public life. Policies of Labour have attempted to offset some of the effects of that -- but they're fighting a battle they surely can't win. The economic base of the country rests on mobile, trans-national capital, and must surely reproduce its forms in our society. IT's going to be interesting (in a bad way, imo,) to see what happens when the safety-nets are removed over the next few years.

Anyway, all that's off-piste, and I must make lunch.

Has anyone mentioned the Etonian Old Boy's network yet?

How can a system be deemed fair when you have eg judges, landowners etc who are part of this network yet who hold sway over so many of us?
How many of them have been genuinely down to their last fiver and had to decide if it is for food or fuel?

The aristocracy are not quite dead yet and the feudal system is alive and kicking in some parts of Britain.

I actually think it helps to be slightly separate from the general populus if you are in politics. How can you possibly rationally and objectively consider cutting services which will lead to the death of some people (e.g. health services/elderly support) if you are firmly ensconced in that community.

If you are in business recovery (where you go in and restructure, to save the business) you don't try and get close to the staff - you'll have to sack vast swathes of them in order to keep the business afloat. Often the previous managers have been unable to stomach this fact and it takes someone who is external and removed to come in with a scythe.

I think politics is quite like this. You need decent principles. You need to think Ethics is not a county north of London . But you don't need to have been in the gutter to know the gutter exists IYSWIM.

@ Animula - You mean Thomas Newcomen, and the Atmospheric Engine? James Watt was just a follower-on. Newcomen was the true father of the Industrial Revolution, and Trevithik was the fahter of the railways.

I agree completely. The single basic reason we are here is to promulgate the species. To that end the best division of labour is you have the kids and care for them, and ill built the hut and kill wolly mammoths. Thats because im physically bigger and stronger than you, and you have the bodily equipment to initiate reproduction. Doesnt make my role any better than your, or vice versa, its just the way it is. But the best person for the job did the job, thats the most sensible division of tasks, and thats what happened for the last 3 million years.

Its wasnt a cunning devious plan by White Male Cro-Magnons to manipulate the species.........

Lincs you are on a wind up.

I have one school aged child and we are very proud to have her in the state sector and have turned down repeated offers to pay her fees. Some state schools are awful but you cannot write them all off in that manner.

I would like you to meet my students and walk away saying they are uneducated. Utter tosh.

And, you know, what about all those men who wasted that time, earned for them by the women reproducers, and money, inventing loads of crap? Stuff that was pointless, or harmful, or morally wrong?

Let's put them into this story of Great White Men who gave the silly un-evolved persons Culture.

Because then the noise-signal ration goes waaay up - and they don't look so bloody great then.

Aaaaand - inventions are rarely invented in a vacuum, without history. They are incremental innovations of existing forms, often. Or the movement of an object from one context to another. OR their potential is unlocked by multiple actors, as it is put in use, and its use expanded - by those little (presumably brainless) workers.

Eg kirby grip - husband watched wife putting dents in her hair pins.

Eg steam engine - what's his name watched mother 'pressurising' her cooking pot.

Im sorry but Etonians are a breed apart. I have friends who went to other exclusive public schools, but men who went to Eton have a unique arrogance. They are imbued with the sense that they are superior.

Just because it's Friday, I'm going to be lured completely off-piste by the feminist-baiter.

OFF-PISTE ALERT

So, for much of history, and much of present-day reality, if considered globally, the struggle for mere existence and continuation has been gruelling. If you don't believe me, read "The Bohemians" - the section on cooking in the Edwardian period.

From a Darwinian perspective, which is most important? Making sure the young survive to reproduce or inventing cultural prosthetics (the wheel, political systems)?
Ans: Both.

Of course, those whose job it has been to ensure basic reproduction have been rendered largely invisible and unsung in history. The only monument to their numbers is basically the swelling of the species.

But, hey, it's taken a long, long time (a testament to just how hard it was to ensure that basic survival for sooo much of our history), but now, in some place on the planet (and let's remember, it's only some places) and for some groups, there are enough cultural prosthetics about to free large groups from the basic struggle of reproduction. But it is very, very recent.

Of course, there are women who have contributed to the field of the creation of cultural prosthetics, and of course they are limited in number. It's been said countless times, but they tended to be the ones who were free of the task of reproduction.

Seriously, I hate the fact that your post seems to be oblivious to how important that role was, how vital and time-consuming. It consumed whole lives because it was bloody difficult, but so necessary it was worth the sacrifice of entire lives. We wouldn't be here without it.

Your blindness repeats an enormous historical condescension towards the enormity of that task. not surprising since writing history falls into the arena of cultural prosthetics. As does the task of valuing, sadly.

But I do foresee a future where the former reproducers are going to seriously make a mark in the field of cultural prosthetics.

oops sloppy tying "might was just " = "might as well just give"

:D

If i had school age kids i would try and avoid at all costs sending them to state schools, the standard of education is now dreadful beyond words.

When i left school in the lat 1960's, I could do maths, I could write an essay, read a book, and i knew a bit about geography, the history of these islands and a fair bit about woodwork and metalwork.

The kids that come out of state schools today by comparison are utterly uneducated. Indeed, many companies and unis complain they have to run remedial courses to bring there basic skill up to scratch. And most of them know nothing about history or geography.

A Levels are a farce. Its the exam you cant fail, and what use is an exam you cant fail? You might was just everyone an 3 A level certificates when they start secondary school. Compared toa 1970 A level paper, modern ones are a piece of piss, i and most of my schoolmates of the time could have done a modern A level paper at the age of about 13.

lincstash is a man, no? can't see Xenia arguing that the reason women weren't integral to the Industrial Revolution was because there weren't any appropriately skilled women around. What with women being considered the equals of men in all ways in the 19th Century.

Lets face it, if you vote for anyone of the "big 3" leaders you are voting for someone who went to a public school, OK so Eton (wouldn't be my choice of public school but so be it.

The one thing about public school is that when these boys were all there they got the roundest and best possible education that was available at the time. State Education has changed somewhat since their time, hopefully for the better. In 20 years time I think that we will see leaders who are more from the state system than the public school system. I also think it is a weak argument and rather petty to bring in school as a reason NOT to vote for a party, I think life experience tops all that which imho just leaves labour and conservative as I don't believe that Nick Clegg has as much life experience as the other two, but none of them know what it is like to be some of us and they never will. I don't believe there are any politicians who do know what that is like and I think that recent C4 documentary highlighted that throughout the parties. I think you have to vote for the person that makes you feel most comfortable in doing something that appeals to you, lets face it whatever any of them say they won't follow through with it so it makes bugger all difference to vote on promises. I do think it is time for a fresh start for the country but who should do that (new leader of the labour party, lib dems or conservatives or a hung party) I haven't quite made up my mind yet. (I just don't think I can put a tick next to GB as he irritates me that he nominated himself as leader of the labour party, but I will closely look at the local mp's and make my decision that way).

On a tangent, do they currently choose the party on the total amount of votes throughout the country or is it still by elected mp's? I believe it was always done by elected mp's which doesn't really reflect the whole view of the whole country does it? If 20 million vote, and 10 mill vote one way, 6 vote another and the remainder a third party but the party with 6 mill votes gets in because of the amount of mp's they have got elected seems not to represent us as the public. I am really glad to be proved differently and am genuinely interested to know if anyone can tell me in laymans quickie terms how it works!

are you trying to be the new Xenia?

1. If i gave you 100,000 whats the chances you can make it £1M? very little unless you were intensively schooled. Thats why you're not a stockbroker.

1. women indeed tagged along as camp follwers. Show me one single photo or account of a female victorian canal labourer or railway worker. When they built such capital projects they brought there families with them, and built camps for them.

3.True, but theres no evidence to suggest it works any differently than the accounts of still primitive tribes documented in the last 200 years.

4.Exactly, see point 2. Otherwise all this running round claiming you cant have a career because all the nasty white men stop you is feminist bollox.

Look at Blairs Babes - over promoted and given special treatment and jobs they wouldnt have gotten normally, and what a dreary untalented bunch they turned out to be, especially the likes of Hazel Blears, Harriet Harman and Jacqui Smith. Good men were prevented for getting those positions and doing a better job because the the feminst crap that pervades the Labour party. The country got short changed with a bunch of useless duffers instead.

I meant L's 11.41 post