Rishi Sunak went without Sky TV so his parents could send him to private school

[number10bus]

Honestly this has really annoyed me, apart from the fact it's such crap - he came from a family where his parents were a GP and a pharmacist, it's like he's literally thought of the most working class stereotype and applied that. He's so out of touch and I don't know why this one has annoyed me so much but it really has.

I'm not much older than our prime minister and we didn't have one either, or holidays and not much in the way of any luxury items and guess what my parents couldn't afford to send me to private school despite them working very hard too.

I can’t imagine Sunak watching The Real World Grunge videos on MTV with his Winchester pals whether he could afford it or not!

@vodkaredbullgirl
Not disagreeing with your sentiment but he would have been 7-8 when sky started and he would have been 13 when he went to Winchester.

His mother was not just a pharmacist. They owned the business as well and it was pretty successful.

I think that if I weren’t finding this all so marvellously entertaining, watching him make gaffe after gaffe, I would cringe myself inside out.

As it is, I cannot find even the one tiny rat’s ass of empathy for him that I would require to conjure up even the smallest, barest minimum cringe. So I’ll content myself with letting my eyes roll out of my head and looking Forward immensely to his imminent demise.

He is the most clueless, tone deaf, morally bankrupt PM on the campaign trail since Churchill in 1945. At least Churchill grabbed the least opportunity to wrap himself in a statesmanlike flag. Sunak couldn’t even manage that even when it was handed to him on a D-day plate.

I've no idea which school his sister attended (private or state) but she went to Oxford University.

Think you quoted the wrong person.

I thought Winchester accepting day pupils was a relatively recent change?

It was such a stupid thing to say.

Sky wasn't even invented until later on. Not having more channels is hardly a sacrifice so it shows how out of touch he is. It also feels like a dig at the poor with their big TVs and tv subscriptions.

Remember when Boris Johnson said about buying a new kettle to save £10 a year on electricity or something along those lines?

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/boris-johnson-energy-bills-gas-electricity-cost-of-living-crisis-kettle-power-b1022461.html

So out of touch with reality.

I'm also pretty sure that Winchester didn't take girls in the 90s. Most public schools / boarding schools were single sex then. His sister may have gone to an equally smart school.

Sorry to disappoint. I was born earlier than rishi and we had sky (and cable before that). He wouldn't have gone to winchester until 13 either.

I quoted this up thread;

Unusually, he went as a day boy, because Winchester is only a few miles from the northern suburbs of Southampton. One friend of his from school says:
“... it was a sign of the esteem in which he was held that he was made head boy despite being a day boy”.

https://www.independent.co.uk/independentpremium/long-reads/rishi-sunak-profile-winchester-akshata-murthy-chancellor-a9525996.html

We got cable (Videotron) in 1992. Mainly for a spare phone line so I could dial into Demon internet (I am a veteran of the Godfrey days) and download the Linux kernel. Can't recall how much it cost as I was living back home and DM wanted to watch ST:TNG

This was when a friend bough a new build where the roads hadn't been laid, I suggested they get cable and they said they had asked and it was "5 years away". Which pretty much confirmed how pisspoor the UK has always been at joined up infrastructure.

I'm damn sure that even the most extensive Sky package didn't cost £730 per month in 1989. Google tells me the Full Monty Sky package in 2024 is £85 a month.

Which is interesting as Winchester’s own brochure states that the day option was only introduced in 2022, same time as they started admitting girls as day pupils only. Until then they were one of the boarding only schools like Eton.

Must have had some sort of special set up for a small number of pupils?

To all the folks moaning about the extra 20% they will have to pay on private school fees - behold what they create.

I would gladly have swapped places with him and gone without Sky if I was a child at the same time as him. What an utter out of touch idiot if he thinks that's a hardship. he really is not interested in being Prime Minister any longer, is he? I wonder if he knows what is coming and wants out without actually being seen to quit?

I haven't dipped into the obvious school fees VAT threads, but I did wonder how all the parents in there felt being told if they really wanted to send their kids to private school, then giving up Sky was the answer.

I didn't say it did - I was correcting another poster who had posted a nonsense calculation before she edited.

They are busily threatening to crash their local comprehensives with their sharp elbows whilst cursing Comrade Starmer.

Sorry, I see what you mean now.

Actually, I've found some old posts on Mumsnet from 2014 - confirming the school did have some day boys in the 1990s:

I have friends who were there 20 years ago who were day boys. It's not new I don't think.

I grew up in Winchester and WC always had a some day boys then - hadn't realised it had changed.

This really pissed me off reading it, how utterly tone deaf!

I am 2 years older than him and when sky came out in 1988 my dad had been on strike for a while as he worked for British steel, I had no idea but my parents were really struggling. We didn’t have sky, but it’s not like saying that you don’t have it nowadays. Very few people had it!

Well if 20%VAT is added to fees that are £1500 per month currently - that would be £300 a month. Cutting our Sky, monthly hair appointment and once a week take aways could def be a viable choice to make it affordable for some. For others - that would be a step too far for their quality of life and for others - nothing they do would make the £1500 affordable to start with. I wouldn't knock it.

VAT would simply mean less start but I am sure most on the bottom end of affordability would tighten to continue and sound pretentious when they say what they are doing to make it affordable

Different generation, but reminds me of my parents complaining that they went without a honeymoon so that they could afford to buy a house, aged 22! No idea of the relative cost of things, and no idea how privileged they were compared to people who will never own a house (or go to private school).