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.

@Clavinova He went on to say that he went without 'all sorts of things' and then cited Sky TV as a specific example.
He is clearly talking nonsense to try to present himself in a particular way that his advisors have suggested.

This time next year Rodney...

ItsFuckingBoringFeedingEveryoneUntilYouDie
No, he wasn't. Winchester does not have day places at 13+. It has a very few in the 6th form. Look at their own website. Read his biography

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

He has the worst PR team. I mean its almost like SNL!

Peregrina
his parents had done well for themselves and chose to educate their sons privately, but not daughter.

Are you sure? I've not read that.

Of course because we don't want educated successful people to run our country and how dare it be suggested his parents were hardworking.

My parents were wealthy and i had a private school education and a comfortable life and i still think the Sky TV comment was crushingly stupid.

I don't think we actually need our PMs to have experienced any sort of sacrifice, we just need them to have an awareness of the difference between privilege and deprivation

starmer said exactly the same thing. Although he was 27 years old so not really a child when Sky was launched. But then again, no matter what PM would have said, you would still not feel sorry for him. Some cultural background pay a lot more emphasis to good education and are willing to pay for it. Ask the striking doctors out there and they will tell you doctors are not really rich.

LOL

Not any more, agreed. I think this story is emblematic or how much things have changed. Historically all the doctors we knew sent their children to private school, and also had large houses in leafy suburbs. It says something about the way housing prices have rocketed and NHS salaries have been eroded that younger doctor friends have to worry how to rent a house never mind buy one in parts of the country

And there is a concomitant idea, sometimes a little vague or woolly, and sometimes expressed as a half-formed thought, but deeply embedded all the same, that people who send their children to state schools belong to a culture that doesn't value education (because if they valued it they would be willing to pay for it or would work whatever hours it took at umpteen jobs to make that happen for their children).

The idea that all schools should be superb, that parents would have an equal choice, and the fact that poor quality schools hold Britain back, doesn't seem to penetrate.

This

He is so out of touch with reality, what a total dick.

My kids had cable TV ( not a lot else but they did have food and clothes...me not so much!)
I'm pretty sure if we hadn't, we wouldnt have been able to afford private school, that would probably have taken my entire income at the time.
He really has no idea how most of us have to live .

Sky TV Christ. All we had was 'outside'
And 3 channels

@Clavinova
From an article about his pal Lord Ashcroft's biography.

I find it amusing that people are hating on Rishi because is parents were a GP and a pharmacist. I can very much bet that they did not earn vast amounts of money when they came to the UK in the 60 from Kenya at which time people in those professions were being murdered. Asians and people from the Caribbean who came here in the 60s and have become wealthy have had to work hard for their money and it was their decision to send their children to private school, which they paid for.

Rishi went to Uni, got his degree and worked in one of the largest investment banks...he worked for his money and became wealthy, he married a woman whose family were very wealthy and everyone is carrying on like he's jack the ripper...loooool. TVs in Asian households were not going to benefit them so he probably was irked that his parents would get Sky and I guess as a 10 year old it may have been a big deal.

I like Rishi, I'm not a tory supporter but I will defo be voting for him over that sloth starmer and his leaning right-wing labour goofs.

Totally agree with what @Thisagainandagain and @mathanxiety have written:

'Very true. The narrative that the poor are poor because they are feckless and lazy'

'He is hinting heavily that they spend every penny they can lay their hands on, fail to budget, fail to prioritise their children's education, sit around watching expensive channels on huge TVs, and thus turn out yet another feckless generation of yobs and end up costing "the taxpayer" a fortune treating the illnesses brought on by their sedentary lifestyles.

He's playing to his own obnoxious gallery.'

I do think he misspoke to the extent that he had no idea what to say when he was asked what things he went without. As he was without a cue card or a minder to tall him what to say, his mind automatically popped back to his natural prejudices about 'the poor' and how they all have Sky TV. It's such a stereotype that this is all he could think of to say.

His parents worked for their money, invested in their children's education and he has reaped from what his parents made sacrifices for. It wasn't easy for Asians or blacks in the 60s - still isnt, so I say good on him, his money wasn't handed to him and he wasn't born with a silver spoon in his mouth.

He is still an idiot though. Every few days he says or does something during this campaign that suggest a lack of intelligence.

Seeing as he was 10 years old when Sky TV was launched his parents most likely put his education before TV being a distraction, although I reckon he was telling a lil white lie cos in 1990 when it was launched I had Sky and was a single parent with two kids working for a local law firm. So if I could afford it with the channels so could his parents, it's most likely they chose not to.

He should have gone to state schools then his poor hard done by family could have afforded Sky (Murdoch owned at its incept 1989)

Rishi Sunak was an intelligent boy, born to intelligent parents who slogged their guts out in relatively well paid, middle class jobs not open to everyone

He took full advantage of the grants system for studying

Was funded by a Fulbright Scholarship for his MBA

He took every advantage of the connections he made at Oxford, Stanford University, Conservative Party Headquarters and Goldman Sachs as well as two other investment firms

He became a millionaire working in the City of London and met and married a billionaire's daughter who has a financial stake in her father's IT firm which has landed several government contracts, making his wife and her family very, very wealthy people

Compared to the majority of the UK, Sunak has had a golden existence of privilege and good fortune denied to most of us

Yes, he's intelligent and yes, academically he worked hard, but he's shafted the population and he's tone deaf to the sensibilities and needs of the vast majority of us

He's more intelligent than Boris, but he is a lousy politician and is making a complete gaff of being Prime Minister

No

I do not admire him, I hope he's crushed at the GE

Problem is I don’t think a staffer came up with that. He clearly wasn’t prepared for the question and that was all he could come up with on his own!

Nope. He made his big fortune shorting the £gbp in the GFC. $25Million apparently (like all Tories, its the cynical hypocrisy of putting their money before country, even when that hurts the country as did their covid contracts). As for well off parents and education, was this his personal hard work? or was it his luck that he was born to a GP and pharmacist? In comparison to 99% of us, he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. That is indisputable.