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.

Oh Rishi. You've faced such adversity. The Adversity of the Wealthy. That's like saying 'My mother, with her pride and dignity barely intact, walked right past Waitrose without looking in, and headed straight for Sainsbury's, Land of the Nectar Points That Never, so that I could attend private school."
Suffer little Rishi. He's so woefully out of touch. It's pathetic really.

He wouldn't even have been living at home for most of the year, so his parents getting Sky just for him would have been a waste!

Most people I know have sky. We don't.
It's a personal choice. I don't see it as a 'rich ' persons thing myself.

it’s not about whether he’s rich but whether he’s lying about his background. His GP and pharmacist parents struggled and as a kid Rishi did the books in the pharmacy = enough money for Winchester?
Doesn’t add up.

I wondered about that. He said his parents came here with nothing, yet a few years later they were able to send their kids to an exclusive private school?

My first boyfriends much older sister had sky in 1986 - and a tumble dryer!! I think the other sister also had a dishwasher too but I'm not sure now. All from catalogues. They weren't rich.

We had a rented tv at the time. Not even a video recorder. Yet my mum went to private school (scholarship).

It is common now, but it wasn't when Sunak was growing up.

I still can't afford Sky. My life isn't worth living. The guy is clueless.

Cringing for him. As if cutting sky TV was the way to afford prestigious private schools. He's so tone deaf.

GPs are paid pretty well and his mother owned the pharmacy herself. Housing costs were low in the 1990s.

I can believe that they could stretch to it if they didn't spend money on unnecessary luxuries - but of course the overwhelming majority of families couldn't, especially now that housing costs are so much higher.

Was your boyfriend's sister a time traveller?😅

Yeah. I don’t believe there’s a plausible turnover of a community pharmacy that adds up to Winchester school fees.

He went to a Prep school as well, Stroud School

He did not say that is how they afforded fees. He said it in the context of knowing what it is like to not always get what you want and to live in a home with parents who work for a living. In his day - 2 professional parents could afford private school - without living on bare bones. Most medical consultant in the NHS when I was a medical student Sent their kids private. That is very much no longer the case as the fees have risen sharply. And yes - for immigrants, who often have to send money back home to feed extended families as well as try and excel in a new country - education is seen as an ultimate priority and his parents would have sacrificed things that most indigenous families in their jobs would have taken for granted (eating out, abroad holidays or nice UK holidays). Tory or not, that is the story of most aspirational economic immigrants in the UK

I would have thought so, but I live in an adjoining very similar constituency (63 and 18) and got canvassed by Conservatives for the first time ever the other day so I think they are scared.

We still have a satellite dish on our house, it was the only way we could access any really for years, as before that even the TV aerial didn't receive (pitty our poor deprived weans who suffered both no TV AND no private school).

The broadband update means we can watch everything online now and even have Netflix but I have never got round to getting the dish removed. So some of those dishes may be ooools.

There definitely is. A GP and a pharmacist would have been able to send their kids to private school in the 90s - with judicious budgeting. As I say above, this was not a rare thing in the teaching hospitals I trained as. Senior medical salaries have not kept pace with inflation (hence the strikes) and private fees have far outstripped inflation in the past 10-15 years. It just makes them even more elitist now and VAT will do that even more.

Four channels??

When I was growing up we had three channels

A GP and a pharmacist would have been able to send their kids to private school in the 90s

One of the fanciest boarding schools?

Rishi just needs to shut up as the more he talks, the more ridiculous he makes himself look.

This "Sky" nonsense is just to appeal to the oldies who like to fool themselves that today's youngsters can't buy a house because they have a mobile phone and Sky - completely ignoring the proven fact that house prices have shot up by many times the rate of wages which is the real problem. £50 per month on Sky and a mobile phone isn't the reason today's young workers can't save the tens of thousands they need for a deposit! It's the, typically, £800-1200 per month rent they're having to pay landlords for small flats!

Yes his parents clearly didn't want Bevis & Butthead influencing their future prime minister so blamed the sky censorship on private school fees😂

God that clip is very cringe. I almost feel a bit sorry for him though...that interviewer stitched him right up. Just look at his calm, understanding, empathetic face as he asks what he did without as a child, you can clearly see what his aim was.

He must have thought all his Christmas's came at once when Rishi uttered the fatal words of 'Sky TV' 😂

They should have been honest with him like my parents were when they deprived me of a Mr Frosty because it was ‘plastic tat’.

The only reason it isn't the headline is Grant Shapps has thrown himself on that grenade by admitting it's all over for the Tories. Imagine him turning up at a fire with his cans of petrol and a hose.