Thread 15 Starmer - Nolite te bastardes carborundorum

[DuncinToffee]

Previous thread

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5244293-thread-14-starmer-the-starmeristas-strike-back?page=40&reply=141334312

It's also very elitist because basically it leaves a huge amount of culture, and England is an ancient culture in the hands of a few.

Mary Anning aside, a trawl of "the Enlightenment" shows it was very much a rich mans club. Who knows how much faster things could have unfolded in a more egalitarian age.

It is no coincidence that Britain had to widen it's social and educational boundaries in response to the French Revolution.

I also remember reading a long time ago that during WW2 there was a very strong feeling amongst the elite that it really wasn't worth winning the war if it meant every jumped up Herbert suddenly felt equal to their betters (what was one of the key themes of "Dads Army" ?) . A very weird foreshadowing of the horribly racist "reason" for the US war on drugs that people are free top research if they so feel.

I'm curious as to what has made you decide this thread is mainly "deferential" to the government ? Where as many posters are openly critical as are posting.

Back to politics I have to say that even this week where Badenoch had a relatively open goal, she absolutely fluffed it. Why are her questions so bad?

Starmer seems to have got some improved zingers which clearly annoy her.

If PMQs matters, which it doesn't really.

Well your Oxford post was certainly sneering so the cap fits for that one.

I have met so many folk who were not at the time able to hack the O-level (yes I am that old) -> A-level -> degree pathway that was traditional in days of yore. However if they had been able to work for a few years and then go back to renew studying could easily have achieved a 1st. Bu "the system" isn't meant for them.

100% agree.

I hate the idea that education somehow has to be justified by its potential earning power or value for money.

I think the blame for this lies firmly at Tony Blair's door when, back in '98, he set a target for 50% of school leavers (post A-level) to go to university, and at the same time abolished grants in favour of students paying fees.

Once payment for anything gets involved, perceived value for money comes into play.

Anyone who did an arts degree, as did I, would find it very hard to justify their course on the basis of potential earning or value for money, beyond personal enrichment. My 2:1 in Linguistics & Literature didn't get me my first job in advertising; my post-grad secretarial qualifications did.

I've been learning Mandarin (very slowly!) for over 15 years now, which I started when I was in my 50s. I'm always asked why I'm doing it - and many people are perplexed when I say it's for no reason other than my own interest/broadening of my mind. Learning for its own sake doesn't appear to be valued any more.

I think it was actually WWI where they panicked about winning the war because the upper class elite were all officers and had (so the leaders felt) more in common with the German elite than their non officer compatriots. Indeed the first world war was quite a step to breaking down ideas of class. See Downton Abbey.

I hate the idea that education somehow has to be justified by its potential earning power or value for money.

That is 100% Thatcherism.

Anyone who did an arts degree, as did I, would find it very hard to justify their course on the basis of potential earning or value for money, beyond personal enrichment.

When I started in IT, there had been no computer courses in the 60s. All the people above me had drifted in from other disciplines. My colleagues/superiors in my sandwich year (2 female bosses, by the way) had studied history and geography respectively.

Really if you do it right, getting a degree should almost be independent of your subject. The point is to learn rigour and how to find and interpret information and then use it to advance whatever it is you want to, or are asked to.

It doesn't matter how many routes Oxbridge adopts to try and help the non elite to gain places. The elite will cry 'no fair' (I give you the MN HE board debates about contexts) and then adopt those practices themselves in order to gain the place. Supracurricular replacing extra curricular would be an example (and those non inclusive Latinate terms drive me beyond mad)

I have read Chums. read it - it's so enlightening.

Private Eye have been writing about Tulip Siddiq and the dubious connections/beneficial relationships for many years and they are not alone in reporting on these issues.

I have no idea what was in the party leadership's collective heads to put her not only in government but as anti corruption minister - it was absurd. The dismissive way in which its been handled - "she will be back soon" - is no better.

That makes more sense.

Of course the reality is the Royal Navy was crushing all in it's path since the 1700s because it did have a ridiculously egalitarian hierarchy - promotion purely on merit. Which meant that the promotion-on-surname French did not stand a chance.

Arguably the superiority of the Royal Navy post 1763 is what acted as a driver for the French Revolution as France bankrupted itself trying to engage.

We differ on that. But if it was, it was no more sneering than the post it answered.

Nobody is asking for deference. We just want people to be civil. If you cannot see that your tone is generally condescending and sneery, perhaps a little reflection is needed.

We don't judge people based on what university they attended - you do. We do not sneer at other posters' cat photos - you have.

You appear to have set us up as a strawman of your own making so that you can swipe at us for being something we are manifestly not. That is quite simply rude.

I have no idea what was in the party leadership's collective heads to put her not only in government but as anti corruption minister - it was absurd.

Some sort of weird "well if the Tories can do it" kind of feeling ? Rather forgetting their place in media land.

We have to remember that against the lone figure of TS, we have the collective memory of Boris fucking Johnson and his cabinet of crony creeping ministers who were funnelling public money to their mates faster than it could be printed.

And I am still trying to unsee some AI investigations into Charlotte "Oh, look. An honour, is that for little old me ?" Owens and the person that secured it.

They were probably related in a way, see the royal cousins

Also (as seen on a QI ages ago) if we had not had male primogeniture when Queen Victoria died, Kaiser Wilhelm would have been king of the UK.

It's no mystery why the Saxe-Coburgs became "the Windsors" in 1917.

@pointythings - agree with all of that. Rummly, you made your own bed. This thread is not just political but social. I'm not really with the bad actor theory, more bad smell. If you do this kind of thing in real life then fair enough, but the expectation, whether clear to you before now or otherwise is that you restrain certain elements to maintain civility and continue the thread. Agreement is not required, but restraint is.

I may not like all of the content here, but in deference to the community, refrain from comment.

You have sneered and you're doing it now.

I assume you follow the thread? so you would have read the highly critical comments over Tulip Sadiq, the cutting of the Latin budget & the glacial pace of social care and NHS plans

So you know darn well that any regular on this thread will be critical of Labour... yet still you come on with your comments.

Good news though that the youngster from accounts has bought down borrowing costs today isn't it?

Rummly. This was your very first post on these threads. You have continued in that vein pretty much ever since.

Yes actually I'd forgotten about that one! Rummly never earns her ticket here, but does a massive fart to clear her throat and then makes a point.

Sadly all we can do is smell the fart

And of course I am being rude back. But you know, it's earned.

If you want to be social Rummly be so, and then make your points. Don't fart at posters and expect us to savour them

Just leave Rummly to her rummles, I would say

Redwood was first nicknamed Vulcan in 1989. I suspect he came around to Matthew Parris' joke faster than Rummly.

As I said, if it was meant to be sneering you need to consider your words more carefully. It was the sort of post that says more about the poster than the subject.