Kate Middleton

[WILKO9]

AIBU to find Kate Middleton really annoying ? It's probably just me but I find her so smug. Anyway feel much better for getting that off my chest !!!

Of the gels in my prep school, 2/3 went on to university but only half of them were demanding degrees.

Three of the gels married nobility.
Two were nobility in their own right.
One walked away from her famous name and became a nun.
Three married non titled millionaires and have peachy lives
A couple are journalists and have nice media careers
Two I cannot track down
and then there is me.

Diana was not academic. There were plenty of private schools sending girls to university in the seventies and eighties. Had she had the ability it is likely that Diana would gone to one of them.

Not necessarily - one of her sisters had a "hatful" of O levels and A level exams according to Andrew Morton but didn't go.

Given only 15% of the whole population went around 1980 and only about 5% of these were women (even less probably - it definitely wasn't 50:50) it wasn't that normal. Only by 1996 did equal numbers of women and men go to university.

Incomparable Interesting observations about rich people losing their money aside, yes, it is equivocation.

I'm sure its not for those that it happens to. I'm pointing out that unless they have a generous trust fund set up to last a lifetime, setting up spoilt brats to live at home, gain no qualifications and marry other spoilt brats seems a model destined to fail. It occasionally works if the girl is reasonably pretty but even then I know of a few failures who simply don't marry at all. They seem to be sad cases, living off daddy and doing a succession of part-time jobs or voluntary work to try and provide some meaning to their lives, maybe even dipping a toe in the online dating world, seeing the "status" of the men they may be prepared to consider getting lower and lower...

And then theres the grandchildren. Even if the trust fund is big enough to support the children, what if it doesn't cover the grandchildren? Who have no example of hard work or study to follow? Oh dear.

It was claimed that "earning your own money" is fulfilling and more fulfilling that being a lady-who-lunches could be. I am going to be really direct, at this point, because it isn't getting through otherwise. Working as a sex-worker is "earning your own money"!

Rright. The fact that its illegal is something you have presumably overlooked.

So, don't be so ridiculous. There are a great many people in this country who are "earning their own money" and they are struggling to afford shoes for their children, panicking about healthy meals, and it's a disaster when the cooker packs up. Beyond our shores, there are people drowning to get here from places where what annie calls a "dead-end job" and panicking about the electricity prepayment meter constitutes unimaginable bliss.

Rrright. So no-one should bother then. Just send the men out to work, shag them and hope they'll stick around long enough to grant you a divorce settlement should they find a better model. Righty-oh then!

Why is it so terrible to point out that marrying a well-off aristocrat and having a nice house, children and money without public engagements sounds better than being a Cambridge?

Very few aristocrats to go around, and fewer still with money. Better with sold landed gentry these days surely? And even then, you still need to meet them. The world has moved on. These days it can be found at Edinburgh, St Andrews and Durham and then in gainful employment afterwards, even for a few years. Even the aristocracy mock Waity Katy.

Annielouise
Given only 15% of the whole population went around 1980 and only about 5% of these were women (even less probably - it definitely wasn't 50:50) it wasn't that normal. Only by 1996 did equal numbers of women and men go to university.
Do you have a link for your statistics
as I think you will find they are completely and utterly wrong.

Well, Annie, you certainly like to spout, that's for sure.

All I can say is that my experience- and I have only mentioned some of it- seems rather more relevant than yours because I have taught and mixed with upper class and upper middle class families and knew what their expectations were. Unlike you, who only think you know.

It's totally irrelevant whether any of Diana's family went to uni, and listening to her brother talking, it's clear he most likely didn't have the brains to be accepted.

And if you persist in calling me 'thick' and being patronising then I will report your posts. This may be AIBU but there is still the rule about insults. You are out of order.

Just anecdotal here, but only one of the youngest aunts on my dad's side went on to proper third level education. All of my uncles did. The aunts went from a convent boarding school to a convent in Paris where the mother superior was an aunt of my grandfather's. They learned French and cooking, bought quaint old records that were all the rage at the time, and smoked a lot. They followed my granny's footsteps, though she spent time in some schloss in Bavaria too, where the nuns emptied the chamber pots directly onto the vegetable beds. The aim was to prepare them for the rigours of running the large households they would preside over upon marriage, and not just getting by but doing it with pzazz. They all married friends of my uncles from school. I knew them all when they were at least middle aged. They were very charming, tweedy, happy women, with great taste.

One of my uncles married a fellow doctor however, so there definitely was at least one UMC Irish family with solid educational ambitions for their daughters. On my Irish farmer grandparents' side, everyone went on to third level education but that family was younger than my dad's family and things had changed by the time they came along. Plus they all needed to make their own way in the world.

That is very sweet, Ihatethecold .

Rright. The fact that its illegal is something you have presumably overlooked.

Actually, it isn't. Solicitation is illegal, there's some interesting details around flypapering bus shelters with three sides, and running a brothel is illegal (and two women in a flat counts), but the actual act is not illegal.

Rrright. So no-one should bother then. Just send the men out to work, shag them and hope they'll stick around long enough to grant you a divorce settlement should they find a better model. Righty-oh then!

Maybe Corbyn is unelectable!

one of her sisters had a "hatful" of O levels and A level exams according to Andrew Morton but didn't go.

Not sure how many exams you have to pass to get a hatful, but Diana is reported by many sources to have failed all her O-levels twice.

maybe she had undiagnosed dyslexia? Maybe she was traumatised by her home life? Who knows?

However there is no evidence to suggest that her academic ambitions were thwarted by anything other than not passing exams.

Quick poll, if I change my name to XeniasOppositeNumber, will I infringe MN's rules on socking?

Diana was not academic. There were plenty of private schools sending girls to university in the seventies and eighties. Had she had the ability it is likely that Diana would gone to one of them.

Precisely.

TheIncomparable maybe its more a matter of unexploited talents? I mean, who knows what skills or talents KM might have, that might have been found out in the world of work? You yourself clearly have massive untapped comic potential. How said that it will never see the light of our tv screens!

Finally you admit most of what you've said is in your experience. In other words, not fact.

so you mean I am making it up?

The fact is that I taught lots of girls who went to uni in the late 70s and early 80s.
The school and their parents had expectations for them ( often because they were paying for their education) - this is a fact.

You have also given stats that others have questioned and said were incorrect- would you like to link to your sources?

I think some of the people on this thread seem a bit unfamiliar with the concept of royalty. They are supposed to be bland. The skills required are actually very similar to those of an air hostess - meet, greet, smile, pretend your feet don't hurt. Keeping quiet about your own opinions is part of the job description.

They are not interviewed for the job. They become royal by accident of birth or marriage.

If you think this system doesn't work, maybe campaign for a republic.

Given only 15% of the whole population went around 1980 and only about 5% of these were women (even less probably - it definitely wasn't 50:50) it wasn't that normal. Only by 1996 did equal numbers of women and men go to university

I was at university in 1977-1981. I think it was less than 15% of the total population but aside from the small group of engineers and land economy students who were predominantly male (and who were probably evened off by the large numbers of women in certain other faculties) I'd have said the mix was even. It certainly was in my law class.

Not sure where you get this idea that upper class girls didn't go to university then. Not borne out by my experience.

Charles Spencer went to Oxford. And Diana was dim. If you read a lot of the books about her she couldn't even spell simple things like 'cereal' when she got married. I also know someone who used to work as her protection officer and although very astute intellectually she was very, very thick according to him. She could never have gone to Uni.

Hmm that makes me wonder if Diana had some kind of undiagnosed learning disability? She certainly proved herself to have smarts in the way she dealt with the media and with her charity work for unfashionable causes like HIV/AIDS and land mines.

Thirty years ago, 10% of women went to university. Slightly more men did, but overall, the number of people going to uni was around 20%.
The figures are slightly skewed now and would need further refinement because many women did go onto higher ed; they went to teacher training college, polytechnics, nursing, midwifery or other medical careers like physios, none of which were classed as university (for the stats) .
It's only now that all of these have been made into degree courses that the figure is around 51% for women going to uni.

Poor exam results at school are no indication of a lack of intelligence. I left school with 1 CSE and now have a first class degree. I agree that Diana didn't come across as particularly intelligent though.

I don't think she did. I know dyslexia was known about and Princess Beatrice was diagnosed with it before she died. She even said she was 'as thick as two short planks' herself.

The entire monarchy is a con.

The entire monarchy is a con.

indeed. I don't understand the hate towards Kate. People are reacting like we had some choice in the selection process and we choose poorly from the field of candidates. She was chosen to be a wife. Unfortunately for us, that also means she has a state role, but don't be surprised she's not good at it. She was chosen on some other criteria.

my point is that your gripe is with the monarchy, not Kate individually. If we get a substandard monarch or member of the RF, that's part of the package. we don't get a choice.