My tory friend says there is no such thing as equality... discuss.

[malificent7]

Im a socialist btw to a certain point. I do get that a nurse shoyld get paid as much as a doctor and a TA shouldnt get psid as much as teacher.
It's the vast inequalities that bug me. I dont think that how hard you work mirrors how much you earn. I think wealth buys a good education which isnt fair. What do you all rekon? Also

This ^^ is nothing to do with grammar schools. Being poor, not being able to afford a uniform and leaving school at 15 would have applied regardless.

Arf at the should/ shouldn't pedant!

What if you are not talented but work hard? Im a semi talented artist and worked hard at art college but i am not taleented enough to make a living out of it.

Another friend is very talented ar art a d does make a living. Down to genes imo.

Inequality being due to reproductive freedom sounds sinister imo... a bit Andrea Leadson... shudder

Arf at the should/ shouldn't pedant!

Arf that the distinction could be considered pedantry.

It isnt pedantry. One says the opposite of the other and it's not clear which is intended.
Or should that be it is clear?

Pointing out my missing apostrophe in isn't would be pedantry.

See that's just not true. Really good female footballers are much rarer and paid vastly less. Male laborers are ten-a-penny and paid more than care workers with massively less skills.
Bullshit
Female footballers are paid less because it's a spectator sport and female football has less spectators, less revenue equals lower wages. If care assistants want labouring jobs learn the necessary skills and swop jobs, Labouring is incredibly hard tiring physical work requiring a range of unskilled and is very low paid so I am really not sure what your point is.

What does arf mean?

Op are you trying to say your paintings should go for as much as your mates, even though yours are relatively shit? People should pay you just as much, simply because you work as hard as your firend.

Okdoke.

Your friend is more talented than you, then. Is that one of the vast inequalities that you refer to in your op?

In the area I grew up in you only went to Grammar school if you came from a 2 parent family that had bought their own house.

Friend from the council estate was top of our year by a long chalk but failed the 11+. Another friend who could barely read or write passed but her parents had bought their own house. The HT held the power to choose who went and who didn't.

No one who lived on the council estate ever went to the grammsr school.

ATM all people seem to be interested in is getting their child to university even if they don't know what they want to do.
There is no thought about whether the child wants to go to university or be saddled with £50000 worth of debt or whether the parents can afford it. It is like they have been blinded to reality.

Inequality is not just about what salary your job pays as opposed to someone else it is also about how you spend your money.

I have known people who are completely broke on a 6 figure salary who have spent their money on smoking and drinking, gambling and eating out to the point they have lost everything. Equally I know a TA who saved up , cut coupons and got every deal going and lived in one half of her house whilst putting bunk beds in the front room to let out to students to eke out her tiny salary whilst raising 2 children on her own who is doing really well.

Sometimes it is about how you spend your money not how much you earn.

In the area I grew up in you only went to Grammar school if you came from a 2 parent family that had bought their own house.

As far as I know, grammar schools don't give preference to home-owners. That would be outrageous.

This aside, the 2-parent family thing is what I meant above about inequality being the logical outcome of reproductive freedom. We know it's best to have children only once you're in a stable relationship, preferably married.

The fact that this has become a quaint notion is symbolic of a cultural breakdown, not a failure of Tory policy.

It's supply and demand.

Many people cannot supply what is in high demand. Some people can, but choose not to.

Those that can and will are in the best position.

Maybe your friend is a better business person than you, better at the networking and marketing/PR side - therefore sells more work?

I wouldn't sell being an artist is a well paid, well thought out career - more of a hobby. Perhaps you are in the wrong profession if you want to make vast sums of money.

The Scandinavian countries in their most equal welfare days (1950s-2000s) did not have either grammar schools or some kind of traditional adherence to Victorian values. What they had was a genuine commitment to ensuring that everybody had a decent standard of life combined with a certain lack of interest in high earnings as a sign of personal worth.

It is generally acknowledged that the introduction of free schools has damaged social mobility in Sweden, and certainly the education system is nowhere near as good as it used to be, but that desire to live in a society where everybody's children get a decent chance is still there.

DH & I both went to grammar schools & we both lived in council houses. I lived in a particularly rough area in a council maisonette. Grammar school admission was purely by passing the 11plus.

oliversmumsarmy in the vast majority of cases, it's not about how you spend your money. There is no equality in this country - how poor you are (or your parents are) when you are born seems set your path out in life. Of course there are exceptions to this, but generally speaking, this is the case. It's a vastly unfair society as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

The OP's friend is right - we do not live in an equal society at all - If you're black, poor, disabled, a single parent, you are hugely disadvantaged before you even start. And it seems to me to be getting worse not better.

I don't think it's about paying people the same, it's about people having the same opportunities from the time they are born. My eldest child is 18 and I've seen how his peer group have progressed - it was clear from the start who would succeed (educationally I suppose) and who wouldn't.

My mum was determined that education was the way out of poverty for her and us.

Tiptop. Back in the 1960s/70s the HT could recommend who went and who didn't. If memory serves me right there was a relative of someone on a different thread who's HT recommended he go to the grammar school despite failing the 11,+

It was so blatant in our school that there was a resignation that if you came from certain roads you were never going to get in.

My friend from the council estate would get 95% + in all her school exams. She was naturally brilliant. Top of the class by miles. Our other friend from the bought houses really struggled to read . Only really mastered it a few weeks before the exam.

Guess who "passed" the 11+ and who didnt

The thing is though, our inherent abilities and talents are not equal.

Even if we take privilege out of the equation. We are not all born equal in our abilities.

Then there are our desires and attitudes and interests. These lead some of us to areas which are in high demand. For others, not so much.

Tiptop. Back in the 1960s/70s the HT could recommend who went and who didn't. If memory serves me right there was a relative of someone on a different thread who's HT recommended he go to the grammar school despite failing the 11,+

I believe you, but this is a failure (an egregious one) of a well-intentioned policy that didn't always get it right. I think there's a lot of merit in allowing the head input in the selection process, but I accept that it's introducing an element of bias.

Again, as far as I know, this is no longer the case.

The highest salaried person i know is DH friend . He was from a really grim estate and went to a crapola comp, ended up doing a PhD at Cambridge which is where he met DH.

All his siblings still live on the same estate, he actually despises them. I'm from a very humble background and am the only one that has escaped. I feel sorry for my siblings who have had a life of minimum wage jobs. DH uses me as an example of the nature over riding nurture debate. Of us five girls I had a different Father.

Both myself and this guy who I must admit I'm not keen on as he is super harsh and judgemental have similar backgrounds. Both successful professionally but have very different life philosophies.

The one thing we do have in common was an over whelming desire to not be poor. I can't imagine anyone wants to be but we both started working when still at school and it was for sure the biggest driving factor.

I wonder if the inequality is more pronounced in other parts of the country? Because some of the examples here I see no evidence of where I am.

Many of my work colleagues have risen from northern working class backgrounds to be world renound experts in our field. No-one seems to care what school or university anyone went to and some don't have any formal education past A levels, just work and life experience.

My dad was a miner and I have a first class degree and a professional career.

BILs parents were immigrants who came to the UK in the 1960s to work on the buses etc and he got a good degree from a highly thought of university and is now high up in banking in a major overseas financial centre.

To add, of these large families myself and this guy are from we are the only ones in either family to go in to higher education. In fact a couple of my sisters have no qualifications at all. My Mothers over riding philosophy was for her girls to trade on their looks.

Similar story for me.

If a magic wand made everyone equal for one day, inequalities would be showing by the next day.

Poverty and social deprivation can also be great drivers, which is why I don't understand people who don't understand working class conservatives. Being working class is not an aspiration.

V interesting observation Barbara - I wonder if this is because the Oxbridge types tend to land in London, forming a bit of a clique.

I have worked in financial services and I don't recognise the snobbery that is often catalogued on MN. I know a lot of terribly successful people who have fairly working-class accents. Particularly the technology firms that serve the financial services sector.

The one person I know who actually has a private jet has a very broad Liverpool accent, and didn't go to university.

I'm using accent here as a proxy for class, which I think is pretty reliable.

This is all anecdotal, but naturally it has informed my world view.

If you make it in to a professional career then your colleagues have also made it to get in to that professional setting Barbara. They have already jumped through all the hoops. plus the hoops are harder these days due to the drive to send everyone to University. I watched higher education destroy itself from the inside.

It's still,there, it still churns out clever people but good grief it's a misery to work in nowadays.

As Teresa may said the Tory ethos is "equal opportunity based on talent and how hard you work, irrelevant of your back ground or who your parents are".

Except thats a lie? I work my arse off (student nurse) and even when I qualify ill still be so poorly paid ill require small amount of tax credits and still won't be able to afford to buy. So no, working hard doesn't pay. And the tories have made it quite clear what they think of us public sector workers by yet again voting for our pay to be capped.