How did Diane Abbott justify sending her son to a private secondary school?

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After all of her rants about parents who pay for private education?

Yes, I'm not left wing but I'm not happy about tuition fees. I know from 2006 Blair has introduced fees which are completely deferred £3k a year my son pays but only when you start earnign but it's still a big debt to have hanging over you. One change he did make from this year is if your parents have a very low income that £3k a year fee is less. I don't think he's given enough publicity to those changes and your student loan can cover your food etc but even so it's a debt. I suppose it's the price we pay for 50% at university rather than 15% in my day.

It also leads to unfairness. My 3 children at univesrity now will have no debt as I'm funding it now up front. They graduate without debts. In my day everyone graduated without debt. Now it's only the fairly well off with generous parents who do.

Graduates pay more tax, a lot more tax since they on average earn more.
But at the risk of alienating the socialists here, "averages" disguise a lot of variance.

Many graduate jobs especially those in the state sector like education and NHS leave people unable to afford housing etc.

I'd also part comapny with Edam. Being the 4th largest economy is irrelevant on two levels.
Firstly it is a function of where you want to be not where you are. India is still a largely fucked up country run by corrupt crazies with widespread levels of superstition that make evangelicals look like physicists.
But investment in education has turned them from a basket case to a threat to the jobs of the largely ignorant British.

Using economics (again apologies to the socialists on MN), the real cost of education is not a function of whether you are 4th or 40th largest economy. Education is almost all labour costs, so is more expensive in rich countries than poor ones. Being "rich" as we define it in the west means essentially how many hours you must work to get the stuff you buy. By that measure "things" (computers, cars, furniture) has become cheaper in terms of how long you need to work to buy them.
But although teachers salaries have not kept up with average wages, they have moved up faster than the cost of goods. Thus education has become more expensive at nearly the same rate as our economy has grown.

DominiConnor I do try as hard as I can not to buy clothes that are the result of child labour, so I don;t shop in shops like primark and we buy a lot second hand. I don't take maintenance from dd father as he works in retail from a company that sells suspiciously cheap clothes, for the same reason I walked away from my divorce penniless as I did not want to profit from child labour. I do whatI can but am sure like most of us I get it wrong sometimes.

Wow, that's a remarkably hard line.

I am a remarkably hard woman!

Sorry to divert from topic.
Twinsetandpearls, there's another thread about clothes and child labour. Apparently, Primark is less unethical than many including John Lewis! I don't know how to do links but it was on a recent thread.

Twinset, I don't think childlabour is as simple an issue as that. I think actually it can enhance a family and in some cultures fit children working under good conditions who are 12 etc can hugely help the family avoid starvation.

That's a valid point. Unless we assume that coloured people love their children less than we do, they are doing it for the best.
Girl children in many countries are seen as an unfortunate error in the production of sons, and giving them some economic worth may be actually keeping them alive.

'Coloured people' - are 'we' apartheid here?

But the western companies should and could pay them more, they don't use the labour to provide familes with a better standard of life but because it is cheap labour so far away thatthey don;t have to worry about the harm they are doing.

I know this because I married into such a family who werein such business and listened to them brag about the cheap labour and spent years living the lifestyle that child labour or almost slave labour paid for and have had to live with the guilt ever since.

puffling I am sure thatI read, in the independent or guardian that primark was the least ethical shop on the high street.

I don;t know how it can ever be right to encourage companies to pay people, often women a few pence an hour to work in dangerous conditions so we can buy a cheap top in a supermarket or somewhere like primark. As women we should be empowering other women not enslaving them so we can have a wider selection of t shirts.

By buying the clothes you're arguably helping the children abroad. If you only buy Western made clothes you're helping children starve to death on some analysis.

By putting british workers on the rather generous in worldwide terms UK dole and using the services of Indian call centre workers we help the third world. I just think it's a bit simplistic to say all child labour is wrong. It depends on the employer. I'd rather a child were well paid to make Gap shirts than earning 10p a day trying to find waste to recycle, sell its body or beg on an Indian rubbish dump

I think it's useful to look at the difference between doing harm, and failing to do good.

Western companies who pay the going rate in poor countries are making their workers a bit better off. Because they only care about money they often lack the tribal/religious/social/sexist
prejudices that best poor countries, they will often employ those who cannot otherwise get work, they do a little good.

I'm not saying they do this because they are good people, but because they can't avoid making things slightly less bad than otherwise.

They do however do major good in undermining local cultures which are the root of at least half the suffering in the world. In Britain if a single mum doesn't get a job because she's the wrong race or religion, or because men don't like female workers, her family won't starve. That's not true in a poor countries.
Go look up the female vs male neonatal death rates in SE Asian countries.
In the West boys die more than girls, enough that more boys are born than girls to compensate. In poor countries a girl is massively more likely to "accidentally" die.

The multi nationals could probably do more, but then again so could we all.

shops like primark use cottton that has been collected by kids under force and often because they are dragged out of school to do do, how is this helping a village.

Workers sacked if they protest about the long hours or unsafe conditions, how is that something to be encouraged?

Factories used by shops in this country bully and intimidate their workers into worker 80 hours a week, how can that be acceptable just so we can gorge ourselevs on cheap disposable fashion?

Another trick is to keep swapping suppliers not only to keep moving to a cheaper supplier but so they can hide what is really going on, I know this as I married into a big retail family and used to listen to them discuss such tactics.

and the managing director of the company I was linked with learnt everything he knew from discussions with the managing director and leadding lights of one of our largest groups of fashion retailers, who has admitted to using such factories.

so DC why don't we all do more, it is hardly asking a lot is it not to buy clothes from primark, tesco or the arcadia group.

firstly DominiConnor familes and children do starve here, I live in a town where every year at least on child dies of starvation.
I myself have also found myslef with a child on the streets with no food, but obviously it would be foolish to suggest that it happens as much in this country as the developing world.

Although the decline of our manufacturing industries saddens me, not least for the children I teach many of whom could have worked in the manufacturing industy, I accept that in a freeish market that retailers/manufacturers are going to look abroad. But they could afford to pay more and make a real difference as some companies do. There is noe xcuse for companies like tesco, matalan or primark to use forced labour and they do simply out of greed. Maybe we just have to accept that we have less and pay more or buy second hand.

Western investment helps those countries. So not buying as you don't buy damages children and their families in my view but obviously people can take either stance. I advise people who employ factory labourers in some poor countries. In our case we follow local labour laws and children are 16 + in that particular country but in other states where children will work anyway and there is no question of them being in school beyond 13 I don't see why Western countries with good checks on how they are employed aren't better employers than leaving the children to beg or starve. What is the moral reason a child shouldn't work? Some families solely depend on that child's wages and when child labour is abolished families starve but it's not an easy issue.

in India I think they just banned child live in servants and there are one million of them a figure I could hardly believe. I wonder what has happened to them.

The key to escaping poverty is education but in some cases british retail companies employ children who are forced out of education to work.

I myself worked from about the age of 13 to help put dinner on our table so I can see that sometimes child labour is necaessary but I was not denied an education ( well actually that isn;t true as I missed lots of school to work but at least I was not working in an unsafe filthy sweatshop run by bullies)

I also said that although it was sad that more clothes are not made here I accepted that companies will want to manufacture abroad but why don't they pay more and allow better conditions.

I myself feel sick to the teeth that in the family I was in children were being given a private education, a outlandishly extravagent childhood all built on the work of forced child labour from the developing world.

Xenia if you followed your logic we would still have slavery as what would happen to all those slaves if we let them free.

Although of course there still is slavery in the world, yet another uncomfortable truth we have to live with.

I was very depressed when I heard she sent her son to a private school. How distressing for her constituents. How can state schools ever improve if the Establishment will not use them?
Blairs - selective RC school in Hammersmith?
Alistair Campbell and wife - state schools in Hampstead are probably pretty middle class aren't they so I don't know how heroic this decision is really. I can't imagine Campbell having any foibles about doing anything that suited himself!

But D Abbott - I guess there is an argument for black British boys needing all the advantages they can get. The State system is demonstrably failing this group - as is the country.

But it is STILL VERY depressing for those of us who have no choice.

My view is that Western companies have improved thing as Western imperialism imposed better systems and democarcy in India and Africa historically, education, abolished child marriage etc etc that overall we have done good and continue to do so; thus I'd rather Western countries employed even children in Africa with safeguards than just purchased the results of that labour from local businesses who exploit children . Of course some local businesses don't either.

Twinsetandpearls, where do you live ?
In any case I'm saying that multi nationals area general undirected force for good, not a guaranteed solution to every ill of the world.

Ipanemagirl has a very valid point. I'd to see the statistics for black boys in state vs private schools.
I have no doubt whatsoever that state schools fail black boys, indeed they fail a large % of the population.

But...
I know people who teach black boys, and there is certainly things that cannot even hope to be blamed upon schools. The most interesting are people who I do not believe are racist at all, but from NZ or Oz who are actually quite shocked where any attempt to discipline them is violently rejected with shouts of "racist".

Schools make this worse a bit by pandering to "culture" which damages not only black boys but Asian girls, and lots of other groups.
But they are not the only cause, and I strongly suspect not even the dominant one.