posh and posher

[southeastastra]

oh dear, what a state our country is in

It's crazy how narrow/protective politics and the party system has become. I don't know who they are representing.

Here's my proposal: only allow MP's serve people who they live amongst. Why not have a residency requirement of 5 years to serve the contituency? That way it's not Eton->Oxford->Whitehall Advisor->MP parachuted into a winnable area. Possibly it would allow for homegrown talent who aren't completely beholden to the party the the party ways? Maybe they'd even be beholden to the people who elect them? Nah - a naive fantasy.

I truly believe there will be a backlash. It may not be soon but it will come full circle at some point.

We've all had a bellyful and soon (please) a new strong resurgence will come from the roots up.

Yes, I agree SWC. Plus the kind of people we'd actually like to represent us (with integrity, knowledge of the real world, genuine intention to improve it, genuine intelligence to achieve this) often don't seem shallow, or cynical, or self-motivated, or wealthy enough to go into politics

Having gone to Oxford from a State school and mixed with all sorts of people from different backgrounds, I found the most distinguishable feature of those from the "top" public schools was their, at best, self-confidence, and at worst, arrogance. Public schools very effectively train you up to think an awful lot of yourself and your education, creating the sort of bumptiousness required to become a politician and to think you are always in the right even when all evidence points to the contrary. State schools, on the other hand, tend to produce far more self-aware and self critical individuals, even when they do provide them with a good academic education.

Yes, I am being rather unfair, there - I am also married to a public school bloke (albeit he went there on full scholarships). There are plenty of people who went to public schools who end up neither self-confident nor arrogant, and plenty who end up neurotic and miserable because of their school experience, although I would stand by the fact that they tend to be better able to dissemble self-confidence effectively, and more at ease in environments that would be totally alien and unnerving to all but the most well off state school children, however intelligent, otherwise confident and academic. And a small minority of the nicer ones are still touchingly naive about the world outside their own education - one having famously congratulated another person on his course for managing to get into Bristol University from a state grammar school... without being intentionally funny. Mind you, I blame his family more than the school for that one.

Belle's point about only the rich being able to start out in such a career because of the need to work unpaid is utterly true in journalism too, especially London, which is probably why there's been no criticism of it in politics.

And publishing. And becoming a barrister.

And working at Sotheby's or Christie's or any of the museums, etc. Basically, all the interesting jobs (from my perspective).

I was talking to someone today about what's happening with the schools in the Rotherham area. It appears that, already, several of the higher achieving schools are being granted academy status. They will then be able to choose their own intake, etc. I don't like the way the academies are being created nor the fact that they will be taking much needed funds from LAs but I suspect that they will turn into the modern equivalent of grammar schools? Apologies if this is crap - I don't know much about the education system outside of what everyone knows (and my DD has yet to start school).

Although I suppose working for Sotheby's you're not having an impact on the democratic or judicial process, which MP, MPs assistants, journalists, and to a lesser extend publishers are.

Actually an awful lot of my friends are lawyers, and the old story about barristers having to work for virtually nothing seems to be no longer the case. It also seems to be maybe more open in terms of ability to rise to the top from a non-Oxbridge background than other 'powerful' traditional careers, particularly the Bar as its so much about the individual, although the magic circle firms are still a pretty tight knit bunch.

What was most depressing about the programme is that the toffs did not enter politics to make the world a better place and to help people - they are there because it is a chance to practise the debating skills they picked up at their school's debating club, they have connections and it is one step from getting their peerage.

I wish Andrew Neil had been more explicit about the Milliband's comprehensive education though.

We do not need the return of grammars because it will signal the return of 80% of school children being consigned to the perception of 2nd rate schools, even if they are not. Comprehensive schools work if they stream to enable the brightest to be stretched beyond their capability, the non-academic to learn vocational skills alongside the key academic skills and the in-betweeners to flourish in both categories that meet there capability, imho.

How can this narrow, unrepresentative elite who have neither earned or deserve their privilege positions, who have never had a real job, never experienced financial insecurity or job uncertainty, never mixed with the proletariat since birth (other than those that serve them), represent the majority of people in this country? It is really depressing.

The Bar is most definitely more open than it used to be, after years of pressure on it to open itself up, but it's still tough in London (not so much outside of London, I suspect) for the non-Oxbridge, not very well off, in huge amounts of university-fees debt (you do, after all, still get a pretty small income to begin with, particularly compared to what you could be earning elsewhere if you are talented enough even to be trying to get a place in Chambers; need to be taken on at the end of your pupillage, for which there is absolutely no guarantee; have no guarantee of ever having a particularly good income, unless wanting to work in an area of the law that is even more weighted against non-public school, non-Oxbridge candidates; and the majority of people involved in the decision making process are still often privately educated and/or Oxbridge educated themselves. For a not very well off person in huge amounts of debt, it's much easier to get a job as a solicitor and work for higher rights of audience that way, unless you are absolutely certain that becoming a barrister is your true vocation. So it is still skewed towards those who can afford many years of uncertainty of income and who have the self-belief to perservere, which is more likely in someone with family who have been there, done that themselves and understand the world in which they are moving.

Effectively, we still have a system where a small elite are groomed for leadership. It's a shame we don't have an empire to send them off into any more - they are all staying at home dealing with the local natives, instead of dying of malaria, or syphilis, in a far outpost.

Although they do have to visit very dangerous luxury yachts and talk to dodgy billionnaire Russians. Oh, and the occasional popstar and footballer, just to show they have a hand on popular culture.