rich kid, poor kid

[giraffescantdancethetango]

who is watching it then?

PS Do you think the mother WAS Xenia masquerading as a primary school teacher

I cannot believe that Alice's mother (sour faced bitch) is allowed to teach children in this country, words fail me that someone so venemous, conceited and full of self importance is allowed to have a position of such influence over young children, her daughter is a product of her's and the doormat father's making.

And remember no matter how poor you are there is no excuse for a young child not to be enrolled in a school or sleep in a bed, she could give up the cigarettes for a week to buy the bed, lazy cow.

I think Alice and her family will regret taking part in this programme. I suspect it was carefully edited to make them appear worse than they really are - and I do hope that they are not as awful as they were portrayed to be.

That Catherine Tate clip has just cracked me up, so funny . I'm very tempted to forward it to a friend of mine, it so reminds me of her!

I worry for Alice, and hope she has moved because it is very obvious where she lives and she will have upset an awful lot of people.

I was shocked and appalled at this programme. It really was one extreme to the other wasn't it?

Natalie, with such a hard life, had taken more on her shoulders than the average teenager and ovbiously was fiercly protective over her mum and her little brother. However she proved herself to be a resiliant, caring, intelligent and polite young woman.

Alice was simply foul, as was her Mother. How anyone can feel and openly admit that money and private education brings superiourity (sp?) is beyond me. They were vulgar, hateful and down right obnoxious.

I cant help but imagine a school full of Alices - Yuck.

Natalie was a rock, her mum should be very proud of her, and Alices mum needs to take a good hard look at herself and her daughter.

I feel very sorry for Alice.I don't think it's fair to make such personal attacks on an immature 15-year-old, whose contributions were hugely edited.

I don't know how her family could have thought it was a good idea for her to take part in the programme. Have they never seen a documentary before? Wasn't it a foregone conclusion she'd be stitched up, like this? To be fair, a lot of what she was saying initially was obnoxious but towards the end she had changed her mind a bit. But it was too little too late and she'll still suffer terrible abuse for taking part.

The programme was very truthful in showing what a divided society we live in and how much fear is out there. It made me think of South Africa during apartheid, the blacks and whites never mixed and the latter were terrified of the former. As Alice said it all comes down to "ignorance" and so much of it is down to our rigid education system. Most private school pupils do look on state school kids as something alien and scary. Whe nI looked at some private schools and asked pupils where they'd been before some said "a state school" in a tone that implied this was something shameful and best forgotten. That's why dd1 is going state.

And Natalie's mum was an example of total hopelessness, too crippled by depression how to get her and her children's lives on track. I really hope as a result of this programme Natalie gets a helping hand and manages to move her and her brother on to a better place.

If I was Alice's mother I would be ashamed of myself at having visited such snobbery and narrowmindedness on my child. At 15 she can only have got this attitude from her family. Having said that in many ways, although extreme some of her views (not the ones about chavs/clothes/what people spend their money on) have a grain of truth - fear, ignorance etc. She will cringe no doubt at having been seen like this, but hopefully learn that actually where you go to school doesn't necessarily mean you are a better or worse person. Natalie was impressive in many ways and her care and concern for her little brother was wonderful. But, like Alice she too had her prejudices and I don't think some of her attitude (when she started swearing when she was asked questions she didn't like) was particularly admirable. I think both of them have suffered in different ways from their upbringing, but hopefully they will change their opinions and prejudices after this. It would be interesting to see a short catch up in a year or so. Just a quick reply to Jujumaman - you say private school pupils look at state school pupils as alien and scary - don't you think it works the other way as well, certainly does round here?

I got annoyed by the ads for it. 'I have money'

'NO!' I shouted at the telly 'your mummy and daddy has money!!!!!'

frosty

I'm sure it does work both ways. I've just been to visit a lot of private schools recently (and decided against them) and reporting what I observed.

quite terrifying how little , actually , no imagination or empathy Alice had. her comments about labour politics, people on benefits and money equals superiority smacked of an immature child parroting what her parents have said.

I appreciate she must have been edited badly, specifically to make the programme more shocking. but she did say some hideous things

her mother and father seemed quite oblivious to the reality of how the 'other half live', it was all about danger, fear, stabbings.. no understanding, no comprehension.

the mother;s comment about their garden being quite small, directed to natalie's polite comments about their home were gobsmackingly crass and insensitive, based on the fact that natalie has no garden at all.

i hope the mirror that has been held up to alice and her family allow them to reflect on their opinions and perhaps re-educate themsleves

i am not saying that natalie was perfect, some of her attitude was very brash, but at the end of the day, here is a 17 year old girl, holding together a depressed mother, SN sibling, on no money , in appalling housing, with very little hope of getting out of the poverty trap herself due to having to drop out of school due to depressed mother and so it goes on

not sure why Alice and her family wanted to take part. unless they really were so naive they did not think they would be portrayed as braying, crashingly upper middle class snobs. Maybe they thought they were doing a great job of pointing out how the middle classes are living in fear of the great unwashed non white council house chavs

left a nasty taste in the mouth

I ended up feeling sad and sorry for them both. Both victims of their parenting

I loved the fact that the mother had no chin. She is a dim, chinless, bigot.

Alice was no more representative of an independently educated 15 year old than Natalie was representative of a state educated 17 year old.

Can a Mumsnetter who lives in the Clapham/Streatham area please go and offer Natalie some babysitting work or help her in some way. I would if I lived nearby. Her family is so clearly in need of help and not getting it. It makes me very cross and very upset.

I looked on james allen website and there are some girls there of different colours so not sure what the mother makes of them?????

I bet james allen are not too pleaseed this morning easpically when alice was seen in their uniform and said which school it was

I agree that alice was vile but the mother was worse

even with clever editing she spoke in sentances and so she really did say the words iyswim

so clever editing won't be putting in words she didn't say iyswim

I watched it alone and recorded it to watch with DS who is 13 and goes to a private school but went state school til 11

all his friends who he sees out of school are from primary and are state school now, I went to the local comprehensive

all private school children are not like that

natalie I thought was lovely and Gabriel was soooooooooo cute ~ really pleased he got his bed

I too, don't really understand why people who are very very poor and are counting the pennies for food etc smoke ~~~ actually want to watch their money burn in front of their eyes

I think that Alice will have a really hard time today but hopefully they have gone to live on a distant island somewhere so they won't have to deal with others who are not like them.

I don't see how the mother can be seen in public in that area again ~ or be seen to be a primary school teacher with those outspoken views

I thought the looks they both gave when hearing about Natalie's dad being shot were truely vile and shocking

I hope natalie gets some help with education so she can get to her full potential

Natalie should be the primary school teacher not the vile mother

,

I couldn't believe when Alice said children from state schools should go and die. She didn't even backtrack when given the chance, she just said she really did mean it. It's just as people say, she is blindly verbalising everything her parents are teaching her.

Oh so it was JAGS...ha ha ...my sister went there!!!

interesting and v embarrassing for the school i think

Alice's mother teaches at a posh private school in Pimlico. Well, at least she was when i was working for the family as an au-pair when Alice was a toddler. And I can tell you,for a primary school teacher, she is ignorant as hell. A stuck up snob. Awful woman. I remember one Sunday we were sitting around the table having lunch when she realised that the stitching on one of her slippers was coming undone and the sole was coming off . And she just says to me: Oh well, we will just have to send it (the slipper) to the poor Hungarians. I'm Hungarian by the way. Could have killed the her. She also loves the idea of kids wearing school uniforms, because then it's obvious to see who can afford to send their kid to a good school, and who can't.

small world SsimTee!mum sounds ghastly.i love Hungary btw been there many times- great architecture,food,wine,people

Mostlyreindeer - she is an ignorant girl whose headmistress is probably spitting feathers at the bad publicity

One of the mothers I met at school this morning told me that she grew up on the featured council estate as did her husband and that her mother stills lives there.

She wanted to bitch slap that abhorrent, vile, stuck up heffer. She is white and working class and could not believe the comments made about the estate, non-whites, the unemployed etc.

No wonder people have views that quite a few middle class parents who send their kids to private school are a bunch of stuck up, conceited, smug and arrogant twits and instil those views into their progeny. This couple have certainly done that and the only ones who are going to suffer are their children. The world is changing, we live in a global economy and people are being judged on what they can do rather than which school they attended. And about time too!

...and seeing as i didn't get into that school some 25 years ago...i feel all the happier for it

God I feel sorry for her. I do. I know what she was saying was dreadful, but then you saw her mother FGS. And she was mugged outside her own house, which compounded all the "fear" that had been instilled in her by her upbringing. And for some unfathomable reason her parents allowed her to be filmed spouting all this. I hope the "oh my God, I can't believe what I said" stuff at the end was true. And I hope she gets into a nice redbrick and meets and makes friends with lots of "chavvy", clever young people.

This could be a whole new series. "Daughter Swap."

Oooooo that would be gooooooood