The people who have everything also run everything.

But many people who get places at Oxford or Cambridge do so because they have been taught privately in classes of 12 rather than 30 as in some state schools. They aren't necessarily top brains but have been tutored and conditioned to perform well in the selection process.

Waste of time discussing IMO.

Please do go on discussing, Lazigirl. Reading nothing but entrenched views makes one lose the will to live...

What exactly is " clever"

I have only read about 4 pages in this thread, so apologies if this has been discussed. I read many references to people working hard to overcome growing up in poor circumstances, working hard at school, attending evening classes, studying at the OU etc and forging a good life for themselves. There has also been criticism of those who doss around and simply can't be bothered to improve themselves.

I worry about those who simply cannot do anything to change the hand they've been dealt. Putting it bluntly, they don't have the intellect. They are poor in spirit and have no model by which to improve their status in the communities in which they live. They weren't high flyers at school, because for many different reasons they could not achieve academically. We can't say they're poorly educated, because they don't have the capacity to take advantage of the higher levels of education available. They simply don't have the ability.

Their aspirations are low because they know they're bottom of the heap. They are the ones who need help and support to at least have a decent life. In some respects life dealt them a blow by not making them clever and those who forged a good life because they had the wherewithal to achieve, owe it to them to help them rise above poverty levels of existence.

We are not discussing a binary system here....the hammer and sickle versus the likes of BJ. The original article is very interesting.

Lazigirl. Oh how I sympathise with your views!

I have read The Poverty Safari Tillybelle and completely agree with you. I find on these political posts, people are not really interested in the evidence, but are keen to state their entrenched views (right and left) without regard for facts which do not support them. Waste of time discussing IMO.

I haven’t noticed that at all ( posters thinking others are class traitors) where are the threads on this??

Communism doesn’t work well ( there are always those at the top and near the top who still manage to drive around in expensive cars, best seats at the ballet etc!)

So why whinge about Capitalism, however imperfect, it’s still the better option.

Thanks, Tillybelle for that good analysis of the problem.

So many people in this thread have veered off into the defence of people who have 'striven' to achieve whatever they have achieved. They seem to be missing the point that the article is about people who have never 'striven' in their lives because they haven't needed to. They were born into wealth and privilege.

It's also interesting that some seem to approve of this. It feels almost like deference to our 'betters'.

I've also noticed in many other discussions that there is a strand of disapproval of people who have been born into reasonably privileged families and have espoused left wing ideals. Almost as though they were class traitors for not being right wing. They're not acting as 'privileged' people should act.

It's all a bit odd...

Lessismore
Many thanks for drawing my attention to this brilliant article.
I'm still lethargic getting over something very achy and groggy, so might not have discovered this had you not quoted it. I love analysis like this. It is very well written.

I was shocked to read how dire things are in terms of integration since I was in Grammar School in the 60s. I had hoped we were more integrated now. I might have agued that we are, drawing on the MPs that I can call to mind. However, the numbers do not lie. This report shows the situation. We are stuck in an ignorant rut of trying to create Politicians who can run the Country from people who are as removed from the lives of the average person as they were 50 years ago. The divide is an abyss.

Has anyone read "Poverty Safari" by Darren McGarvey? It is set in Glasgow where he grew up in very deprived circumstances. He decided to look at the reasons for poverty and the reasons why the Powers that Be and the Residents in the poor areas could not communicate. It is brilliant! Up to date and piercingly perceptive.

In the article we are discussing, Gary Younge says: "One of the reasons why British politics is so difficult to understand at present is that most of those critiquing it are so deeply embedded and implicated in the world they are critiquing, they just can’t see straight." In other words, our politics is difficult to understand because the people reviewing it are stuck inside it so tightly and anything they say reflects on they themselves, so they can't have an objective view. So as far as British Politics goes, we can't see the wood for the trees!

If you want to sound superior and put down the quotation which is so well selected for this discussion as a "catchy soundbite" that does not bear scrutiny or a fallacy that gives rise to itself, you clearly either have not read the article or have not understood it. Or perhaps you want to show off your bit of Latin? Another quotation from the article which can sweep that pompous idea out of court is: "Since the war Britain has come to think of itself as far more meritocratic. The current situation gives the lie to that illusion" with the accompanying statistics to prove it. Don't fall into the error of "sounding clever" (but showing yourself up for being stupid) by saying "lies lies and damned statistics" because these stats are so simple even an infant class can understand them!

The fact that the person who threw us into the crazy ill-prepared Brexit mess a few years ago "went to the same school and joined the same supper club at the same university as the person who will most likely be prime minister in a few weeks’ time." The person who will have to ultimately sort out the result, without much idea of how. Also " Nobody thinks that is an uncanny coincidence. It’s how Britain works. It’s also why it’s not working."

At my Grammar School in the 1960s I fell for the Britain as a Meritocracy idea. I am appalled at the dire failure of this today. Even though I taught in different universities and my late husband was a House Master in a Public School, I should know how the divide works. In the university which the ex Public school students attend, what I would call snobbery, but I suppose it is elitism certainly exists. The public school you attended gives you greater status accordingly. In the other University, the students are practically all doing a wage earning job as well as studying full-time and the debt which they will have when they leave weighs heavily upon them. It is frequently discussed and influences their choice of career. In the hierarchical university one hears nothing about this. At the week-ends the students row, sail, play tennis etc and are free to do as they please. You can tell the teaching style they received. They expect you to simply narrate the facts they need to spue out to pass the exams. There is no desire to discuss, to think about another point of view or - Heaven help us! to do a bit of research themselves!. When it comes to their piece of original research they are flummoxed unless they have found a student in a higher year with an idea to copy. In the poor kids' uni they are bubbling with discussion. They will argue about the research! Teaching them research methods and how to understand statistics is enormously rewarding. But when they graduate, that debt will be the rudder that steers them into the next port in their lives. Not aspirations, not desires to try something higher and better. Fettered with debt they are held in place.

It is true, until we can free our brightest and best to become the leaders in our Country, they will not emerge to do so because of the heavy weight of debt round their necks. We shall have the Borises and the Charterhouse boys, those whom mummy and daddy put through school and university without any encumbering debt so they were free to choose. Moreover, those who were taught from the cradle that they were the ruling class. With subtlety, politely, insidiously, with oodles of money, gently letting them know who were the "people like us" and the "people not like us". Thus confidence is born and that is all you need. Not a moment's self doubt to stop your path to the top. That is why the people who have everything also run everything.

(Sat 06-Jul-19 12:37:16) So would you do away with private education?
I have never been convinced that it is only, or especially, private education that gives some the golden ticket. The vast majority who are privately educated have wealth behind them. They do not have the scarcity problems of others. They can risk more and more easily make and save more and this must give them a great deal of confidence. On the other hand, those with negative wealth are more insecure and will make their decisions and possible not take simple risks based on their experience of this.

If you look at the cross-over of people who attended very good state schools, in a pleasant area where their parents and others had the disposable income to make life a easier, I would suggest there is little difference between them and the child whose parent scraped to send them to a local but not particularly sought after public school.

No one can ask to be born into this world, and when we are, no one can select the parents they are born to or the circumstances those parents will raise any child in.

Some children will be born into wealth and privilege, while others will have parents that although on limited means, will strive above everything else to give their children a good home and education.

Other children, unfortunately, will be born to parents who are unable to cope with children or a home environment in general. In these households, abuse and violence are often rampant, and the children's education receives little or no attention.

The above sets the basic environment for how any child will cope in education and what they will have achieved at its outcome. However, I am a person who believes that everyone born into this world has natural talents or skills that if found can be exploited to make them an asset to our society and bring success in their working lives.

I have stated previously on this forum that I at times have the privilege of acting as a tutor on Unite and other trade union workplace safety courses. In that, many who attend those courses come from a background of not doing well in their early year's education, but wish to bring better safety standards to their workplace and at the same time better themselves.

It is often for many of the above the first time they have entered a "classroom environment" since underachieving in their primary education, and apprehension can be seen in many of them on the first day of any stage one course. However, it is also very often that those persons overcome that trepidation and go on to complete the full four weeks of training, and enter the forefront of a career in industrial safety.

The above I give as an example of what can be achieved by almost anyone no matter what their background upbringing when lifelong learning is freely available

As stated no one born into this world can choose their parents or the manner of their upbringing. However, all can change and build on that background however base that may be to achieve given the opportunity. That stated, Britain now so often fails its population in the field of lifelong learning, that many never find that opportunity to fulfil their full potential.

(Sat 06-Jul-19 00:06:40) Yet many people did and do study although their stomach is rumbling. People in the public eye who have made it in the world are always telling everyone how deprived their childhoods were, yet they succeeded.

I think that is more of a right-wing trait; I don't notice it on from the left so much. The far-right seem to believe that each person has the capacity to succeed and that if you don't it is because you are a skiver, etc., or, if it's themselves, that someone else is responsible.

The parable of the tram drivers son or the council-house childhood is just to prove that their view is correct, isn't it?

The article is interesting, backed up by facts and thought provoking. It's not about private education or Labour politicians who were privately educated.
I fail to understand this " what about " mentality which does nobody any favours.

"There is a clear and undeniable link between the entrenched and calcifying class stratification in British society and the inept chaos in which we currently find ourselves"

This is the crux of the article, not whether or not Tony Blair was rich or Prince Charles did well at University.

There is no point relishing the past and talking about night schools, bettering yourself, putting children through private education and so on. Those days are gone.

Input!!

Humptydumpty, re: your point about the passing on of wealth to children.

If Mr. Dyson couldn’t leave his wealth to his family where would it go?
To the government?
End of a business?
Maybe not but there may just be a huge loss of employment and I put to the economy.

Lessimore well said. You have the facts and figures as opposed to the poster who just said oh here we go bashing etc. It’s a Democracy we can do that especially when it’s deserved. Nothing will change till the country is not run by Old Etonians , drug taking so called journalists like Bo Jo taking in 250 K for a column which he said he just knocked out on a Sunday morning and the money was just ‘chicken feed ‘. Disgusting! They really do not know about the real world. Domestic abuse, love children serial adultery is OK for the party of Family Values as long as they don’t have to stick to those values. What’s happening here is the way Trumps behaviour has been normalised. And those Brexit MEP’s are just as bad taking the salary and pension!

There are lots of single parent families, so no "we".
Just one parent.
There are children whose parents have health issues, drug issues, mental health problems.
There are people with no family support, not even access to their own bathroom.
There are families relying on food banks.
There are homeless families.

I would say its fairly obvious the odds aren't in their favour.

"Perhaps the way to even things out would be to stop money being passed at death to the next generation, i.e. everyone starts on a level playing field. Money from estates could be re-distributed annually across the population so that everyone gets an equal share." I think not, where would the drive to succeed come to be?

By the way, I was a teacher at our local comprehensive and obviously knew a lot about it. I wasn’t convinced our daughter would get the best possible education there, which is why we decided to send her to private school, even though we knew it would be a huge commitment.

It makes me so mad when I read posts knocking people who went toOxford or Cambridge and saying that they come from rich and privileged families. Of course, some of them do, but there are families like ours who aren’t rich or privileged, but managed to give our children an excellent education, just because we were determined to do it and worked really hard to give them the chance. You just have to believe you can do it and work incredibly hard to fund it. We put our daughter through private education because we were determined to and we look back and wonder how we did it. She was given a bursary, which helped, but it was jolly hard work! She went to university and then did a Master’s at Oxford, where she met her husband, who was on a two year scholarship from the US. Now they live in New York and both have excellent jobs. It’s a matter of determination and really hard work, but it pays off in the end.

Its probably doing BJ a power of good living in a "small" flat and having trouble with the neighbours, bit more like the rest of us. This country has been run from the top down for a 1,000 years going to be difficult to change. Perhaps Comrade Corbyn will help us! I do think the private schools should go.

Agree about the BBC salaries. Thieving gits.

(He'd probably like that)

Not Christ Evans
(I elevated him more than he ever deserves)

Chris Evans