John McDonnell - fee paying scholar to Marxist

Oh my goodness. This has run on to 7 pages. I have better things to do than worry about someone's parent's choices

Yet you still post GGmk3 strange that!

I said in my OP that some will say it was his parents choice. My thread was not about that (although there has followed some mighty good deflections!).

It was about JMcD’s decision to hide the truth and for what possible reason?

When/how did he hide the truth? His education obviously didn't give him any advantages, judging by his academic achievements after leaving school. All his qualifications have been achieved as an adult.

Oh I’m not going over all the old ground. There’s 7 pages on this thread (just ask GGMk3!) and it’s contained therein.
?

Urmstongram What is "working class"? McDonnell's dad was a bus driver! Young John was obviously a clever lad because he passed his 11+ to go to grammar school, before being sent off to a minor Catholic boarding school, which he stayed at for two years.

The idea that that kind of background makes somebody "posh" is laughable. Well, it would be if some goons didn't believe it.

Nothing's contained in the thread, except a load of bigoted tripe and some people trying to establish facts.

When did McDonnell ever try to hide the truth? I don't follow everything he's ever said or written, so I don't know - and it would appear you don't either.

Find it incredible that today, in the 21st C- so many people still think in strict and narrow 'class' lines. As if anyone with a social conscience, who believes in good health care and education for all, and in supporting those who hit hard times, one way ot the other- are loony lefties.

This is just ridiculous. The difference between NHS and private should have nothing to do with access to healthcare- but with a nicer room, a TV, WiFi and a choice of doctor/surgeon - as it is, btw, in Switzerland.

Same for schools. The private system here is tiny, and mainly for expats who move around a lot, do not speak the local language, and want their kid to have the ability to move around the world and still aiming at the same qualifications. When there are NO private schools, and the children of all different people go to the same school, be it the local surgeon's or CEO of a large company, the kids of the refuse collectors and the woodcutter, or the lady at the till at the local supermarket, or the vet's, the Vicar's, etc, etc- then those with influence make sure classes remain small, quality teaching and facilities are provided, for THEIR own kids, and all the kids too. Unfortunately, once people opt out and go private- then the state systems get neglected- as those in power and influence have .. as said, opted out. Out of sight, and out of mind - and funding, etc.

... not only loony lefties, but eaten alive by the green monster. Which is also, totally and utterly ridiculous in most cases.

Nope, it was far worse than that - his parents didn’t pay, they couldn’t afford it. Instead he got there on an LEA grant funded place at a time when this was not at all unusual.

So what penance can he do for a sin not committed by him, but but by his parents and the local authority. We're does this sort of thinking come from?

a load of bigoted tripe
Is tripe going to mentioned on every thread?

I'm beginning to feel nauseous

It's been on his Wiki profile since 15 June 2017, so presumably you're claiming he lied about his education before then. I'm just asking for some evidence. If you have it, fine.

It won't be mentioned if people stop spewing out tripe.

There is no penance that will suffice GracesGranMK3. We must - apparently - not get drawn into discussions regarding the really, really serious lies told by the incumbent PM and his band of rogues, thieves, liars and chancers, but instead we should throw our arms up in horror that something that didn’t actually happen decades ago.

At something

Are you saying this whole thread is a lie then? He was on an LEA grant.

Shame on the OP for not checking her facts. Was this perhaps lifted from a social media page funded by the Tories? It has their grubby little fingerprints written all over it.

Rather than an LEA grant, I suspect it was a church grant. I knew somebody who was sent by his strict Catholic parents (factory worker and cleaner) to a Catholic boarding school, in the hope that he would become a priest. They didn't have to pay anything. Unfortunately, he fathered a child when he was 18, so the idea that he would be a priest had to be abandoned.

It was published in the Sun in June 2017. Maybe it's in the Tory "Dummies' Guide to Smearing the Opposition".

SirChenjin there are dead Conservative cats bouncing round this forum like we've never seen before.

Just what is it that they don't want us to talk about

Oh, that would be the Tory Party record - a fact.
Johnson's lies - a fact.
The people who have died because of a Tory decision to maintain austerity, otherwise known as privatisation by the back door - a fact.
The plan to make "Boris" the PM by selling this country off to the lowest bidder - a fact.

So let's not talk about schoolboy McDonnell but talk about John McDonnell who is preparing to do for this country what President Franklin D. Roosevelt did for his in the 1930s bringing it relief, reform and recovery from consequences of the last 10 years of Tory incompetency.

Ahhhh, but Brexit GracesGranMK3 - nothing else matters, it seems.

And let's not forget that Attlee went to Haileybury (a proper posh school) and Oxford and had middle class parents. Wow! What a hypocrite he was!

I don't notice it being talked about a great deal on here SirChenjin and we are not that weird as a "cohort".

I actually told Jo Coburn (Politics Live) that at lunchtime but she just continued thinking she knew best. Then they had almost nothing to say about this "pivotal" part of politics.

This whole thing is a storm in a teacup but it serves John McDonnell right for his inverted snobbery.

Back in the time of the 11+ and grammar school, it was quite common for an LA, which didn't have a faith based grammar school and where their were a large number of faith based parents to take some or all the places in a local faith based private school. It also had the advantage that increased the number of grammar school places available for children who had taken the 11+

I went to just such a school. The LA took up most of the places in the local independent convent grammar school for girls who passed the 11+, also the children of other denomiations who preferred a faith based school to the state grammar. Most of the Jewish families in the town sent their daughters to the convent as did some CofE parents.

Now if John McDonnell had just been straight and open about this right at the start years ago this piffling little storm would never have arisen.

I went to a private school because my local LA took up most of the places there. I was one of a small group of boarders, my boarding fees were paid by the state because my father was in the army. I have never ever considered myself anything other than state educated because my eductation was entirely funded by the state and the same applies to John McDonnell.

What bothers me is if John McDonnell thought his state education was something he should hide. If can be devious and underhand about something as trivial as this, what else is he beng devious and underhand about that is of some significance .

I do not consider members of the Labour party who were privately educated are top be despised, it is their parents who decided what school they would go.

I do despise Labour MPs who send their children to private schools or go to great lengths to get them to effectivly selective state schools. I am thinking Diane Abbott and Tony Blair. There are others but the their names escape me.

If your child or grandchild needs an operation, but the NHS is in such a state that delay puts s/he in great pain or at risk of further deterioration, or worse- should you be blamed for paying to go private?

Just to jog your memory M0nica

1996:
Labour was bracing itself for fresh embarrassment over its education policy after the disclosure last night that Harriet Harman, shadow Health Secretary, is to send her son Joe to a grant-maintained grammar school in Kent.

Ms Harman's son - whose elder brother Harry,13, goes to the Oratory, the grant-maintained Roman Catholic comprehensive attended by Tony Blair's son Euan - has secured a place in the highly competitive examination for the selective St Olave's School, a boys' grammar in Bromley.

Ms Harman is married to Jack Dromey, a Transport and General Workers' Union official. Labour Party policy is opposed to the principle of selection in schools.

Ms Harman's son was one of the top 90 in the examination, out of 700 applicants. The 11-year-old is at present at a local state primary school, Dulwich Hamlets, in south London, acknowledged as a feeder school for St Olave's, a state school which has opted out of local authority control by becoming grant-maintained. The school is selective as well as grant- maintained, which makes the decision particularly sensitive.

Ms Harman said last night: "This is a state school that other children in my son's class will be going to. That he has got in has got absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I am an MP. Any child in Southwark can apply, many go and admission is open to every child in Southwark irrespective of money or who their parents are."

Ms Harman said that there had never been the same pattern in London of sending children to very local schools that there had been in other parts of the country. Many of her own constituents in the London borough of Southwark went to schools in Lewisham and many in Lambeth went to schools in Southwark.

She added: "There has always been a lot of travelling in London. It has also been common for a long time for parents in inner London to send their children to schools in outer London boroughs."

Ms Harman said the fact that she had not decided to send her second son to the same school as his brother in no way reflected on the Oratory, which was a "brilliant" school. "Sometimes a school is perfect for one child and another school is perfect for another. There is nothing unusual in a parent sending one child to one school and another to a different school."

David Blunkett, shadow Education Secretary, told the party conference in October that a Labour government would create no more selective schools. "Read my lips. No selection, either by examination or by interview under a Labour government," he said. But the party's education policy document makes it clear that the party will leave it open to local councils to preserve existing grammar schools.

St Olave's has a 175-pupil sixth form, with 96 per cent going on to higher education. It is a 400-year-old school which was founded by Southwark pensioners, originally in the London borough.

I have absolutely no argument with anyone who wants the best for their child - except those who try to prevent other parents doing the same.

It's interesting that it was common for inner London parents to send their children to schools in outer London borough.
Perhaps that is why it was difficult for children who lived in those outer London boroughs to get a place in their local or very nearby schools - pushy inner London parents who had 'clout' were ensuring their own children took up those places.

Now I know.

Not being a Londoner, I cannot judge. But members of a a party determined to ban all selection, should live by their own policies. Special pleading is what people do when they are in a priviliged position and , lets face it any politician with a well known name ,a seat in Parliament and in the cabinet or shadow cabinet is in a priviliged position.