Sir Philip Rutnam's resignation

Vegansrock posted that "Most top civil servants are super posh like most Tory politicians"

Absolutely not true. They may end up with knighthoods, but the most senior civil servants are very clever people from varied backgrounds.

My OH has a cousin who is a retired permanent secretary. He did not attend a posh school and (now that he is retired he can tell us this) never once voted Tory.

All respected professionals in whatever profession might be trusted to be in the right which means doing their job without political bias.

Sir Philip Rutnam is an honored professional at the top of his profession .

All Ps are Qs.

Sir Philip Rutnam is P

Sir Philip Rutnam is Q

My relatives who are or were top civil servants aren't super posh either. They're just very "establishment". The ones I've met have an encylopedic knowledge of current affairs and news, but they don't ever push politics. My daughter is an HR executive officer in the civil service and certainly isn't super posh. She's methodical, unflappable and scrupulously fair - I can imagine she's just the kind of person Dominic Cummings would hate. She has a killer stare and I can imagine she wouldn't take any nonsense from somebody like him or Priti Patel.

I was listening to a profile of the senior civil servant in Brussels for the Brexit negotiations this afternoon. His parentage is obscure but he won a scholarship to his local grammar school in Nottingham and then went to Oxford.

Doesn't sound particularly 'super posh', or even 'posh' to me. He could be the son of a single mother living in a council flat, for all we know.

I never thought that Theresa May was super posh either.

The daughter of a vicar, grammar school and clever enough to go to Oxford.

But poshness is all relative anyway
m.youtube.com/watch?v=9tXBC-71aZs

Except when it’s not https://youtube/9SaZUYa5r28

youtu.be/9SaZUYa5r28

It's weird that people (eg. Cummings, Farage, Johnson) who attack the so-called elitescome from posh backgrounds themselves. I don't understand how people can criticise the civil service, academics and other "experts", yet fall for the spiel of these charlatans.

I am constantly amazed by the narrow minded judgmental attitudes of many people to anyone who didn't spend their childhood as the only child of a single parent living on a sink estate.

Reverse the statement. How outraged would you be if someone suggested that the child of such a parent is incapable of understanding the lives of the majority of people because they had a different background to theirs.

I agree - judgmental attitudes are appalling aren’t they? Here’s Boris’ views on single mothers in case anyone hasn’t seen them -
www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/election-boris-johnson-articles-women-women-journalist-spectator-labour-a9221036.html%3famp

I have come across children in that situation and I do think that some of them are incapable of understanding the lives of others. In educational circles, it's known as lacking cultural capital and is one of the reasons that children brought up in deprived circumstances lack aspiration and lack the skills to fulfil ambitions.

I suppose that explains why he keeps getting married anyway. Although the daughter born out of wedlock is difficult to explain. Possibly though her mother was far wiser than Carrie.

one of the reasons that some of the children brought up in deprived circumstances lack aspiration and lack the skills to fulfil ambitions.

One of the things that does these children most damage is the defeatist attitudes of those who claim to want to help them seeing their situation as helpless and hopeless.

My grandparents were born in deep poverty and received little education, but made a successful way in the world because no one kept telling them how desperate their situation was and how hard it would be for them to ever get out of the situation they were born into.

Too many impose low expectations on children from difficult backgrounds and seem to be happy when their low expectations are fulfilled.

B

I agree - and when you have our PM making such appalling judgments about single mothers, their children and women in general it doesn’t bode well.

None of us know the details, it is all speculation and I think that people are confusing the situation. He may be useless at his job, or not, it may be that he needs to be removed but there are ways of doing it which do not include bullying, if he was bullied. Whether he was good at his job or not is irrelevant it he and others were bullied.

Most of the people I encountered working with children from difficult and deprived backgrounds never gave up in spite of encountering situations they were unable to change and seeing time after time families and children slip back into old habits when the support wavered. A classic example are children, supported throughout their primary school, and brought to some level of order and learning, only to slip into truancy and out of education at secondary level, because they just couldn't cope with the size of school and lack of individual attention.

Just who are these people who are imposing low expectations on children from difficult backgrounds, MOnica?

I worked in a school in an area of high deprivation. The whole school ethos was for teachers to work their socks off to get the children examination results which would help them to progress in life. The message was always positive; do well in schools and it will help you in your future. But, as the HT said sadly (to me, privately), 'We are selling them a lie when there are so few jobs available to them'

I would suspect that many of us on Gnet had at least one set of grandparents who were in poverty, even in deep poverty, but opportunities for our parents, and us, in the 50s. 60s and even 70s were far greater given the UK's still thriving industrial base and the need for people in clerical and retail occupations. Jobs were plentiful.

The destruction of our industries, computerisation and the outsourcing of work to countries where labour costs are far lower has had a profoundly negative effect on jobs available for 'ordinary' people over the past 30 -40 years.

But, believe it or not, many people are trying very hard for these children, despite the not very encouraging circumstances they face, not dismissing them as never going to achieve anything.

the daughter born out of wedlock
At first I thought you meant Carrie herself trisher then re-read it.
Perhaps as Carrie was born out of wedlock (that sounds so quaintly old-fashioned) she doesn't want the same for her own child.

My experience, in a part of the country not so far from you, trisher was much the same.

I agree Maizie.

Is this Boris “taking control of his woman”? What a lovely way with words he has.

He may be in charge of the country but I doubt that he's in charge at home.

I agree with you Maizie about how hard it is to succeed. My Grandmother left school at 14,never owned property and was very frugal. Like it or not, those days are long gone. We are a society obsessed with material goods and a quick fix.

Maizie People like you.

You mean he’s not following his own advice Callistemon?