Charlie Gilmour - The Gift That Keeps On Giving

Julia is a very perceptive woman. She commented yesterday :

"Well, good grief! The BBC News just ran an interview with Charlie Gilmour, made on the day, before they knew who he was, or what he'd done, and it's pretty clear he's either functionally retarded, or was drunk or stoned at the time."

Not found the BBC video, but take a look at this. He certainly seems to be off his face.

"Forward, break the lines, forward unto death !" With a heroic effort Laban refrains from the obvious response.




Julia : "No doubt Daddy's PR team wrote that statement for him..."

Today's Mail :

"Last night, Gilmour issued a statement through his father's PR firm."

The Mail story also quotes a "friend" - presumably some Facebook friend - as follows:

"Charlie was on acid when he ripped the flag at the Cenotaph. He boasted about being on drugs on his Facebook afterwards but later took down the posts about acid."

Hat-tip to commenter John Horne Tooke at Biased-BBC.


UPDATE - school - Lancing College (via)

UPDATE - you can see how remorseful he was about the trouble at the demo :
























and this (via) :

A friend wrote on Gilmour’s Facebook page: “That is you climbing the flag, yes?”

Gilmour replied: “No. Not me. Someone else.

“Whoever it was was obviously on acid and didn’t know what the f*** he was doing and how much of a massive f***ing backlash there would be…”

The pal wrote, “My mistake” – to which Gilmour replied: “My big f***ing mistake.”

UPDATE - this photo from the Mail today - obviously not someone who was looking for trouble. The rock is just a pose and the latex gloves aren't at all the sort of thing you'd find useful when you're doing some 'free shopping' ...
























Photo: Steve Burton / Daily Mail.

"Charlie Gilmour has admitted being close to the car carrying the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall when it was ambushed by paint-throwing demonstrators in Regent Street. At 8.10pm, less than an hour after the attack on the Royal limousine, he was filmed by the BBC outside Topshop in Oxford Street, half-hiding a woman’s lace-up boot under his coat."

UPDATE - the Sun :

"Another picture showed him apparently trying to light a fire by the doors of the Supreme court on Parliament Square. "

Photo : The Sun/Jeff Moore


Hmm. Gets everywhere, doesn't he ? Busy little bee.

Why on earth didn't Chief Inspector Michael Walsh, one of whose officers stamped out the fire, arrest the twisted firestarter?
















Photo : Daily Mail/Jeff Moore

Not that I can't understand the appeal of smashing other people's things up as part of a mob. The sound of breaking glass has an appeal to young men of all classes. It's because it's such fun that we have to have strict laws against it.

Public School Prat

Looks like the Student Grants who trashed Central London yesterday really do fit the trustafarian stereotype :

"Privately-educated Charlie Gilmour, whose Pink Floyd guitarist stepfather is worth £80million, said: 'I would like to express my deepest apologies for the terrible insult to the thousands of people who died bravely for our country that my actions represented. I feel nothing but shame. My intention was not to attack or defile the Cenotaph. Running along with a crowd of people who had just been violently repelled by the police, I got caught up in the spirit of the moment. I did not realise that it was the Cenotaph and if I had, I certainly would not have done what I did. I feel additionally mortified that my moment of idiocy has distracted so much from the message yesterday's protest was trying to send out. Those who are commemorated by the Cenotaph died to protect the very freedoms that allow the people of Britain the right to protest and I feel deeply ashamed to have, although unintentionally and unknowingly, insulted the memory of them.'"

Lying toerag. He's doing history at Cambridge and he doesn't know what the Cenotaph is. And he 'just got caught up'.

He feels nothing but shame that it's all over the papers, that's all. Cretin.


UPDATE - cleverclogs Carol Vorderman tweets "Cowardly little liar".


UPDATE - Julia comments :


"Well, good grief! The BBC News just ran an interview with Charlie Gilmour, made on the day, before they knew who he was, or what he'd done, and it's pretty clear he's either functionally retarded, or was drunk or stoned at the time. If you can catch it on iPlayer, I suggest you watch, and marvel at what passes for a Cambridge-educated student these days. "

Anyone seen this interview and got a copy or a link ?





(I think that's the first ever mention of Twitter on this blog)

Publicans Gone Wild

The young ladies and gentlemen (and catering staff) of the Royal Grammar School, Worcester, demonstrate the latest dance 'craze' sweeping the nation's youth. Apparently, since the England cricket side popularised The Sprinkler, the Watusi and the Hully-Gully do not 'cut it' and are no longer 'where it's at'.



(The school wasn't always the home of gilded youth. An ancient foundation, it was IIRC a state-funded grammar school until the early 1970s, when Worcestershire went comprehensive and Bromsgrove County High School became North Bromsgrove High School. RGS, independent though state-funded, picked up their ball and went private.)

In Defence Of Alan Duncan

Not often you'll hear me defending the council house grabbing millionaire who compared social conservatives to the Taleban and called for them to be 'rooted out' of the Tory party.

But at least Duncan is open and up-front about his beliefs. What you see is pretty much what you get.

His nemesis was a chap called Heydon Prowse, which sounds more like a PR firm than anything recognisably human, but who is actually a public school luvvie from Islington. Ticks all the boxes, doesn't he ?

Browse dug up Duncan's lawn, creating a bed in the shape of a £ sign, as a protest against the MPs expenses claims. Duncan, for what reason I know not (maybe he's just a nice guy - who knows ?), repaid this act by asking him to lunch. Browse turned up with a hidden recorder, and next thing Duncan's honestly and privately expressed views on the starvation diet of MP expenses were all over the media.

As a result of which he's out of the Shadow Cabinet. As Guido observes, Cameron (no social conservative himself) has watched his ratings fall and taken the appropriate action.

I understand the realpolitik of what Cameron's done, and by his leaving statement so does Alan Duncan. I guess it just sticks in the craw that Browse should pick up a scalp by his act of betrayal.

You can see why I'd make a lousy politician.

Another Public School Leftie ...

Brigstocke is ideal for the BBC.

He attended Westbourne House School just outside Chichester before going onto King's Bruton School in Somerset.

Good private boarding school material.

More on Mr Brigstocke here.

The Need for Diversity ...

Mrs Andrew Marr on Gordon Brown's most pressing issue - the shortage of women in his cabinet.

"Tony Blair never had a "women" problem. They liked him. From Tessa Jowell, who famously said that she would throw herself under a bus for him, to Ruth Kelly, Hazel Blears and Bev Hughes, the women were loyal to Blair."

And Blair was a smooth, lying snake-oil salesman, personally attractive and charismatic, brilliantly competent at talking the talk of politics and disastrously incompetent at walking the walk of effective policy. Hmm. This is an argument for more women in the Cabinet ? Strange, how potent cheap rhetoric can be. I remember Clinton's last Labour Party conference appearance - not a dry seat in the house and you could have bottled the oestrogen in the air. The Labouristas loved him - a guy whose most lasting legacy will be a hefty cut in US welfare rolls.

Mussolini didn't have a woman problem either - he used to pleasure women journalists who'd come for an interview without even taking his boots off. Maybe Ms Ashley should head for Rome to do a piece on Berlusconi ?

I digress. The comments struck me :

RapidEddie :

if we take a look at the present and recent cabinet:

David Miliband - Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

Jacqui Smith - Hertford College, Oxford.

Peter Mandelson - St Catherine's College, Oxford.

John Hutton - Magdalen College, Oxford.

Geoff Hoon - Jesus College, Cambridge.

Ed Balls - Keble College, Oxford.

Ed Miliband - Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

James Purnell - Balliol College, Oxford.

Shaun Woodward - Jesus College, Cambridge.

Andrew Burnham - Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge.

Yvette Cooper - Balliol College, Oxford.

Paul Murphy - Oriel College, Oxford.

You'd think that such a high proportion of top positions being filled by alumni from just two universities might not have escaped the eagle-eyed attentions of the gender-balance-noting Jackie Ashley (St Anne's College, Oxford), or her colleagues Polly Toynbee (St Anne's College, Oxford) and Madeleine Bunting (Corpus Christi College, Cambridge).

Chesney01 :

Singly perhaps it doesnt matter what their backgrounds are but put together the lack of world experience is frightening. I am sure that if I carried on adding names then the experience profile would not widen significantly. It would merely add ex public sector employees and lawyers.
I am sure that the lack of knowledge of the real world is a major factor in why the Labour Part is so out of touch and why the government is in the mess it is in. It is no wonder that Labour campaign on peripherial issues of gay rights and foxhunting and have lost the working class they claim to represent.
:
David Miliband - Corpus Christi College, Oxford. No profession outside politics.
Jacqui Smith - Hertford College, Oxford. Short time as a teacher
Peter Mandelson - St Catherine's College, Oxford. Short time in tv being groomed by the BBC for politics.
John Hutton - Magdalen College, Oxford. Lecturer (Law)
Geoff Hoon - Jesus College, Cambridge. Lecturer (Law)
Ed Balls - Keble College, Oxford. Writer/Journo
Ed Miliband - Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Short time in tv as journo
James Purnell - Balliol College, Oxford. No profession outside politics
Shaun Woodward - Jesus College, Cambridge. Short time in tv as journo
Andrew Burnham - Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. Trade Union
Yvette Cooper - Balliol College, Oxford. No profession outside politics
Paul Murphy - Oriel College, Oxford. No profession outside politics

RapidEddie :

AllyF said:

Haven't exactly been sticking up for the Graun of late, so feel obliged to point out Kettle, White, Monbiot, Freedman, Younge for starters.

Ally, I stand corrected.

I was of course forgetting Martin Kettle (Balliol College, Oxford), George Monbiot (Brasenose College, Oxford), Jonathan Freedland (Wadham College, Oxford) and Michael White (University College London. Oh, the shame). Younge? Who he?

But are these brave chaps just token sausage-swingers amongst Catherine Bennett (Hertford College, Oxford), Allegra Stratton (Emmanuel College, Cambridge), Zoe Williams (Lincoln College, Oxford), Tanya Gold (Merton College, Oxford), Marina Hyde (Christ Church, Oxford), Bidisha Bandyopadhyay (St Edmund Hall, Oxford) and Melanie Phillips (St Anne's College, Oxford)?

"Ah!" but I hear you cry. "What about Sam Leith (Magdalen College, Oxford), Peter Preston (St John's College, Oxford), Andrew Rawnsley (Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge), Simon Jenkins (St John's College, Oxford), Alexander Chancellor (Trinity Hall, Cambridge) and not forgetting the leader of the pack, Alan Rusbridger (Magdalene College, Cambridge)?"

In the light of such overwhelming evidence, I should have to concede that The Guardian is in fact gender neutral and representative of the widest possible cross-section of British society.

We're Not Having Kids Part 503 - Liz Forgan

Times interview with the current Arts Council chairman :

There are, she thinks, two reasons for her becoming such a successful woman. During her single-sex education it never crossed her mind that women could not run things. “And I don't have children. It is unquestionably much more difficult for women with children to have a long-term career. I am in awe of women with children juggling 18 balls but the superwoman myth went too far. In your life if you are a daughter, mate, parent and have a career you cannot give 100 per cent of time to all of them.”

Laban thinks single-sex education is a Good Thing, too - particularly for girls.

But it's funny. She doesn't seem in awe of this successful woman with kids :

I have been a card-carrying feminist for 40 years and this woman has found somewhere in me a little kernel of sexism. She causes me to make a failure of sisterhood. Sorry Charlie but I cannot stand her candy coated philistinism, I hate her crass creationism, I loath her parading of her family about the place, God forgive me I even hate her teenage hair ...

Publicans 1, Chavs 0

"I say, Giles ! Let's get down to Stansted and ruin a few holidays !"

Millie Tant Goes All Soft'n'Fluffy

Is she mellowing with age, or have the Labour image advisers been gently pointing out that the style was a bit butch ?

Wealthy socialist Fiona McTaggart, the MP who thinks that the 1st Battalion of the Scots Guards (who were Trooping the Colour the day she complained) are too hideously white, seems to have undergone a makeover :



This used to adorn the Home Office website when she was a minister. Now the hair is longer, the whole style softer - in this BBC news video she looks as fluffy as she's ever gonna be. Listen to the immaculate privately-educated (Cheltenham Ladies College, no less) diction as she pronounces :

"That is not the Labour way".

Fat lot she'd know about the Labour way.

She may be an upper-class entryist of the sort who have destroyed the English working class (in her case by campaigning for their replacement via mass immigration), but even she can see that Gordon Brown is doomed, and the only question is how many Labour MPs he'll take down with him. I must say the conference is going to be fun. With any luck it'll be like the good old days, with frequent interruptions from the floor, slow handclaps, rows in the bar, the works. It looks as if rank and file MPs are doing the job that a Cabinet ought to be doing. But the Blairite years of conformity have taken their toll, and no-one there has any spark of independence. It's down to the poor (excepting their monstrous tax-funded pensions) Parliamentary infantry. Onwards and downwards !

UPDATE - Labour do have the problem that all the potential replacements are duds as well. I personally think a Miliband-led party would bomb even more at a general election. Interestingly Jon Cruddas thinks it's all a waste of time - presumably characterising the whole thing as the Blairite's revenge. But there's some good news for him.

Housewife and hairdresser, lecturer and railway inspector — the group that gathered on a rainy night earlier this month had only one thing in common: all voted Labour at the last election. Around a third remained supporters, the same proportion had switched to the Conservatives and the remainder were undecided.

Blimey. Around a third. In a Labour heartland (Doncaster). They were shown clips of potential candidates and asked for comments.

Miliband : “It was as if he’d just read a book before he came on the television and couldn’t wait to spew it all out.”

Alan Johnson : "I just lost the will to live during this one"

But Cruddas :

In the clip shown, Mr Cruddas — who once worked in No 10 as Tony Blair’s link with the unions — was interviewed about whether pupils are tested too much. Although the group appreciated his independence — registering strong agreement when he said that British students were the most tested in the world — they continued to warm to him even as he put the other side of the case. His graph shows a steady climb and ends with the most positive scores in the exercise.

“He spoke my language. I understood everything he said,” said one man. “Honest straight from the start,” agreed a woman. Another said that he was an “average person, middle of the road” but also “more interesting” than the others. “He was owning up to things. I actually listened to him,” said one elderly man. “It wasn’t, ‘this is how it is, this is how I want it’; he was open to discussion.”

Rick Nye, a co-director of Populus, said Mr Cruddas was the “surprise package”.

“People warmed to his straightforwardness and, above all, his willingness to criticise existing government policy in the area of testing children in schools, an issue that many respondents could readily identify with. If Labour were looking for an Identikit leader who could transform their political fortunes, he or she would have to be fresh enough to catch people’s eye, frank enough to admit Labour’s past failings, trusted enough to offer an uplifting vision of the future, and strong enough to deliver on their promises.”

I'm presuming that Cruddas wasn't talking about immigration.

Only just realised ...

Former BBC Radio MD and current Scott Trust chair (the Scott Trust own the Guardian) Liz Forgan's rants on Any Questions, which I blogged today at B-BBC, contained the following :

a) the chair of the Scott Trust thinks Brown should go asap. No wonder her mate Polly's wielding the hatchet.

b) the chair of the Scott Trust thinks employment law should discriminate against men. You can see why Julie Bindel has the run of the place.

c) the chair of the Scott Trust thinks a 'global electorate' should vote in the US Presidential elections. Operation Clark County, described by this lefty as "one of the most ill-conceived liberal electoral efforts of all time", is perhaps explained.

Irony Alert ...

Public school leftie comedian (seems to be on all of those six-blokes-and-a-girl-called-Sally-who-knew-each-other-at-uni-plus-thirty-five-scriptwriters Radio Four shows) Marcus Brigstocke :

The main thing we've done since we got here is making everything green. It's an agonising financial experience. We've spent about a hundred grand ...

We have solar panels, and are having photovoltaic panels fitted as soon as we can get hold of them, but the demand is very high. They are full-on energy-producing panels – they will run your lights for you and contribute to the national grid. You can get photovoltaic panels in the UK but the waiting lists are long. Also, the Government has set a cap on grants for installing them, at the same time as saying, "Yes, we are taking climate change seriously!" I am getting my panels in from a Chinese plant, the only one in the world with a really solid eco-record for making them. A lot of these things you buy thinking, "Yes, that's the right thing to do", and then you find out that the carbon footprint caused by construction and transport makes the action useless.

Ah yes. Those famously eco-friendly Chinese. And they're delivered by magic pixie rather than ship.

It's an iron law that the more you parade your green credentials, the more long-distance flights you make - hence all those "Bali from £17.99 if you fly Tuesdays" ads in the Guardian's travel section, and all that one-upmanship about finding somewhere "totally unspoiled" off Sumatra. One can never know how trustworthy the figures are in sites like this or this - one says a return flight to Miami releases the same CO2 as 10,000 miles in a family car, another says return to NY "has as much effect" as that 10K of motoring - something to do with high-altitude CO2 emissions being worse. But the general message is clear.

Our Mr Green is an archetype :

"I first skied when I was 15"

"People who have listened to my Giles Wemmbley Hogg series are sometimes surprised to discover that I am he. I spent a great deal of my gap year in his shoes, travelling round Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia"

"When I was in my twenties, we used to go to Mallorca a lot"

"We spent our honeymoon in Mauritius, at the Paradise Cove Hotel"

"My last three holidays were all snowboarding in Méribel, at the beginning of this year. Ideally I’d like to go for two or three weeks, but what with work and family, I can’t do that. Instead, I go several times for three or four days."

"In summer, we go fairly regularly to Canada"

Guardian commenter CaptainCrunch sums it up neatly :

I can't get over the number of people who claim to be concerned about climate change but still feel the need to take foreign holidays.

Either they really haven't joined the dots between their holiday activities and the global climate, or their outward concern is just an act designed to portray themselves as caring middle-class liberals. Either way, I wish they'd give up the pretence and come right out with it: my travel plans are way more important than the environment.

(Just put the icing on the Giant Cake of Hypocrisy, Mr Brigstocke tootles off on a freebie to the Arctic to tell us all about the horrors of climate change.)


According to his Wikipedia entry, Brigstocke's essential theme is "the hypocrisy of the affluent".




(via)

Public School Socialists ...

Via Harry, this Prospect piece on the changing music market. As the value of recorded music drops, the value of live music increases. But it was this that struck me :

Even the less prosperous citizens of Chile were asked to pay £80 to watch Coldplay in Santiago's Espacio Riesco, a considerable sum in a city where the average monthly salary is around £250.

More Upper Class Lefties

Thanks to Harry's Place, something on the background of the Guardian's Seaumus 'Mad Dog' Milne.

"You know what they used to say in the twenties ? 'Show us your calluses ! Why are your hands so white and puffy ?' Now that was Marxism !"

"I've been a worker, I've worked !" cried Rusanov, ..."

from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Cancer Ward.

Ian Blair - Foot In Mouth Again

Calling the Royal Ulster Constabulary 'paramilitaries' is all in a days work for the PC publican (Wrekin College, fees 10-21K) who :

Thinks that Haringey residents are happy to leave their doors unlocked and open; not everyone agrees;

Can't understand why the Soham murders were in all the papers.

Who says "If you’re not broadly against the police when you’re a teenager, you’re not much of a teenager."

And who thinks that people who pay for private security guards are 'crazy'.

By their friends shall ye know them.

More Publicans

Oliver "Affluenza" James - Eton. No wonder he's in the Guardian and on the BBC so much.

Lily Allen, chirpy cockney songbird - whose alternative, laddish Papa stumped up those Fat Les royalties to send her to Hill House (Prince Charles' prep school) and Bedales, one of the most exclusive girls' schools in the country. Fees; £8,218 per term. Via Mr Eugenides.

Activist Judges Reduce All Sentences At A Stroke

Remember the overflowing prisons crisis. I think it was the Home Office disaster before last.

Mr Reid wrote to all sentencers reminding them that the jails were full and other sentences available. Not of course that he was trying to influence them. Oh no.

Somebody must have been working hard behind the scenes since then. All the prison problems solved at a judicial stroke. Admittedly more crime problems for the rest of us, but what does that matter ?

Court of Appeal
Published February 16, 2007

Regina v Seed
Regina v Stark

Before Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, Lord Chief Justice, Sir Igor Judge, President and Mr Justice David Clarke
Judgment February 13, 2007

When considering the length of a custodial sentence, judges should bear in mind the fact that, at present, the prison regime was likely to be more punitive because of prison overcrowding.

Particular care should be exercised before imposing a custodial sentence on a first offender since association with seasoned criminals might make reoffending more likely rather than deter it, particularly where the offender was young.

Enforcement of fines was now rigorous and effective and, where the offender had the means, a heavy fine could often be an adequate and appropriate punishment.

The Court of Appeal, Criminal Division, so stated when: (i) Allowing an appeal by Trigger Seed against a prison sentence of six months imposed by Mrs Recorder Simler at Chelmsford Crown Court on January 8, 2007 following his plea of guilty to assault occasioning actual bodily harm. A seven-day prison sentence was substituted.

(ii) Allowing an appeal by Phillip Stark against a nine-month prison sentence imposed by Judge Cutler at Winchester Crown Court on December 8, 2006 following his pleas of guilty to bigamy and failing to surrender to bail. A three-month prison sentence was substituted.

I have no law training, but it looks as if a new legal principle has just emerged from Lord "Don't jail muggers if they're in a gang" Phillips' fertile brain. The punishment element of a prison sentence is positively correlated with the degree of prson overcrowding - via an obscure algorithm that cuts six months to seven days and nine months to three months.

I wonder what the victim of the wonderfully named Trigger Seed (what's his background ?) thinks of 7 days for ABH. If I assault Lord Phillips and cause ABH - an idea that seems unusually appealing for some reason - will I get 7 days ? And if a few of us do it in a gang, will we walk free, citing 'peer pressure' ?





Lord Phillips was educated at Bryanston and Cambridge, lives in Hampstead.

What School, Prime Minister ?

Balfour - Conservative, Eton (fee-paying, private)
Campbell-Bannerman - Liberal, free grammar ("For centuries it was an integral part of the city's educational system, but in 1976, despite its high standing and achievements, it was closed when education in Glasgow was reorganised along 'comprehensive' lines.")
Asquith - Liberal, private
Lloyd George, Liberal - free parish school and home-educated;
Bonar Law - Conservative - free grammar, the same one that educated Campbell-Bannerman
Stanley Baldwin - Conservative, Harrow - fee-paying, private
Ramsay MacDonald - Labour, free parish school (he was a pupil-teacher at 15 - bright students were recruited as teachers and learned at the chalkface)
Neville Chamberlain - Conservative, Rugby - fee-paying, private
Winston Churchill - Conservative, Harrow - fee-paying, private
Clement Attlee - Labour, Haileybury - fee-paying, private
Sir Anthony Eden - Conservative, Eton - fee-paying, private
Harold Macmillan - Conservative, Eton - fee-paying, private
Sir Alec Douglas-Home - Conservative, Eton - fee-paying, private
Harold Wilson - Labour, State grammar
Edward Heath - Conservative, State grammar
James Callaghan - Labour, State grammar
Margaret Thatcher - Conservative, State grammar
John Major - Conservative, State grammar
Tony Blair - Labour, Fettes - fee-paying, private


For thirty three years, from 1964 to 1997, State grammar schools provided Britain with five successive Prime Ministers, before the previous public-school dominance was restored - ironically by a Labour Prime Minister.

A public-school education produced some pretty cool dudes, though - not that I'd ever thought of Harold MacMillan in that category before.

"During the Battle of the Somme, he spent an entire day wounded and lying in a foxhole with a bullet in his pelvis, reading the Greek writer Aeschylus in the original language."



UPDATE - Speccie interview with schools minister Lord Adonis.

The good :

The battle to reform state schools has been a bloody one for Tony Blair, on a battleground which his party regards as sacred. From the offset, Lord Adonis has been his chief adviser. Ten years ago he was a journalist writing about education in robust terms. He denounced the ‘comprehensive school revolution, which destroyed many excellent schools without improving the rest’. He deplored the end of grammar schools, a move ‘carried out in the name of equality but which served to reinforce class divisions’.

It’s the kind of stuff which is too hardcore for a Conservative manifesto these days. Yet its author tells me he still believes every word. ‘I have not changed my mind in ten years,’ he says. ‘If I could redo the 1960s and 1970s education policy, I’d do it very differently.

The frankly depressing :

But I think the debate has moved on from the abolition of the grammar schools. Nobody sensible, including today’s Conservatives, David Cameron or David Willetts, wants to turn the clock back.’

He maps out a three-pronged consensus: that education spending must rise, reform must continue and there must be no return to selection by ability. ‘The Conservatives have accepted that too. They’re not for bringing back grammar schools either. Put all this together and we have established a new consensus.’

So he thinks abolishing grammar schools was a disaster, and that's the way it's going to stay.

And could someone tell me what the point of voting Tory is again ?


UPDATE2 - "A telling hiss of heresy from Tony’s blue-eyed boy" says the Sunday Times.

Private Education

Is it a waste of money ? ask Shuggy and Chris Dillow.

I married into a family with a fair few doctors among the brothers-in-law and cousins. They were all state-educated - and all of them educate their children privately. Then I thought about other doctors I know. These are all NHS doctors - and I don't know a single one with children at state secondary. I'd say the majority used state primaries - but the moment the kids hit 11 they were sitting the entrance exams.

Maybe the NHS is recruiting only from stupid people. Or snobs.




UPDATE - "maybe they do it because they can afford it" says Shuggy in the comments - my reply's there too.

Chris Dillow wonders if the kids wouldn't prefer the cash, invested in a high interest account. I went through exactly this calculation before deciding to send my youngest son private. Reasoned that giving him the money equalled giving him a fish (or admittedly, rather a lot of fish). Giving him the education equalled teaching him to fish for himself.

It's sad - when I was a grammar-school boy we looked down on the 'publicans', characterising them as 'thick rich kids'. In those days the doctors sent their kids to the state grammars. But 'a grammar school education for all' turned out to be a lie.

John at the England Project bit the bullet too.

"And screw anyone who tells me that we, and 60% of other parents of children in my sons school, are doing it because we have fallen for a confidence trick. We are parents who saw an alternative to the future offered by the state and jumped at the chance…..even if it means financial worries and serious risk for a decade or so and a likely end to successful pension planning. It’s called being a parent. It’s called taking risks."

Keeping Poor Kids Powerless

Can't understand it. The comprehensive system is producing the best-educated generation in our history, yet social mobility is declining - and has been since the grammar-school cohort dried up.

Fewer state-educated kids make Oxbridge than forty years ago. And fewer state-educated kids are getting to the top in journalism.

More than half the UK's top 100 journalists went to private schools, a survey for an educational charity says. The Sutton Trust, which helps youngsters from underprivileged homes, also said that more than half of those with degrees had been to Oxbridge. The proportion privately educated had risen since 1986 from 49% to 54%.

The trust's report said: "A common perception among leading editors we spoke to is that the gap in ability between those from private schools and those from state schools has widened over the last few decades. Young, independently educated aspiring journalists, they argued, are just more confident, knowledgeable and self-sufficient at an earlier age than their state school counterparts."

So the privately educated children of the Toynbees and Aaronovitches should have no trouble following the Hattersleys, the Rozenbergs (Mr Melanie Phillips), the Lee-Pollards, the Corens, the Davieses and a host more into the hereditary guild of British journalism.

Money Isn't Everything, Says Millionaire Etonian

"Tory leader David Cameron says there is more to life than making money, arguing that improving people's happiness is a key challenge for politicians.
In a speech to the Google Zeitgeist Europe conference, he said the focus should not just be on financial wealth.

Under a Tory government, the public sector would become "the world leader in progressive employment practice".

But he conceded that some on the right would believe people's well-being was nothing to do with politics."

Would they ? I thought the idea on the right was that independent people were happiest and that politics should facilitate this by getting the state out of the way as much as possible. Maybe not.

Mr Cameron does seem to be a bit of a Boho.

"To calculate a person's status, you take his net worth and multiply it by his antimaterialistic attitudes. A zero in either column means no prestige, but high numbers in both rocket you to the top of the heap. Thus, to be treated well in this world, not only do you have to show some income results; you have to perform a series of feints to show how little your worldly success means to you.... You will ceaselessly bash yuppies in order to show that you yourself have not become one. You will talk about your nanny as if she were your close personal friend, as if it were just a weird triviality that you happen to live in a $900,000 Santa Monica house and she takes the bus two hours each day to the barrio. "


It's the education bill today, in which Labour MPs will once again try to deny working class kids the sort of education most of them had. Tim Worstall has the links here and here.

Robert Crampton tells it like it is :

The people I’ve met who went to grammars learnt in greater depth and breadth than I did. Their lessons were more rigorous and more challenging. Roy Jenkins? Denis Healey? Harold Wilson? I don’t think they were baking sheets of paper in the oven to make them look like medieval parchment for history homework in the Thirties, as I was 40-odd years on.

I didn't do that at grammar school either. But my sons did, in year 8 comprehensive.

They should consider this, these Labour men and women who detest their leader and educational selection in equal measure. For more than 30 years, from the death of Hugh Gaitskell to the death of John Smith, when the grammar school generation was on stream, the Labour Party did not feel the need to choose a public schoolboy for its leader. Since 1994, when the comprehensive generation started to become available, they’ve had Blair from Fettes, and soon they’ll have Brown, the product of a ruthlessly selective fast-track education. And before too long, I suspect, we’ll have Cameron from Eton. He’ll be that school’s nineteenth Prime Minister. We’re still waiting for the comprehensive system to produce its first.