Posh Boys in trouble?

[french frank]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/poll/2012/may/03/tony-blair-uk-politics

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

me tooooooooooooooooooooooooo aaaaaaaaagggggggggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh hhhhhhhhhhhhhhh but but welcoming is one thing and needing is another


i would actually hate it but it is the case that we are governed by callow youth in all the main parties and it shows ...

alas i do feel that beginning with Blair and Broon that the Labour party's failure to address leadership issues disqualifies it from government for a generation of leaders ... ie the one after the next one ...

[ahinton]

To represent people - the mass of people - they need to have knowledge, experience, understanding of what most people's lives are like. The 'posh boys' exhibit none of this - they grew up & were educated in a sealed world, they have not had jobs where they encountered 'ordinary' people, they have made no attempt to find out what people's lives are like. As Mr GG has said in another thread, in an area where Mr Cameron might have developed some empathy & understanding he has exhibited none, & made people's lives immeasurably more difficult.

I agree with your first sentence, of course; indeed, how could I do otherwise?(!). That those whom you call the "posh boys" do not, in your view, exhibit any of this requisite understanding cannot and indeed should not be blamed upon the nature of their education and how it was funded, nor on their experiences or otherwise in the workplace; they are adults in their 40s with university degrees, for heaven's sakes and there is and indeed should be no excuse whatsoever for their having any less understanding of and sensitivity towards the lives of others, particularly in their lofty political positions.

I'm afraid your attempts to defend private schools & the people who use them - to buy privilege & access for their children - are really on a hiding to nothing.

Since I have made no attempts either to defend or to accuse private schools (apart from my remark about how appallingly unsatisfactory music tuition is in some of them), they are indeed by definition "on a hiding to nothing" because they do not exist in the first place; furthermore, I am far less convinced than you appear to be that all of those who send their children to private schools do so with a primary view to purchasing "privilege and access" for them as distinct from trying to get them what they believe - not always correctly, by any means - will be the best quality education that they can get and, in any case, not all students at pricate schools have wealthy and privileged parents any more than not all of those who attend state schools are from lower-middle or lower class backgrounds.

[ahinton]

no i think ah makes a fair point in logic but the trouble is his argument does not scale up .... yes it may be so but not in the great majority of instances that a fair and competent representation is attained through a member of an outgroup ... but the main case that it is usually safer to rely on one of your own still stands ... one could not argue that an exception to the main point is untrue but one may argue that although true it makes little practical difference ie that we remain governed by a self sealing cadre of 'posh' and rather incompetent young men in all the main parties .... and that one strata in consequence represents everybody

I still maintain that it's up to each individual MP, regardless of his/her background; it's an absolute essential to have and develop a proper grasp of the lives of those whom you have been elected to represent and, whilst no MP can possibly expect to be able to concur with the stances of each and every one of his/her constituents, one doesn't have to be hyper-intelligent to be able to recognise the nature of the MP's duty to represent - indeed, if that understanding fails or is otherwise compromised, there will be a problem, regardless of how it might have come about. The rule of thumb is don't even think to stand for Parliament unless you've got what it takes to represent your constituents and others. It's just as important that MPs from what are (quite insultingly and uninformatively) termed "working class" backgrounds" have and develop some understanding of the lives of the wealthier among their consitutents and others whom they're elected to represent and there's no more excuse for a lack of it in such MPs than there is in a lack of it in the opposite direction in MPs from privileged backgrounds.

[Serial_Apologist]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!



My blood pressure wouldn't stand it, Calum. Let him grub around the world for his dirty millions. He has ruined enough lives.

couldn't agree more, aeolium - can't get my head around the fact that anyone would want the return of Bliar, though Alistair Darling would be another matter altogether notwithstanding his apparent compliance because unlike Bliar, Brown and Balls he has gone some way towards admitting his role...

I think the tendency of a goodly part of Joe Public to self-abase, doff hats and pull forelocks before the rich and powerful continues to have strong roots in the Victorian Christian idea of "The rich man at his castle, the poor man at his gate" being automatically part of some natural order which seems to exclude human intelligence from that order as part of a distortivwe narratrive.

Probably the major part of childhood's enculturation is as much ascribable of the trickle-down need to forestall adolescent questioning's part in individuation, that moment when the organism acquires the mental and physical means of non-dependence on parental shelter for survival, and present its own uncertainties as the stuff of inexperience and immaturity: that protection that easily slides into protectionism in the interests of status and the status quo so well portrayed in RD Laing's "Self and Others". The sweeties are co-terminous with the sweeteners (reward theory) of Faustian access to the world of consumer (un)durables and the ironically solipsistic end-product of drugs, compulsive human commodification and the sexual objectification corollary, and the ignored groundfill of human surplus to requirement the rich and powerful pre-cushion themselves against to survive.

Lovelock (anyone hear the interview on R4 this morn?) saw interonnections beyond disciplinary divisions to reach his Gaia theory; we are all in desperate need for new overarching psychosocioanthropologicalpolitical equivalents.

[Bryn]

I think there's a bit of "over egging" going on
do you get "free" books and sports kit at Eaton ?

I take it you mean "Eton", and no, those who send their sons to Eton pay for the boarding (each student has his own room which comes unfurnished) and basic teaching. Just about everything else is extra.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

Lovelock yes S_A but Laing not any more better to watch the excellent Up [7 et seq] Laing is just a diatribe against imagined enemies

[handsomefortune]

Lovelock yes S_A but Laing not any more better to watch the excellent Up [7 et seq] Laing is just a diatribe against imagined enemies

funny you should mention 'world in action' and 'seven up' series calum da jazbo, (yes, 'fifty six up' is due this weekend). i, for one, can hardly wait! in preparation, i have been diligently recapping on the whole series. as tv goes, the series couldn't be more relevant to many exchanges on this thread!

perhaps neil, in particular, would have responded well to r d laing's themes around sustaining himself personally? instead, he drops out, sleeping rough, and typically puts himself at personal risk, as a 'responsible and caring' human being. later, neil becomes a liberal mp for hackney, and then cumbria respectively. imv neil sums up the 1960s onward magnificently. he's about the only person to stick to his guns, reject consumerist values completely. perhaps along with 'seven up' co participant, jacky, who works in childrens' education in the east end. in the last episode, 'forty nine up' jacky's realising both she, and the disadvantaged children she works with, are about to be shafted by the 'every child counts' blair mantra, and 'class less' society rot. it means the disadvantaged (children and adults) from all backgrounds return to a default position of being undetected, and 'under the radar', simply as it's much cheaper for selfish governments. suddenly, her job can be done by 'anyone else' but jacky herself. that is, as long as they're untrained enough not to realise the long term significance of inhumane shortcuts, leading to the deletion of all proper provision. jacky does a brilliant speech illustrating her new circumstances. she coincidentally represents millions of employees and disadvantaged people similarly tricked by the fork tongued semantics of recent political rhetoric.

imv a huge shame tim from liverpool (as is neil), can't contribute beyond 'twenty eight up', as he's actually sacked from the school he teaches in .....simply for criticising mrs thatcher, in the tv documentary! (incidentally, it's a very good idea to check wiki, as well as utube, as the background info to the whole 'seven up' series, this far, reveals some really stunning incidental occurrences. but for obvious personal reasons, these aren't covered in the tv series itself). 'world in action' remains pretty remarkable, as well as typically invasive, as a fore runner to largely pointless, fake 'reality entertainment' of today.

[handsomefortune]

Just about everything else is extra.

apart from infamous eton bullying, which is free.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

i was reading a review of Ken Livingstones bio in the lrb and the reviewer made a most telling observation about the world ken L came from ... it is no more, that post war Streatham suburbia with it's values and class .... and what fascinates about 7 Up is that the world that spawned it is no more ... and neither is the world of my origins huge chunks of redevelopment later whole histories are obliterated or tesserateed for the cultural anthropologists ... the fwecking country etsates and private schools are still there and the ST Georges Hills .....

i digress the posh boys are in trouble not because they are posh but because they are bawbies, naifs, schoolboys in the hardest world we will all ever know short of war ....

[ahinton]

Just about everything else is extra.

apart from infamous eton bullying, which is free.

Is it really Are you certain of this? If indeed it's true, it would seem that fag power ain't wot it used to be, then...

[MrGongGong]

I take it you mean "Eton", and no, those who send their sons to Eton pay for the boarding (each student has his own room which comes unfurnished) and basic teaching. Just about everything else is extra.

oops the only Eaton possibly worth bothering with is Nigel ?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

...even as dysfunctional as (me or i which?)...

I think it would be "I" here, as you are really saying "even as disfunctional as I am"

(Not that I agree with you. )

[gradus]

Eton's A level results are good but don't look that special to me but I am uninformed about these things. It does however sport 6 A* passes out of 6 entrants in Music Technology, so presumably they're doing some things right with all that money.

[MrGongGong]

Eton's A level results are good but don't look that special to me but I am uninformed about these things. It does however sport 6 A* passes out of 6 entrants in Music Technology, so presumably they're doing some things right with all that money.

The Russell group have downgraded Music Technology so it is now seen as a "soft" subject and not suitable for students wanting to study "academic" subjects.

But they do a cracking degree at Huddersfield !