Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

this has been recommended to me as a most interesting read, and should also interst certain sections here .....

Avi Shlaim's The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World is a fresh and informed account of the modern world's most intractable conflict.

In the 1920s, hard-line Zionists developed the doctrine of the 'Iron Wall': negotiations with the Arabs must always be from a position of military strength, and only when sufficiently strong Israel would be able to make peace with her Arab neighbours.

This doctrine, argues Avi Shlaim, became central to Israeli policy; dissenters were marginalized and many opportunities to reconcile with Palestinian Arabs were lost. Drawing on a great deal of new material and interviews with many key participants, Shlaim places Israel's political and military actions under and uncompromising lens.

£2bn for NHS
the headline reads well, and one can only hope that it is wisely spent - pretty forlorn hope i fear
however, from where will this big slab of money of come as well as that for the mega infrastructure programmes that are also forecast?

more cuts in welfare payments?
possibly, as those on benefits will rarely be conservatives, and most probably don't vote at all

David Cameron is all fine speeches and no action

Does anyone in Downing Street really believe that this strategy will win over the voters, asks Janet Daley.




Master PR man: David Cameron at 10 Downing Street Photo: GETTY IMAGES



Janet Daley
By Janet Daley

7:00PM GMT 29 Nov 2014



Another week, another smart political move from David Cameron. Or was it? The endlessly trailed and ever-so-long-anticipated speech on immigration finally arrived, and in spite of Mr Cameron’s delivery – which implied unambiguous frankness – was immediately subjected to forensic textual analysis. Instead of putting to rest the question of what he really intended to do about the EU, he launched an instant new wave of doubt and interpretation. For all the Kremlinology about how much of this had been pre-agreed with Brussels and sold in advance to the Liberal Democrats, the most concise judg-ment – oddly enough – came from Ed Miliband: people were not going to believe the Prime Minister’s new promises when he had broken the old ones.


Banal it may be as an Opposition leader’s retort, but it does hit what has become the most serious (perhaps fatal) Cameron problem squarely on the head. The example at the top of everybody’s mind was the failure to deliver on the “no ifs, no buts” promise to reduce immigration, which was so inconveniently exposed by the net migration figures the day before the speech.


But only a day before that, there had been another grotesque embarrassment involving another of Mr Cameron’s smart political moves. Remember that brilliant surprise announcement first thing in the morning after the Scottish referendum result? Mr Cameron strode out on to Downing Street and proclaimed that the further devolution he had promised to the Scots would indeed be delivered, but it would have to be accompanied by a parallel undertaking to the English: if Scottish voters were to be given more control over their own affairs, they would have to lose their powers over matters that affected only English voters. Well, as of this moment, that does not appear to be true.


The initial recommendations seem to involve the Scots having their shortbread and eating it. They will not only get more tax-raising powers for themselves, plus the continuation of the Barnett subsidy from Westminster – but their MPs will continue to vote on English budgetary issues. That is what you call hitting the jackpot. Downing Street now says that, in fact, proposals to address the English question will be forthcoming “within weeks”, even though Labour leaders are claiming they have had an assurance that their Scottish MPs will not be shut out of English political matters. So, either Mr Cameron is saying different things to different people or he is about to rewrite the British constitutional settlement on the hoof. I’m not sure which is worse.


Once again, there is either going to be a public sense of betrayal or a fudge designed to give the impression that concrete actions have followed inspirational words. And all of this stems from making smart political moves that consist entirely of saying clever things.




More: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/11261407/David-Cameron-is-all-fine-speeches-and-no-action.html

Latest YouGov / Sunday Times results 28th November - Con 32%, Lab 34%, LD 7%, UKIP 15%;

By Iain Martin
7:48PM GMT 29 Nov 2014
Despite the deficit, the identity of his accusers gives the Chancellor an enormous electoral advantage that Ed Miliband and Ed Balls still struggle to process mentally, says Iain Martin.

Four-and-a-half years into the job, the Chancellor is almost unrecognisable as the soft-faced youngster who in opposition promised optimistically to “share the proceeds of growth”. His features are drawn, his demeanour is earnest – and such is his ghostly pallor that MPs ask whether he knows something terrible about the state of the economy that he isn’t telling us.

Their concern is justified. Despite all the talk of austerity and cutbacks, the UK’s finances remain a long way from being fixed. As the Chancellor will be forced to admit when he delivers his Autumn Statement on Wednesday, the Government is on track to borrow in the region of £100 billion this year, an incredible sum when one considers that six years have elapsed since the financial crisis. On that front, it is to be hoped that Mr Osborne will include a word or two in his statement this week about the central role played by one of his predecessors in ruining the nation’s finances.

Last week, it was reported that Gordon Brown will not be standing at the next general election. Although even the surging SNP would struggle to take his seat in Fife, the prospect of clinging on as the Nationalist tide laps around his ankles cannot be appealing. Remember that according to Mr Brown the Nationalists were supposed to have been killed off by Scottish devolution, another project on which he, the great strategist, appointed himself chief architect.

How different the terrain looked a decade ago, and how confident Mr Brown sounded. Ten years ago this week, a cocksure Chancellor Brown delivered a pre-Budget statement in which he paid tribute to his own brilliance. He told the Commons that it was all going splendidly well with the economy: “Inflation at 1.2 per cent, claimant unemployment 2.7 per cent, interest rates 4.75 per cent, growth rising by 3 per cent, living standards by 3 per cent… stability the foundation… more investment not less… opportunity for all… a progressive Britain we can be proud of.”

Today the country is still counting the cost of Mr Brown’s hubris. Whereas the national debt stood at almost £450 billion in 2004, it has since soared to £1.45 trillion, as the Government has maintained spending, and tax revenues failed to recover. The cumulative shortfall means that £1 trillion has been added to the pile, which for now costs £55 billion in debt-interest payments.

Even now, the Labour leadership struggles to comprehend the enormity of the mistakes that were made before the crash. Mr Brown’s policies did not directly cause the global meltdown in 2008 and resulting recession, says the party. This is true, though only up to a point. The British banks that he lauded and let rip were especially aggressive in helping to inflate the biggest global credit bubble in history. According to the Bank of England, the total assets of the UK’s biggest banks came to £1.4 trillion in 2000, equivalent to 143 per cent of GDP. When measured in 2010, shortly after the crisis, their balance sheets totalled £6.24 trillion, or 450 per cent of GDP.

No wonder the impact of the earthquake was spectacular, and its aftershocks in Britain so long-lasting, when the government had allowed our banking system to grow that big, so rapidly.

But where Mr Brown and Tony Blair – who let him do it – are most culpable is that they foolishly predicated policy and their increased government spending on the boom lasting indefinitely. By mistaking a crazy credit explosion for the “end of boom and bust” they left the country exposed when, as history suggests always happens, eventually there was a bust. The result has been an abnormally long downturn, a broken banking system failing to meet the needs of the economy, persistently high deficits and that growing national debt.

Step forward Mr Osborne, who must this week explain how the job of clearing up the mess is going.

There is some good news. The Prime Minister and the Chancellor are right to say that a quiet revolution is taking place in the UK economy, as its shape changes for the better. Not only is self-employment on the rise, but also new business formation is at levels that suggest an entrepreneurial revival is under way. According to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, there were a record 5.2 million private sector businesses at the start of 2014, an increase of 330,000 on the previous year. That is up 51 per cent on the numbers at the turn of the century.

It is on this improvement that Mr Osborne plans, quite sensibly, to hang his hopes. The UK is in the middle of a painful readjustment, to which a substantial part of its workforce is adapting by just getting on with it. There is no credible alternative or easy fix.

The problem for the Tories is that the failure to get a proper grip on the deficit – the gap between government spending and income – will have to be rectified soon after next year’s general election, creating plenty of scope for the Opposition to terrify the very voters the Tories are already struggling to convince. As Paul Johnson of the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies makes clear in an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, the cuts that will be required next time are bigger than anything attempted by the existing Coalition.

All this is in spite of strong growth and an employment miracle in which almost 900,000 private sector jobs have been created since the Coalition came to power. Unfortunately, that jobs growth has not yet been matched by wage increases, meaning that tax revenues have disappointed. Simultaneously, the Government has ring-fenced spending on big-ticket items such as the NHS and pensions, and further down the scale even borrowed money to send it abroad in the form of foreign aid.

It leaves the Conservatives rather embarrassedly arguing that, look, their record is not perfect but can you imagine how much worse it would have been if the other lot had been in charge, and Labour’s advice to limit austerity had been followed?

On Wednesday, the Labour leader and the shadow chancellor Ed Balls will, of course, shake their heads smugly when the Chancellor has to recount the state of the public finances, although it is difficult to see how Labour’s preferred solution (more borrowing and higher taxes) will do anything other than hit economic growth and increase the deficit still further.

In the end, despite the deficit, the identity of his accusers gives the Chancellor an enormous electoral advantage that Labour frontbenchers still struggle to process mentally. It remains the best Tory hope that the pair pointing out Mr Osborne’s limitations have (incredibly) not even acknowledged properly how an epic once-in-a-generation intellectual failure by Gordon Brown – and his presumption that he had ended the business cycle and cured mankind of its tendency to idiocy in a boom – lies at the root of Britain’s serious and ongoing problems.

Now, the Chancellor can say, Mr Brown’s two principal advisers from that disastrous period in the Treasury – Ed Miliband and Ed Balls – are back demanding another go.

The Telegraph

Bring back Broon as well!

And Cameron limps on!

What "amuses" me, is that Cameron hangs on to Scotland and fragments England.

What a calamitous period in the UK politics reign over by an incompetent.

Plebs are good robbing fodder. Not that they have much to rob.

The problem for you Haze, is when the plebs start building guillotines!

A clear choice: Labour debt or Tory realism
Telegraph View: the Chancellor insists that he can afford to spend more on the NHS because the economy is growing so fast. Certainly, things would be poorer under Labour.


By Telegraph View7:00AM GMT 30 Nov 2014Comments53 Comments
The National Health Service is something that everyone in Britain cares about deeply. From cradle to grave, we rely on it to look after us and our families. And as the population grows and ages the service will, almost without question, require more money to finance it. But crucially, that need for funding must go hand-in-hand with reform, which is just as necessary.
George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, says that the economy is now strong enough for him to invest an extra £2 billion in the NHS next year. The economy certainly is a great deal better than it was when he took over from Labour in 2010. Programmes such as Funding for Lending and sensible tax cuts mean that the country is this year predicted to grow at its fastest rate since 2006. And the Government asserts that targeted savings mean it has enough to make this generous investment in health care.
Many Conservatives have, over the past four years, voiced justifiable concerns about the ring-fencing of the NHS budget – in part on the grounds that its problems will not be solved just with more money. Indeed, many of the challenges faced by the health service come down to a question of poor management. One dramatic example of this was the horror at the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, where patients were left without treatment, cries for help were ignored and there was a culture of intimidating staff who complained. The Government has advanced a programme of reform in the NHS that should help it to work better in the interests of patients – from the introduction of league tables to guidelines that would require doctors, nurses and midwives to be honest with patients and apologise when mistakes are made. There is a growing acknowledgement that the NHS has to be modernised, with more services available in the evenings and at weekends to reduce the pressure on A&E.


In all areas of public spending, a balance has to be struck between investment and reform, which helps to ensure that the taxpayer’s money is spent efficiently. The case for reform is all the stronger in an age of marked austerity: Britain owes it creditors some £1.4 trillion as of this year. Paul Johnson, director of the highly respected Institute for Fiscal Studies, says that this week’s Autumn Statement will have to reflect the reality of new limits. That could eventually mean reductions of up to a third of spending in many departments; further welfare reforms that could cover everything from housing benefit to the triple-lock pension guarantee; requiring workers to retire later; and even scaling down the politically sensitive schools budget.
Given how difficult present circumstances are, it is a relief that we have a Conservative-led government and not a Labour one. A Labour administration would have committed itself to yet more taxing and spending at great cost to the country. Today Mr Johnson says there is a massive predicted spending gap between the two main parties’ agendas and that this amounts to an epochal choice for voters at the 2015 general election. Labour is happier to endure higher borrowing and thus even higher debt; the Tory plan for deficit reduction is considerably stronger. The Conservative approach may be a tougher sell, but it deserves credit for being far more realistic. Britain needs to bring discipline to its finances – precisely in order to be able to afford a modern, reformed welfare state.

Some of the replies to above article :-

A clear choice: Labour debt or Tory realism

Hang on a bit!!
Not so fast!!
Forgetting something aren't you?
There is a third way, a better way, a fairer way.
There is UKIP.
There is a way of regaining British sovereignty.
There is a way of regaining British independence.
There is a way of regaining British real democracy casting off the one party state, its own justice, and its own values and laws.
There is a way to regain our borders, our culture, our identity.
There is a way of protecting the green belt.
There is a way to stop the collapsing and destruction of our NHS.
There is a way to start using our schools for general education not for just teaching the English language.
There is always a way for everything.
And where there is the will - the way is there.
Forget the lib/lab/con
That IS the road to debt and the only realism - ever greater political union within the EUSSR and ever increasing mass immigration.
Take the third option.
UKIP
2015 - all the way.


The true choices
1. Labour = No EU referendum, more enforced diversity, more unjust wars, more Immigration, more borrowing, more crime and terrorism and eventually civil unrest and maybe insurrection.
2. Conservatives = No fair EU Referendum (they will permit all immigrants and EU Migrants to vote) , more Immigration, more borrowing, more unjust wars, more crime and terrorism and eventually civil unrest and maybe revolution.
3. LibDems = LOL
4. UKIP = Fair EU Referendum, proper border controls, foreign criminals deported, Islamist terrorists and hate preachers deported, no benefits for Immigrants until they have paid into the system for 5 years at least, no free NHS for immigrants, Grammar Schools for the brightest, recall of MPs for wrong doing, new trade deals with the commonwealth and the list goes on.
Anyone who votes LiblabCon again is voting for the demise of the UK, more Westminster sleaze and corruption, the destruction of our culture and values ,full EU integration and the appeasement of Militant and Political Islam.


I know the economy is booming . But then our borrowing is rising too.
The economy seems to be booming because industry is being subsidised by the taxpayer who is picking up the bill for all the hidden subsidies the low wage earning people , many of them immigrants , are being paid. Then there's the cost of infrastructure demands. Schools, NHS etc.
It is a vicious circle. Subsidising industry with hidden subsidies gives the economy a boost which is outweighed by the cost of those subsidies .
Then there's the hidden costs of a burgeoning population.
Time to rethink.


"A clear choice: Labour debt or Tory realism" Really? is this the latest attempt to suppress both the truth and the influence of UKIP? If so it is a false dichotomy. In fact is even more false than your assertion that that we can rely on our NHS to be taken care of "from cradle to grave."

That is not just a false claim but a wilful, blatant and irresponsible travesty of the truth as witnessed by the ongoing withdrawel of care in the community together with the almost complete absence of care for our mentally ill, or vulnerable and our aged. Add to that the betrayal among those groups as evidenced from references 1-5 below It becomes crystal clear the most accurate way of describing this latest piece of Downing street propaganda for which you appear to be an eager and willing participant, is Nazi!

“There is no propaganda to great, no half promise too outrageous that with sufficient repetition cannot become the mantra of the masses."
Joseph Goebbels

1 Tories admit NHS reforms 'mistake', the UK dementia care 'betrayal'
and maternity wards struck by strike 13 October 2014


The cupboard is bare !!
But fear not !! our Political class has refilled the cupboard with other things.
Lets take a look ?
We now have Somali child abuses.
Lithuanian KILLERS .
Under cutting Polish cap in hand cash in pocket builders(some good) (some nice)
Bulgarian people traffickers.
Romanian people traffickers.
Cash in hand Polish cleaners £7.50 an hour
Car wash ALL CASH , But don't worry its only a front for laundering all the other illegal activities (see above and below)
Dodgy booze from Poland , don't drink that stuff.
Illegal animal transportation and documentation.
We now have thousands of people who are slaves, thanks , I am sure the they are really happy we opened our borders and carried out NO CHECKS.
Thank you government.
Its the governments faulty, they just let in anyone .
Invisible hand cuffs.



Don't forget our old favourite "Captain Hooky Hamza" before he was sadly extradited to the USA. He had his own personal nurse whilst in prison to help with all the tedious tasks which required more than his one good hand. Bizarrely it transpired his nurse was gay, which must have been a bit strained for both of them given Islam's less than tolerant view on such matters.

A fine allocation of resources I'm sure we all agree. Far better than wasting money on those undeserving people with cancer, leukaemia or alzheimers.


We are at the 4 1/2 years stage of Lib-Tory debt accumulation - add that to an inherited Labour base figure by all means - but be clear.

There has been little or no will to tackle the deficit in this (now fixed-term) Parliament and being in Coalition with the Lib-Dems is no excuse.

The transition to a completely new government or the continuance of the same one with or without Clegg and Co will change nothing.

Overspending and not admitting the tax take is not going to rise ever to cover it is the modus operandi for all of LibLabCon: period.

From 'Middle East Online'
First Published: 2014-11-30

Investigation uncovers 50,000 ‘ghost soldiers’ in Iraq
Iraq Prime Minister reveals existence of 50,000 fictitious names in military and promises widening crackdown on corruption.
Middle East Online

Weeding out process will extend to all state institutions

BAGHDAD - Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi on Sunday announced that an investigation had uncovered the existence of 50,000 "ghost soldiers", and promised a widening crackdown on corruption.

"The prime minister revealed the existence of 50,000 fictitious names" in the military, said a statement from Abadi's office issued after a session of parliament.

A parliament statement said the premier scrapped the 50,000 jobs, equivalent to almost four full army divisions.

"Over the past few weeks, the PM has been cracking down to expose the ghost soldiers and get to the root of the problem," Abadi's spokesman Rafid Jaboori said.

He said that the investigation started with a thorough headcount during the latest salary payment process.

Soldiers confirmed that salaries were paid only recently after a two-month delay about which they were given no explanation.

"There are two kinds of 'fadhaiyin'," one experienced officer in the security forces said, using a word which, literally translated, means "space men", and refers to the fictitious soldiers crowding the payroll.

"The first kind: each officer is allowed, for example, five guards. He'll keep two, send three home and pocket their salary or an agreed percentage," he said.

"Then the second and bigger group is at the brigade level. A brigade commander usually has 30, 40 or more soldiers who stay at home or don't exist," the officer said.

"The problem is that he too, to keep his job as a brigade commander, has to bribe his own hierarchical superiors with huge amounts of money," he said.

The officer explained that, for those reasons, the thousands of soldiers who defected or were killed this year across Iraq were rarely declared as such.

The United States, which occupied the country for eight years, has spent billions of dollars training and equipping Iraq's military.

Yet the army collapsed when fighters from the Islamic State jihadist group launched a sweeping offensive in June.

Since taking office in September, Abadi has sacked or retired several top military commanders, and Sunday's announcement suggests he wants to tackle the graft and patronage that prevailed under his predecessor Nuri al-Maliki.

"Haidar al-Abadi is setting integrity, efficiency and courage as the criteria to appoint a new military leadership," Jaboori said.

"This weeding out process will extend beyond the military to all state institutions," he said.

2. Conservatives = No fair EU Referendum (they will permit all immigrants and EU Migrants to vote)

who says or more importantly, where says?

===============

4. UKIP = Fair EU Referendum

Since when were UKIP offering a referendum on EU membership?
Why would a UKIP referendum (if there ever would be such a thing) be any more "fair" than the one offered by the Conservatives?

EU citizens resident in Scotland could vote in the Scottish referendum. Of course, EU citizens resident in the UK cannot vote in our general elections. As far as I can see the criteria for voting in an EU referendum would be the same as a GE. In other words, only UK citizens could vote.

Today

The Swiss have voted against limiting immigration. The provisional result is 74% against and 26% for. The view seems to be that they did not want to become isolated from Europe. Immigrants make up 25% of the population.

Only Swiss citizens could vote.

CHAOS!

Forty years of comprehensives have put Tristram Hunt at the top

The Labour north London elite's hypocrisy for attacking private schools is staggering, says Allison Pearson



Shadow education secretary Tristram Hunt Photo: PA


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/secondaryeducation/11255093/Forty-years-of-comprehensives-have-put-Tristram-Hunt-at-the-top.html



By Allison Pearson

9:00PM GMT 26 Nov 2014




The other night, I went to a feast at a Cambridge college. The hall thrummed with the grave rumble of mighty brains and the crystal and silverware sparkled in the candlelight. I asked my learned neighbour how the college was doing raising the number of students from comprehensive schools. His reply was shocking. So desperate was the college to improve its ratio of state-school undergraduates that it had actually started accepting some kids with Bs, and even Cs, at A-level.


These youngsters arrived in Cambridge grossly unprepared and were promptly sent for a year, at the college’s expense, to a local sixth-form crammer where they would be taught to write essays and to generally master all the things that privately educated high-fliers can do by the age of 16.


As a Comp Kid myself, I suppose I should have welcomed the news, but I was angry. Of course, it was very decent of the college to bend over backwards to accommodate applicants who hadn’t made the grade, but why couldn’t bright children from backgrounds like mine count on their secondary school to educate them properly in the first place?


How humiliating that poorer kids were now admitted on “potential”, rather than knowledge and flair. I was staggered that a Cambridge college, which exists to stretch minds of the highest calibre, was paying for teenagers to be taught the basics to compensate for a comprehensive system which has never matched the thorough intellectual grounding offered by grammar schools.


This country, which once educated boys and girls in those grammars to the highest level – far better than many of the fanciest private schools – was now engaged in covert affirmative action, to meet fair-access targets. What other choice was there?


Imagine explaining to a bright spark who won a scholarship to Cambridge from a grammar school in my part of South Wales in the 1950s that, in 2014, it would take noblesse oblige and extra tuition to enable a child like them to make the same leap.

Meanwhile, the admissions process is increasingly weighted against the privately educated kids who actually know stuff, but whose parents have paid their own money for costly tuition. Still, the kids that were spending a “gap year” in a crammer will register in the statistics as state-school applicants thus helping the university look more socially diverse. Huh?

You don’t need a PhD in moral philosophy to work out that something fishy is going on. And what solution does Labour, the party of the underdog, offer? Well, with the UK tumbling down the international league tables in literacy and numeracy, the big new idea of Tristram Hunt, the shadow Education Secretary, is… to attack our private schools. Yup, you know, those simply dreadful institutions with a worldwide reputation for unparalleled excellence?

The same evil schools, that is, where so many prominent Labour supporters send their own offspring to gain the selective advantage their party denies to children from less well-off familes. Baron Hunt of Chesterton, for instance, who was leader of the Labour group on Cambridge council in the early Seventies elected to send his son, little Tristram, to University College School in north London.

How can you possibly preach one kind of education as a Labour councillor then send your own child to an elite, fee-paying school?

Very easily, judging by how few of Labour’s north London elite has actually acted on their principles and enrolled their kids in the nearest state school. Not for them the exciting, multicultural challenge of the notorious Islington Green School, heavens, no! “I mean, we believe in diversity, darling, but Poppy’s got processing difficulties, so she needs to be at Dame Alice Owen’s.”

Dame Alice Owen’s, by the way, is the highly academic school in leafy Hertfordshire where Islington MP, Emily Thornberry, sent her son in 2005. Obviously, Emily, who was sacked from the shadow Cabinet last week after tweeting a photo of a council house in Strood, couldn’t run the risk of her sensitive offspring mixing with Child of White Van Man.

The hypocrisy is staggering. If you have to find something better for your own child then, at least, have the courage to admit that the system is not good enough for any child.

No such admission is permissible, sadly. For Labour took an education system that wasn’t broken and “fixed” it for ideological reasons. The tragedy is that getting rid of grammar schools only served to entrench class privilege. The wealthier went private or bought a house in a good catchmemt area and the poor got what they were given.

You know, I have had it with ideologues, from Anthony Crosland to Tristram Hunt, playing politics with a state education system of which they have zero experience. Would Tristram have become a top TV historian if he’d had to survive one of the shambolic comps a mile down the road from his Hampstead alma mater? I seriously doubt it. Yet this lucky man actually wants fewer kids to enjoy what he had!

There are subtle signs that the tide is turning. Addressing the CBI last week, Ofsted head Sir Michael Wilshaw said that pupils should be directed towards either an academic or vocational school halfway through secondary education. Sir Michael insisted he was not advocating “selection at 14” but “maximum opportunity at 14”.

Hmmm. Sounds remarkably like grammar school by any other name, doesn’t it? And about time, too.

Let me end, as I began, with a Cambridge dinner. On Saturday night, I will be toasting a friend of mine, the Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge and joint winner of the million-pound 2014 Brain Prize, given “in recognition of his pioneering research into higher brain mechanisms underpinning literacy, numeracy and and social cognition”.

Fifty years ago, Trevor, who grew up in a terraced house in south London and attended a superb grammar school, won a place to read Natural Sciences at Cambridge. No special favours needed. No noblesse oblige. No year in a crammer paid for by his college. Back then, the brilliant working-class boy had an education as good as any of his titled contemporaries, featuring proper hard science and mathematics.

Trevor tells me he doesn’t see kids from his background coming through much any more, though he reckons that nearly all of the best British scientists of his generation came from grammar schools.

Forty years of comprehensive school education and where has it got us? More Tristrams at the top of society and fewer Trevors in store. As an experiment in promoting greater social equality, I’d say it was a C minus.


Wouldn’t you, Tristram?