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.

Labour’s Posh Boys (and Girls)

By Mark Wallace
Follow Mark on Twitter.

It's become a regular refrain from Labour ranks that the Tories are posh. The infamous Bullingdon photo, which Carla Millar today mimics above, is used as shorthand to pick at the number of privately schooled men and women in the Cabinet and in the Parliamentary Conservative Party.

The failed attempt by Labour to make class an issue in the Crewe and Nantwich by-election, with activists dressed up in top hats and tails, stands out as an example of their enthusiasm for the subject.

And yet even a cursory look at the Opposition benches reveals Labour has its own fair share of posh boys and girls.

Ed and David Miliband are the sons of a millionaire academic.
Ed Balls had the good fortune to enjoy an excellent education at the private, all-boys Nottingham High School.
Harriet Harman is an alumna of St Paul's Girls, and the daughter of a Harley Street doctor.
Hillary Benn's father may have given up his hereditary title, but the family weren't so keen to redistribute the Stansgate Abbey estate.
Chuka Umunna is the grandson of High Court Judge Sir Helenus Milmo, and was also privately educated, at St Dunstan's College.
Tessa Jowell went to St Margaret's School for Girls.
Fiona MacTaggart attended the famous Cheltenham Ladies College.
Tristram Hunt is the son of Lord Hunt, attended University College School and, well, he's called Tristram.

Now, there is nothing wrong with being privately educated – I was lucky enough to go to RGS Newcastle. But the fact that my fellow old boys include Labour Peer Lord (formerly Sir Jeremy) Beecham and Ian Lucas, Labour MP for Wrexham, should suggest that Labour is being quite hypocritical in trying to cast it as a negative – and a Tory negative at that.

As much as the left might try to pretend otherwise, the simple fact is that politicians on both sides of politics tend to be disproportionately posh. Slinging mud at the Government for poshness invites mud to be slung in return – and a mudfight gets nobody anywhere.

Attacking people who have been fortunate in their education and their start in life is damaging for our national life, too. The collectivist idea that someone's class ought to invalidate their views is as idiotic and unfair when done through inverse snobbery as it is in old-fashioned snootyness towards the poor.

We saw the damage that can be done by such inverse snobs when the Blair Government abolished the Assisted Places Scheme in 1997. At that point, the scheme gave 34,000 pupils the opportunity to access private education that they could not otherwise have afforded. New Labour may have ditched Clause 4, but they were still sufficiently into class war that they closed it down, cutting off such opportunities for any more children.

Those battles are still being fought today in education. Despite years of criticising the restricted access to private education, North Tyneside Labour are spending a fortune on lawyers in order to stop the fee-paying King's School becoming a Free School - opening up a great school to all, regardless of financial means. That they are mounting their legal challenge at taxpayers' expense only adds insult to injury,

The nation would be better off if Labour MPs put their schooling to use thinking up better policies, rather than shouting about school ties.

That is not to say that any of us with an interest in politics should ignore the correlation between political success and poshness. It should be a matter of concern not that the well off are represented, but that the less well off are not.

The same trend can be seen in the arts, in business, in journalism and elsewhere. Social mobility is too low, educational outcomes for the poor are all too often well below average and entrepreneurialism is well behind many of our competitors (as Allister Heath reported yesterday).

Instead of lambasting those who get the best start in life, we should work out ways to raise levels of education and opportunity for all to the same standard. In an ideal Britain, there would be little demand for private education.

Labour were right to start the academy programme – but they should now fully support Free Schools, which radically extend the opportunities and innovation pioneered by academies. Similarly, their opposition to welfare reform means a continued jab in the eye for hard workers who see some earn more than them through the benefits system. Fighting cuts to business red tape means that they prefer the risks and costs of setting up a small business to remain prohibitive. Continuing their commitment to high taxes necessarily means that those with the least money have even less of it to spend on themselves and their children.

We have an opportunity deficit in this country, which all parties should want to fill – particularly one claiming to be the champion of working people. Stopping the hypocritical attacks on "posh" Tories would be a start – and it would free up time for Labour to focus on ideas that would give to everyone the opportunities currently enjoyed by relatively few.

fred - surely you mean Flashman


sticky - before it gets lost ......
51948 - absolute bullshit! .... what about ensuring that you live in an area where there are good quality state schools? ..... how do you rate that, or do you only wish to berate those who choose to use the private sector?

DB4,

No, but when I played rugby I was known for having big sloping shoulders which allowed the rubbish to slip off.

Don't make Fred angry, you wouldn't like him when he's angry

Manuel.

Know your place:

Mitchell,

Education: University of Cambridge, Rugby School, Jesus College, Cambridge

8-)

You played rugby Fred? I thought rugger was supposedly for "posh" boys.

Cyners....sticky - before it gets lost ......

51948 - absolute bullshit! .... what about ensuring that you live in an area where there are good quality state schools? ..... how do you rate that, or do you only wish to berate those who choose to use the private sector?..........................ends

go on then tell me how somebody who is poor can ensure there next meal never mind living in an area where there are good quality state schools!!!!!!!!!!

bloody hell Cyners you really are WAY out of touch.

So much so that I cant really believe you mean the above statement.

Have you been to West Yorkshire or some of the other areas in Lanchashire the Midlands and elsewhere.

Jesus if you could see what the Tories have done to these areas.

Thats why there are so many Food Banks, dont you realise that people are living from day to day and from meal to meal.

Ensuring they move to an area where there are good quality state schools, MY GOD MAN. Are you all down South BLIND to this dont you know the deprivation in the North and Midlands???????????? JESUS.

you're in one of your road-rage moods and haven't answered the question


btw, i wouldn't call parts of chatham and its environs remotely posh or even smart or anything else that you wish to use perjoratively, but it happens there are a few excellent state schools in the vicinity

of course what it does mean is that properties that fall within the "correct" catchment areas will inevitably increase at a faster rate than those that do not

do you now suggest that people should not be allowed to relocate to take advantage of those schools?

Fred I cant believe they dont know how run down certain parts of the midlands and north are.

They are obviously living in a different world from us.

Its shame full, but then again I suppose its not there faults but this rotten governments fault.

Cyners obviously posts crossed or you are trully in denial.

not so old chap ..... read above (51967)

Chatam where the F is Chatam? Never heard of it.

shame on you ...... used to be one of the finest dockyards in the country
it's on the medway in kent, next door to rochester

before the constituency boundaries were messed about in 2010, i think the "old" area regularly (but not always) returned a labour mp

Whats Kent go to do with Yorkshire lanchashire and the Midlands?????????????

Of course now I know where you mean but you cant compare Kent to anywhere in the Midlands and the North.

For Christ sake catch up with whats going on in the country.

i can only talk from first hand knowledge
of course there are loads of deprived areas throughout the country which lack decent schools, but this is getting a million miles away from the initial question i asked ..... so herewith yet again ....

51948 - absolute bullshit! .... what about ensuring that you live in an area where there are good quality state schools? ..... how do you rate that, or do you only wish to berate those who choose to use the private sector?


and another


51967 - i wouldn't call parts of chatham and its environs remotely posh or even smart or anything else that you wish to use perjoratively, but it happens there are a few excellent state schools in the vicinity

of course what it does mean is that properties that fall within the "correct" catchment areas will inevitably increase at a faster rate than those that do not

do you now suggest that people should not be allowed to relocate to take advantage of those schools?

DB4,

In my playing days, Rugby was considered a "Toffs' game" in England and playing for the county was something akin to playing tennis in the UK as a whole. A large number of public schools played both the round ball game and rugby.

Played with a number of ex county players, who play for English county team while they were stationed in England doing the National Service.


Mind the English players who were playing rugby in England were often thought of educated thugs and had the P taken out of them by others.

In Wales rugby was a "working" man's game, similar to the North of England although due to the split rugby league was prominent as the "mans" game.

The problem was if you played league in NE, you were banned from playing rugby or entering the club houses, in South Wales, unless you changed your name.

But the English girls like the Welsh talent when they had a home match.

By the way, who was your mother?

If you have kids and are thinking of moving, one of the first things you consider is the schools in the area. The same applies if you are thinking of having kids. It is natural to choose an area that has the best schools where you can afford to live. That means your kids end up going to a school depending on how much money you have. That is far more insidious than people choosing to pay for private education. It means that poorer people automatically end up going to the worst schools.

Mary Queen of Scots, Fred.

The situation becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. The best schools have better off parents who generally take education very seriously and the schools get better and better results. The poorer parents end up with low quality schools with many pupils from families that don't really care. That drives down standards and results and attracts more and more poorer people as it will be cheaper to live there.

GF,

Over the last year or so, I have returned to Cardiff and with my daughter have driven around some of countryside, villages and towns near to it and also driven through the old mining valleys.

They are depressed and miserable, many decayed as a result of the previous tory's mismanagement of economy and the murderous culling of the pits and associated engineering and support services.

Disconnected and apathetic communities remain and they are only slowly regenerating,

It wasn't the closing the pits which was the problem, but the manner and speed in which it was done. Maggie and her tribesmen were responsible for the misery they wreaked. (They could have looked back and examined the 30s and the building of replacement trading estates.)

(Scargill had a responsibility as well and was stupid, but he did tell the truth about what would happen.)

The problem is that the crowd of schoolboys in charge of the country at the moment have learnt nothing from that experience.