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.

Manuel,

I think it is you who are ducking and diving.

It is a subsidy from the public purse.

If the public schools are the pinnacles of virtues you suggest, let the stand on their own feet, i.e. what they are really worth in the market.

No objection.

Quite happy for them to exist, but not to be subsidised by the public.

Quite happy for my offspring to have language, music and other "coaching" when they were young and thought to be beneficial. Also, quite happy to do so. Didn't mind the cost.

But thought that similar should have been available to all.

To a certain degree similar to the above was afforded me, by my parents.

=====

Ask you d-in-law, how many UK born medical graduates are leaving the country each year to avoid repaying medical course fees?

Interesting!

Why do Labour's chosen send their kids to selective/fee paying schools?

fred - what you object to is that they qualify as charities ..... is that not the truth of the matter?

sticky - do not forget that a great many parents move to where the best schools in the state sector are .... why would that be? ...... it's not to "steal a march" (good polemics) but to give their children the best start in life that they can

GF,

Slight objection, the reason is often that the children enjoy being extended to a degree not available in the state system and that they want the best opportunity for the future of their children and prefer to spend their excess money on what they think valuable.

Those things in a decent society should be available to all.

---------

What do you know about BDEV that I don't?

The Bugger is going against my expectations.

murders in Kenya all over the world MUSLIM FOLLOWERS ARE MURDERING CHRISTIANS AND THE WEST ARE TAKING NO ACTIONS
TIME IS RUNNING OUT THEY MUST UNITE AND WIPE THESE MURDERERS OUT

let's murder the murderers :-)

CYNIC BY THAT POST IT SAYS YOU AGREE WITH THEIR CRIMES FACT THE POST SAYS YOU DO

no, but in honesty, what is the difference or how do you draw the line?


one w/e "we all" say assad is a murdering bastard and needs to be destroyed ...... the next w/e we find ourselves supporting him against ISIL
a difficult and dirty world

Labour's champagne socialists send their kids to the very best comprehensives in the country by the simple process of buying a very expensive house in the catchment areas. They save the school fees and put it into a property which increases in value. You can see that the top 20 comprehensives in the country are surrounded by very expensive houses. The process is similar to paying for private education.

It is worse though in one respect. It prevents all but the very well off getting into good comprehensives. I have such a school across the road from me. Nearly all the parents are very well off. They are well known actors, media people, politicians, TV presenters, film directors etc. As soon as a comprehensive get high ratings, it is swamped by people paying to get into the school buying property there. Their political views prevent them from paying school fees, but doesn't stop them from using their money to get into the best schools.

The private school vs buying property to get into a school are exactly the same. You might stop private schools but you can't stop people buying in a catchment area.

muslim followers are killing Christians in the name of islam to me that means war
and we should go to war and end the killings of innocent people we must rid the planet of those that murder in the name of islam
cynic do you think we should act or let them carry on murdering innocent people black or white

Cyners whats the difference between this of yours....but to give their children the best start in life that they can

and mine....to steal a March on their neighbours kids.

Its the same thing.

FRED not often we disagree but I think education and health should not be available to the highest bidder.

The buying property technique has the additional downside that it prevents poorer families sending their children to excellent state schools. If you stopped private education then the swamping of good state schools by rich people would massively increase.

weather we liked it or not sadam gadafe assad were doing good job holding their countries together blair and bush are the war criminals in my view and I was against the wars dropping bombs on women and children in the dead of the night

The competition for places in my nearby top comprehensive is so bad that you only get a place if you live within 300 metres. Almost every house and flat inside that perimeter is occupied by families with children at the school.

Ohhhhhhh Hays shut up.

The state schools in my area are all the same, under performing, but if you have a determined child, that child will work and outperform the average in the school.

That doesnt mean his or her parents just because they have had money handed down to them can buy a place in a private school or buy a posh house near a top performing state school.

Education should be all about a level playing field just as health care should be.

stealing a march is perjorative and inflammatory, which is exactly what you meant it to be




it is certainly interesting that even in my youth, public schools were generally affordable to ordinary middle-class families, and even to a good number of those below that arbitrary level, there is no question that the top public schools and their excellent academic and other facilities are now only affordable by the super-rich or overseas families

my own grandchildren are fortunate to live in area where there are excellent state schools, and the same would apply if they lived in this region ...... should they not attend those establishments?

weather they go to a top school or a lousy one , if they are thick it will not help to make them clever you either have it or you don't . just look at most druggies all
singers or other stars or parent rich . them look at coke head in parliament

Back row: David Miliband, Ed Miliband, Ed Balls, Harriet Harman.

Standing in middle: Hillary Benn, Chuka Umunna.

Front row: Fiona McTaggart, Tristram Hunt, Tessa Jowell.

GF,

If it is available to all, there would be no necessary to bid for it. That should be the aim of government, but that is by raising the "standards" of state education and educating parents to "enable" their children.

The difference is that children sent to hot houses (crammers) of education, i,e. public schools, is that a generally given a stable routine driven environment which their home life would not provide. The parents often avoiding the responsibilities of parenthood for various reasons. (Incompetence and family dysfunction sometimes being the reason.)

Again, when I played sport (Squash in particular.) I paid for coaching, because I could be pushed and could organise it around my working day. I valued the guy (Naz) and the work outs, part of my education. He taught me to discipline myself when I was in my 20s and the gain from repetitive application to build up skills.

I paid for the regular intensity of his coaching, while others preferred to drink 5 pints a night and think coaching expensive.

There is room for choice.

========

Back to BDEV.

8-)

By Bryony Gordon

7:00AM GMT 02 Dec 2014

Samuel Johnson said that a man who is tired of London is tired of life, but that was well over 200 years ago and I really wish people would stop quoting him as if he would have said the same today and not, upon looking in an estate agent’s window, high-tailed it straight back to Staffordshire.


Dr Johnson never had to wait forty minutes to be wedged in a stranger’s armpit on the tube – a daily occurrence for any of us who happen to live in that vast, vomitous mass that is sneeringly referred to by the wealthy as 'Sarf London’, even if parts of 'Sarf London’ are more expensive than truffles sprinkled in gold and served on a platinum plate with diamond detailing.


He never had his toes broken by a wheely suitcase, and he was never sworn at by a cyclist who careered into him after running a red light. Had Dr Johnson come to London now, he would have been completely exhausted by it. People would be shouting blue murder at him as he slept-walked slowly through Victoria Station; they’d be elbowing him out the way as they raced to be swallowed whole by the tube.


Can I let you in on a little secret? Nobody likes London, especially not the people who have the misfortune to live in it. There’s a popular misconception that people who reside in the capital are all members of the metropolitan elite, and that we walk around with a sense of entitlement, our noses turned up because we happen to live near some good museums and the Prime Minister.


Undoubtedly that is true for a minority who can afford not to use public transport and get to escape to a country pile each weekend. But the rest of us are just trying - and often failing - to make a living in a city that does its best to suck it out of us.

If our nostrils seem snooty to you it’s only because the air outside of Mayfair and Chelsea stinks of fried food, stale beer and body odour; either that or we’ve just seen what an asbestos-ridden two-up, two-down is being flogged for by one of the seven estate agents that have popped up on the high street.

Ask a Londoner what their favourite thing about the city is, and if they are being brutally honest they will probably tell you it is listing all their least favourite things about the city: the shoddy public transport that shuts down most weekends, because who travels at the weekend?; the fact that being rude is the norm; the tourists stupid enough to actually come on holiday here.

I really hate the place, and I was born here. Some days, when parts of me get stuck in the doors of the Northern Line because there is space for my left leg but not my right, I genuinely think I might die here, too. It has always been the London way to stick it out but recently something has changed. I come from a long line of Londoners - my parents were born here, and my grandparents too – and we were all delivered in hospitals that have now been turned into supermarkets or luxury 'apartments'.

Yet slowly but surely even my family have moved out, lured by the fact that they can buy entire estates in Devon for the price of a two bed flat in Elephant and Castle. Most of my friends have gone, too; our capital city is now so skewed, that by moving out and downsizing both jobs and salaries, they are actually upsizing their quality of life.

So I wasn’t surprised to learn that people in their thirties are leaving London like never before. According to a report published by the Office of National Statistics, 58,220 people aged from 30 to 39 left the capital between June 2012 and June 2013; a record number, and a ten per cent increase on 2010.

They aren’t all escaping the rat race for the fresh air of the countryside. A huge number are moving to smaller cities that have ten times the charm: Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Nottingham, Liverpool and Newcastle. They are no longer willing to be hoodwinked into believing that London is the only place in the country with museums and culture.

That exhausted people with small children are leaving London in droves is completely understandable, because it has always been a city for the young, hopeful and energetic. But my 22-year-old brother tells me that many of his contemporaries from his London school have decided to seek their fortunes elsewhere – they see no future for themselves in the capital. To them it is a city that has been monopolised by the super rich, by bankers and oligarchs and celebrities who have turned even the Old Kent Road into Park Lane.

Some time soon, London will be nothing but a playground for the wealthy that doubles up as a tourist attraction. That makes me feel a bit nostalgic but it also hardens my resolve to up sticks as soon as we can afford to shove our one-and-a-bit-bedroom flat on the market. It was Vince Cable who last year described the capital as a “giant suction machine draining the life” out of the rest of the UK. That may well be the case, but those ONS statistics show that after years of taking, it is now finally giving something back. London has reached tipping point, and it is about time, too.

The Telegraph