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Over the past half century just three Tory leaders have led their party to victory with overall majorities at general elections. They were Heath in 1970, Thatcher in 1979, 1983 and 1987 and the last, John Major, 22 years ago in 1992. What they have in common is that they came from modest backgrounds and were all state school educated.
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It's a strong poster, but I don't like the way it's worded. In a democracy, isn't it ultimately "the people" that make a Prime Minister? Do the Conservative Party really think that the office of Prime Minister is something that it is within their gift to bestow on whomsoever they choose? Just a thought.
I agree that the Tory Party have a perennial problem about making sure that they seem "in touch". However I am less convinced that the correlation with school background is as obvious as many would assume. It is more to do with personality, rhetoric and the shape of policy direction which make people think that a leader is worth taking a punt on. Boris is the obvious counterpoint - very few would not know he is a PST; but at the same time it does not deter enough people to stop his political career (thus far). He has not been tested at the national level but still I think the point stands.
One benefit which people never credit enough is that natural 'relaxed demeanour" which public school backgrounds tend to cultivate (much more so than an Oxbridge background). Witness not just Cameron but also Boris, Blair and others. This is something which I think is pretty positive in most circumstances other than armed national conflict.
I frankly doubt that Cameron's school had the smallest impact on the vote in Wythenshawe. Labour would most likely still have won even with Major in charge. (And, by the way, I wish the Tories had a 12.1% majority in Wythenshawe!)
...The second was how relatively undistinguished their careers had turned out to be. Apart from one senior politician and one former newspaper editor, they were a middling group of lawyers, property investors and fund managers, rich by national standards, but disappointing if you consider their start in life. They arrived at that school at 13, clever and mostly from wealthy families, to spend five years wearing tailcoats and becoming members of one of the world’s most elite networks. Yet there they were, in their prime, and it had amounted to not very much at all.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b8dc242c-8e83-11e3-98c6-00144feab7de.html#axzz2tN4qHEOX
[Paywall, but you can get several articles a month free]
Money no object? There is no new money. Read the Update at the foot of this BBC article.
On the Eton thing, all parties suffer from nepotism and narrow cliques.
I agree that the next leader of the Tories will probably be from a more modest background, which is what state educated really means. Cameron does remain popular within his own party, and has the lead over Ed Miliband in popularity. Class isn't everything.
Maybe the Tories would have done better with David Davies in charge, is that what the post is implying?
As for the Old Etonian bit, it's inverted snobbery and a very poor trait.
Ed Miliband speaks at length about the ills of British business, but he has absolutely no experience of working in one, understanding the dynamics of a business or the pressures that they face. Nor for that matter has Nick Clegg. David Cameron's experience of working in a business is pretty limited too.
Similar observations could be made about living on benefits and many other aspects of daily life that millions live daily and which our masters casually legislate about.
The problem is not what school the Prime Minister has been to, it's the strong impression that politics is now for a small caste of gilded and remote talking heads. This will not change any time soon, because those at the top don't see that they're the problem. But until it changes, the public's alienation will grow.
My MP is a Viscount (and distant cousin) grandson of a Baronet who was made a Viscount. Another Scottish LibDem is a Baronet, also grandson of as it happens a Tory MP who was made a Baronet.
We all know Harrriet Harman attended the same school, St Paul's as George Osborne. He is berated for being heir to a Baronet (which Kevin Maguire goes on about ad nauseam) but she is 1st cousin of an Earl and daughter of a Harley St practitioner, hardly your ordinary GP. She sent both her sons to selective schools rather than the local comprehensive.
Chucka is the grandson of a High Court judge and known to make off the cuff remarks about the working class. The Labour front bench is stuffed with Honourables but that doesn't seem to stop the left referring to privilege as though it is some sort of Tory disease.
http://blogs.ft.com/ftdata/2013/01/28/grammar-school-myths/
"You can see that poor children do dramatically worse in selective areas.
There is an narrower idea out there in the ether that grammar schools are better for propelling poor children to the very top of the tree. But, again, that is not true. Poor children are less likely to score very highly at GCSE in grammar areas than the rest."
Personality and policies trump the Prime Ministers education by a trawler load of fish. Take Mike's dateline back another few years and you can add Churchill, Eden, MacMillan and almost the most fishy of them all Alec Douglas-Home.
Were the punters and especially Labour voters concerned about Blair's attending Fettes or LibDems about Clegg ? Answer - No.
Politicians have precious little say about their secondary education and clearly aren't punished by the voters because the latter understand their educational aspirations as parents.
Should the Conservatives find an outstanding candidate for leader then the sum total of their education at Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Uppingham or a score of other private schools that will have any effect on the punters will be close to zero.
And I was a poor child in a selective area and I did OK
On grammar schools, no one doubts that they were the best system yet devised for educating bright working-class and lower-middle class kids. The objection is not to grammar schools, but to secondary moderns. The objection to comprehensives is of course that too many of them are just secondary moderns by another name. Why so? Because the English (this discussion does not apply to Wales or Scotland) don't appreciate education. If UKIP want another popular policy, a promise to hold a referendum on closing down Oxbridge would probably do better than most...
I honestly don't care about people's background, what school they went to, who their father was, its what they do that matters. Cameron coming from Eton wouldn't be an issue is he spoke human and didn't have a policy platform which was so utterly disconnected from most people's reality. As it is he and his fellow travellers sneer down their noses at people, hectoring and abusing anyone who dares disagree (especially women in the HoC) and are seen to favour their own with policies that smash the poor and middle yet fine cash to give their own.
Were I Eton I would be horrified at what Cameron has done to a proud old school. He has destroyed its reputation so that to so many now "Eton" is synonymous with "cretin".
What school did the Mogg go to? I'd vote for him.
It's rather unfair to judge people by the school they went to. I fail to see why snobbery is acceptable when you're sneering at those who, when 11, were sent to a fee-paying school by their parents.
Mr. Anatole, welcome to pb.com. Did you used to post here, some time ago, or am I misremembering?
Mr. Antifrank, you make a very good point. Schooling and university matter less than life experience. Politicians seems to go from university to a party role, SPAD-ship and then get catapulted into a safe constituency.
"Because the English (this discussion does not apply to Wales or Scotland) don't appreciate education."
A generalisation, but sadly true. Labour's view that education of deprived kids would benefit a lot by more money falls down where the parents have no interest anyway. And probably why some deprived communities with parents from from overseas do very well.
Very few of our class went to grammar school but the two or three that did had parents with aspiration for heir children.
And when my children went to the local comprehensive school, to be called a "swot" was a badge of shame.
She did much better than expected, so while I appreciate your argument about the old secondary moderns the reality in my area is that if you don't pass and go to grammar school then you will still get a good education. Maybe having a grammar school system drags the whole education system in the area up?
Antifranks link to a mathematical analysis cannot be dismissed with anecdote. It explains why it is the richer classes rather than the poorer ones that call for a return to selection.
Schooling for politicians matters, but more important is to have life experience outside the bubble.
"A comprehensive school includes the brightest as well as the bottom end."
I went to a grammar and the ethos was much more on aspiration. My son went to a comprehensive where the ethos was to avoid being seen as brainy. We both ended up with PhDs but parental aspiration was important. Many kids on our estate never even got to the start line. There's only so much a school can do.
Conclusion.
If you want to become PM, get your parents to sent you to a public school (the grammar school route is now only available to very few); get into Oxford; then qualify as a barrister.
There is very little to distinguish between the parties in the backgrounds of their post war leaders. Conservatives have a bias towards Eton but all parties have draw a similar proportion of their leaders from independent schools. Labour have a bias towards academic and media experience; Tories fowards business and military. 23 out of 24 who had a university degree went to just four universities, with Oxford dominating.
There is nothing to suggest that leaders who do not fit the obvious pattern achieve greater electoral success. The non-public school boys are Davies, Steele, Kennedy and Campbell for the Lib Dems; Wilson, Callaghan, Kinnock, Smith and Brown for Labour; and Thatcher, Major, Hague, IDS and Howard for the Tories. As mixed a bunch of elecoral success and failure as you can get. Most benefitted from going to Grammar Schools (those schools which have subsequently changed to full comprehensive status were selective when the leaders attended).
It does look like OGH has allowed his prejudices to get the better of him. Perhaps Charles can arrange for Robert S's children to go to Eton. The Smithson's need a PM in the line!
The current education system is broken, but concentrating on the top-end would be a disaster.
(( know some on here, when pressed, call for grammar schools and brilliant schools for kids who do not make it into grammars. But this still gets distilled down into 'bring back grammars!' and concentration on the top end)
Tories believe in a small state and low tax. They believe in this not because they are greedy or selfish but because they genuinely believe that an economy ordered in that way will produce the most wealth for the country and that, on average, the people will be better off.
They are right of course but it is so, so easy to portray this as indifference to those who do not get better off, to those left behind and to the inequalities of wealth that result.
So it is much more important for a tory to look connected to ordinary people and to be aware of their concerns. Blair did not have this problem because he was supposedly leading a party for the left behind. Tories do.
I think Cameron is extremely smart and able. His tutor at Oxford said he was one of the brightest he had ever taught. He could have been succesful in a range of careers but chose politics because he is committed to public service and cares about people. It is just that coming from his background it will never look that way.
Of course this does mean that many, theoretically "comprehensive", schools actually have some of the brightest students (or those whose parents have worked hardest to tutor them through the selection tests) "creamed off". I read a very thorough study of this last year, which alas I can't track down offhand, which suggested about 90% of schools in England are affected by academic selection to some extent (i.e. either the school is selective, or the school is competing forstudents with other schools which are selective). The effect may not be very strong: for many schools it may be only 1%-2% of students they are "losing" in this manner. For a secondary modern in a borough full of selective schools, that might rise above 20%.
The 90% figure is believable when you bear in mind that some non-grammar schools use academic selection for students outside a certain catchment area, and grammar schools are a magnet for children from surprisingly far away. (If you know how to recognise the school uniforms, there are quite a few schoolkids in Tower Hamlets who attend grammar school in Southend-on-Sea...) When you throw in the number of kids taking full scholarship exams for private schools, academic selection is clearly not dead. The commentariat tend to write as if it were.
The probability you win a GE given you went to state school is NOT THE SAME as the probability you went to state school given you won a GE.
The first is very roughly on in 10 million, the latter roughly a half.
To make your claim you need to compare the ratio of state schooled PMs to number of state schooled citizens against the ratio of private schooled PMs to private schooled citizens. I don't have the numbers but I would be amazed if the latter is not substantially larger.
Nadine Dorries got this right: "Posh boys not knowing the price of bread"
At the 0.5%, there were none. At 5-10%, 10. At 10-15%, 83. At 15-20%, 179. At 20-25%, 132. At 25-30%, 83. At 30-35%, 48. At 35-40%, 35. At 40%+, 61.
The 5-10%-ers can realistically lose only an average of 5%; the 10-15%-ers about 10%, the 15-20%-ers an average of 14%. If those between 20-35% lose an average of 17.5% each, then the 61 seats at 40%+ would lose an average of about 3.8% each, considerably better than the polls suggest.
Basically, the post was in reaction to surprise at people reacting by stating that a big loss of votes in a no-hope lower-middle (20-25% support) Lib Dem seat was bad for them. It's exactly the sort of pattern they should be hoping for if they want to hold support in their top-end seats. The numbers given are just to illustrate the point. Hell, if they'd lost 20% of their support (and that was indicative of all the 20-35% range, with meltdown to deposit levels in the sub-20% range), that could imply minimal loss in all 96 of their top seats! (assuming that they poll around 10% in total; I'd personally expect some recovery by then anyway)
Basically, the real summary here is that more variance in the Lib Dem vote, especially concentrated in bigger falls in their no-hope seats, is the best crumb of comfort they could see right now.
Depressing stuff.
There isn't any doubt that politics favours people who focus on it from teenage and network fiercely from then on. The selection process is simultaneously tough (only maybe 1% of those who seriously want to be MPs make it) and at the whim of a small group of people preoccupied with politics and likely to know several of the contenders personally. And one way of focusing and networking is to go to Eton and Cambridge
The electorate is pretty used to this and willing to look past it if they like someone and an effort has been made by the politician to look at other backgrounds. Opprtunities arise naturally and should be grabbed - I went on benefit after losing my seat not because it would produce much money but because I wanted to understand the process. Tory MPs have more to prove in this area (just as Labour MPs have more to prove that they aren't merely a sppokesman for a trade union), which I think is why Ed does (relatively) better in the "in touch" ratings - people assume he's got some sort of interest in them because of his choice of party, and he isn't arrogant. There are plenty of ways to show interest and concern, and I think Cameron does make a bit of an effort (which is a reason he's still quite liked), whereas Osborne really does not.
http://reason.com/reasontv/2014/02/10/self-control-is-the-key-to-a-success-joh
"I must not drink the hair restorative tonic before writng PB threads."
.....................................
Anyway .... toodles .... I'm orf to accompany Mrs JackW and to prevent bankruptcy in Bond Street ....
Wish me well !!!!
Cambridge educates traitors.
That Cameron non-politics CV in full.
Gap year working for his Tory MP godfather
PPE at Oxford
Conservative Research department operative
Special Advisor to Chancellor Lamont on Black Wednesday
Special Advisor to Home Secretary Michael Howard
Director of Corporate Affairs for Carlton after his mother in law got him a job where he launched the highly successful onDigital.
Put him out in the real world without the family connection and you're saying he could have been a success? Evidence? And its not just Cameron, all three main parties are fuill of similar drones who have done nothing.
For instance, I've no idea if baking my own bread is cheaper than buying an equivalent loaf from the shop, once ingredients and energy are taken into account, yet alone the time taken (which I don't as I find baking relaxing).
I've got enough going on in my head without keeping such (for me) useless information in there. What's more, I'd like politicians to have their heads filled with more useful information as well, especially as bread is just one of the essentials of daily life.
The other problem is their obsession with Europe,leading them to bang on about it incessantly,when polls show voters have more important concerns.Banging on about Europe could tear the Tory party apart.It is very hard to see a pro-EU leader succeeding Cameron.
The only candidate to deal with both problems is Michael Gove,son of toil and an outer,is very much in the game.
Gove is best priced at 9-1 and is 3rd fav..As well as a possible winning bet,he could lead the Tory party over a cliff into oblivion,which is,of course,only a secondary factor.
She noted with admiration how the place had changed, how he'd put in new cupboards and changed the windows, new bathroom suite etc, all without prompting.
Cameron would have been utterly lost.
FWIW I would say the same things about Miliband, except he has not yet made PM. Just because our politicians are drones with insufficient real world experience (on which I agree with you) does not make them stupid or less than able. They have reached the pinnicle of their chosen profession and few do that in any walk of life.
Just as Cambridge is the best in Britain at winning Nobel prizes (with Oxford in a lacklustre third behind Cambridge and the combined LU and ICL).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_by_university_affiliation
The evidence that a "system containing grammar schools" (rather than grammars themselves) currently fail to provide a good education for poorer families is very strong. Anybody who dismisses it out of hand on the back of anecdotal evidence is being intellectually lazy. Anybody who thinks it's just about what happens in the four walls of the grammar itself (which may well provide an excellent and stimulating education to the bright and poor) is missing the point. But it's unclear to me how much of this is an inherent problem with selective education, and how much of this is a flaw in the current arrangement of the system in particular.
Years back when I was a grammar school lad and the campaign for the 11+ to be given the chop was being organised (by some bods in the local Labour Party as it happened, but the Tories can hardly claim a record as "protectors of the grammar schools") one of my more easily diverted teachers got drawn into a debate on the merits of the selective system which I think stands up pretty well. He thought in practice it was not working very well, because it had in effect become a cosy way for the middle class to get a private-style education on the cheap. The figures bore him out - most of the pupils came from a handful of state primaries in middle class areas that were well known (a Key Selling Point to prospective parents) for their extensive 11+ preparation, or a network of local prep schools. A lot of parents considered it cheaper to send a kid to prep school where they would do two years of 11+ practice, than to send them to a state primary then private secondary. I suspect none of the kids from the prep schools went on to the local secondary moderns as the local private secondaries had good custom, though some may have got shipped off to nearby (religious) comprehensives. By all accounts a very large proportion went on to grammar schools, though. I doubt it was all due to their genetic superiority manifesting itself in better 11+ scores - the preparation they received, at a price, clearly helped. Lots of the people I met at grammar school had had a coach or tutor on top, even the ones who'd gone to a state primary.
What I found interesting about my teacher's argument was that he felt the system needed serious practical reform. Make the 11+ uncoachable. (Not sure how easy this would be, I fear this was the point in "verbal reasoning" instead of English and arithmetic, yet even that was being gamed.) Perhaps allow more input from primary teachers (not sure how that would have broken the stranglehold of the prep schools, where all the little darlings were treated as "talented" and would get pushed for grammar entry, but it's how Germany runs a selective school system without an 11+). Grammar school school cohorts should grow over time, adding students whose talents are identified later at non-selective secondaries (makes a lot of sense, crazy to think you can spot all the bright kids at the age of 10). "Let" students who are underperforming at grammar drop down into other secondaries (at this point, the argument sounded more like one for streaming rather than for running a separate school system for the bright). More investment in the non-selective schools, including technical schools as a rivalto more academically-oriented secondary schools (also rather German, but I later learned that Southampton had run a "tripartite" grammar-secondary-technical system).
As the parentheses suggest I remain skeptical about many of those suggestions. It's hard to see who could make the case for such reforms apart from the headteachers of the grammar schools themselves. The people who might otherwise apply political pressure to make the system work better for poorer students, were too busy campaigning to shut the whole thing down in favour of comprehensives for all. But it'd be wrong to judge the idea of selective education purely on the historic (or current dregs of) sytem in Britain. International comparison to central Europe (not just Germany has the Gymnasium) would surely be instructive. I can't see any prospect of a return for grammar schools in their tradional form, but I wouldn't be surprised if some sort of "magnet schools for the gifted and talented" make a limited appearance. You don't get many Labour politicians calling for the BRIT School to shut, for instance.
I think it would have been seen as strange if in 2010, Labour had claimed that the country had made Gordon Brown PM (even though he'd have had more validity to that claim given that the country knew in 2005 that Blair was likely to stand down during the course of the parliament, and that Brown was likely to succeed him).
If the best option for the next Conservative leader happens to be an Old Etonian - and I believe that at the moment, that's likely - expect him to be elected. His background will prompt much criticism from The Guardian and hardly anyone else will care. What matters is being seen to be on the side of the electorate. Where you come from is irrelevant; what matters is where you are going.
Prejudice may be all that is left when there are no persuasive arguments to be had against policy and performance.
It is like opening the cupboard door and finding there is no food on the shelves.
But it is difficult for the Tories to score well on being "in touch", and part of that is due to the background of their current leadership. Perhaps unfair, given the backgrounds of those in the senior positions in all parties, but nonetheless true.
I think that part of the problem is that the Tory front bench "looks and feels" very homogeneous. I think the party would be forgiven the occasional Old Etonian, actually. As has been noted downthread, the public schools are very good at producing "smooth", self-assured operators - the kind of person who may shine now in politics better than before the 24/7 media etc. Better to have a likeable ex public schoolboy than an angry or chip-on-shouldered or plain weird state school lad. But you can have too much of a good thing. There's a fine line between smooth and smarmy, self-assured and cocky.
Issues matter more, but if you can't "connect" with people then you can't convey your stance on those issues effectively. There are some demographics that the Tories are not connecting well with, and a more heterogeneous leadership would help them.
I went to comprehensives myself, as did my sibling with a PHD from Cambridge, and my other sibling who went to LSE and is an economist in London with an international organisation. He failed his 11+ but was saved from a secondary modern by Mrs Thatcher (who was education minister at the time) abolishing selective education in our county the same year, so he went to a comp instead. I do not believe that he would have got where he has if he had gone to the secondary modern. Inevitably our own experiences make us all feel we have expertise, but it seems to me that 11 is the wrong age for selection. No-one that I know opposes selection at 18 for university, but the question is where in this band of 11-18 should selection occur? Personally I think that public schools have it about right at 14 with their Common Entrance exam.
If not, I rather suspect a canny briefer.
BTW surely curtains were never council house issue, were they? And windows, kitchen suite, etc., qualify as man stuff (DIY and all that).
You are of course right about all parties suffering from connections mattering far too much. This is at least as much true of Labour, where Prescott and Johnson were very likely the last of their breed: the working-class lad who rose to the top via the union route. With the unions themselves becoming increasingly professional, as well as the fast-tracking of SpAds (who invariably need family connections themselves), it's doubtful whether that route's now viable for someone of that background.
I have never heard a wind like it. It was primal screaming...
'DAILY MAIL COMMENT: Is Union sleepwalking towards poll disaster?
Alex Salmond’s Scottish Nationalists – who are gaining in the polls – ruthlessly exploit Westminster’s weaknesses and miscalculations, of which there have been far too many.
Forget David Cameron’s gimmicky decision to deliver a major speech on the referendum from London’s Olympic Park, rather than in Scotland, which will have gone down like a lead haggis in the bars of Edinburgh and Glasgow.
No, what worries this paper is that the negative, threatening approach by the pro-Unionists is proving counter-productive.
On Thursday, for instance, George Osborne (who at least travelled north of the border to make his speech) struck a worryingly arrogant tone by declaring: ‘If Scotland walks away from the UK, it walks away from the UK pound"....
The truth is that negative campaigning seldom works. The tragedy is that there is a gloriously positive message to be delivered, but the pro-Union politicians are utterly failing to articulate it.'
http://tinyurl.com/qjqr4dp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election#2011
Wanting a referendum on our EU membership is the majority view in the UK. Those opposing it are the extremists.
A football great from another time and another country.
My dad and grandad saw him play. One standing on the Shelf, the other one on the North Bank. They've all gone too. A sad day.
She spent her time adjusting ties and picking imaginary specks of dust off the collars of her male subordinates.
Every proper Tory likes a nanny.
That is compete rubbish. Ask John Prescott. What was it Nicholas Soames used to taunt him about?
Actually quite a few council houses were sold in Scotland too - certainly in the decent areas - as is instantly evident from your 'front door metric'. I wonder if you are perhaps thinkng of the universality of unpainted harling as a weather shield [I think the English call it rendering or pebbledashing]. It's not required to paint harled houses, whether privately or publicly owned, any more than it would be to paint brick terrace houses (but it does happen quite a bit, of course).
Theresa May? Maybe, although having renamed the Tories as 'the nasty party', even if she never meant to, means a black mark against her.
Phillip Hammond? Never, if the party knows whats good for it! His voice grates on the ears; it's a continuous whine. He cannot deal with ordinary people at close quarters, (see floods), and he has mangled the countries armed forces with malevolence.
Another dose of reality for the PB Britvolk - and it's from the Telegraph!
' To deny Scots the pound is therefore to deny them independence. Once this fact sinks in, the bravado of last week’s threats could easily backfire. If Scots vote for independence, they have to be accommodated. London cannot honourably or constitutionally take any other course.
It was for very good reason that Holyrood’s Fiscal Commission Working Group rejected all the other options in attempting to flesh out likely monetary arrangements for an independent Scotland; none of them would work, or rather, they couldn’t be made to work in an acceptable manner.
Scotland cannot realistically form its own currency while accepting its rightful share of the national debt, for this would be tantamount to default on that debt, throwing both Scottish and British debt management into chaos.'
http://archive.is/XAa1c#selection-853.1-865.227
Council housing used to come in all shapes and forms. Many council houses in the part of London where I grew up were Victorian and Edwardian. Friends of my Mum bought their three storey Victorian place from Camden council in the late 80s for about £50,000 and are now sitting in a place worth well over £1 million. A lot of the nice old houses that you see as you wander around Camden, Islington and Hackney were council places 35 years ago.
Use of "Fatcha" is another Tory sneer at the lower orders, as is 'Elf and Safety, and "innit". The plebs cannot even pronounce words properly. Aren't they ridiculous?
Everyone does it. Not just those on the left. The UK is the most class ridden, class conscious, class obsessed country on earth.
Independence is a matter for Scots. The British pound, however, is not something you can claim as of right and nor is it a matter only for Scots.
Class is an exclusively Marxist concept.
*PB is not representative of Englishmen (and Welsh/Northern Irish)
I had a friend who was New England old money. Just before he was about to marry, a group of his WASP friends took him out, sat him down - and told him that his bride to be was outside his class. He was letting the side down. Even though she was a) gorgeous and b) the daughter of a Greek shipping gazilionaire.
But most countries don't need class divisions. They have tribal divisions, far far more vicious in pitting one section of society against another.
Funnily enough, the Germans seem to reverse around the way we do it. Selective education at secondary level (with Gymnasium very similar to a British grammar) but then uniformitarianism at the university level (though they are moving now towards having "elite" universities again, and I presume that will come with greater selectivity).
As well as front doors: new windows, extensions and garden improvements are signs that a council house is no longer in public hands. People take much better care of things that they own, than things that they rent. It is not just the uniform carling that made me see Scotland as resembling the England of my youth in the Seventies.
Not that the Seventies were all bad, the atomisation of lives in a more materialistic culture has losses as well as gains, and a lot of England has lost the social solidarity evident in parts of Scotland. It does show how far our two countries have seemed to diverge socially over the decades. Even under Mrs T and John Major the Tories had significant support in Scotland, it was from the mid 90's onwards that this evaporated, with the Conservative party becoming less and less interested in social conservatism and kitchen table politics. UKIP have picked up on this social conservatism, as have the Labour party. The "Cost of Living Crisis" is just inflation under another name, a core concern abround the kitchen table, and one that was a core concern of Mrs T and seventies Conservatives. The Tories are more concerned with dinner party conversations than kitchen table ones nowadays. All about Europe, and not about the price of bread.
That is why they are such dreadful snobs.
Turnip head finds more unionist drivel. How many hours does Superman work representing 30,000 companies. If he works 365 days a year and 24 hours a day he can spend less than 17.5 minutes per company.
Another patsy pushing self interest.