Monday 27 April 2009

Equality Audit

That rules out Georgia Gould and the entire Shadow Cabinet, for a start.

Or have I missed something?

44 comments:

  1. Rules them out in what sense? It appears you haven't looked at what the Equality Bill says.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh, I know what it'll say: yet more help for the privately educated daughter of two Asian doctors over the state eeducated son of a white bus driver and a white shop assistant. That's what these things always say.

    ReplyDelete
  3. They should audit how many PPCs selected for next year had paid jobs in the five years after graduating.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Five years after graduating?

    ReplyDelete
  5. As I said, it wouldn't take long. After all, who has to wait five years before being given a seat? Only someone who was never going to be given one, anyway. I mean, by then, you'd be what? 26? TWENTY-SIX? Imagine!

    ReplyDelete
  6. You were 21 when you were first a Parish Councillor.

    ReplyDelete
  7. One more non-student election that she's ever contested, never mind won.

    It's hardly comparable in all sorts of ways. Including the fact that there were then, as there are now, 15 members of Lanchester Parish Council. And the rest of them certainly weren't 21, let me assure you.

    ReplyDelete
  8. There is only one MP for Erith and Thamesmead.

    ReplyDelete
  9. There are 646 MPs altogether.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Yes, but only one of them sits for Erith and Thamesmead. That is the point.

    Being an MP is simply no job for someone straight out of university at the normal age.

    ReplyDelete
  11. All things being equal, I'd agree that a 22-year-old is unlikely to have the qualities required of a good MP - but then, plenty of MPs don't have the qualities required of a good MP, so it seems a bit of a shame to focus on the age of one particular would-be candidate. This is the best commentary I've seen on the issue.

    ReplyDelete
  12. At least Benn was selected fair and square. Like his granddaughter, presumably. The ballot wasn't rigged.

    And he'd fought in the War, in the RAF. Gould has never fought for so much as her place at Oxford.

    ReplyDelete
  13. And Benn did?

    ReplyDelete
  14. Oh, against the grammar school boys in those days, yes. To have made it to Oxford from a public school was actually quite an achievement in the days of the grammar schools.

    ReplyDelete
  15. "Being an MP is simply no job for someone straight out of university at the normal age."

    Damn right. I mean, just look at Pitt the Younger.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Don't focus on the Benn stuff (although I think it's a salutary point) - read the rest of the article.

    ReplyDelete
  17. They are really annooyed by the fuss over this.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Damn right. They cannot believe that anyone dare object to their behaving like this. Or, indeed, in absolutely any other way that they see fit.

    Pitt The Younger? I ask you! She even LOOKS like some silly little rah tart. And she certainly has the attitude of one.

    ReplyDelete
  19. David's right - in the 1940s it was vanishingly difficult for the public-school educated heirs to the peerage to get a place at Oxbridge. The number of public-school educated heirs to the peerage studying at Oxbridge in the 1940s probably never got out of double figures.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Still after the women's vote, are we David?

    ReplyDelete
  21. Pitt was one of Britain's greatest ever PMs! Don't listen to the Fox/North propaganda, join our Facebook page and find out the truth about the pint-sized political dynamo!

    ReplyDelete
  22. Women would be ruder about her. Indeed, they are. Since they can be. Which must be nice.

    The grammar schools dominated Oxbridge. Until comprehensivisation, most boys' private schools concentrated on preparation for the City or the Officer Corps, neither of which cared about degrees in those days. And most girls' private schools taught nothing, really.

    But then, many of what are now private schools WERE grammar schools. And would be again, if they could be.

    ReplyDelete
  23. If you think that I am scouring Facebook for The William Pitt The Younger Appreciation Society, then you have...

    ReplyDelete
  24. My grandfather went to Cambridge in the 1940s, after public school and the Royal Navy.

    ReplyDelete
  25. Good for him. He will have met a very diverse bunch of people, both in the Navy and at Cambridge.

    ReplyDelete
  26. I'm sure he did. My point is that public school was no bar to getting into Cambridge.

    He wasn't the heir to a peerage, though.

    ReplyDelete
  27. Fox/North4Eva!!!!27 April 2009 at 16:55

    PtY sucked! Couldn't even defeat some upstart colonials - if you want real radical 18th Century statesmanship, check out the Fox/North posse!

    ReplyDelete
  28. Leave it. You may type like that, but if you have ever heard of these people then you are not fooling anyone that you really are of the rising political generation.

    Or, indeed, of the established one. Has, say, James Purnell, or George Osborne, ever heard of them? I think we know the answer to that one.

    Polin, I never said it was a bar. I said that most Oxbridge places went to the grammar schools when there were grammar schools. As they did.

    ReplyDelete
  29. "I never said it was a bar."You said that "To have made it to Oxford from a public school was actually quite an achievement in the days of the grammar schools". That implies to me that you think public school was a disadvantage in Oxford applications. Otherwise, why mention it?

    ReplyDelete
  30. It was a disadvantage, of sorts. The grammar schools were much more academic insititutions than most of the fee-chargers. And a simple look at admissions proves the point: most were from the grammar schools. That persisted until the grammar schools were abolished.

    ReplyDelete
  31. Elder Statesman27 April 2009 at 17:10

    PtY may have been good looking, but he was a boy trying to do a man's work. Pitt the Elder was a real man. Respect your Elders! Age before booty!

    ReplyDelete
  32. I won't tell you again, leave it.

    Although you are essentially right. Yes, Pitt The Younger was Prime Minister very young. But he wasn't terribly good. And he wasn't as good as his father.

    ReplyDelete
  33. That's very interesting, David - can you point me towards the data on 1940s Oxbridge admissions from grammar schools and public schools?

    ReplyDelete
  34. Oxford and Cambridge themselves could doubtless give you chapter and verse. It may even be on the Net by now.

    And anyway, just think about that generation of the great and the good, about who they were and where they came from. The grammar schools sent them to Oxbridge, and the rest is history.

    To those trying to post spoiler comments about the Seventies and Eighties, do you know when comprehensivisation happened? Can you name the Education Secretary who closed so many that there were not enough left at the end for her record ever to be equalled? Why are you so keen on the archetypal Thatcher policy?

    ReplyDelete
  35. So many what?

    ReplyDelete
  36. Thought so.

    And you're right of course. Just ask anyone who was at Oxbridge in the grammar school days. They were state school universities.

    ReplyDelete
  37. No one under 50 except you believes me when I tell them this, but it is true. Oxford and Cambridge were state school universities in the days of state grammar schools. Anyone of my generation can remember that. You might as well ask for the statistics on how brown or grey the clothes used to be. We can remember it. Things were just like that then, simple as that.

    ReplyDelete
  38. Q, yes indeed, but in this case the statistics will certainly exist, so I can only assume David has seen them. I was just wondering where he saw them.

    ReplyDelete
  39. Quite.

    Although Oxford and Cambridge doubtless have them.

    Honestly, I have never before come across ANYONE who disputed the old grammar school domination of Oxbridge. Even the most militant comprehensive campaigners say that it is the wrong question (whereas in fact Oxbridge has worsened as the abolition of the grammar schools has narrowed its social base - that is the problem with it).

    But even they don't dispute what the answer to that question is. That's why they don't like the question. Anyone who does so dispute simply doesn't know what they are talking about.

    ReplyDelete