Is it because England is generally self-satisfied and conservative? Or is it that the powerful and high class keep re-entrenching their privilege? I was just speaking to someone from another culture(Turkey) and it hit me how self-satisfied the wisdom you get here is. He said, if people spent half the effort on making their state schools better as they do on catchment areas and private schools, society would be so much better of. And that the privately educated dominate every single profession. And how spoilt and in a way selfish it was. The simplicity of it really hit home, and the logic of it, coming from someone with another perspective, rather than being browbeaten pompously by the usual wisdom, of the empiricist kind(it's how we' ve always done things, we're the only people on earth with the sense to do xyz, monarchism, empire etc etc-they use it about every issue) coming from the people it benefits. And it really struck me how arrogant selfish and ignorant we have always been, we have no right to lecture the Americans on it. Talking to the French, you are regarded as a bit thick and needing help if you do it, they believe profoundly in the state as fundemental to their ideals. Now since everyone accepts you need a state, you have to be in one boat or the other. You cannot reject it, so why be in a halfway house position , even where you spend a lot on it but don't truly believe in it as a collective. This is worse for everyone. Privilege and lack of social mobility is getting worse, the NHS is being decimated, people are now facing losing the right to their council homes(review every three years to get kicked out)-don't tell me that isn't happening, I know it was Thatcher's policy but obviously a bit too humane for Cameron, it didn't get reported because the press loves him and only gives favourable coverage. It was in the Mirror. Anyway, I've gone ont to other things, but I am so sick of this government and years of the same wisdom, and a social apartheid. We took a lot from the French historically, it seems they have very different and interesting ideas on health and education too. Anyway, does anyone wish to discuss the issue, of course I expect the usual deluded pompous post-imperial, Britannia rules the waves, everyone is clueless and this is how we make it happen garbage, but anyone with anything also thoughtful to say or anyone who wants to argue against them, please join in.
I am sick to death of the privately educated being every single one of my local professionals, their lame pithy having it easy tone of casual condescension and pseudo mateyness while they talk down to me , their entitlement and the corruption, self-serving evil, and or downright incompetence and mediocrity they get away with. I am so ****ed of with the deeply unjust and smug stranglehold, and yes America has vast wealth divide but this isn't the same, it goes beyond wealth, is more excluding and a tighter bind, and way more smug. It's insufferable the moral air they get away with, and the entitlement with which they act, and their patronization.