fat cherry wrote: the government (both elected and unelected mandarin types) is still made up of privately educated nobs, even on the left. We still have an unelected second chamber of apparently zero consequence (the lords to you Mr B) and subsidised public (as in private - don't ask me about the nomenclature) education system that feeds the top universities who then feed the government/civil service. I think thats the rough view from the left anyways.
Just come across an example of what I mean by this in the news this morning.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44155130This old bird was a deputy governor at the bank of england - which amongst other things sets interest rates and handles all our cash, and had to resign due to an oversight in which she failed to declare a potential conflict of interests - that her brother is high up in Barclays Bank. Now apart from how, when you've worked in the financial industry all your life you'd forget a thing like that........ A year later she's back as Chief Executive of Visa Europe (which is owned by the banks, one presumably being barclays).
Is she a working class upstart from the north country? Nope. Her dad is 3rd Viscount Hailsham, one of the remaining hereditary peers and also has a life peerage (not sure how this all works) sits in the Lords at 300 quid a day plus (or so the oapers say). Before that he was an MP for a while when the press fund out he had claimed 2000 quid in parliamentary expenses to 'clean the moat of his castle' - though after the event it was 'more complicated than that'. Anyways, who cares, his old man carked it and he got the peerage, and after the commons went to the Lords. Her mother is a baroness in her own right (economist and big business cheese), and her dad (i.e. gramps) was a conservative MP and Chief Secretary to the Treasury and Paymaster General. His dad before him was also an MP and all the lot went to private (or public as they call them here) and Oxford.
Oh and its the happy day tomorrow!!!