The gold medal for irony goes to David Cameron as he tries to exhort the UK's wheezing, education - sorry, "social engineering" - system to provide better facilities for the gamut of Olympic sports. Surely to God he knows as well as anyone that tipping yet more money into the present system is tantamount to pouring it down an already well fed drain.
The denied reality is that the vast majority of the successes of the London Olympics will have been delivered by products of an educational system - and family support networks - that our witless politicians have done their best to strangle, starve and dissuade for the past 50 years.
Ben Ainslie is a product of a very traditional independent day/bording school - Truro School - motto "To be, rather than to seem to be" the very type of school that was first in front Labour's ideology-inspired firing squad as the (very privately educated) Shirley Williams put party dogma before best interest. (And to this day, the scatty old bat who never did a real job of work in her massively privileged and most misguided evil-doing life, still defiantly declares that comprehensive education was her finest achievement!)
However, the real story for these Olympians is that they come from a family that is committed sufficiently to be willing to pay £3k5 a term (day) and not just ignore the state so-called "free" education, but to make the statement so stark that it dare not speak its name - that state education is hugely inferior. All Olympians - almost without fail - will credit family support with a large element of their success.
A brief moment on the hypocrisy of politicians, which continues largely unabated: the fact that virtually all members of the last labour government's cabinet sent their kids to private schools is well documented. Labour peer Lord Sugar may famously not have gone to public school - but his kids and grandchildren all went/ are going to fee-paying schools; and he's nobody's fool where wasting money is concerned.
When taken to task on the matter, those Labour acolytes that are willing to coyly try and defend their decisions, tend to do so on the basis that their family's interests come first.
So then Dave, please do not blow this opportunity to strike back and make the connection between success and committed families; and then take that idea the extra mile and apply it to a root and branch reform of the education system, where a far deeper family engagement with their kids' futures is more important then yet more taxpayer money thrown at the task.
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| Ben Ainslie does it again |
Ben Ainslie is a product of a very traditional independent day/bording school - Truro School - motto "To be, rather than to seem to be" the very type of school that was first in front Labour's ideology-inspired firing squad as the (very privately educated) Shirley Williams put party dogma before best interest. (And to this day, the scatty old bat who never did a real job of work in her massively privileged and most misguided evil-doing life, still defiantly declares that comprehensive education was her finest achievement!)
However, the real story for these Olympians is that they come from a family that is committed sufficiently to be willing to pay £3k5 a term (day) and not just ignore the state so-called "free" education, but to make the statement so stark that it dare not speak its name - that state education is hugely inferior. All Olympians - almost without fail - will credit family support with a large element of their success.
A brief moment on the hypocrisy of politicians, which continues largely unabated: the fact that virtually all members of the last labour government's cabinet sent their kids to private schools is well documented. Labour peer Lord Sugar may famously not have gone to public school - but his kids and grandchildren all went/ are going to fee-paying schools; and he's nobody's fool where wasting money is concerned.
When taken to task on the matter, those Labour acolytes that are willing to coyly try and defend their decisions, tend to do so on the basis that their family's interests come first.
So then Dave, please do not blow this opportunity to strike back and make the connection between success and committed families; and then take that idea the extra mile and apply it to a root and branch reform of the education system, where a far deeper family engagement with their kids' futures is more important then yet more taxpayer money thrown at the task.
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