The bizarre thinking of right-wingers

Some people baffle me. I cannot understand their naïveté and inability to see the division in our society. It is as though they have been cloistered in the arms of the Telegraph for too long.

Now I admit I rather set myself up for this anyway. I am a fairly frequent participant in comments on the Westminster blog on the Financial Times website. Not the most socialist of sites I would agree, but I have long held there is little point in contributing to left wing sites as you are already speaking to the converted.

Anyway, in a recent debate about higher education we began discussing the lack of accessibility of places like Oxford and Cambridge to working class people. Needless to say my vitriol against “the system” was frowned on by one contributor, who I am convinced sees me as some kind of representation of the Devil himself.


Here are some of his comments:
I knew a lot of working-class boys who went to Oxford so I see no reason why I should be shouted down by someone who doesn't know what he is talking about and chooses to rant about something I have never said. As well as providing scholarships, which now provide pretty nominal amounts of money and significant prestige to the most academically gifted undergraduates, Oxford provides generous bursaries to the poorest undergraduates. Tacitus is displaying either ignorance or bigotry by claiming that his children cannot afford to go there. The doors are *more* open to decent working class kids than to those of the upper or middle-class *provided, of course, that they have the ability to benefit from the course*.
There are a few rich kids but they have always been untypical and there is an active trade in second-hand textbooks. He seems to have completely changed his line from "poorer kids cannot get in" to "my kids don't want to get in".
I object to being so utterly misrepresented: I said that it was not the fault of Oxford but of the comprehensive school system created by Labour pushed and egged-on by The Guardian that there was inequality of opportunity - Tacitus alleges that I "sit there pontificating about how there is equality and all you have to do is work hard" - what utter tripe. Perhaps that is because he feels sensitive to my comment "the barrier is less social class than parental attitude to education". When I was 17 I thought that education was more important than "a few beers of a night and the chance to meet lots of girls.”

I can't be sure how old Tacitus is but looking at his blog I suspect that he started secondary school *after* I started complaining about the disadvantages imposed on bright working-class kids by the replacement of grammar and secondary tech schools by comprehensives.
The increase in gross inequality in the UK is down to New Labour and I am on record complaining about this for several years. I am not blaming Tacitus - Mapam is reckoned to be nearer Scargill's SWP than New Labour, but there is absolutely no reason to blame *me* for it nor to imply that I sympathise with it.


Sounds like I hit a nerve.

Needless to say, I couldn’t let this go, so this was my reply:

Your responses would be amusing if they were not so scary in their inaccuracy and your comment "I know a lot of working class boys who went to Oxford" rather demonstrates your naïveté. Of course you will find a few token working class kids allowed through the system - otherwise the broader working class would realise they were being stifled. By allowing just a few in you keep open a dream that maybe, just maybe, if you are really lucky and they don't pay too much attention to your accent you will get in.

You argue that Oxford offers generous bursaries - in fact these are only of £3,200 per year. Now, with annual fees of £9,000 there is already a £6,000 differential before a working class kid even walks through the door. On top of this is accommodation. Some will live in College at a cost of £3,700 (already £500 over the bursary fee) but many will be forced to live outside in private accommodation. The University itself recommends students budget over £6,000 for this. Then of course are the day to day costs and the University very conservatively recommends students budget a further £1,850 a year. This would mean that each year a student will be in debt to the tune of £13,650 a year, assuming they stay strictly on budget, only return home once each term and keep social life to a minimum.

You say the doors are more open to working class kids than to middle class ones, yet only 11.5% of students identify themselves as working class. Hardly a true representation of society.

As for the very weak and exceedingly old chestnut of "it's all New Labour's fault" - get real. The division between classes has been going on at Oxford for years - long before 1997 when New Labour came to power. If anything, there was a minimal increase in the number of working class students during the period.

You say that at 17 you were more interested in education than going out with girls and drinking beer - well bully for you John., because so was I. Except I had to leave school and work for ten years so I could afford to go to university. I didn't have the luxury of being able to put financial considerations to one side.

As for mention of the now defunct Mapam I raise two points. Firstly, what on earth has an Israeli left wing party of the 1980s got to do with our argument? Secondly, for your information Arthur Scargill is, and never was a member of the Socialist Worker Party. He formed a separate organisation called the Socialist Labour Party. Perhaps your other 'facts' are equally well researched thus leading to naive and bigoted analysis.

Well one thing is for sure – I may not have converted a Tory, but I sure as hell gave him a sleepless night, because his response to me came at 2.55am!!

Oh I do love upsetting right-wingers. No doubt he will make some typically naïve response, but isn’t it disturbing that there are still people in this country who think this way. Clearly there remains much to do to educate people about the extent of division in our society.

Pricing universities out of reach

When I was 18 I wasn’t very interested in studying, so the idea of going to university never really raised its head. In those days, like many of my generation, all I wanted was a few beers of a night and the chance to meet lots of girls. So I went to work in a job I hated, on a salary that offered no real opportunity for expansion and with no real career prospects.

Fortunately ten years later my thinking had changed and I applied to do a degree. Now I was never one of those academic elite who felt able to go to Oxbridge. I was closer to one of those oiks that went to what they now call a new university – in those days we called them polytechnics.

I was very grateful for my place and particularly relieved that I was given a full grant and even a few pounds extra because I was a mature student. Had I have been forced to pay student fees there is no way I could have afforded to go. I was a husband and a father (though I was to be divorced just weeks before going to ‘the poly’.

I studied hard, managed to obtain a good degree and went on later to gain a teaching qualification and a master’s degree. Because of circumstances I had an employer who paid for both of these postgraduate qualifications – again if I had been forced to pay the fees myself I would not have been able to afford them.

I am in no doubt I have been very fortunate.

Today I hear Oxford will probably charge £9,000 a year for tuition fees to study at their illustrious university – slightly less than the annual salary of someone on a statutory minimum wage and substantially more than the amount a married couple receive on the dole.

For someone like myself, who went back to education later in life this huge hike in fees is a disgrace and divisive. It will mean very few working class people will be able to think about going to Oxford or any of the other ‘red bricks’– even if intellectually they would be able to cope with the standards required.

So we have a situation, thanks to Cameron and Clegg, where the working class, and particularly those who are out of work, can never aspire to entering the portals of academia. Effectively they have made learning beyond the financial reach of the poor, the underprivileged, the unemployed, the disabled and ordinary working class folk with families who want to return to education.

Oh, and what about the single mothers who want a chance to develop their lives once their baby is old enough to be handed to a childminder?

It is an absolute disgrace and epitomises the divisiveness of this government – where the ‘haves’ can get the opportunities, and the ‘have not’s’ are forced to struggle through life, trying to make ends meet. No doubt Cameron would prefer the kind of society epitomised in the book “The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist”. As society where the privileged have all the finer things in life and the working class scrape an existence, fighting a daily battle to survive

No guesses as to which side of the fence Clegg and Cameron want to sit on!