7% of the school age population attend a public school. Which means that 93% do not. So how are we represented in the ‘Palace of Varieties’?
Does it matter that a significant proportion of our elected representatives (nearly a third) come from what can be seen as a privileged background?
Yesterdays Guardian leader article:
“The last election produced not only five husband and wife couples, two pairs of sisters and a pair of brothers, but also 18 MPs who were sons or daughters of MPs, 10 who were grandchildren of MPs as well as assorted step‑children, nephews and nieces. Politics remains a family affair; it is also even more resistant to social mobility than the world outside. The proportion of MPs from public schools (three-fifths of Conservatives and a sixth of Labour) is unaltered from the 1980s. The extraordinary stasis that has afflicted parliament even while many aspects of the real world have been transformed might be part of the explanation for the outrageous way some of those MPs milked their membership of this self-perpetuating elite.” (11/01/10)
How important is this issue in the scheme of things? Do you agree we have a ‘self-perpetuating elite’ and if so what can we do about it?
No comments:
Post a Comment