Corruption is even affecting the ‘public’ schools. It’s reported today that a ‘deputy head’ at Eton, no less, one Mo Tanweer, has been sacked for giving out public exam questions to other teachers (or ‘masters’) – and so to their pupils – in advance: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2017/08/25/eton-colleges-deputy-headmaster-leaves-school-following-investigation/.

How long has this sort of thing been going on, I wonder? Might it help explain the apparent academic success of other Old Etonians, who don’t otherwise seem to be endowed with great intelligence. (Dave and Boris obviously come to mind.) Actually, hostile as I am to public schools generally, this is not the sort of behaviour I would have expected of them. They always used to take pride in instilling honour and honesty in their pupils, if very little else; which is why – notoriously – they were so snooty towards the notoriously amoral and selfish business of industrial capitalism. (See Martin Wiener, English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit, 1981.) And why they were so relatively incorruptible as colonial rulers.

But then Mr Tanweer isn’t like other Eton masters. (I’ve known a few.) Racists might want to make something of his Pakistani origin. (Predictably, Daily Telegraph bloggers already have.) Myself, I’d highlight his job before he went into teaching, which was in investment banking. Is it usual, I wonder, for public schools these days to recruit ex-finance capitalists as teachers? More evidence, if so, of the inexorable progress of  Marx’s capitalist leviathan.

Apart from that, Mr Tanweer’s main interests are reported to be ‘poker and golf’. ’Nuff said.