Another long silence from me. Sorry. Medical again. I think the Creator was distracted when s/he designed the prostate. (It must have been a She, I think. Women don’t have them. And it probably serves us males right.)
In the meantime I’m thinking of having another go at the ‘Public’ schools. It must be obvious what has triggered this: the sudden re-emergence in British politics of some of the worst but also most characteristic of their products over the last ten years. Cameron, Boris, Jacob – Old Etonians all; followed by a Wykehamist, a dozen others from ‘minor’ Public schools, and a sprinkling from Grammar schools that enviously aped them. As well as inspiring me, the phenomenon has provoked a small flood of books about the Public schools over the last few years – most of them critical, some utterly damning, as you can tell from their titles – which I’m wading through just now. I quoted from Musa Okwonga’s excellent One of Them in an earlier post. I’m presently into Kynaston and Green’s Engines of Privilege; to be followed by Robert Verkaik’s Posh Boys; Richard Beard’s Sad Little Men; David Turner’s The Old Boys; Martin Steven’s The English Public School… and there are still more to come. I have these books on my mobile phone, so can read them in hospital on Thursday, while I’m waiting for tests. (Hopefully only for a day. I’m not anticipating anything serious.)
But I thought I’d kick off (later) by recounting my own experiences, years ago, at one of those ‘envious’ Grammar schools; and then at Cambridge, where I first came into contact with the genuine Public School crowd. As you’ll see, I found them friendly, in a patronising sort of way, and amusing. But then (in the sixties) we all thought they were on the way out. How wrong we were.
Porter’s Pensées 
My main criticism of English public schools is that they don’t admit the public and that the products thereof (as a consequence) aren’t in the least bit interested in the public interest. Cameron’s EU re-negotiation farce provided Boris with the only opportunity he was ever likely to have to convert poor journalism into national policy.
“Having been the editor of the influential conservative magazine The Spectator, and covered the European Union as the Telegraph’s Brussels correspondent in the 1990s and early noughties, Mr Johnson told a classroom of a moment in his life when a ‘light bulb went off in my mind'”… https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9291699/Boris-Johnson-claims-quit-journalism-politics-guilt-abusing-people.html
Well that actually does sound perfectly plausible.
“I was like a journalist for a long time. I still am really, I still write stuff,’ he said during a discussion at Sedgehill Academy in Lewisham, south London, on Tuesday.
‘But when you’re a journalist, it’s a great, great job, it’s a great profession, but the trouble is that you sometimes find yourself always abusing people or attacking people.
‘Not that you want to abuse them or attack them, but being critical when maybe you feel sometimes a bit guilty about that because you haven’t put yourself in the place of the person you’re criticising. So I thought I’d give it a go.’
While a columnist and editor Mr Johnson wrote several controversial controversial pieces that have continued to dog his career, including a 1998 column about the resignation of then trade secretary Lord Mandelson which referred to gay men as ‘tank-topped bum boys’.
He has also been accused of racism for comparing veiled Muslim women to ‘letter boxes’ and referring to the ‘watermelon smiles’ on the faces of ‘flag-waving piccaninnies’ during a visit by Tony Blair to Africa.”
What a commercial for public school journalism and diplomacy he is. I might be biased towards Grammar Schools though as I attended one myself, Hipperholme GS. It’s still an excellent school if not as traditional as it once was. Not least as Brighouse Girls GS was integrated into it in the 80s, which has improved it in every way. I remember playing hockey against Brighouse Girls, it was a bit like playing against Saint Trinian’s. I should have worn cricket pads.
B t w Boris has returned to journalism this summer, as a Daily Mail columnist. It’s probably the proper place for him. Funny how things turn full circle.
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“What”
Off topic…slightly…you are enthused about “experts”…well, this lot, all very well established academic and paid up members of the “great and the good” have done about as well, in fact possibly less, than our British public school ruling class do…
This is emphatically not a plea in support of the public school clowns who are currently in control; it is a plea in support of control by democracy.
The money supply and interest rates should be under the control of the democratically elected representatives of the people. If they f**k up, we kick them out. This must surely be right.
As JFK ( and unlike the young, I don’t have to explain to your readers who he was…🙄🙄🙄…bloody annoying when I have to do that…) said after the Bay of Pigs fiasco “all my life, I have known better than to trust the experts…why did I do it now?”
And thank god he rejected the advice of the military “professionals” during the Cuban Missile Crisis; otherwise we would not have been here to give our views…
Advisers give advice…it is the business of the executive (preferably democratically elected…they are more in touch with the “people”) to weigh that advice and make a proper reasoned decision.
Given which Kruschev didn’t do too badly in the Cuban Missile Crisis…which led to his downfall.
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Hope your health problems diminish.
Look forward to reading your next post – good point about the “envious” grammar schools that aped the public schools.
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