When I went to college, (it was free in those days), I hung out with a guy called Howard. We touched on the subject of class and I mentioned that I identified as being working class. Howard looked bewildered by this. "You're far to articulate to be working class!" He expostulated.
I probably mentioned that many playwrights and authors also identified as working class too. Jimmy McGovern, a screenwriter and producer, was born in Liverpool in September 1949, the son of working-class parents. He was the fifth of nine children. He suffered from a stammer, for which he received no therapy and which affects him still. Jimmy, like me, also failed to get that memo.
Private schools. That Labour Party has decided to levy VAT on private school tuition fees, damn their eyes! Don't they know that parents who choose to send their kids there, work extremely hard and even go without Sky TV! I know this because a bloke who's got more money than the King, said so. So it might be true. (I haven't yet read it in the Daily Mail, so if/when I do, I shall know that it must be true!)
The key word here, about these parents who send their kids to private schools, is choose. As a working class man, I've never blown my entire income on scratch cards. I've never met any other people in my tribe who have done that either.
To be fair to these parents, I have never, ever heard this hard done-by bleating from them. I have only heard it from very right-wing Tory acitivists, who are presumably, bleating on their behalf! I believe that these hard working people accept the sacrifices that they make gladly, the same as I did when I was in retail, working 12 hour days, 6 days a week, during the Christmas/Sale period. I also had to take a cleaning job at a school, because my company couldn't give me enough hours. I was also diagnosed with epilepsy when I was 17, in 1967. Did this stop me working. No. We could all complain that we're hard done-by!
Equally, I would never, ever have considered a private school route, purely because our family would have been financially crippled by the fees and I remain unconvinced that they deliver a superior outcome anyway.
No, the brain-dead Tories who send their kids to private schools because of how all of the crumbling state schools they read about in their Daily Mail. What they don't tell you is that as soon as the Tories gained power in 2010, they quickly spent the money* that the outgoing Labour government had reserved for the repair of schools confirmed to have Raac. A total of 231 schools in England were confirmed to have Raac, or reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete, in the most recent government list as of August 2023.
“They (the Tories) are prepared to tolerate for other people’s children something that they would not be prepared to tolerate if it affected their own family,” I couldn't have put it better myself. In fact, that was said by Bridget Phillipson, the shadow education secretary.
And now the positive. How about we Brits all get our sleeves rolled up and transform our state education sector into a national treasure, like the NHS? Remove the need for parents feeling the need to send their kids to a private school, for example, just because their boss does, or someone influential in their tribe does.
Both our children went to state schools, comprehensives and then went on to university. They both went on to get good jobs and they both managed to get mortgages so that they could have choices.
While I was at school, we had a couple of fantastic music teachers. Mr. Whitney and Mr. Upson who taught us to sing. We sang the "Agincourt Song" - very well indeed at the town's Corn Exchange, a quality venue, where we, I might add, wiped the floor with a posh school!
