The more Tory Contenders for leadership try to demonstrate that they don’t come from privileged backgrounds, the more ridiculous it becomes.
While Penny Mordaunt and Liz Truss forced to trot lines about being high school students, poor Tom Tugendhat has the handicap of being an old boy at one of the top public schools, St. Paul’s.
It’s really special to listen to all the Oxbridge and public school television interviewers spewing out accusations about the candidates’ education as if accusing them of pedophilia.
Rishi Sunak struggles with a double whammy of privileges. His main albatross was Head Boy at Winchester (another top public school).
While Penny Mordaunt and Liz Truss are forced to fret over being high school students, poor Tom Tugendhat has the handicap of being an old boy at one of the top public schools, St. Paul’s
There is a little damage control in the fact that he participated as a fellow of immigrant parents. But he married Akshata Murthy, the multi-millionaire daughter of one of India’s fabulously richest men.
In years past, Rishi’s backstory might have been seen as inspirational. A perfect demonstration that a slight looking child of Indian descent can climb to the top of the tree in this country. Not now.
For that reason, any parent who thinks their child would stand a better chance of becoming world kings (as Boris Johnson aspired to) if they could get them into a top-notch private school needs to think again.
Rishi Sunak struggles with a double whammy of privilege. His main albatross was Head Boy at Winchester (another first class public school)
Of course, I wonder if it was necessary to pay the huge Westminster School fees that I paid for years. I imagined it would be a place with wonderful teachers where my child would learn how to learn and how to apply that knowledge.
Westminster is the alma mater of political thinkers such as Nigel Lawson, Tony Benn, Nick Clegg and John Russell, Prime Minister of the Whigs. But by the time my son got there, it had lost all pretense of promoting political opinions – he was almost expelled by his uninspiring headmaster for taking part in the tuition marches of the time.
Luckily for him and me, my son never had political ambitions. So the scar of such an excellent public school education is not as damaging as it could be.
The race to prove you haven’t benefited from privilege isn’t unique to politics. But right now, it’s proving to be one of the more ridiculous factors in deciding who will lead this country.
Liz and Kemi can’t give heels the boot
I feel a little sympathy for the female Tory nominees who, in this heatwave, have chosen to squeeze into form-fitting dresses and heels like queuing in Alan Sugar’s boardroom at The Apprentice. Kemi and Suella in blue, Liz tied up in red.
I find that hot weather makes me hoard water like a camel, which requires the loosest of clothes, which is generally very unflattering. However, flowing dresses and flip-flops aren’t really an option when you’re under the lens of the country’s media.
Is Gary worth more than fearless Lyse?
THE annual release of BBC salaries always provides hours of bathing fun. Gosh, is Gary Lineker really worth over a million pounds a year? Is Lyse Doucet, who risked her life to break news from Ukraine, worth less than a fifth of the money the match-of-the-day presenter is getting?
And what do we think of the £5,000 pay rise for Question Time moderator Fiona Bruce?
I’m sure there would be inequalities as fascinating as they were ridiculous if other institutions made their employees’ salaries public. While the desire to make money motivates many of us, as a nation there is nothing we like more to criticize than to criticize those who make it. Even if, like the two top names on the BBC list, Gary Lineker and Zoe Ball, they were state educated.
Birth guru who pushed us all forward
The recently deceased Catherine Hill was a fashionable childbirth guru in the 1980s and 1990s and recently gave in-person childbirth classes to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.
For those of us who paid for our weekly meetup all those years ago, she was a comforting guide through the nerve-wracking later days of pregnancy. In their small, glass-walled conservatory in Chiswick, we learned the huff and puff of labor and, most importantly, what to expect (and what not to expect) from our partners. During my time at Vogue magazine, taking time out to cross the city to study with that kind Jean Brodie was never questioned.
Unlike Miss Brodie’s students in Muriel Spark’s brilliant novel, Catherine Hill’s “girls” did not belong to her for life.
But we have a nostalgic affection for one another. While I can’t claim to have become firm friends with any of my classmates, we all get excited when we meet to find out how the newborns we brought in their car seats to meet 27 years later are doing.
Airlines perfect the last-minute disappointment
We were due to travel to Athens for a wedding at the end of August. But surprise, surprise, the flight was cancelled.
When I looked at the rebooking options, I was amazed to see how many flights there were from Heathrow to Athens on the same day. That’s certainly the problem: there are simply too many flights.
Isn’t the solution to shorten flight schedules instead of causing chaos with ad hoc canceled flights?
It sounds like common sense to prevent travelers from booking seats on flights that may never take off. But the airlines are so afraid of giving up their valuable Heathrow landing spots that they’d rather offer the flight, take our money – and abandon us at the last minute.
A French favorite crosses the English Channel
PETANQUE, long the popular game in the squares of French provincial towns, has recently become popular this side of the English Channel.
As a recent convert, I’m here to say it beats mindfulness as a relaxation technique. On a summer evening under the trees, the banging of the boules on the sand court and the clicking of the cicadas are enough to convey that holiday feeling.
