You don't have to pay the "property price premium" every year to keep living there
It's not that I dislike Cameron, Clegg or even the Miliband boys (and, yes, I know they did not go to private school, but they are still children from one of the best comprehensives whose parents payed a property price premium to live in the catchment area)., says Nick Cohen.
Even if Haverstock School was "one of the best comprehensives" (it's not; it's about average for North London), it needs to be remembered that the Miliband brothers went there in the 70s, not today. Ralph Miliband bought his house in Primrose Hill in 1965. Primrose Hill has always been a quite nice area, due to the Hill, but it wasn't particularly expensive in 1965, which is why a Marxist academic was able to buy a house there.
Since then, obviously the value of that terraced house on Edis Street has gone through the roof, but this is clearly irrelevant to the social and economic standing of the Miliband family in the 1970s.
Quite why so many people feel the need to say that Labour politicians (other than Tony Blair) are upper-middle class, public schoolboys or otherwise children of privilege when they aren't is beyond me.
I mention, merely in passing, that Nick Cohen went to a selective school (Altrincham Grammar). But of course it isn't privilege if you earn it by passing an exam at the age of 11. It isn't even that uncommon to find people who believe that because they passed one exam at some point in the past, that they can ever after attribute all of the massive advantages and legs-up they've enjoyed to their own ability and efforts. Perhaps this is why so many people still put their universities in their potted biographies, ten or twenty years after it could possibly have been relevant.
I can't help but suspect this whole post is a veiled post about the recent B&T comments thread where, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, the entire jamiesphere confessed to an Oxbridge education.
ReplyDeletehaha! nah, it's just a Nick-Cohen-bashing post that clearly ought to have been on Aaronovitch Watch, except I don't want to either step on Dave's post, or to raise false hopes of a return from cold storage.
ReplyDeletealso, you've got to be pretty incurious to live in inner-North London like Nick and not to be aware that it's gone through a succession of huge social transformations in the last 40 years, not all or indeed any of which are over.
ReplyDeleteespecially when you (like Nick) bought your gaff there when it was dirt cheap in the 80s and it basically all looked like the 7 Sisters Road or just behind Euston Station does now.
You can see that grammar school advocates are mainly concerned with the top 20%, not the rest, by the fact that they obsess about "selection by house price", yet never mention that this must be as much a factor for secondary moderns as comprehensives.
ReplyDeleteThey'd have gone there in the 80s, presumably? Ed's only 40.
ReplyDeleteThere was a similar not-realising-how-London-changes thing with the Tories' Shaun Bailey, just for a bit of balance. People noticed he'd grown up in Bracewell Road, a nice bit round the corner from Notting Hill and assumed he was putting on the 'up from the streets' stuff.
As it turned out, when his family were living there (born 1971) it was under blight from the London Motorway Box - things got better after this was lifted in 1973, but basically the story seemed to be consistent with 'black immigrant family housed in soon-to-be-demolished-slum', although not the 'estate' that occasionally gets referred to.
None of which explains how he ended up in the Conservatives, but there you go.
Another point. Some of the Grammar schools were really bad. The one my dad went to was terrible, and some of the ones in Kent were dreadful. They were pretty mixed in London also.
ReplyDeleteParts of Notting Hill and Kensington are still pretty ropey. Some bits near the flyover, though they're now quite expensive (hillariously).
"Perhaps this is why so many people still put their universities in their potted biographies, ten or twenty years after it could possibly have been relevant."
ReplyDeleteAhem, I read your fine writings both here and on CT and I must have read at least 15-20 times that you studied PPE at OXFORD and more than 50 times that you did the shortened MBA, otherwise known as MSc Finance from UCL(?). Certainly, I could give your average punter a pretty good run-down of the strengths and weaknesses of both courses just from what I've garnered here and at CT. In fact, I might even pass the first electives from what I've gleaned.
In contrast, I have not the faintest idea where, say, Felix Salmon, Epicurean Dealmaker or any other Econ blogger I read went to university.
Just saying, like.
They are (Felix aside) anonymous
ReplyDelete"They are (Felix aside) anonymous"
ReplyDeleteEpicurean Dealmaker is, sure, but the wider canon of Econ bloggers isn't. The point still stands.
Ahem, I read your fine writings both here and on CT and I must have read at least 15-20 times that you studied PPE at OXFORD and more than 50 times that you did the shortened MBA, otherwise known as MSc Finance from UCL(?).
ReplyDeleteI know, pathetic isn't it?
(further to the above - the business school thing is just me being intentionally provocative, because so many of my friends hate business schools without, IMO, knowing very much about what it is that they hate.
ReplyDeleteBut the Oxford thing - I mean really, it's been sixteen years now. Going to Oxford or Cambridge is like being Irish or not owning a television - people are pathologically unable to not mention it in conversation. I'm not particularly proud of being prey to this common failing. I suppose that since there are all sorts of regulatory restrictions on talking about my job, and I don't want to talk about my family, it's the only form of boasting I can indulge in).
In contrast, I have not the faintest idea where, say, Felix Salmon, Epicurean Dealmaker or any other Econ blogger I read went to university
ReplyDeletehttp://seekingalpha.com/author/felix-salmon
Heh, candid response. Working in the civil service, there is an Oxford PPE mafia in the upper echelons who, simiarly, never tire of pointing out where they went to university, so I'm used to it.
ReplyDeleteRichard - you kind of missed the point, you went looking for it.
you kind of missed the point, you went looking for it.
ReplyDeleteWell, of course you wouldn't brag about a degree from Glasgow.
I kid, I kid. Like D^2, I do do the brag, but I'm not proud of it. But that's because my college believed in effortless superiority. It's gauche to mention that.
Richard J: And why the fuck not?
ReplyDeleteSpeaking as a person with a degree from Glasgow [and two from Oxford].
And a massive chip on the shoulder, naturally ...
ReplyDeleteDo those Oxford degrees really carry that much prestige when mentioned in the UK? Without having carried out extensive research I am guessing that in the US knowing that Jones graduated from, say, Harvard, would be held in Jones's favor to some extent, but by the third time Jones mentions this fact any benefits would be completely erased by the perception that Jones is a braggart.
ReplyDeleteThe UK is a much smaller country than the USA, and the London-based upper middle class (which is what we're talking about here) a really quite small and gossipy world indeed. Basically, Jones would only have to mention it once or twice; by then, everyone who Jones would want to know about it, would know.
ReplyDelete