Posh Boys
Verkaik has done his homework, so we know that parliament, the law, the church (of England), the senior civil service, the military, the main financial institutions, the media - all are run by men from the English public schools.
No women.
And that has been the situation for centuries.
In the current contest for leader of the Conservative Party, for example, all of the remaining 6 contenders are men (there were two women in the running but they got kicked out in round one) and they all come from public or selective grammar schools:
Michael Gove - Robert Gordon’s
Jeremy Hunt - Charterhouse
Sajid Javid - Downend Academy School
Boris Johnson - Eton
Dominic Raab - Challoner's (selective) Grammar
Rory Stewart - Eton
In addition, these guys all sound alike (Home Counties smarmy - even Gove, who is the least likely Aberdonian I've ever come across) If you listen carefully to them, what they're saying is utter sh*t* but they are confident and self-assured.
And every one of them is rich.
I don't have the money-making gene myself but I've no objection to people being born rich or making a lot of money, if it's done honestly and they pay their taxes the same as I do. I've never wanted to have a posh accent, although I've been known to do a mean imitation of Her Maj after a couple of glasses of wine on Christmas Day.
But the old boys' network, that's a different thing.
About 51% of the population of the UK is female. So how come we are still so under-represented in what appear to be all the main professions?
And where do the working classes get a look-in? Not to mention the state-educated professionals - teachers, lecturers, social workers - who used to form the backbone of Westminster and keep it grounded?
Here's a clue: I've been doing a futurelearn course on anti-semitism for the last 6 weeks. Very interesting. A lot of the participants were members of the UK Labour Party trying to get to grips with the concept of anti-semitism that the party now finds itself being accused of. Rightly or wrongly. I wouldn't know, but I admire people for trying to educate themselves, even if they were at the mercy of presenters from Yad Vashem who, on occasion, seemed to confuse anti-semitism with anti-zionism themselves.
However, in among the genuine seekers after knowledge, there were some people I found hard to deal with. First, there were the so-called pro-lifers (I prefer to call them anti-abortionists) who these days feel empowered to put in their tuppenceworth on every occasion, whether it's appropriate or not.
And then - worst of all maybe - there were the angry white men: still outraged at 'women's lib' after all these years and often confusing it with 'political correctness', these guys deal in major grievances - their own - and for some reason they regard themselves as (in the deathless prose of one of them) 'an endangered species.'
I'll be honest and say I do not want to be governed by any of these people, but the problem is I currently live in a 'union' where the 5 million Scots, many with social democrat urges, are constantly outvoted by 60 million others who seem to think it's okay to be governed by politicians who are mostly men, mostly privately educated, and so rich they have no idea what it must be like to be poor.
I don't think I've ever seen a government so remote from the people it governs as the present Conservative party is. This is a government that keeps on with a policy of austerity that isn't working. It punishes the poorest in the land; keeps on attacking the disabled and the unemployed; and keeps adding to the cost of living - like passing the burden of the TV licence to pensioners who are already on one of the lowest retirement pensions in Europe - and yet...they keep getting elected.
Would the Labour Party - if it ever got its act together and got elected - be any different?
PS What ever happened to Brexit?
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