Britain: The End Game.

There can be little doubt that education in Britain has become the preserve of the rich while working class kids have been told that there is no point in harbouring unrealistic ambitions. To a large extent, as the present government demonstrates all to clearly, this was always true. None but the rich could ever contemplate a career as a barrister, for instance, since that career was always dependent on being rich enough to work and study without an income and because opportunity was always dependent on who you know. Academia is similarly weighted in favour of the rich for exactly the same reasons while a career in higher education is a virtual impossibility without a piece of paper from one of the only two universities that count in this country - Oxford and Cambridge. Today the "Independent" has revealed the true cost of a university education - £100,000 for those without the benefit of mommy and daddy to pay it for them and have to take out loans. The Tories, with the toady LibDems who betrayed their principles over the issue, counter this with the argument that students only have to pay this back if they get really good jobs and are paid the average wage of an office junior. Nothing could be better calculated to blunt the ambitions of an ordinary working-class or even lower middle-class kid than this. What is the point of ambition when all it will get you is a crippling debt repayment schedule? For the likes of Cameron and Osborne this is hardly an issue - their trust funds took care of their education and will take care of the education of their descendants far into the future. The unspoken truth of this is that the entire education system is based on a false assumption - that only the children of the rich can truely appreciate or deserve to benefits of a good education. The children of the poor need not apply. What, then, will Britain look like in the future? The largely uneducated being lorded over by a bunch of chinless wonders without a brain cell to share between them? Yes. It was that way for most of Britain's history and is set fair to continue, after a brief "glitch" between the end of World War II and today, into the far future.