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89 thoughts on “Crimea Was Lost on the Playing Fields of Eton

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  • Herbie

    The reason the elites send their sprogs to Eton and places like it is because they get a good education, something that’s seemingly impossible now in the state sector, and especially since they abolished the grammar schools.

    I suppose poorly educated people are easier to control through media and so on, and of course you often see evidence of that in the comments section here.

    The only place you can get a decent education in the UK state sector these days is in NI or Scotland, unless you home teach.

    John Taylor Gatto provided the equivalent of a private education to poor kids in his state school in New York, and won many awards for his achievements.

    Here he points out 14 important elements that characterize the private school education.

    There are series of videos on this topic:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qArZMuqE4FY

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Taylor_Gatto

  • mark golding

    Etonian ‘eloquence’ from top minister agent Cameron:

    Today-“It is completely unacceptable for Russia to use force to change borders, on the basis of a sham referendum held at the barrel of a Russian gun. “

    Yesterday-“What I take from our conversation[Putin/Cameron] today is that we can overcome these differences[over Syria] if we recognise that we share some fundamental aims: to end the conflict, to stop Syria breaking apart, to let the Syrian people decide who governs them and to take the fight to the extremists and defeat them.”

  • Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!

    “Eton seems a blunt filter; why not narrow it down to:

    Etonian friends of Israel.”
    _________________

    I hope we’re not off on the Israel track again….

  • Mary

    They do invite lesser mortals to courses in the Summer holidays, for a fee of course.

    Summer Courses

    Like most independent schools, Eton makes its facilities and expertise available to visiting students during the summer holidays. Unlike most schools, however, the College’s aim in some of its courses (all of which are residential) is to offer the Eton experience at rates which are subsidized in whole or in part.
    http://www.etoncollege.com/SummerCourses.aspx

  • Herbie

    The great thing about places like Eton is that they can take a very very stupid person and make them quite impressive, presentable, even employable.

    There’s a lot of that about.

  • Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!

    Oh good, it seems we’re not. Some O/Ts (eg Mary) but nothing on Israel. Sanity breaks out.

  • Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!

    “The great thing about places like Eton is that they can take a very very stupid person and make them quite impressive, presentable, even employable”
    _______________

    Which is a part of what all schools try to do, surely?
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    Having said that, I do agree with a couple of your points at 16h01, including

    “I suppose poorly educated people are easier to control through media and so on,”

  • Mary

    It is a charidee of course.
    1139086 – THE KYNGE’S COLLEGE OF OUR LADYE OF ETON BESYDE WINDESORE

    THE COLLEGE WAS FOUNDED BY HENRY VI FOR THE WORSHIP OF GOD AND THE EDUCATION OF YOUNG MEN TO THE SERVICE OF THE CHURCH AND STATE. IN THE 21ST CENTURY OUR CHARITABLE PURPOSE IS “THE ADVANCEMENT OF EDUCATION BY THE PROVISION, SUPPORT AND CONDUCT OF A COLLEGE IN ETON AND THE MAINTENANCE AND PRESERVATION OF AN ASSOCIATED CHAPEL AND BUILDINGS.”

    31 Aug 2013 Income £55,750,000* Spending £55,381,000*

    31 Aug 2012 Income £60,293,000* Spending £51,398,000*

    31 Aug 2011 Income £59,491,000* Spending £60,343,000*

    Charitable Status and Fees

    Until 18 December 2010, Eton College was an exempt charity under English law (Charities Act 1993, Schedule 2). Under the provisions of the Charities Act 2006, it is now an excepted charity, and fully registered with the Charities Commission,[92] and is now one of the 100 largest charities in the UK.[93] As a charity, it benefits from substantial tax breaks. It was calculated by the late David Jewell, former Master of Haileybury, that in 1992 such tax breaks saved the school about £1,945 per pupil per year, although he had no direct connection with the school. This subsidy has declined since the 2001 abolition by the Labour Government of state-funded scholarships (formerly known as “assisted places”) to independent schools. However, no child attended Eton on this scheme, meaning that the actual level of state assistance to the school has always been lower. Eton’s headmaster, Tony Little, has claimed that the benefits that Eton provides to the local community free of charge (use of its facilities, etc.) have a higher value than the tax breaks it receives as a result of its charitable status. The fee for the academic year 2010-2011 is £29,862 (approximately US$48,600 or €35,100 as of March 2011),[94] although the sum is considerably lower for those pupils on bursaries and scholarships.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eton_College

    The nitwits who buy lottery tickets have even contributed!

    Lottery grant (1995)

    In 1995 the National Lottery granted money for a £4.6m sports complex, to add to Eton’s existing facilities of two swimming pools, 30 cricket squares, 24 football, rugby and hockey pitches and a gym.[95] The College paid £200,000 and contributed 4.5 hectares of land in return for exclusive use of the facilities during the daytime only.[95] The UK Sports Council defended the deal on the grounds that the whole community would benefit, while the bursar claimed that Windsor, Slough and Eton Athletic Club was “deprived” because local people (who were not pupils at the College) did not have a world-class running track and facilities to train with.[95] Steve Osborn, director of the Safe Neighbourhoods Unit, described the decision as “staggering” given the background of a substantial reduction in youth services by councils across the country, a matter over which, however, neither the College nor the UK Sports Council, had any control.[95] The facility, which became the Thames Valley Athletics Centre, opened in April 1999.[96]

  • Margaret

    Daily Telegraph article: Shetland, Orkney and Western Isles ‘should get vote on whether to leave Scotland’.

    One commenter at the Telegraph website says that if Shetland stays in the rUK it will be “exclave” within the Scottish EEZ (“Exclusive Economic Zone”). He says that means it will only have a 12-mile maritime limit. And not much oil.

    @Craig – Is he right?

    I suspect he isn’t. Why would it be an exclave? You can draw a geodesic line from East Anglia in England to Shetland which doesn’t go through the Scottish mainland.

    Click here to sign the Scottish Parliament online petition for referenda in the three island groups, to be held 1 week after the Scottish independence referendum.

    The electorates on all 3 islands taken together amount to fewer than 60,000 people. It won’t cost much to print the ballot papers.

    My guess is that if the Scotland result is “yes”, then people in both Shetland and Orkney will vote to leave Scotland and stay in the rUK. People on the Western Isles will probably vote to stay in an independent Scotland.

    It will be interesting to watch how this one pans out.

  • CanSpeccy

    Yes, very interesting.

    But why have sanctions not been imposed by the international community on the United States and its European satrapies for their criminal subversion of the legitimate government of Ukraine?

    And why no discussion of the astonishing hypocrisy of those who accuse the Russians of hypocrisy but say nothing about the grotesque hypocrisy of the United States of Aggression?

  • Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!

    “I see the resident moderator has clocked on!”
    ________________

    Indeed so, Mary, and on topic and polite with it. Please take note.

  • nevermind

    The playing field will be uprooted and re seeded with the finest grass there is, one can’t contemplate to having the boys, scrumming, ruggering and buggering, infected with working class bacillye of any kind.

    So its a new lawn or nothing.

  • conjunction aka lurker made flesh

    Thanks Mary for the link to the Harrison programme. Nice to know where it’s coming from.

    Thanks Herbie for the link to the Gatto video.

    I do agree about private schools. In general state schools teach people not to think, imho, and this is not just a ploy by the ruling classes I think but a plan based on genuine ignorance.

    I went to a direct grant school and I was told to keep my mouth shut unless I had something to say. (Hence the lurking).

    I was told to think for myself before I opened my mouth. etc etc

    Lord Salisbury, whose importance is often ignored, but a consummate diplomat among other things and incidentally a man who was wickedly bullied in Eton or Harrow I think, allegedly causing lifelong depression, said that the reason the aristocracy should rule was not because they were better than anyone else but because they had the education and the leisure to think.

    Somehow a la Gatto, proper education needs to be available for everyone.

  • guano

    “Cameron’s probably doomed. The jackals are scent-marking their territory. ”

    Because it has been washed off by the flood of hypocrisy coming up from the drains about Western backing of Al Qaida in Syria, and psy-ops in Crimea.

    Governments get used and booted out. The Etonian factor has brought a little aftershave into the changing room otherwise stinking of cheap deoderants, but the Zionist powers that be who run this country by financial blackmail need a proper New Labour Miliband majority to start re-structuring the Middle East the way they have always planned it to be.

    Gove would be an ideal choice for post-defeat Tory leader, along with underpants on the outside Major, who was a man of certain principles, or the other ghastly three. Hague, Howard and Brain-Empty.

  • Mary

    Also experiencing raw sewage are the Chagos Islands where the US Navy are discharging it into a lagoon. Shame on the UK for displacing the Islanders and shame on the US for defiling a once beautiful place.

  • Fule

    I suspect that if you took Eton out of their buildings and deprived them of funding but retained the staff it would still be a good school.

  • Richard

    While I take C.M.’s point, I would be surprised if Britain can “lose” Crimea (for Ukraine) or has any influence on the situation there one way or the other. Old Etonians can bugger up Britain and are doing. But you don’t have to have gone to a public school to participate in that project – though I admit it may help.

    Global power (just) resides in Washington and they are replete with privately educated prats with an innate sense of entitlement who go on to Harvard or Yale (or even, on occasion, Oxford or Cambridge) and who couldn’t hit a cow’s arse with a banjo let alone compose a decent written sentence in English, compose a verbal sentence without recourse to the word “fuck”, solve a differential equation, say ‘Hello’ in a foreign language or identify on the map somewhere they are about to start dropping bombs on. Were it not for the fact that people have died in Kiev, policemen are probably still in hospital having their burns tended and young men may yet die in Donbass, I would be laughing my bollocks off at their pitiful attempts to explain why the people of Crimea shouldn’t vote on their own future without Washington’s permission. “Don’t interfere in Crimea, Moscow, but we want you to stop this referendum or we’ll erm … erm … we’ll impose travel restrictions! I bet that’s got you worried. So in case you didn’t hear first time, let me make it perfectly clear: get in there and stop this referendum – but don’t interfere!. Yeah. Oo-ahh.”

    The governing Eton crowd are worse only in the fact that they are puppets and go along with everything Washington says. They are national embarrassments, basically.

  • Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!

    The Eminences have been having a rather bad time of it over the last few threads, haven’t they. Including from the blogmaster.

    Funny how they specialize: the Tovarish, Herby, Macky et al on the noble Russian Empire, Mary, Nevermind, Monseigneur Scorgie et al on Israel/Palestine/the Jooos.

    ********************

    Ruble plunging further, buy € and $ !

  • doug scorgie

    Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!
    18 Mar, 2014 – 10:41 pm

    “…the Jooos”

    Habbabkuk, you have been cautioned previously about denigrating Jews, please show some respect towards the Jewish people by refraining from the spelling: “Jooos.”

  • Peacewisher

    I’ve just heard (from Britain’s finest on the radio…) that the EU are going to start the process of bringing Ukraine into the EU immediately. What! A regime replete with fascists being welcomed into “our” Europe? Has Brussels gone completely mad? Maybe Farage was right after all… the EU is not fit for purpose. Good for UKIP in the May elections, methinks. Hopefully, the EU will see sense and not allow any talks to begin until a democratic election has occurred in Ukraine and a democratic government is installed. I only hope that includes International observers with a good sense of history.

  • Kempe

    Well the conditions attached to the EU aid package, the last minute rejection of which sparked this whole sorry affair, would have required Ukraine to clean up it’s act in terms of corruption in government and the judiciary. I’m not aware that Putin’s counter offer contained any such conditions which is what doubtless made it more attractive to Yanukovich.

    Whilst pointing the finger at our Eton educated elite let’s not forget that leadership from the EU was once again noticeable by it’s abscence.

  • Peacewisher

    Yes, Kempe. The EU seems to have lost something in recent years… although Brussels now has more power over member Nations as a result of the Lisbon agreement. The current administration represents an enormous number of civilised people, yet seems unable or unwilling to provide direction based on “Europeanness” of the current incumbents. It seems obsessed with further expansion. I think the EU worked well with 12, then 16 countries, and further expansion should have occurred over a longer time period. I am definitely beginning to see Nigel’s point…

  • BrianFujisan

    ” Like a mirror, the situation in Ukraine reflects what is going on and what has been happening in the world over the past several decades. After the dissolution of bipolarity on the planet, we no longer have stability. Key international institutions are not getting any stronger; on the contrary, in many cases, they are sadly degrading. Our western partners, led by the United States of America, prefer not to be guided by international law in their practical policies, but by the rule of the gun. They have come to believe in their exclusivity and exceptionalism, that they can decide the destinies of the world, that only they can ever be right. They act as they please: here and there, they use force against sovereign states, building coalitions based on the principle “If you are not with us, you are against us.” To make this aggression look legitimate, they force the necessary resolutions from international organisations, and if for some reason this does not work, they simply ignore the UN Security Council and the UN overall.

    This happened in Yugoslavia; we remember 1999 very well. It was hard to believe, even seeing it with my own eyes, that at the end of the 20th century, one of Europe’s capitals, Belgrade, was under missile attack for several weeks, and then came the real intervention. Was there a UN Security Council resolution on this matter, allowing for these actions? Nothing of the sort. And then, they hit Afghanistan, Iraq, and frankly violated the UN Security Council resolution on Libya, when instead of imposing the so-called no-fly zone over it they started bombing it too.

    Putin …18th March…

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