From Alasdair Macdonald [former Head Teacher] this morning:

The Herod and the Scotsperson both headline the fall in the number of children attending private schools in Scotland since the introduction of VAT on school fees. Both papers call the decision to charge VAT ‘vindictive’ and present the fall as a bad thing.

Over 95% of children in Scotland attend local authority schools and this has been the level since education became compulsory in 1873.

The monies raised by VAT are hypothecated to public education. This, according to two of our ‘papers of record’, is a bad thing for Scottish education. Now, let’s end the exemption from local authority rates which private schools enjoy, too.

From Professor John Robertson OBA, former schoolteacher, education lecturer and Associate Dean (QA):

Private schools for segregated boys and girls and elite universities: The reproduction of the BBC elite

From Deadline on March 11th, the seven contenders for the post of BBC Director General.

https://deadline.com/2020/03/bbc-director-general-candidates-1202879325/

The seven, their school and university:

1. Tim Davie: Independent boarding boy’s school and Cambridge University
2. Charlotte Moore:  Independent boarding girl’s school and Bristol University
3. Jay Hunt: Independent girl’s day school and Cambridge University
4. Alex Mahon: Independent girl’s day and Imperial College London
5. Jane Turton: School unknown and St Andrews University
6. Simon Pitts: School and university unknown
7. George Osborne: Independent boy’s boarding school and Oxford University

So, at least 5 of the 7 attended gender-segregated private schools, often boarding. Jane and Simon, I’m going to guess, try to hide their privileged education. Once again, Simon may be hiding his elite alma mater but the other six all went to elite universities, 3 out of the 7, to Oxbridge.

All English, none BAME.

The winner – Tim Davie: Independent boarding boy’s school and Cambridge University!

Finally, on Reform UK:

We had thought Scotland immune to the charms of Nigel Farage and Reform UK but recent polling suggests otherwise. Scots are just as bothered by immigration and just as cynical about the old parties. Reform UK look like moving into second place in Scotland, leaving the Cons and Labour looking irrelevant. They’re already consistently in first place in England and Wales.

Their projected image of being somehow ‘anti-establishment‘ is an apparently successful ploy to conceal from the voters that they are funded by the rich, care no more for the ordinary person than the Cons, and that this is just another inter-elite struggle for power with working-class males tricked into to doing the fighting for them.

The truth of who they are and that they are not like you, has been exposed by Novara Media.

They begin with:

Former City trader Nigel Farage makes a big deal of his supposedly anti-elite credentials. The Reform UK leader, educated at one of London’s poshest private schools (Dulwich College), regularly urges journalists to get out of their metropolitan bubble and reflect the views – as he claims to do – of “real people”.

However, during the election campaign, Reform hasn’t been funded by these “real people”. Rather, while millionaire Farage claims to be leading a revolt against the elite, he’s being funded by old Etonians, property moguls, and people who have made small fortunes in the Square Mile.

For more, read on at:

Nigel Farage’s ‘Anti-Establishment’ Party Is Being Funded by the Establishment

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