The British have an unhealthy obsession with schooling. At a time of vague if well-nurtured class boundaries there remains an easily understood boundary between the privately and publicly educated.
Followers of British politics will know that Jeremy Corbyn’s advisor Seumas Milne is a Wykehamist, meaning a former pupil of Winchester College. This information is not useful, or even particularly telling, but you pick it up in passing from the press, and people feel it matters.
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This week we discuss Boris Johnson’s epic fail at the Supreme Court prorogation hearing, Labour’s epic fail to depose its deputy leader Tom Watson as it rolled out an array of k-razy socialist policies, and Jazza’s discomfort about how middle class climate change protests are.
Joining us are our varying levels of private school guilt.
Image based on Tom Watson and Jeremy Corbyn at the 2016 Labour Party Conference by Rwendland
A girl I knew once logged onto Facebook the morning after a party to untag herself from pictures of her getting friendly with someone who was not her boyfriend.
That kind of paranoia sticks in the memory. It is thus striking that Justin Trudeau, presumably the first Canadian prime minister to get caught in a blackface scandal, says he did not remember dressing up as Aladdin. Assuming he was being honest, clearly it was no big deal.
Continue reading →Two stories emerged this week regarding the private lives of elite sportsmen: rugby player Gareth Thomas and cricketer Ben Stokes.
Thomas felt obliged to reveal his HIV status after a journalist from an unnamed tabloid threatened to out him. Worse, that reporter approached his parents for comment on the matter before they were aware of the diagnosis, depriving Thomas of choosing how to conduct that delicate conservation.
Continue reading →Sam Smith’s decision to come out as non-binary has provoked predictable backlash from pundits – particularly rightwingers.
The pop singer announced they were changing their pronouns to they or their via Instagram late last week. “After a lifetime of being at war with my gender I’ve decided to embrace myself for who I am, inside and out,” Smith said. “I understand there will be many mistakes and mis-gendering, but all I ask is you please, please try.”
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