Similar backgrounds?

Just trying to balance things.

Taken from a single article, in the Telegraph

Gordon [Brown] [born 20-02-1951] attended the [private] nursery school, taught by a Miss Bogie, in two rooms of her flat, where he met Murray - now Lord - Elder, who is still a close friend today and who was chief of staff to John Smith, the late Labour leader.

When Gordon was four he enrolled at Kirkcaldy West, the local primary school, ... Gordon excelled at sums and was set increasingly difficult tasks by his teacher, Aileen Mason.

At 10, he joined Kirkcaldy High, an ancient school ..... selective in its intake and its 1,200 pupils were given a "hothouse" education. .....

In April 1962, aged 11, he wrote an article about a church campaign in favour of television commercials against the twin demons of alcohol and tobacco. Gordon concluded his piece with a typically opinionated flourish: "Let us hope that this plan will be a success and that the sale of drink and cigarettes to the younger and older generation will fall when these [commercials] against drink and cigarettes are shown."

At 14, he passed nine O-levels and just after his 15th birthday Gordon took his Highers, the equivalent of A-levels, securing five grade As, including maths, English, and history.

Gordon was part of the E-stream - the E stood for early - a pioneering scheme for fast-tracking the brightest 16-year-olds to university. ...

At university, ... he took a first in history [at Edinburgh, founded 1582 - 4th oldest in Scotland]

There do not appear to have been complaints about the school breaching confidentiality by giving out the details of the academic background and achievements of a former pupil.

Now for Mr Cameron, cobbled together from this this article and this one, both in the Telegraph

David Cameron, [born 09-10-1966] the Tory leader, [had] 13 classmates at Heatherdown prep school

..... So quick was the future Conservative leader’s ascent through the academic ranks at [...] school that he entered its top academic class almost two years early.

A school report emerged ... showing Mr Cameron ranked last in the elite sixth form [current Y6] at Heatherdown Preparatory School [...] following poor results in Latin, maths, geography and French. ... James Edwards, the former head teacher, told The Daily Telegraph that only the brightest boys were allowed to enter the elite form ....

Mr Cameron was as much as two years younger than the boys against whom he was competing, after teachers marked him out as “very bright” and promoted him up the school.

"To suggest he was a dunce is rather unfair because you would expect a younger boy to be behind chaps who had already sat their scholarship exams to [sic. secondary school],"

Cameron passed 12 O-levels and 3 A grades at A-level, and a '1' in the scholarship exam for PPE .... went on to achieve a first class honours degree in philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford [founded c.1188 - 3rd oldest in Western world]

(Aside - In the south it was common for a year group to be called a 'form', it certainly was when Mrs R was at school, but further north she became a little disorientated to be placed in a 'year' - which is now used nationally, although there are still 6th Form colleges.)

So you could say, couldn't you, that the educational backgrounds and outcomes were similar - both men were fast-tracked through school, spent their time in classes labelled "E", both attended selective secondary schools, and both achieved first class degrees in 'proper' subjects at very good Universities - and they both went through Higher Education when it was paid for by the state.

It's also interesting to note that their ancestral backgrounds are remarkably similar :

Genealogists at Ancestry.co.uk, a family history website, have studied the  1841 census, the first complete record of Scotland’s population, and found  the two men’s direct ancestors. They were tilling the same hard soil only  150 miles from each other.

John Brown, born in 1806, a 35-year old agricultural labourer living in the tiny village of Balmullo in Fife; Ewen Cameron, born in 1781, appears in the census as a 60-year-old farmer living in Inverness.

John Brown of Balmullo, Fife, had a son, John, who became a farmer;

Ewen Cameron’s son William is listed ... as a farmer at Upper Muckove, outside Inverness near Culloden.

Simon Harper, of Ancestry.co.uk, said ... time was a great leveller of class.

“Cameron is recognised as coming from a line of blue-blooded stock and Brown is seen as working-class, but not so long ago their ancestors were living near each other and doing the same thing,”.

And now for some differences :-

At age 11 Mr Brown had decided to wage war on both alcohol and tobacco - even though whilst at university he suggested taking empty cans beer to parties so he didn't have to contribute. At 16 Mr Cameron was, allegedly, punished for smoking cannabis.

Mr Brown, before the age of four, was taught by a lady who lived, and taught, in her flat (- imagine the furore from the agents of the state if such a thing were to happen today -) whilst Mr Cameron went to a boarding school.

According to the articles (you'll have to read them yourself) many of Mr Brown school chums have risen high within the state sector - funded by taxation; those of Mr Cameron have risen within the private sector - funded by enterprise.

@ Demos today.

Mrs Rigby notes that David Cameron, Frank Field and Camila Batmanghelidjh (founder of Kidsco) shared a platform at Demos today, launching "Commission on Character" or "The Character Enquiry" (name depends on source)

Mr Field discusses this on his site here (Good Character), with further comment here (Demos launch its Commission on Character) (the link on Frank's site from within the former item to the latter is broken)

The Times carries a news item here and the BBC here. There is also a report in Tory Diary.

I think all these things are worth reading, which is why I've put them together - it'll take quite a bit more than five minutes of your time.

I'm not going to make any comment about either the project or the people involved. I am, however, intrigued to see how this will pan out over coming days and weeks and wonder if there will be a backlash of some sort for this overtly public co-operation?

Did Gordon get his timing wrong?

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Mrs Rigby hasn't a clue whether this is good timing or not, but she has a feeling the overall impression will be that Mr Brown was trying to beat Mr Cameron to a PR opportunity - and it won't help the troops one little bit.

From the Mail

Mr Brown flew to Afghanistan yesterday to meet British troops and military leaders just 48 hours before Mr Cameron was scheduled to make an identical journey.

and

The Tory leader scrapped his own visit – which has been in his diary since July – to avoid an unseemly cat-and-mouse game and wasting overstretched military resources.

Mrs Rigby thinks that if Mr Brown had kept out of it he might have been able to ask why Cameron had gone to Afghanistan, he could have claimed it was a vote-gaining political stunt, he could have asked how much it had cost and so on. He might have been able to make some capital out of it all - especially when we all know that the MoD is strapped for cash.

But, he's lost that chance, and it looks too much as if he merely scurried out there so he could get in first and, somehow (at least in the Rigby household) Cameron looks like the good guy who has called off his own planned visit to the troops because,

‘We were conscious of the military resources required for our trip and chose to reschedule.’

While I don't have a lot of time for Mr Brown, mainly because he likes to hide behind his sofa when the going gets tough, I think he's been badly advised and this is yet another PR calamity.

But is it deliberate?

In the end, assuming all the various polls are right, when Labour is trounced at the next election the blame will no doubt be laid solely at Gordon Brown's door - and none of his so-called advisers will get an ear-bashing.
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Party broadcasts.

Mrs Rigby and her family have watched, with interest, the latest video offering from the Labour Party. She thinks it's a Party Political Broadcast in advance of the European elections, although she isn't altogether sure because she didn't hear the word "Europe" mentioned, not once.

She's interested too in the way it concentrates on horrible things Mr Cameron will do - as if the speakers have a crystal ball. Mrs R didn't know he was standing for a seat in Europe, she thought he was happy enough here in UK.

She thinks the broadcast is all a bit odd, not only because David Cameron is just one person, but also because she knows there are lots of representatives of other parties standing for election to the European Parliament. She thought Labour would be hoping to trounce them all.

Anyhow, Mrs R was interested in what was said, because she has experience of some of the things the broadcast mentions.

1) "David Cameron would love to see people like me on the dole"
Well, OK, Mrs R wouldn't mind that actually.

When Mrs R lost her job she couldn't sign for anything because a) she is married b) her husband is in work c) Mr and Mrs R have been prudent and put a tiny bit of money into savings and d) she lost her job for the "wrong reason".

2) "David Cameron would cut support for families under real pressure in this recession"
Mrs R's family hasn't seen any support for families under "real" pressure in this recession, so she doesn't think there's much support to be cut!

Her own family hasn't seen any reduction in their living costs - in fact they've gone up because the house needs to be heated during the day. She hasn't seen any reduction in essential transport costs. She hasn't seen any reduction in food costs. What she has seen, with increases in fuel duty filtering outwards, is an increase in the cost of almost every single thing the Rigby family touches.

Mrs R knows families who are battling, unsuccessfully, with the system to get some help with their mortgage interest. She read somewhere or other that only one family in the whole country had made a successful claim since the scheme was set up, unfortunately she can't find the reference now.

3) "If David Cameron had been in power I wouldn't have an extra £60, a free TV license and a free bus pass."
Mrs R isn't old enough to qualify for any of these, but she has relatives and friends who do.

Almost without exception they quickly worked out that £60 a year is a teeny bit more than £1 a week, an insignificant amount in "real terms" when a load of bread costs more than £1. Those that don't have televisions don't benefit from the free license. Those who live in areas where public transport is poor, erratic or non-existent cannot benefit from a free bus pass.

All would have preferred to see their pension increased by a sum equivalent to the cost of the TV license and free bus pass, so they could choose for themselves where to spend this extra money; so they could choose whether or not to buy a television license; and maybe choose whether to use a bus or, in many cases, contribute towards somebody else's petrol or share a taxi with a neighbour so they can do their grocery shopping.

Has nobody in the Labour Party, suffering from arthritis or a gammy leg, ever tried to get onto a bus with a wheeled shopping trolley and a couple of shopping bags filled with unwieldy things like toilet rolls?

4) "David Cameron would scrap the right for every patient to see a cancer specialist within 2 weeks."
No, sorry, it doesn't even apply now.

If you go to your GP with a "scare" and it happens to be just before a public holiday - when an outpatients department could be closed for as long as two weeks due to staff holidays - you wait longer. Mrs R knows this from experience, and it resulted in a truly ghastly Christmas for all concerned.

5) "David Cameron would cut £160 million from crime fighting budgets right now, that is the equivalent of 3,500 Police Officers"
Maybe it is the "equivalent of 3,500 Police Officers", but it doesn't need to be.

Earlier this week the Chief Constable of Essex said he could save money AND increase manning by making small savings. Mrs R commented on it here.

She and her family, their friends and neighbours wouldn't notice if the Police budget was cut, because their local police station is closed most of the time. One early morning Mrs R tried to speak to the Police and found the station doors firmly locked shut. A telephone, in a box on the wall outside - that should have connected her to the "control room" - had been vandalised. She tried again when she got home, but the person on the other end didn't even know where Mrs R was, and wanted detailed directions. This sort of thing doesn't inspire confidence, and is possibly why some crime statistics are down - it's too hard for some people to report a problem.

The only uniformed people the Rigby family do see are called "Civilian Enforcement Officers", who give out fines for parking and littering, they aren't allowed to do anything else.

6) "Mr Cameron would give £200 to £300 to millionaires"
Really?

Mr Cameron would personally open public coffers and hand out that much money to people who are already "rich"? - To living people who've either worked damned hard all their lives, not spent their money and invested it in businesses etc.. Does this mean he'd hand over even more cash to professional politicians, entertainers or footballers?

No, on balance Mrs R thinks not. She thinks this is about Inheritance Tax, and is nothing about giving money to anybody, it's about not taking it from them.

Inheritance Tax is about taking money from the estates of people who have died. From the financial leavings of people who have paid taxes - on income, as National Insurance and property/car/contents insurance, in local community charges, on property transactions, on consumer goods - and they'll have done this all their lives, rarely if ever making a claim or asking for anything back from the state.

This is a tax that doesn't only apply to "millionaires" - it applies to ordinary families who happen to be dealing with the estate of a relative who happened to own a property, a property whose value may have risen in their lifetime simply due to rising prices. This horrible tax applies as much to the working person who scrimped and saved to buy their rented home, and who have beggared themselves to maintain it in their declining years, as to those who were born to well-off parents.

This tax is applied to the estates of those people who may have struggled to retain some vestige in independence in their later years, who resisted the need to sell their home to pay for care - an iniquitous thing, not done in Scotland where elderly care is free.

Mrs R thinks this is a punitive tax, with levels set deliberately low so that it captures the life savings of almost anybody who has been careful throughout their life and whose home has a residual value, often due to no more than a geographical or demographic accident.

So, that's what Mrs Rigby thinks about the video.

Even if all these claims were true, Mrs Rigby wants to know what these issues are to do with Europe.

Europe doesn't set the levels of UK unemployment benefit or taxation. Europe doesn't set the cost of UK television licenses, public transport strategies or fuel duties. Europe doesn't set the price for a UK television license, nor does it set the access standards for our healthcare. Europe doesn't set the UK Police budgets, and it doesn't dictate the levels of UK Inheritance Tax.

Last time Mrs R looked, all these things were dictated by her own government, with details decided either by small committees or following discussion within Parliament at Westminster, Brussels has nothing to do with these matters.

So, Mrs Rigby would like somebody who knows more about these things than she does to, please, tell her precisely what this broadcast has to do with the European Elections.

Public Money, or the Government's money?

David Cameron made a speech that used words Mrs Rigby hasn't heard for a long time.

He said MPs should take personal responsibility for their actions, which should be reasonable in the eyes of the electorate. He mentioned things like scrutiny, accountability, ethics and also reminded MPs that the money they put into their pockets is public money.

It's nice to hear a politician reminding MPs where the money they are using comes from, and is so completely different from a comment left over at Old Holborn

You pay your taxes. It's the LAW. It's not your money, it's the Government's money.

Mrs Rigby knows which point of view she prefers!