Graham

The report featured in the Scotsman today explains that pre-natal stress from, amongst other things, poverty, affects the physical well being of children throughout their lives. Poor parents have sick children.

Choose where your children are born? Children are born where their mothers can afford to live. Money does matter and it is naive in the extreme to believe otherwise.

The quality of the physical environment and the quality of schools, health care and almost everything else is better for the children of the better off.

I agree that a house where the parents encourage cultural social activities, where there are quality books, a quiet place to do homework and all the other things the middle class strives to provide is better than a noisy and noisome slum.

I was born into the lower middle class and did reasonably well until my dad died and my mother was hospitalised for 2.5 years. I spent the years leading up to O-Level doing my homework on the bus, waiting for the bus or huddled in a shop doorway waiting for hospital visiting time to let me in to see her. Of course, less work was possible when it was raining. I ate when I got home to the aunt who looked after me, usually around ten at night. Then I tried to finish my homework. Guess what? My grades went to pot.

If my family was rich I could have taken a taxi instead of spending a three hour round trip on the bus or waiting for the bus. I could have eaten at a cafe at a reasonable time. Or better, we could have bribed the specialist to come and see her at a local hospital instead of one across town. I could have had a private tutor.

If you really believe money doesn't matter, you are an idiot.

Everybody has a place in society, from the talented and well educated to those with none, we all have our aptitudes, there is no class just survival, like any other animal humans need to feed and breed. The Lord of the manor with a fortune founded on selling opium to the Chinese in the 19th century drunk in his leather armchair drinking expensive brandy smoking Havana cigars sitting by the 200 year old family fire going shooting in the morning. Is no different to a down and out sat on a broken mattress drinking cheap cider and smoking a spliff warming himself with yesterdays papers who goes shoplifting in the morning. Roll it back 50,000 years to sitting in the cave etc.... People are trapped by instinct and modern society. Wherever you go there is the same scale of people but those with the power can exclude some, send them to prison or a run down housing estate. Social experiments have their place but many are ill-founded and fail. We must keep trying remember the companies that were paid a fortune when these schemes were originated were most likely profiteering at the expense of the tax payer. During the 1st world war 21,000 Americans became millionaires at the expense of the loss of life and destruction of Europe.

However all that being said I'd rather be rich and miserable than poor and miserable.

Hadn't seen this thread before but it explains where Jeremy Bosk got the chip on his shoulder!

Mister Stonebanks

I to was rejected at 11+, more i suspect by how the system selected rather than ability. Iwnet on to a secondary school, whilst friends went to grammar school

And here we are 50 years later. I followed through with a shelolad of exams and even a university degree.

i have been in work since 1965, not rich but no debt paid my way etc etc.

My 11 plus peers, well some are still down the Colliery inn supping pints, writing out bets and dreaming of going to that big city three miles away.

the system was crap, probably still is.

I did Ok despite the system

Those who can, do those who cant teach.....

Jeremys main thing may be for another day, but remember if they shared out the wealth equally in uk today, witihn 20 years it will be back the way it is now with 1%of the population owning 98% of thewealth, just be a different 1%

Banjo

I agree that redistribution on its own is insufficient to make a permanent improvement in the national well being. Combine it with a better state education system and a system for weeding sociopaths out of the power structure and we might get somewhere. No one sensible advocates complete levelling out of either wealth or income. I want less inequality and for privilege to be earned.

I knew someone who, like you, failed the eleven plus. He became a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. Not everyone has the intelligence and determination to succeed against the odds without help from the rest of us. That some succeed despite social handicaps is no reason not to help those who struggle.

sgjhaghsdg

If you want to gain at least an intellectual understanding of "why people put *any* time into this rather than getting on with improving their lot", research ideas such as: human feelings, altruism and ethics. No, you won't get a bigger house or a shinier motor car from the exercise.