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Despite living in the same county for 34 years, yesterday I had my first opportunity to explore Eton College and Eton itself. It is an extraordinary place. The facilities at the college are unbelievably comprehensive and sumptuous. Wandering through Eton, with its Eton College bespoke tailors and high quality shops and restuarants, one is amazed at the sense of entitlement which such a place must engender in its pupils. They are extraordinarily fortunate. One wonders if any of them pause long to consider such blessedness. One doubts it.
OK, I went to a public school,[captionpix imgsrc="http://paulwalternewbury.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/cimg0278.jpg"]which happened to be the subject of the novel and TV series “To serve them all our days” by our old boy R.F.Delderfield. But, being stuck on the edge of Exmoor, 600 feet above sea level, at West Buckland School is something of a different experience than Eton.
It is interesting to reflect on the upbringing of David Cameron. He was brought up in Peasemore, a village near Newbury which I know relatively well. It is “out in the sticks”, as they say. He went to a high-falluting prep school in Winkfield, Berkshire, then onto Eton, the “dreaming spires” of Oxford and the rather privileged pastures of Carlton Television.
One therefore has to ask when he actually came into contact with the real world. Some might argue “never”. However, he did have a summer job just near where I live in the Newbury Hambridge Road industrial estate. Plus, his mother was a magistrate (so came into contact with the real world, to an extent), his father, lest we forget, was disabled and his son, Ivan, had severe epilepsy and cerebral palsy and died aged six. [captionpix imgsrc="http://paulwalternewbury.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/cimg0280.jpg"](My son died aged sixteen months so I would readily recognise that losing a child is dose of “real life” – on steroids. And having grief after six years of bringing up a severely disabled child doesn’t bear thinking about).
I am being careful here. I don’t want to turn this into a standard anti-Toffs rant.
But one does begin to wonder.
We have a Prime Minister who has lived a very priviileged life, rather closeted from the real world. Plus a Deputy Prime Minister who was brought up in the grand environs of Princes Risborough, albeit under the influence of a “real world” mother.[captionpix imgsrc="http://paulwalternewbury.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/cimg0271.jpg"]
I don’t know what this all means. But sooner or later I think we may look back and point the finger at such privileged backgrounds for our two main leaders.
