Alexandra Shulman’s Notebook
Punishing private school pupils won’t make life fair
ONE set of my grandparents fled the Ukrainian pogroms early last century to build a life in Toronto, starting with nothing. The other were middle-class English who, through a series of trials, had fallen into what might be called ‘reduced circumstances’.
Their children – my parents – were curious, ambitious and aspirational. They forged successful careers with no banks of Mum and Dad to dip into or sophisticated social networks to give them a helping hand. They gave their children, myself included, the best upbringing they could – private schooling, university education and contacts who have helped us along the way. Although, unfortunately, still no bank of Mum and Dad.
I’ve always recognised I had these advantages at the start of my working life. But reading a new book, The Class Ceiling,
Why It Pays To Be Privileged, by sociologists Sam Friedman and Daniel Laurison, I appreciate I also had other benefits I was unaware of.
These were those less acknowledged nuances that also affect social mobility: the cultural references you can lob casually into conversation, knowing how to navigate the social minefield of dress-down style and, crucially, the shared sense of humour that makes such a difference when it comes down to, not getting a job, but fitting in. (Anyone who thinks class attitudes don’t matter any more clearly hasn’t been following the furore over Mrs Brown’s Boys winning Best Comedy at the National Television Awards instead of Fleabag.)
So of course we should support the need to increase the number of pupils in our leading universities who don’t have the same advantages in their early life.
Ideally universities should be social melting pots – everyone learning from and about each other as much as how to interpret Beowulf.
A new initiative by the Office for Students has resulted in Oxford and Cambridge pledging to double their intake from what they call ‘under-represented’ groups. It sounds good. Yes. But not entirely.
To achieve this end, they now discriminate against the privilege of private education. Denying pupils places on the grounds of where they were educated – even if many of their parents have worked their socks off to get them there – is not the answer.
It’s a blunt axe that only creates a different set of problems. Why not consider adapting the interview process instead? Or look at other criteria for acceptance that more effectively embraces all, rather than discriminates against some?
If we assume that upward social mobility is desirable – indeed the whole point of all this debate – then why on earth should we penalise those who have achieved it?
I’ve benefited from the hard graft my grandparents and parents put in. I certainly don’t want my child or future grandchildren to be deprived of opportunities because of it.
There IS sense in a £70 lipstick
HERMES is launching Rouge Hermes, its first lipstick. This is a brand able to sell a single luggage tag for £875, so it’s no surprise that a lipstick is going to set you back around £70.
There’s a range of delicious miniature leather cases to carry them in (this is a bag house after all) and the tubes are made from the same metal as the hardware on its famous bags, like the Birkin.
Price aside, their USP is that they are refillable, which is now the buzzword in cosmetics. For years, refillable has been a bit ‘cardboard and muesli’, which is not what people want when they buy a lipstick. But if you can create desirable refillable packaging, it’s win-win.
Of course, there is nothing new about this. When women first began to apply make-up in public, they brandished exquisite gold powder compacts, cut-glass perfume atomisers, and decorative tins of rouge, all refillable. That was more than 100 years ago. The future appears to be looking back.
The BBC is blasting away its bedrock
WHEN you are under fire, it is not the time to cut back on troops. But that’s exactly what the BBC is doing with the announcement it is losing 450 jobs across its news division.
OK, maybe the huge numbers that set up camp at Glasto or the World Cup are over the top, but news is something else. It’s the bedrock of the Beeb, and admired and envied across the world.
The proposed hub model appeals to the financial honchos – ‘centralising’ news-gathering (aka shrinking staff numbers) that can be accessed by different outlets (aka losing individuality and tone).
But the strength of the BBC’s news is in the variety, range and distinctive voices of the different programmes.
Sarah Sands, the imaginative, sparky editor of Today, has already resigned in frustration at the idea of running what, in effect, is a conveyor belt of information. Good on her. If World At One and News At Ten, Newsnight or Today start to all sound more similar, starved of individual reporting, I along with many others will stop tuning in. And that’s going to be even worse news for the beleaguered licence fee.
Why fiery Madonna is my ‘twin crush’
MANY of us have twin-crushes – someone of our exact age who makes you think – ‘Hey, it’s fine. I’m not so old after all.’ Mine is Madonna. There she is on tour in London (below), decrying gun control and Donald Trump and still doing handstands, belting out Like A Prayer in her fishnets and corsets. Go girl. I’m relying on you.
Total disclosure: we’re only actually the same age one month a year. But who’s counting?
But Brad, a badge will ruin my outfit!
BRAD PITT’S flung the name badge question into the public arena. Do you or don’t you wear one? I don’t. Correction: won’t. Or wouldn’t, until Brad was pictured cheerfully wearing his.
I hate them as they make me feel conspicuous (idiotic and illogical, I know), and truthfully, they kind of ruin an outfit. But now I see this refusal could be interpreted as self-regarding. As if the reason mine isn’t pinned on is that I assume people already know who I am.
Clearly everyone knows who Brad is but he still toed the line. So from now on so will I. But when it comes to a horrid plastic lanyard hanging round my neck… well that’s another matter.