‘Going to Oxford University from an inner-city comprehensive school was like landing on another planet, one populated by strange people in bow ties with no concept of what it’s like to live in the real world.’
Blimey! Somewhat of a masterpiece here. Statistically/informationally speaking, this is a veritable gold-mine, spilling 24 carat largesse with almost every page turned. It’s difficult to over exaggerate the importance of this brilliant & humongously necessary book. It becomes a kind of reference manual, a supreme repository on what could be argued as the world’s most primary corrupting agent & root-source of simony & psychological vice & warp… a kind of injustice index. Verkaik is due a medal, if not a crown.
‘Today all the great institutions of state – government, judiciary and military – are run by an elite who have attended private schools. The bankers, hedge-fund managers and financiers who control the money markets in the City went to these schools. Our professions continue to be dominated by private educated doctors, lawyers and accountants. And the same is true of the country’s fourth great estate, the national newspapers and broadcasters which set the political weather.’
The extent of research is staggering. The appendix of inductees, ‘gentlemen’s clubs’ (ultra exclusive & deeply secretive, historically anointed selective-mixing grounds for the absurdly wealthy, aristocratic, ‘politically’-connected & ex-public school dunked to convene in secret & connive & conspire without any oversight, regulation or public record), public schools & their relating histories (much of which is saturated with a sordidness, immorality & monumental hypocrisy). The ‘conflict of interests’ predicament (the very notion of the tremendously wealthy being schooled in exclusion has to be the most bloated, belly-up, rigor-mortis-wracked carcass of an acceptable practice ever…. indefensible in the most screamingly obvious of clear-cut) is not just laid-bare with great sapience & factual acuity, but Verkaik gives us reams of revolting quid-pro-quo mega cronyism, all of which goes on over brandy by the log-fire after blasting a few grouse “just imagine their povs chappers”(1). I still can’t believe the shit in this book! & the sheer volume of it, which barely relents for a second from first folio to last. at times it’s almost like looking through some kind of corruption accountants nepotist transaction files.
“Muscular Christianity”? unannounced Empire? Social bribery? – pay for privilege/position without merit or qualification, or rightful earning. Largely undetected & almost completely undeclared, a dependable, covert aegis & surreptitious network that reveres class/allegiance/association & ‘loyalty to the sect’ over ability & principle. Rigged, fantastically unfair in the utmost of extremes, hugely dangerous & insidious (shit-brained reprobates with all the scar-tissue of the public school operating-table now running, administrating & deciding institutions & platforms for a body of people they have absolutely no fucking modicum of understanding of, all for the ulterior benefit of their own insanely bent & damaged coven of clandestine weirdos) & sensationally undemocratic. Does this sound like a good idea? Do you wonder why our country (& much of the world due to this miasmas intervention) is so fucked? & should you ever be caught committing crimes, you can always rely on the ‘in-house’ fervor of your friends in the judiciary, police force, papers, channels of power to nullify or vastly mitigate the consequences…. & this is before we even get into the Masons (we find out from this book that many public schools actually have their own lodges! – ‘Public School Lodge’s Council’). fixed odds.
Amazingly, the public school was not always a fee paying exclusive for the affluent & arrivistic. It was actually the antithesis (hence the name), but this was purloined & grotesquely subverted in an act of incredibly wicked sequestration (the first chapter of the book “Poor Schools” covers this fastidiously). Neutralizing the public benefit/common good whilst abducting the institutions for their own restrictive advantage. Much like todays public subsidizing, gross double-standards, off-shoring/tax-avoidance, bail-outs & exceptionalism for industry/markets, all whilst issuing austerity on the lowest earners/majority & hacking the life out of civilization under the mantle of ‘cuts, deficit reduction & belt-tightening’, the mass-mockery & violation of equality, just-cause, fairness, reason, logic, acceptability & basic morality is raped by a bunch of Bullingdon degenerates & their cancerous cohorts. IT-IS-JUST-A-SHAM!
“The Golden Age of the English public school corresponded with the triumph of the British Empire. Cecil Rhodes, the architect of modern imperialism, neatly summed up the British perspective by claiming in 1902: ‘We are the finest race in the world and the more of the world we inhabit the better it for the human race’. Such unshakable confidence was expressed by public school headmasters at morning prayers and echoed across the Empire. In this way, public schools were the ‘aggressive, bigoted extreme’ propagandists of British imperialism.”
Fagging, floggings, homosexual child-rape & the massive’ massive cover-up & concealment of child rape are, obviously, always on the margins throughout the book. However, unlike Alex Renton’s incredible Stiff Upper Lip, Verkaik spends little attention on this horrific & endemic crime. That’s until you hit chapter 14 “Dormitories Of Abuse” which pulls up the rock in full for the next 13 pages of repugnance. Renton’s detailing of this institutionalized vileness finds a secondary compendium in this heavy & powerful chapter. It seems that this is so often part of the ‘education’ itself almost. Justin Welby is never far away. Twisted, sick, insane.
Verkaik finally delivers adequate justice to David Cameron -who along with his Etonian accomplices – get almost an entire chapter to themselves (‘Did You Go To School?’). & it really is a miracle that the pink-nonse got away with it (& continues to). Like a sewer-system clogging fat-berg of dirt, Verkaik digs in the sprawling garbage to uncover the core miasma, which is, even by Conservative standards, really’ really shocking. Cameron’s cabinet contained more Etonians than any other Conservative government. Helen Ghosh describes Cameron’s ‘executive decision-making club’ as an ‘Etonian clique’. It is staggering & it just goes on & on, the dirt coursing out like a ruptured artery. There is one word for this & one word alone – plutocracy! in the fullest sense. Then again, that’s always been the core ‘unofficial’ purpose & objective of the Conservative party, & if you can’t see that now amongst the ruins of our contemporary crisis, you are incognizant & insensate to the maximum.
“Later on, one of Osbourne’s favorite responses to political trouble was reportedly: ‘oh look, it’s all a game.’”
If you only read five more books in your life, & you have any kind of concern for the state & future of the world you inhabit, make sure Posh Boys is one of the pentad. A stratospheric ovation for Robert Verkaik for delivering the information the people need. The public school, is at the heart of our crisis. it is the source of the engirdling rot.
“Cameron was able to walk away from Downing Street knowing that he had honoured the long held Etonian tradition of looking after friends in need. They could now cash in on their time in government. Some set up consultancies to advise companies they’d been introduced to while in power; others joined multinational businesses with the implicit intention of opening doors to Whitehall. There were even examples of former advisers now paid to advise each other.”
(1): = my posit/non-verbatim satire.
Author: Robert Verkaik (344 pages)
Publisher: Oneworld (2018)