al_yrpal wrote:Some of us have been bombed out and lost everything been on rations into our teens but studied worked saved and succeeded against all the odds.
Though I don't want to diminish your achievement, you have to admit that you are part of a lucky generation. Yes, rationing and the immediate post-war era was no cakewalk, but compare the ability for a gifted or talented child to rise to top in your era to now. A gifted child doesn't even have a grammar school to go any more, because they were considered to convey an unfair advantage, but intelligent or talented children from working class backgrounds have not had it worse since prior to WW2. This compounded by an influx of pupils who have to be taught lessons, whilst having little knowledge of English. Every native speaking child's education in such an environment will suffer, because the teaching rate is set by those who have difficulty comprehending the language. However great the odds were for you, they are now several times greater still, some progress!
beardy wrote:Poverty is the problem not cultural diversity.
Well, that is pretty anecdotal. You say poverty is the problem, yet many small seaside towns with poor white folk have far fewer crimes per capita than the more diverse parts of larger towns and cities, so how do we square that circle? There was a program on the BBC with Trevor Phillips recently stating that young black men from the same estates as young men white men in London and other metropolitan areas commit far more knife crime, mostly on one another. It'd be nice to get to the bottom of the problem, rather than pretend it does not exist. The problem, to my mind, comes from connections to Jamaican yardie and American gang culture, connections that white boys from the same areas are influenced by far less keenly. Culture informs everything, for good or ill, to pretend it makes no difference to a person's values and actions is absurd.