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Thursday, April 26, 2012

class war

More than a third of British land is still in aristocratic hands, according to a 2010 ownership survey by Country Life magazine. In the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition cabinet, 15 of the 23 ministers went to Oxford or Cambridge.
"It is extraordinary that we are once again governed by the old landed gentry, the Bullingdon Club and Brasenose tennis club," said Timothy Garton Ash, the Oxford professor and prominent political writer, referring to an exclusive Oxford dining club and the college at Oxford University that Mr. Cameron attended. "The almost Darwinian ability of the old English upper class to adapt has been demonstrated once again."

France's corporate, political and administrative elite is groomed in a small number of exclusive schools, the grandes écoles. Just under half of France's 40 largest companies are run by graduates of just two schools: ENA, the national school of administration, and the École Polytechnique, which trains the country's top engineers. Together the schools produce only about 600 graduates a year. There are fewer than 6,000 ENA graduates alive today, compared with at least 160,000 Oxford alumni.
"The British elites feel superior because they were born superior; the French elites feel superior because they went to ENA," said Dominique Moïsi, a senior fellow at the French Institute of Foreign Relations.

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