Spotted an “Editor’s pick” comment on the BBC News web site:
“Rachel :
This has been a problem for years, I recall being viewed as a nuisance for finishing class work & homework half way through the lesson at comp school. I was bored, frustrated and rebellious & ended up getting through 3 schools before leaving with no qualifications. I guess you could say that was a state education fail. I still ended up with a PhD from Cambridge but no thanks to the state system.”
The path from leaving school with no qualifications to getting in to Cambridge, let along getting a PhD from there, would make an incredible story if true. Worthy of a BBC News article, in fact. Unfortunately, Rachel almost certainly made it up as a lame “trump card” in the debate. I wonder if this is a British thing, just making stuff up so you can moan about how crap everything is, or if it happens everywhere.
I wish the BBC would apply the same scepticism and questioning to members of the public as they do to everyone else. I remember another person on Newsnight a while back complaining that when she went into hospital for an operation she was pushed down the queue because some black woman, new the country and unable to speak English, was prioritized ahead of her. No reason given for this prioritization, except the implied racism against white people and that immigrants somehow get everything first because because of the EU or something. No explanation of how she came to know the intimate details of this other person’s medical history in order to decide her own need was equal or more urgent. Gordon Brown was right, people like that are bigots who just love to hate, and the BBC loves to give them a platform without challenging their bullshit.