Labour can meddle but life is mainly about luck
Justine Greening is losing the plot when she says bosses must take applicants' school and social backgrounds into account when hiring staff
FROM the outside, Oakwood High School, in Rotherham, looks like any other school.
But plainly it isn’t, because the only two famous people it’s ever produced are Conservative MP Justine Greening and my colleague from the television, James May. And both of them are a bit weird.
This week, Ms Greening said that a child from a rough, inner-city comp who gets three Bs in its exams has done better than a kid from Eton who sits the same exams and gets three Bs.
That’s absolutely true.
But then she goes on to say that bosses must take this into account when they are hiring staff.
What?!!?! It’s already hard enough for bosses to make a choice on who to hire without having to look up every candidate’s school history and how that school did in the league tables. And whether the child sat next to Jordan the troublemaker or Malcolm the swot.
If a boss did that, there’d be no time left for bossing.
The trouble is that Ms Greening, inset, like many politicians, and James May in fact, believe that we are all equal and that no matter how much time and effort it takes, we should all have the same chances in life.
But that’s claptrap, because it doesn’t take into account the fact that some people are just lucky.
Some are born to be good at football, so they will end up in a big house with an orange Lamborghini and an even more orange girlfriend.
Others are born beautiful. They will be models and they will earn a good living by sitting on a tropical beach wearing nothing more than a bikini and a smile.
And some will be born with spots and a gut and a brain the size of a walnut. They will end up with a lot of porn on their hard drive.
Ms Greening and that halfwit Corbyn need to realise this, they can meddle as much as they like but whatever they do, some people will one day win the Lottery and some people won’t.
Let me give you an extreme example of luck.
A few years ago the boss of the Grand Tour advertised for a new director and, as you can imagine, he received a 2ft stack of CVs from all over the world.
This leaning tower of post sat for weeks on a desk until his secretary said he MUST decide which people he’d like to come in for an interview.
Exasperated, he picked up the top seven-eighths of the pile and put it in the bin.
He then gave his secretary the remaining CVs and said: “Ask them to come in.”
She was horrified and said: “You can’t do that.”
To which he replied. “Yes I can. I don’t employ unlucky people”.
Those people who’d ended up in the wastepaper basket could have studied hard at school.
They could have worked their way along the food chain, carrying tripods up volcanoes and learning about exposure and frame rates.
But when push came to shove, they were unlucky.
And that was that.
THEATRE GOER
KRISTIN SCOTT THOMAS is so beautiful that whenever I bump into her I am unable to form a word, let alone a comprehensible sentence.
“Hnruruggle,” I usually say.
This week I did better, but not much.
It was in the interval during a play in London’s West End. I was on my way back to my seat when she came whizzing out of the ladies.
“Oh,” I said desperately trying to think of something interesting to say. “Are you here for the play?”
She looked confused, wondering why else she might be in the theatre.
In a bit of a panic I said: “Or did you just pop in to use the loo?”
One of these days she’s going to have me certified.
FAST AND FURIOUS
WHEN speed cameras were first introduced, we were told they would only be located at known accident black spots and that we’d be given plenty of notice, so we could check our speed.
Ha.
New figures show that last year, 72,348 people were caught out by completely hidden cameras on motorways – statistically the safest roads anywhere in THE WORLD.
And more incredibly, 42,000 of these people were fined for doing LESS than 70mph.
Signs on these so-called “smart motor- ways” had set the speed limit at 50 even though traffic was light and the weather was good.
Highways England even admit that sometimes, these lower limits were incorrectly set.
So we’re being fined because a bored cretin in a control booth has pushed the wrong button.
Meanwhile, only one in ten burglaries are ever cleared up by the police.
Just thought I’d mention it.
POOR OLD MELON
AFTER posting its biggest ever quarterly loss, Tesla’s boss, Melon Usk told an analyst that he was a boring bonehead and now, apparently, the company is worth $2billion less than it was the day before.
It’ll probably be all right for Melon though, because $2billion?
That’s the sort of cash he finds from time to time down the back of his sofa.
THESE FLOATING THINGS… THEY’RE BOATS
LAST year, scientists exploring the tropical islands in the Philippines – nice work if you can get it – made a surprise discovery.
They found 50 small flint tools and a dismembered rhinoceros skeleton. This confused them, because the tools were more than half a million years old and they thought that, back then, man didn’t exist in this part of the world.
Immediately, they took to the bar – sorry, I mean laboratory – and began to work on what might have happened.
Well now they’ve come up with an answer. Presumably after watching Life of Pi, the boffins have announced that early man must have got there . . . on floating islands.
I see, and what were these islands made from? Wood? Polystyrene? Apples?
Or let me just throw this out there and see if it sticks. They made some boats and went there on those.
CHOO CHOO PAIN
PLANS to electrify big chunks of Britain’s rail network have been shelved.
Good.
Because continuing to pour vast sums of our hard-earned money into this outdated Victorian invention is idiotic.
At present, 80 per cent of transport money is spent on the railways even though only eight per cent of the population ever use them.
Meanwhile, the roads, which are used by 28million people pretty much every day, have been turned into pockmarked cycle lanes.
WHO WANTS TO SEE AN AD?
FOR the past few weeks I’ve been rehearsing for my seven nights in charge of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
It’s not as easy as it looks. And by far the hardest part for me – having never done commercial television before – is remembering to go to the ad breaks.
Producers became so exasperated with me going on and on that they developed a system whereby they could flash a “Break” message on a screen in front of me.
But if I wasn’t wearing my glasses when it popped up, I didn’t notice it.
MOST READ IN OPINION
I did, however, notice the new message that cropped up yesterday.
It was in large flashing letters and it said: “Oi F***face. Go to a break NOW.”
The actual show begins on ITV tonight at 9.15pm. And I’d like to apologise in advance to all the advertisers who think viewers will get a chance to hear about their products and services in the breaks. Because with me in the hot seat, they probably won’t.
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