Waste and Inequality

Having collected the letters in the village, Mr HG found a small group standing outside the building as he rounded the corner on his way to the butchers. "I'm a pupil of yours," said a smiling man, "So you may remember me. And then we stayed here once, on our way through Italy, and you took us in when it was just as hot as this."

"And you must come in out of the heat now," re-opening the main door and beaming across decades. The next day they came for lunch, driving over from Cortona with the family, where they were staying in the collapsing ruin a daughter had persuaded her father to buy. The ecohouse was looking at its best, blistering glare across the fields outside, layers of insulation and shadowed porticoes keeping us cool and grateful not to be outside rubbing our wingcases against our legs or whatever it is that makes that constant background noise from the woods and olive groves. They took heart; the ruin would transform. The amounts of hard work both on the ruin, and elsewhwere to scrape together the cost, would end in lunch with friends and all the gossip of how the years had gone.

The eldest son a film maker, which was a surprise. The friend explained that his application had been refused - excellent interview, unbeatable results, appropriate languages and post degree plans, but 'No'. Afterwards there had been great disappointment until after our friend had been telephoned by one of the interviewers.

He was very sorry. There was no way they could have accepted him. He was a candidate of just the sort that was wanted, and who could exploit to the full all that was on offer; who could use the learning and skills given to him to the enormous advantage of those he wanted to work with, and for, afterwards. But he is our friend's son. And that ruled him out.

Our friend explained that they were not well to do, that the boy had studied in Greece and Spain, as well as in his home country before they had settled in England again for the two A-level years at Sixth Form College. He had command of all the languages he would need, including mandarin (not that it's called mandarin any more), and other Asian languages.

That wasn't the point.

But his grandfather, from whom our friend had been estranged for so long, would guarantee any fees and could not understand what the boy had done wrong.

Grandfather was a problem too, and his father before him. They did not dare, literally, to take the candidate and the flack that would hit them from all sides. Privileged access. Nods and winks. Old boys. Connexion. The place would go to someone unexceptionable to the new politics.

Someone less qualified, someone quite unable to use what had been commandeered on their behalf. Someone whose education could not have been less privileged than that of a boy attending local schools as his parents lived the hippy values and dreams that had caused their ejection from the world of responsibility and duty their family stood for. Our friend was not inconsolable as his father and been. But all of us were well aware of the waste of resources and possibilities in the name of some silly egalitarianism that had no relevance where the boy would have worked and served.

Some institutions of 'religion, learning and research' are not just parts of universities; they are international and intergenerational in their reach, they are alternative routes to understanding, and to resolving intransigencies and even wars. They are not closed, caste-like systems but are open to the best of those who can use their rare resources to the limit. And to treat them as if they should conform to job qualification providers is to destroy capacities of which few enough remain to the country as it is. We cannot wish to start each generation afresh, as if nothing of what has gone before has any value, surely? And we cannot be so unfair as to deny what has been earned fair and square, because of our relations.