The e-mail from Andrew's reader goes to the heart of the problem with the Buller Boys and their ilk - their sense of entitlement. They're as aggressive and territorial, in their idle way, as a gang of skinheads swaggering down Broad Street.
When I was at Oxford, I learned to ignore the toff set. (That wasn't difficult, as I went to a defiantly non-traditional college.) But that doesn't mean the problem goes away. Disliking upper-class dining clubs and all their accoutrements isn't about "class envy", because that implies that the critics somehow want to emulate these pathetic twerps. There's an all too obvious and banal reason why some of us object to the boys in their silly dinner jackets: they symbolize a public school network which exercises an unhealthy degree of control over the way things are run in this country. It's not just about jolly japes committed by an insecure and unimaginative bunch of teenagers. Unfortunately, there is, as far as I can see, no way of discussing this phenomenon without appearing "chippy".
We all once did stupid things didn't we...I'd like to hold it against him, but dressing up and getting drunk?
Posted by: Adrian Monck | Sunday, February 18, 2007 at 09:03 PM
The problem is not whether this thing or that thing is "held against them." It is that nothing is.
Power without responsibility? Sounds like a problem in the making.
Posted by: Perm Dude | Sunday, February 18, 2007 at 09:57 PM