Clegg against Cronyism

Earlier in the year out of curiosity I conducted a survey of the educational backgrounds of front bench MPs, in order to see whether a popular saying was merely mythology or whether it had some basis in reality.  The results showed that the popular idea that MPs are mostly privately educated in a small clique of "independent" schools has a strong factual basis.

This makes recent statements by Nick Clegg, himself a veteran of Westminster school, all the more intriguing.  Is Clegg a fan of Sluggish Software?  I doubt it.  More likely in an environment where unemployment is high social mobility is becoming the topic of the day.  Fear of unemployment also tends to foster more conservative career decisions with less possibility to move between companies, especially if they're operating with minimal staff.  A traditional route of social mobility via university education also looks as if it's immanently about to be severely curtailed.



Until quite recently I had believed that British society was becoming more egalitarian.  Within my own lifetime I've undoubtedly had more opportunities than my grandparents did, who came up against very rigidly enforced social class limitations.  The same sort of explicit exclusion, based upon the occupation or status of your father, no longer exists but it does seem that what might be called "classism" or the more popular contemporary term "cronyism" is on the rise.  Some of the employment advice I've had recently does make the suggestion that you try to become friends with "important people" or people at companies that you want to work for, in the hope that your application might be more favourably dealt with.

I suppose that increasing cronyism is only to be expected in a business as usual scenario in which inequality continues to increase as advances in automation and use of outsourcing concentrates wealth into shrinking and more defensive social networks.  It's also possible that cronyism could be the outcome of falling energy per capita or increasing cost of energy.  If energy becomes too expensive or scarce then transport opportunities might be more limited and who your neighbours are becomes more important.