Gove Attacks 'Preposterous' Number of Old Etonians in Cameron's Cabinet

Michael Gove, the education secretary, was educated at a fee-paying school in Scotland.

THE GUARDIAN: Education secretary draws comparisons between PM's team and cabinet of Lord Salisbury, criticised for alleged cronyism

The education secretary, Michael Gove, has attacked the "preposterous" number of Etonians in David Cameron's inner cabinet and, in the process, taken aim at the chances of Old Etonian Boris Johnson succeeding Cameron as party leader after the general election.

He described the concentration of Old Etonians as "ridiculous", adding that such a bastion of privilege does not exist in any other rich country.

Although Gove, in an interview with the Financial Times, stressed that the elite nature of Cameron's top team reflected the failings of past state education policies, the remarks fit perfectly with the Labour claim that the top of the Conservative party is an out-of-touch elite. » | Patrick Wintour | Friday, March 14, 2014

Mohamad at Eton
We follow one boy's journey from a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon to the UK's most prestigious public school.

Read the article here | Witness | Monday, January 07, 2013

Eton and The Ritz on al-Qaeda Hit List
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Eton College and The Ritz hotel were on a hit list of British targets found on the dead body of a senior al-Qaeda leader according to reports.

The high-profile targets were found on the body of Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, the network's commander in East Africa, after he was shot dead last week in Somalia.

Discovery of the list prompted security services to hold a summit with Government ministers and warn the school.

America's security services have also issued a warning to major hotel chains.

Mohammad was on the United States' list of 26 most wanted terrorists and had a £3.5 million bounty on his head for his role in the 1998 bomb attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania which killed 224.

He is also believed to have masterminded attacks on the Paradise Hotel in Mombasa and a missile strike on an Israeli charter flight in 2002. » | Ben Farmer, in Kabul | Thursday, June 16, 2011

Cameron Quiet on Dope
MIRROR: DAVID Cameron faced damaging questions about his honesty last night [February 11, 2007] after refusing to comment on revelations that he DID smoke cannabis at Eton and Oxford.

A new biography discloses that the Tory leader narrowly avoided being expelled from Eton aged 15 for smoking "spliffs".

It also refers to his "infrequent and moderate" consumption of cannabis during his three years at university. >>> Oonagh Blackman Political Editor | Monday, February 12, 2007

Religious education: A young pupil studies the Koran at a Darul Uloom school in Mumbai. Photo: Mail on Sunday
Inside the Muslim Eton: 20 Hour Days Starting at 3.45am with the Aim of Producing Muslim Elite of Leaders
MAIL ON SUNDAY: The clock strikes 11am and boys spill out of classrooms into the corridor to move on to their next lesson.

There is no noise and no jostling. Instead they walk in an orderly manner, heads bowed respectfully and eyes downcast to avoid my gaze. The boys, all aged between 13 and 19, are dressed in ankle-length white salwar kameez and white skullcaps.

Their feet are bare. For this is no ordinary school. This is Darul Uloom*, a Muslim madrassa or religious school, set in the pretty Kent village of Chislehurst. It is one of 166 Muslim schools in Britain today.

Of those, 26 are Darul Ulooms, religious seminaries rooted in the Islamic orthodoxy of sharia. According to an ICM poll, almost half of British Muslims wish to send their children to Muslim-only schools.

‘Our parents represent the cross-section of British Muslim society,’ the mufti – an Islamic scholar – of one leading school in northern England told me. These parents include teachers, doctors and shopkeepers.

Secretive and protective, Darul Uloom schools have been operating in Britain for 25 years. But since 9/11 they have faced closer scrutiny by police who fear they may be academies of radicalism – something the headmasters deny.

Now, for the first time, a Darul Uloom has opened its doors to a British newspaper and allowed The Mail on Sunday exclusive access. Most Britons may have never heard of such schools. But their significance in the Islamic world is paramount and it is shaping young Muslims in Britain today.

Islamic experts regard Darul Uloom as the second most important Islamic academic institution in the world after Cairo’s Al Azhar university. The schools aim to create new leaders of the Islamic world. Read on and comment >>> Edna Fernandes | Sunday, June 20, 2010

*House of Knowledge: دار العلوم

New Dark Age Alert! MP Condemns Plan to Build Muslim Eton for Girls
Forerunner: Students at an all-girl Muslim school in Bradford. Photograph: Mail Online
MAIL ONLINE: A Labour MP has bitterly attacked plans for a Muslim ‘Eton’ for girls.

The college for 1,500 pupils would be both the largest Muslim faith school and the biggest boarding school in the country – larger than 1,330-pupil Eton.

Yesterday Gordon Prentice, MP for Pendle, near the school site in Burnley, warned that it could damage existing schools and colleges in the area and stoke community tensions.

‘The last thing we need is single-sex, single faith schools for girls,’ he told the Times Educational Supplement.

‘It pulls against community cohesion. It makes me weep to think so much time, energy and effort has gone into the community to get people to mix together. [This] goes against all public policy.’

The blueprint emerged after a proposal for a 5,000-place girls’ boarding school in Pendle was dropped amid public opposition.

The Islamic charity behind the Burnley project, the Mohiuddin Trust, insists its aim is to ‘strengthen inter-community relationships’.

It is in the process of setting up Mohiuddin International Girls’ College after purchasing the former Burnley College site for £2million.

The college would cater for girls of 16 and over and teach mainstream qualifications and faith studies.

The trust wants the school to cater initially for 500 students, expanding to 1,500. >>> Laura Clark | Friday, December 18, 2009

Networked from Birth
THE GUARDIAN: Boris Johnson's election as mayor now means that there are two men with remarkably similar histories at the top of the Tory party: both he and leader David Cameron are Old Etonians who went to Oxford and were members of the same notorious drinking club. But the Conservatives are just reflecting modern Britain, says John Harris - a nation that is now less meritocratic than in a generation

And so it came to pass that Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson was elected Mayor Of London. Last Friday, at the formal announcement of his victory at City Hall, the proceedings were watched by his children, Cassia Peaches, Milo Arthur, Lara Lettice and Theodore Apollo. News of his win was presumably also cheered by his five siblings, all of whom went to either Oxford or Cambridge, including his Paris-based financier brother Leo, Sunday Times columnist sister Rachel, and half-brother Max - who, according to the London Evening Standard, is currently "studying for an MBA in Beijing". Meanwhile, media observers have inevitably been drawing attention to the new mayor's alma mater, and the fact that the election of one old Etonian may well have laid the ground for the arrival of another in Downing Street - who, if David Cameron makes it, will be the first Eton-educated prime minister since Harold Macmillan in 1957.

On the Tuesday before polling last week, the Today programme's John Humphrys testily asked Cameron about his and Johnson's past history, their now-infamous membership of Oxford University's Bullingdon Club, and the photograph of the two of them in the club's signature £1,200 tailcoats that last year mysteriously disappeared from public circulation. In that week's Sunday Times, there was a typically scabrous cartoon by Gerald Scarfe: Cameron and Johnson in "Buller" attire, locked in a triumphal embrace, simply captioned "Toffs rule OK". The Guardian's Steve Bell, meanwhile, carried on portraying Johnson as a nightmarish amalgam of Joseph Goebbels, Attila the Hun and Bertie Wooster. Networked from Birth >>> | May 9, 2008

BBC:
Ex-BBC Man Is Boris Johnson's Spokesman: New London mayor Boris Johnson has hired ex-BBC political correspondent Guto Harri as his director of communications >>> | May 9, 2008

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback - UK)
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Hardback - UK)