"It`s what you know not who you know" says 'Calamity Clegg' but he admits that Daddy, pulled strings to get him his first job!

Click 'read more' here or below to find out who these lowlife are

"Pedigree Chums"! David Cameron & Other Members of the Bullingdon Club

As a party, the Lib Dems are so discredited nowadays that they are prepared to say anything and doing anything to curry favour with the electorate. Now seen as the fag-end of the Tory party, they lost their deposit and came last in the recent Barnsley by-election, even losing votes to the racist BNP.

To try and restore his party`s reputation before the May elections, the Con-Dem deputy leader, Nick Clegg, recently announced that he`s taking steps to stop wealthy families from securing plum work experience placements (internships) for their children. He thinks the jobs market in this country is rigged in favour of the privileged and he wants to get working-class kids into top jobs. He says he wants a society which is based on "what you know, not who you know". He also thinks that people doing internships should be paid at least the minimum wage.

But no sooner had he announced his policy aimed ostensibly at kickstarting social mobility in Britain, when he was heckled from the Commons back benches and accused by some MPs, of gross hypocrisy. When challenged, he admitted that he hadn't paid interns when they`d worked for him and that his millionaire father, Nicholas Clegg, who was then the Chairman of United Trust Bank, had pulled strings to get him an internship with the Finnish bank, Postipankki. He also got his first job (he started at the bottom and worked his way up), working for Lord Brittan of Spennithorne in the European Commission in Brussells, after his next-door neighbour, Lord Carrington, put in a good word for him. Despite the advantages his privileged upbringing has given him, Clegg, said:

"I`m not ashamed to say we all inhabited a system that was wrong. I do not deny I have been lucky but the plans I have set out today will help others from a wider range of backgrounds to get the opportunities I enjoyed."

The leader of the Con-Dem (Millionaire) government, David Cameron, is only too aware of the opportunities afforded to the upper-classes who are socially well connected. He owes his rise in life entirely to birth, breeding and the social circles he moves in. He got work experience with an Hong Kong bank when a family friend put in a good word for him. He did work experience for his godfather, the MP, Tim Rathbone. He landed a job with Carlton TV when his mother-in-law, Lady Astor, persuaded Michael Grade, to give him a well paid post with the TV firm. He also landed a job as a researcher with Conservative central office after a mystery caller from Buckingham Palace, rang them to say: "I am ringing to tell you, that you are about to meet a truly remarkable young man".

While 'Calamity Clegg' may well be feeling contrite and slightly embarrassed, his father, Nicholas, said: "All this intern nonsense is overblown."

Last year the Organisation for Economic Co-operation & Development (OECD), said that on one indicator of social mobility - the difference between parents and children`s incomes - Britain had the widest gap of any country in Europe.

Of course none of us will be really surprised by any of this, that people do get on by "having a word down the tennis club with people that matter". Priviledged upper-class people like Clegg and Cameron, just go from one arranged job to another. But as Friedrich Nietzsche says in Twilight of the Idols: "The English are the people of consummate cant".


The text below is from an article in the Daily Mail in 2007:

1. Sebastian Grigg

Still close to David Cameron, Grigg knew him from Eton and lives nearby, in Holland Park. Born into privilege - he is the oldest son of Baron Altrincham, Anthony Ullick David Dundas Grigg, and went to Eton before going to Oriel College - he is now a member of the moneyed aristocracy as a partner at Goldman Sachs.

He and his wife, former Times journalist Rachel Kelly, host an annual Christmas drinks in Lansdowne Crescent which is very much a fixture for Notting Hill grandees. Grigg made an unsuccessful bid to be a Tory MP.

2. David Cameron

Misdemeanours with cannabis aside, Cameron was clearly a surefooted operator at Eton, for by the time he arrived at Oxford he had the social connections to make joining the Bullingdon Club easy.
He still found time for work, though, getting a first in Philosophy, Politics and Economics before going on to work at the Conservative Research Department. Spells at the Treasury and Home Office, then seven years as communications head at Carlton TV. Elected MP for Witney in 2001, and became Tory leader in 2005.

3. Ralph Perry Robinson

A former child actor, he had a walkon part in the 1984 film Another Country, that study of public school homosexuality and betrayal.

At Oxford he once paraded round Oriel quad dressed as a monk and calling for virgins to be sacrificed. A former pupil of the Prince of Wales Institute of Architecture, he was recruited by Richard Rogers to help him design a virtual reality centre in Japan. He now lives in a village near Salisbury, Wiltshire, where he makes furniture.

4. Ewen Fergusson

Generally thought of as the "quiet one" of the group, Fergusson also had a wild side and is thought to have been responsible for a notorious Bullingdon incident in which a plant pot was thrown through a restaurant window, resulting in six members spending a night in police cells.

The son of former rugby international turned British ambassador in Paris Sir Ewen Fergusson, Ewen Junior - Rugby and Oriel - is now a partner in the banking and finance section of City law firm Herbert Smith.

5. Matthew Benson

Born into proper money - his family were wealthy merchant bankers - Benson spent three years working for Morgan Stanley before setting up a property consultancy.

Now a director of Rettie and Co, an Edinburgh-based property company, he married in 1997 Lady Lulu Douglas-Hamilton, ex-wife of Lord Patrick Douglas-Hamilton, at a ceremony which involved a ruined castle being rebuilt over three floors.

6. Sebastian James

Another Bullingdon blue blood, James is the son of Lord Northbourne, a major landowner from Kent. Something of an entrepreneur, his business ventures have included a DVD rental business, Silverscreen, and a dotcom business, ClassicForum, which was supposed to be an eBay for rare books.

7. Jonathan Ford

The president of the Bullingdon - a post to which Boris Johnson aspired, but never succeeded in attaining - the Westminster-educated Ford was elected to the post because "he had a mad genius about him".
After Oxford, where he read modern history, he had a spell in the City as a banker with Morgan Grenfell before going into financial journalism. He is now deputy editor of a financial website, and married to Susannah Herbert, literary editor of the Sunday Times.

8. Boris Johnson

He looked much the same then as he does now, albeit a trifle slimmer, and was regarded in much the same light: ludicrous, but with an ambition that is not to be underestimated. Beaten by Ford for the post of president of the Buller, he made up for it by becoming president of the Oxford Union.
Editor of the Spectator from 1999 to 2005, and MP for Henley since 2001, his chief occupations outside journalism and politics would seem to be amusing television quiz show audiences and being unfaithful to his wives (two, at the last count).

9. Harry Eastwood

Another old Etonian, after Oxford Eastwood worked in corporate finance at Storehouse, the retail group. Later tried his hand at setting up his own business, co-founding a firm called Filmbox which aimed to operate vending machines for people to rent videos from. They were persuasive enough to get backers to stump up £450,000, but the business was a failure before it even got off the ground. Is now commercial director for a company called Monkey.