Difficult but not impossible.

I think this illustrates that "bank manager" is an occupation that avoids the pressures of the working world in much the same way as teaching is claimed to. The bank manager gives advice and, if the advice is bad, it's the customer's fault for taking it. Bank manager is, I think, a steady job, better than being on the dole and one that will provide a crust for decades, it's a solid choice of job such as one might expect a Methodist to take up. It's not however one that would give a person a particular insight into the caprices of the broader working world.

There's no perfect market in employment. People are not rewarded because society assigns a value to the work that they do or the qualifications that they have. It's just accident. If an occupation has a dominant union and a monopoly position, lawyers might be the perfect example, then people in that line of work are able to command a disproportionate wage. If there's an historic position of power held by people in a line of work in a state, teachers in Ontario for example, then they're well paid. People who take the plunge and operate a business succeed or fail entirely based on luck. They may work hard, they may have a good idea, but loads of people do. Luck in the sense of, say, having a mother who knows potential customers, is the difference between riches, just doing well and failure.

Appealing to the government to fix it all is a cop out, the members of the government are usually too busy enriching themselves and their friends. All we can do is balance the potential risk and reward in the small subset of occupations we have the chance to try and to pick one. The access to opportunity is key, a poor kid from the inner city has bugger all chance of choosing, say, to be a barrister, he's going to be stuck with the choice of nurse, recycling picker or bank manager.

What a load of intellectual sounding claptrap.

May I expect a proper rebuttal from you personally or will the government be handling that?

I believe that the opportunity to access these professions is there. Trouble is, the poor inner city kid is likely to have the bottom feeders of the teaching pool, therefore will get a crap education from teachers who are either disinterested clock-watchers, or brand-new and inexperienced - both groups only there because they can't get jobs anywhere else.

The hardest jobs should have the highest pay to be able to attract the best individuals. Any profession whose pay is controlled by unions and government department and is largely based on years-of-seniority instead of actual real talent is always going to be saddled with a disporportionate number of time-filling coasters.

I did.

I do appreciate what you are saying but I am also a believer that the sky is the limit. One may have "better" opportunities being born into some families but it doesn`t necessarily guarantee success nor mean that one is simply limited to repeating the occupations of one`s parents.

I disagree, apart from the reasons you cite there's the problem of vision, realising that one can be a lawyer, for example, without going to Eton or UCC. And then there's the problem of funding, further education in the UK and, more so, in Canada, costs. Rich parents = better opportunity. Having a willing, or even grudging, source of funding is a matter of luck.

I know, and thought you might mention it.

I don't disagree with any of that but think that people who break out of the family pattern are the exception.

Is that however more to do with the mindset of the family rather than lack of opportunity?

Lack of money can be as much a motivator to succeed as it is a hindrance (not a barrier) to accessing educational opportunities.

I would be a farmer....drivin my Tractor around plowing fields and such...and yelling incessantly "Get Orrrfff moy Laaand!"

Not just of the family but, yes, a person raised in an environment where everyone went down t'pit until that woman closed them and everyone is now on the dole may not see that he or she has the option to follow the yellow brick road to corporate governance. I don't see it either, so I don't blame them.

You can be as motivated as you want. You aint got $75,000 a year you aint going to Columbia, you'll have to settle for UBC. Or, in the more common, case in Canada (and now in the UK too I believe), if your parents won't pay you're not going to college, period.

I believe it was Arthur Scargill responsible to the pit issues to which you refer

If a family (or anyone) tells you that you cannot do something enough many will begin to believe them. I came from a pretty basic background and did OK. No parent to pay for my education. They were telling me I was looking beyond my station, bugger that, I wanted to do what I wanted to do - so did it.


There are many a student who does not give a toss about their education because it is all paid for, as much as there are those paying for their own and working to make the most out of it. Plenty of people put themselves through college, there are of course some pretty successful people who never went to college or dropped out.

We may not have control of where we come from but we do have control over where we go. We are in a society all too willing to blame someone or something else for our problems or lack of opportunity rather than try and do something about it.

But that was pre-Thatcher. In those days there was such a thing as
"society" and "society" paid for education.

Hardly surprising... whilst it's right that everyone has the opportunity to pursue any career of their choice, that doesn't mean they've got the ability to do it, or indeed even the desire to do it.

I guess that's why the government drive to increase University education from about 5% of the population to 50% of the population will only result in a glut of tradesmen or shop assistants with degrees of questionable value.

I don't think devaluing degrees matters one way or the other, if everyone has a degree (and I think this is very much the case in Canada, people behind the counter in banks have degrees!) then the standout candidate for a career needs a second degree or a degree from a better institution. The problem just shifts from "who's going to finance the first degree" to "who's going to fund the MBA".