Let me get this straight:

Your ancestors were miners and dockworkers, and Weller aged 19 claimed he was going to vote Tory (soon afterwards he admitted it had been a joke). Conclusion: Weller has no right to criticise the Conservative destruction of the UK.

Someone you knew who criticised Murdoch ended up working for him, therefore all criticisms of Murdoch have no substance.

I've never read such foolishness in all my life. I'm actually embarrassed for you. And you say I'm talking out of my arse?

Thatcherism was pure short term thinking. Keep enough people happy to stay in power and hope that by the time it all goes to shit the public don't know or care why it's gone to shit. (Which to be fair has worked.) Deregulating the housing market; selling off the utilities; reducing investment in public services; there's no such thing as society; etc etc. The present situation was an obvious inevitable result. Most UK posters on here are old enough to have done well out of Thatcherism. Whilst the rest of the country has gone to shit.

By the way I don't even have the money to visit Islington let alone live there, and I make my own sandwiches. And I'm old enough to remember the Thatcher years first hand.

Anyway, to return to those utopian jumpers...  oh, and Thomas More...

I took a factory job.  Sticking labels onto jars of pickled onions.  It was much more fun than teaching A-Level History. 

Not.

^ That glass ceiling was in place all right.  No doubt about that.  I had an interview - not on a friendly basis - with my housemaster.  He was outraged that I wanted to study History, Politics and Economics instead of woodwork and metalwork.  He told me outright I was factory fodder.  This would be in 1974.  I politely told him to stick it.  I've been politely telling people to stick it ever since. 
One of my proudest achievements was getting a shy underachiever into Cambridge, another seeing a dyslexic girl achieve 100% in both her A-Level papers.  Yet another was making the arrangements for a three year old child become bilingual in French.  Some said it couldn't be done.  I did it.

As for education: that's been well and truly fucked by neoliberalism i.e. treating a school like a burger franchise. Back in the day teaching was a career for life. Nowadays few people can stay in the profession long term. I certainly couldn't.

'That glass ceiling was in place all right.'

Definitely. But social mobility has actually got worse. Inevitably. Young people need to have a rich family to be able to enter creative professions such as the media, music etc etc. Back in the day one certainly did not need to have a rich family to be a journalist or rock musician.

I have never had a job with security. I have never had fixed hours. My life has been full of uncertainty. I am exceptionally badly educated as my school years were the equivalent of being sent to an open-prison.

I have been incredibly lucky to live in Birmingham though and that has provided me with a wealth of opportunities.

^ An underrated city.  When you're in Birmingham, you know you're in a city, unlike in Derby, which kids itself it's a city.  I used to enjoy attending examiners meetings at Aston University.  Dad used to buy a lot of jazz at - The Diskery, is that right?  Easy journey between Derby and Brum by train.

It’s all gone a bit ‘Saturday night and Sunday Morning’.

When grammar schools still existed they gave youngsters chances. Teaching was still regarded - rightly - as a vocation and an important one.

As far as London was concerned, there was plenty of work. You might not get into certain places that only wanted public school/Oxbridge types but that was little hardship.

It would be far worse in places heavily dependent on a single employer or industry unless you moved elsewhere.

Agreed.  My brother-in-law is a wealthy man, dividing his time between Calgary and California.  Came from a house that had no bathroom let alone central heating.  Went to grammar school, went to college (never went near a university): work, work, work.  But he'll never return to England.  His grandfather was a Liverpool dock worker, great-grandfather an Irish immigrant from Cork.  The next generation: all professionals: education, law.  But modern education is a racket, really.  Or at least much of it.  Time-servers.  Cynics.  Those who can do, those who can't teach, those who can't teach teach gym.  That sort of thing.

Yes modern education is a racket. It’s gone well beyond micromanaging schools and burdening teachers with endless bureaucracy.

Further education is a complete racket that kept youngsters off the unemployment records and provided another industry for educators.

Worthless degrees and £9000 per annum for Zoom tuition might hamper the prospects of this sector. Meanwhile many decent jobs have gone in the ‘race to the bottom’. Good apprenticeships and a regular wage disappear for the ‘gig economy’.

I agree about neoliberalism.  But isn't the EU somewhat that way?  The US?  I don't know, I lose track.  But unless one can persuade people - voters - not to be quite so acquisitive, to co-operate with one another, to share you get stuck in the mud. 
For most of my adult life I've been guided by the kindness of a homeless woman who shared her supper with me.  She had nothing much but shared what she had.
Make of that what you will.