February 20, 2006

Kerry Saved Me from Hicksville

From a letter in today's Herald justifying the state service for Australia's richest dead man:
I am in year 12 and thanks to Mr Packer's charity have been privileged to attend Ascham School as a boarder since sixth grade on a full scholarship. Without this gift I would have been relegated to a country high school and would not have experienced or learnt half as much.
It's funny coz it's true. A' course, I hope the locals won't be waiting for you, lassie, when you venture home for the hols.

Naysayers might argue that a man who had millions to throw away on the geegees could have tossed a few in the direction of the public education system (perhaps, who knows, by simply paying a fair amount of tax), rather than merely sponsoring a few toff changelings from less fortunate circumstances, but these sort of commos clearly fail to understand that a good education is like the old school tie: it isn't worth much if everybody has one.