Letters | 9 April 2011

Expensive manners

Sir: Ivor Roberts says that Oxford University is ‘taking the very best, whatever their background’ — and is not to blame if state schools no longer produce the very best (‘Oxford under siege’, 2 April). And yet studies have found that state-school pupils perform better at Oxford than their privately educated peers, relative to GCSE results. When his university is admitting as many state-school duds as private ones, we’ll know that its admissions tutors are no longer swayed by expensive manners at interview. For now, that remains open to doubt.

Benjamin Rockbird
London SE15



Cuts tactics


Sir: Charles Moore (Notes, 2 April) quotes the late, great Auberon Waugh on cuts. In his Private Eye diary for March 7 1980, Waugh wrote: ‘Civil servants in every department, asked to propose expenditure cuts, are suggesting whatever will save least money and cause maximum public outcry. But the government has not woken up to this yet…’ It is clear from the interview with Eric Pickles that the Cameron government is wide awake to these tactics.