Affirmative action, English style

Labour never seems to run out of ways of penalising people who are guilty of nothing else but achieving in life.

If you're unfortunate enough to have parents who went on to higher education, you might yourself be denied a place at University under Labour's new plans. I can understand the Government wanting to help the less fortunate, but this is going a bit far. For many of us, our parents were the first generation who ever went to University. They got there on merit, not because of privilege. So what exactly are we guilty of?

As far as Labour are concerned, if you've achieved something in life, it must have been at someone else's expense. Britain seems to be moving rapidly back to the class obsessed 70s.

Of course the smarter ones among us will find ingenious ways of getting around the new rules. Charles Moore (who is University educated) has already come up with some ideas...

Perhaps we should quickly take our children out of their schools and put them in what Alastair Campbell once called a "bog-standard comprehensive". Perhaps we should get divorced. I could marry a non-graduate black and refuse to pay my ex-wife, now a single mother, any maintenance. That would make our children's background look less shameful.

One could even consider disability. It is said that Indian beggars sometimes mutilate their children so that they look the part when they beg. Should we urge our offspring to explore amputation? Perhaps a university education really will cost an arm and a leg.