Bullingdon Club Britain: The Ransacking of a Nation

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The 15 students were served 24 bottles of red wine, 24 bottles of white wine, and plenty of champagne. The damage they inflicted ran into hundreds of dollars. But the UK’s and the North East’s complicity in sportswashing is far from the end of the story, or its beginning. Other past members include former defence minister Alan Clark, broadcaster David Dimbleby and Princess Diana’s brother Charles Spencer.

Robinson, James (18 October 2009). "David Dimbleby: Ringmaster of our democracy". The Observer. London: 18 October 2009 . Retrieved 5 May 2012. The thing about Latinate words is they’re evasive,” Johnson admitted at a Latin-themed charity event in 2007, yet the media has lapped up this act ever since. [1]In 2013, Johnson – who reputedly still greets former members with a cry of “Buller, Buller, Buller” – described it as “a truly shameful vignette of almost superhuman undergraduate arrogance, toffishness and twittishness”. He added: “But at the time you felt it was wonderful to be going round swanking it up.” The furniture smashed, the china shattered, the jolly gaggle of toffs from the Bullingdon Club that summer evening decided to visit a friend in Oxford. He didn’t answer the door when they came calling. Someone threw a flowerpot through a window. Someone else pulled the drainpipe from the wall trying to climb in. The terrified student called the police and the Bullers fled the scene. Local Bobbies with sniffer dogs located a couple of lads ‘whilst two future politicians escaped altogether.’ But Johnson was not the only prime minister in bed with well-heeled hedonism. Both he and his rival, David Cameron, were members of Oxford’s notorious fraternity, the Bullingdon Club. That we allowed that tendency to trash restaurants to take power and trash the country may reveal more about our repressed sense of revelry and riot than we care to admit.

David Cameron's and Boris Johnson's period in the Bullingdon Club was examined in the UK Channel 4 docu-drama When Boris Met Dave, broadcast on 7 October 2009 on More 4. An Observer Magazine article in October 2011 reviewed George Osborne's membership of the club. [43] Cultural references [ edit ] A photograph of club members in their Bullingdon tailcoats taken in 1987 has been repeatedly republished since Cameron became Tory leader. The picture made him “cringe”, he said. “We all did stupid things when we are young and we should learn the lessons.”

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Britain has had a total of 55 prime ministers. Of these 20 attended Eton, 7 went to Harrow and 6 Westminster. Throughout almost two-thirds of modern history, we have been ruled by the same class with the same objectives and, for the most part, the same tailor.