Of course, the title above refers to my response to the death of Professor A. H. Halsey. No doubt his family and friends are grieving for a man who seems, from his obit in The Telegraph, to have led an unblemished private life. I, however, am concerned with his public life in which, I would suggest, he probably did more damage to Britain than the the best efforts of the Luftwaffe during WWII!
Halsey was one of those products of what might be called the 'respectable working class' who took advantage of the educational system and after gaining a place at a Grammar School eventually went on to university and finally - and this tells you all you need to know about him - he became Britain's first professor of Sociology! To provide his full title I quote from Wiki:
"He was Emeritus Professor of Social and Administrative Studies at the Department of Social Policy and Intervention, University of Oxford".
Just pause and roll those various titles across your tongue - "Social and Administrative Studies", "Social Policy and Intervention". In other words, everything that has slowly but irrevocably strangled the life out of what was once a thriving and flourishing society getting on with its business with minimal government interference. The vomit-inducing irony - yes, for once this is an irony I detest - is that this man who spent a lifetime whispering at the elbow of ministers of education was a man who had risen by his own efforts through the very education system which he then spent his life destroying!
Truly, sometimes there can be nothing more dangerous than a foolish man imbued with what he thinks are good intentions!
