PRIVILEGED WHITE MEN RULE: The new UK cabinet set up by privately-educated, upper-class, white, male Super-Toffs David Cameron and Nicholas Clegg.
"I will appoint a cabinet that looks like America..." -- Bill Clinton (1992)
"I will appoint a cabinet that looks like Eton..." -- David Cameron (2010)
The first quote is genuine. It was a pledge made by Bill Clinton when he was running for President of the United States in 1992. And Clinton kept the pledge -- creating a multi-ethnic, diverse cabinet with strong female and minority representation. A welcome change after the white male enclaves of Reagan and Bush Senior (replete with minimalist tokenism). It was a policy of diversification that was echoed in the administration formed by UK Prime Minister Tony Blair in 1997.
The second quote was never publicly uttered by the Right Honourable David William Donald "Dave" Cameron during the recent UK election campaign. But to all intents and purposes, it might have been.
In the election, a whopping 23% of the eligible electorate voted for Cameron's Conservative Party (36% of the 65% who bothered to vote). But that 23% -- coupled with the support of the party led by fellow toff the Right Honourable Nicholas William Peter "Nick" Clegg's Liberal Democrats (a colossal 15% of the electorate) was enough to enable Cameron to cobble together a coalition government of dubious moral validity. (77% of the electorate didn't vote for the Conservative Party that leads the government). But blue-blood Cameron is what the British nation got for its sins (which include stunning amnesia about the 18 years of Tory rule 1979-1997 and the misbegotten notion that nothing could be worse than the Labour Party with or without Gordon Brown.)
If Cameron HAD been asked what his cabinet would look like -- doubtlessly he would have provided a focus-group tested response full of platitudes about women and minorities. Fortunately for this true-blue Tory son of the landed gentry -- he was never asked that question -- so he has been able to pick a cabinet that looks like his alma-mater -- Britain's most exclusive, elite, boys-only private school Eton.
26 upper-class, privileged white boys. With a staff of 4 females to clean up after them. (One of those four being a token minority woman in a sari. "I say! How terribly exotic!")
So much for Cameron & Clegg's much-touted "change" and "fairness".
A "change" back to the 19th century colonialism Cameron and Clegg's parties are rooted in.
And a "fairness" of skin that comes about when 98% of the cabinet is caucasian in a multi-racial nation...
CAMERON & CLEGG's COLONIAL HERITAGE: "A prayer's as good as bayonet on a day like this"