""Elitism" lies not in enabling the able, but in devaluing those other than the elite. Subsidising the opera while doing nothing to aid (and indeed much to attack) folk music is elitist.""

No need to lecture me on the definition of elitism, which is of course, exactly as you state.

It is New Labour which needs educating, since the use the false spectre of "elitism" (their meaning of the word) to stifle the able and keep the young as uniformly dumb as is necessary to prevent their seeing the shortcomings of the party in government.

At the age of eleven, I was way ahead of my younger brother, who was not academically inclined, so I won a scholarship to a top school and he went to that old fashioned second choice, a Secondary modern. We both achieved the best we could and finished highly placed at "O" and "A" level GCE.

He is a very talented artist and teacher, who achieved a masters in fine arts working from home.

I, being low on ambition, eventually qualified as a Carpenter and Joiner.

My point is that he would have floundered at grammar school, and I did not, but neither of our careers were defined or confined by that difference.

Don T.