'Obscured Meanings:' 'Legacy Preference...' OxCam

You wouldn't believe that such extraordinary lengths are taken to cause a deliberate obscuring of facts about even quite recent history on the internet - but it is so.

I have personal knowledge of people who attended Oxford or Cambridge Universities... ...who literally screwed up their degree certificates and threw them in the waste paper bin. You probably won't believe this but it is true that a handful of people did do this.

When you look up the phrase 'legacy preference to University' you will find a consistent swathe of publications on-line almost everywhere talking about the abolishing 'long long ago' of preferential granting of applications from those whose family members HAD ATTENDED one or other of the great Universities. Therefore to make it seem that entry by academic merit must be 'the natural opposite' and the 'democratic and fairer' system that would replace 'family privilege' and unfair 'entitlement.'  

Now...

...that is not what the phrase really means though, does it!

So why do they do this kind of thing? Is there a propaganda element at stake? 

Most certainly. Of course.

And I am going to point this out in an attempt to pin-point the era around which things went badly off the rails for the United Kingdom government and society at the top where decisions are made.

Functionally the matter had been simmering away literally for decades and might have been the product of Post-War social disconnectedness; too many leaders having died in the war itself, too much of the fabric of society that had gone into positive development and social and intellectual progress being destroyed.

The UK Labor Party Prime Minister James Callaghan was at the core 'turning point' really - he shifted to the Right on economic policy with the effect that the purely (IE 'only' or extremely predominantly) meritocratic basis for academic position - which was prized by the economically poorer Left Wing people - was abandoned in favor of the most simplistic economic rationale.

This looks like a scene from the Sony Playstation '007' game.
Haspel knows the plots that have been foiled BY THE CIA, not MI6.
Sir Richard Dearlove thinks Islamic Terrorism is 'overstated.'

You see, up until Thatcher, entry to Oxford and Cambridge was also in some percentage (not only, but at least to a certain percentage) facilitated to favor those WHOSE PARENTS OR CLOSE FAMILY MEMBERS HAD EXCELLED ACADEMICALLY AT THOSE UNIVERSITIES...

It was not merely, 'that a family member had attended.' 

Now this is meaningfully different to just some kind of weak idea of patronage. This is about the perceived value of a continuance of academic legacy. Legacy preference in some degree provides some small hint at a moral compass!

It seems to the dumbed-down only a subtle and small difference, but it was significant enough in the minds of those who threw their 'qualifications' away in disgust, to really matter. And they knew, and foresaw - very correctly - that there would inevitably be a rise to the very top by those highly corruptible people who were motivated by money and power, and who of course, had in fact already used money and power to get places anyway. At every step and stage - be it Eton or some other name school - how much you paid saw to it that your grades and chances benefited, and thus, all else just fell to you like so many dominoes. And this also implied that not only did those who paid money 'get places,' but certainly, there was already a pervasive atmosphere dominated by those who were in fact permissive about ego and 'advantages through bribes.'

This is the crude kinds of people who are running the United Kingdom now - and about whom Julian Assange says 'they are a nefarious lot who are in control of the place.' He bluntly warned Donald Trump not to visit. I take a slightly different perspective from Assange's - which is namely, that the same kinds of people are also cowards and only can do things behind someone's back and in the shadows. They will, I think, smile thinly on the outside to Trump, were he to venture to London, and make a show in public. But they are not to be trusted in any serious way and you cannot guarantee what they might be up to behind your back; that much I also hold to be true along with Mr. Assange.