The thing with the idea of “competition” is that it long ago became an idea which could be used to justify practically any cost. It replaced all those notions of efficiency, preference-satisfaction and so on by which utilitarians used to set so much store and which now appear quaint by comparison. Although in the process it became largely meaningless: does it mean comparative advantage? If so, then we can’t compete with the Chinese in any meaningful way, as we have no indigenous manufacturing capacity. This kind of fact wouldn’t be changed if every single school leaver left with 12 A* GCSEs.

And if by competition is meant some mysterious process by which we get to be better than anyone else at developing some cutting edge technology or other, then this is hardly well-served by a majority of people being able to read and write to a certain standard – in fact, it’s best served (as it is now) by public funding of specialist educational institutions and international collaboration with the Chinese, Russians, Indians, Japanese and maybe Americans which is going on all the time anyway.

Or maybe it means the kind of “competition” that apparently goes on all the time between “world cities” for conference business, tourism and so forth, which seems to be envisioned (by journos and politicians at least) as a kind of mad rampage in which a more or less constant number of more or less well-heeled people go dashing around from world city to world city, pulled this way and that by which location has the highest building, the swishest conference facilities, or the hugest airport. Which again has nothing to do with “skills”, unless the entire population of each world city is drafted en-masse into low-paid, low-status service sector jobs… ah, maybe that’s it.

But that still leaves the rest of the population. And that suggests the process of education is still about more than “competition”; the government has ultimately to justify it as being about something along the lines of “enabling people to play a full part in society” or somesuch.

And that lets the philosophy, archaeology and ceramics tutors back in, waving the tools of their trade belligerently and demanding cash.

However, the idea that lifelong learning is being subordinated to the economy, skills gap and competitiveness (etc, etc) must be a given. Sad to relate but there ain’t no profit in adult ed philosophy courses not when we’ve got a billion plus Chinese in ‘competition’. (Has anyone thought about co-operating with these buggers? just a throw away thought) As you say, everything has to be measured according to ‘key skills’ criteria squeezing the last drop of wit, imagination and individuality from ourselves, draining us of all reason and hope (or at least that’s what I felt when I came across it).

I did once come up with the notion that we are now living within some sort of capitalist communist system. Whereby you are simply slotted in to your economic niche as soon as you can make a profit, flogged for all your profit-making worth and then retired to flounder in some goddam awful rest home for the terminally uneconomical (Scarborough perhaps). Given that we are supposed to be in fear of our (economic) lives from China (which in practice means what exactly?) I suppose again if this might be the case, because people wanting to return to learning after the decades you mentioned become a threat, nae a subversion to the system. You can’t make a profit if your studying (or at least, not as much). What if instead of ‘from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs’, we have ‘from each according to his profitability, to each according to there’s’. Thus only the virtuous as defined as those that contribute to profit can only enjoy the successes of the country, bugger the rest, and bugger you if you want to study philosophy. And as I appear to be hurtling into a previous rant, I’ll stop right about now.

Can you send me any current e-mail address please. You are either willfully ignoring me (boo, hiss and an evening with Boris Johnson as punishment) or I’m using a redundant address.