Toby Young to help lead government's new universities regulator

[LeftishBrit]

8. Sigh, yes

Also I think that both Boris and Toby Young represent a particular group: the 1980s clever-clever student journalist grown up (or not grown up!). Although I mostly avoided such people successfully (they would have found people like me 'boring' and called us 'gnomes', 80s undergraduate-speak for swots and nerds; I found them utterly repellent as human beings), I was occasionally exposed to them, though I don't think that I ever met these specific individuals. They turned student newspapers into slimy gossip-columns; sneered at anyone whom they could sneer at; and were ruthlessly and unpleasantly ambitious. It's my impression that current student journalism is mostly not nearly as bad. I remember even at the time thinking that this was the lot that would end up running the country, and messing it up.