We live in age where we want the sound bite more than the details. As such the 'Class War' term suits all the media outlets. Like most complicated things what is going on is not black and white but many shades of grey - as this thread shows.
Eton is not responsible for producing 'the upper class' - if we all valued education then we would be prepared to pay taxes at the level which is spent on Eton on each student. We (and that is all us) have chosen not to. As a parent, I want the best for my children and if I can afford it, why would I not give them a head start by an excellent education?
We used to have grammar schools, but these were seen to be unfair. We now have comprehensives which do not seem to be able to achieve the same results, but meant that we did not end up with the poor education dolled out by the secondary modern's.
Perhaps part of the problem is that we are not prepared to pay our MPs an attractive salary. As such it means only those with another form of income can actually become an MP. If we want the best then it will cost.
Perhaps the question we should ask is why the cabinet is full of Old Etonions? Why have not other equally capable people chosen politics as a career? Part of this is the 'old boys club' but perhaps part is that Eton somehow manages to produce people who want to be involved in running the country
We need to accept some big hard facts. We have run out of money and somehow need to reduce our demand for it. We cannot keep the same level of benefits (and grow in benefits) without being able to pay for them. Add in the fact that we are all living longer and we need to budget for a life to 85+, more costly health care, a shrinking working population and it becomes a problem to which there is no answer, let alone an easy answer.
The easy solution is the blame the rich. They must be fault because they are rich and we should tax them into the ground. Therefore we have a class war! We are all in s**t together - the problem we have is that for people at the lower end of the income scale even a very small reduction has a huge impact.
As I said, there is probably not an answer - we probably don't even know the question we need to answer