On 9-8-2009 16:47, Stephen wrote:
> On Sun, 09 Aug 2009 00:12:14 +0200, andrel <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> 
>> I think it was meant as a reference to the British system where you can 
>> only elect politicians that have been to one or two colleges. It is 
>> scarily true of most democracies though.
> 
> I think that Jim is right it is more a criticism of the American political
> system. In Britain we have effectively had a three party system since the late
> 19th century and have a few small parties and independent members of parliament.
> 
> You may be being confused with our class system where the majority of English
> MPs have traditionally been educated at either Oxford or Cambridge.

I think that is basically saying that all politicians (except local 
ones?) are either from Oxford or Cambridge, but perhaps I was indeed 
more thinking of Eton. I am not extremely familiar with British 
political system, but I had the impression that it is a bit of an old 
boys network, where the labour and the tory leader had been always 
together at school except when the age difference was too big.
You may both be right that it is about the US system, I think it was in 
a later book and he was more exposed to the strangeness of the US at 
that time than merely to the silliness of British politics.

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