Follow the rumour from her, to him, to this:

I'm sick of all this whining following good A-level results about what second-rate subjects students choose. What did the older generation learn with their supposedly breathtaking mastery of long division etc? They learnt to attack and exploit the poor all over the world, abandon the vulnerable of their own society, and generally not give a damn about anything apart from the statistics of "progress".

Maybe with our more humanities-based curriculum, with its emphasis on finding something for everyone, we might learn that numbers are to serve people, and not the other way around.

Says Peter Briffa:

There's one for the root causes brigade: long division turns you into a rampaging capitalist.

If only it were that easy.