From the original article :
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Children don't believe it; we all know that the guy who comes top in maths is smart; the guy who comes top in English is smart;
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haha, no. I've never even heard of people respecting English as a subject.
Also, I think he might be misunderstanding how grades are assigned. An A grade in maths is not necessarily going to be worth more than any other A grade because the inherent "difficulty" of mathematics (if you can talk about such a thing meaningfully, I doubt you can) is going to be factored into the exam / grading system. This is not to say that all A-Levels are equally valuable (what does that even mean?) - as that's obviously going to depend on the situation. Someone having a A in Physics would hold very little value with me if I was recruiting for a customer service position (it might even stand slightly against them on a subconscious level).
Anyway, I did Business Studies at A-Levels. It actually did serve as quite a good introduction to economics (based on later economics classes I've since taken in my degrees) although obviously it's not as focused since you've got lots of other crap to cover too (e.g. critical path analysis and that sort of thing).
But yeah, perhaps the fact I did Business Studies at A-Level instead of Economics (which my school didn't offer) had an effect on how my application was received at the LSE (my first - and rejected - choice out of the original six applications). But then again it's far more likely that it was my utterly shit personal statement and absolute lack of any sort of extra-curricular activities. Overall, it doesn't make much difference. It'd be nice if all schools offered the same subjects but if you're unlucky enough to be in the disadvantaged sections then I'm sure there's plenty of ways of overcoming it or making up the time. A friend of mine spent another six months after A-Levels doing a stand-alone Economics A-Level so he could get the university place he wanted. It'd have been if he could have avoided that, but it didn't exactly kill him.
One presumes that if you go anywhere decent you're going to be interviewed anyway and therefore these types of rules (i.e. requiring specific A-Levels) are mainly about reducing the strain on admissions (again, I'm presuming).
Of course, overall A-Levels are pretty much worthless, they're poorly designed and form another wretched part of the overall rotten system. Oh yeah and grades demean the human spirit ra ra ra. But in particular they're not going to be of any use in teaching practical skills (like doing presentations) but to be fair they're not really mean to either.
edit : Apologies for duplicating points already made in the thread, I've not read all of it yet.