The Political Thread

[Christov]

Daily reminder; not everybody on benefits is a lazy workshy cunt.

Just saying. It is remarkably easy to slip into generalisations, but I trust this board is smarter than that.

[House of Usher]

Just now watching Iain Duncan Smith reading aloud an evidently very difficult speech he hasn't read through in advance (or seen before?) thus tripping up over the parsing.

The Labour spokesman's response is much more clearly annunciated and his delivery is more measured, probably because he has rehearsed it and probably because he wrote it himself.

[Peter Wolf]

Just now watching Iain Duncan Smith reading aloud an evidently very difficult speech he hasn't read through in advance (or seen before?) thus tripping up over the parsing.

The Labour spokesman's response is much more clearly annunciated and his delivery is more measured, probably because he has rehearsed it and probably because he wrote it himself.

I learnt to read out loud to others at school without having previously read the material i was reading.

Rehearsing speeches.  

[House of Usher]

I learnt to read out loud to others at school without having previously read the material i was reading.

Well, they obviously didn't teach it at the school Iain Duncan Smith went to.

[Peter Wolf]

I learnt to read out loud to others at school without having previously read the material i was reading.

Well, they obviously didn't teach it at the school Iain Duncan Smith went to.

What is even funnier than that is Teleprompters.



The next thing you know is they will need someone else to read it for them.

[Peter Wolf]

After today's escapade at the student fees protest, and as someone who has recently left university, allow me to say that I find it difficult to sympathise with rioting students, irrespective of the issue at hand.

-Why are French students rioting about the retirement age? Most of them are barely twenty! They haven't done a day's work in their indolent lives! And the French retire earlier than most places in Europe as it is, so their petulant bleating (and smashing up of streets) completely fails to move me.

-It's all very well to talk about the halcyon Avalon of free university grants, but back in the 1970s 14% of British school leavers went on to university. Now it has more than trebled to 43%. Something's got to give somewhere. 

-For ****'s sake, for the umpteenth ****ing time, fees are not a barrier to entry[/u]. Under the student loan system you only have to pay once the degree is completed, and then only once you've reached a certain income level, so your background is irrelevant - and before you leap down my throat condemning me as the typical insensitive Tory, you should know that Vince Cable said the exact same thing.

We currently have what is misleadingly called a system of 'tuition fees'. Many people believe, wrongly that when students arrive at university they or their parents are required to get out their chequebooks, or wallets, and pay more than £3000 for a year's tuition.

The idea that students are repelled from higher education by fees owes much to this erroneous belief.

In reality of course most students meet these costs by taking a student loan, payable direct from income after graduation when earning a reasonable salary.

Cable goes on to criticise the current system in that someone like me (an archaeologist) has to pay a similar amount to a stockbroker with a higher salary, but there is no financial barrier stopping a salt-of-the-earth blue-collar honest-crust flat-cap working-class person from applying for law or medicine or any other upwardly mobile degree should he so desire. To insinuate otherwise is fearmongering agitprop from people deliberately trying to provoke a false crisis. In short, lies.

The clue is in the word "Loan"

Students are signing up to a loan which of course has interest added to it @ 3 points higher than the RPI.Also the Govt knows that most wont be able to pay off the full amount very quickly if at all so they work out a deduction scheme where pay is deducted @ 9 percent while still adding interest on top of the loan.The worse off in work after graduating will pay more interest on the loan than the better off.

Thats the bit you missed out

Its immoral to charge the student interest on top of the tuition fees.

[House of Usher]

Being as cynical as I am, I had to agree with my reactionary friend on another message board that the £9,000 a year fees are fair on poor students, only with the proviso that they never earn as much as £21,000 a year so long as they live, thus never having to repay a penny of their borrowing. We were, both of us, quite pleased with this elegant solution, which is course a bit of a gamble. How fair the higher fees are will depend entirely upon how certain you feel that you will never enter employment in a professional occupation subsequent to graduation. So long as your aspirations are more modest than to want to be a school teacher or a nurse, it looks like a fairly safe bet to me.

[Peter Wolf]

Being as cynical as I am, I had to agree with my reactionary friend on another message board that the £9,000 a year fees are fair on poor students, only with the proviso that they never earn as much as £21,000 a year so long as they live, thus never having to repay a penny of their borrowing. We were, both of us, quite pleased with this elegant solution, which is course a bit of a gamble. How fair the higher fees are will depend entirely upon how certain you feel that you will never enter employment in a professional occupation subsequent to graduation. So long as your aspirations are more modest than to want to be a school teacher or a nurse, it looks like a fairly safe bet to me.

Interest on the loans is unfair because those who can afford to pay the tuition fees upfront will not have to take out the loan so therefore student loans are unfair in principle.

Even though a student who pays interest on the loan doesnt get anything more from the university than the student who pays upfront it costs them a LOT more in the long term.

This hardly seems fair to me.Everyone has an equal opportunity to go to University but the system favors the better off.

Debt slavery sounds fair to me and whats more if you are not from a better off background if you want to go to university you have NO choice but to take the offer of the loan which to me is exploitative.there is no need to "insinuate" anything either as this is all fact so its fair to say that the loan is off putting to some especially in this economic climate and you could say that while its not actually a barrier it is a deterrent.

This is hardly fair.

The comment i am referring to was Bollocks.

[Old Tankie]

Peter, why is it immoral to charge interest on tuition fees?  We all need a roof over our head and to achieve that most of us have to take out a mortgage.  Is it immoral, therefore, for the banks to charge us interest on our loans?

I would point out, it's not compulsory to go to university.  Most of the people I know who have achieved a good standard of living are self-employed builders, plumbers, electricians, etc., etc.  The most required attributes in the modern jobs market are a willingness to work hard, self-reliance, and flexibility, not a BA in Fine Art!!

There must be jobs out there, 'cos if I'm reading one of Ush's posts correctly, he's got three of them!!

[House of Usher]

This is hardly fair.

You are, of course, quite right.

There must be jobs out there, 'cos if I'm reading one of Ush's posts correctly, he's got three of them!!

Nah, I haven't got a job. What I have got is work. With two working adults in the house we can pay for mortgage, bills and food. Nice though it is not to have an employer, it's nicer to know exactly how much money you've got coming in from one week to the next.

[WoD]

my argument here is simply that if these rules were in place when I had the opportunity to attend university I could simply not have afforded to go. Simple as that...just not enough money and too much debt for me to consider going.

I agree that Students should contribute towards the University funding, but not to this extent.

[Peter Wolf]

Peter, why is it immoral to charge interest on tuition fees?  We all need a roof over our head and to achieve that most of us have to take out a mortgage.  

I would point out, it's not compulsory to go to university.  Most of the people I know who have achieved a good standard of living are self-employed builders, plumbers, electricians, etc., etc.  The most required attributes in the modern jobs market are a willingness to work hard, self-reliance, and flexibility, not a BA in Fine Art!!

There must be jobs out there, 'cos if I'm reading one of Ush's posts correctly, he's got three of them!!

"Is it immoral, therefore, for the banks to charge us interest on our loans?"

Yes it is as banks generate credit out of nothing and charge interest on the loan.Its all about generating as much income as possible in return so the whole system is exploitative and immoral.

I havent got much time for Strawman arguments as before i know it another half an hour has gone by.I am working as there are jobs out there and i am self employed.

[Old Tankie]

Ush, am I right in saying that, under the proposed new system, you won't be able to pay your student fees up front?  Also, if "wealthy" students want to pay their student loans off early, isn't there going to be a penalty charge?  Or have I got that wrong?

[House of Usher]

I would point out, it's not compulsory to go to university.  Most of the people I know who have achieved a good standard of living are self-employed builders, plumbers, electricians, etc., etc.  The most required attributes in the modern jobs market are a willingness to work hard, self-reliance, and flexibility, not a BA in Fine Art!!

Which modern jobs market are you talking about? My family were all self-employed trades people. They did very well out of self-reliance, flexibility and hard work in the '60s and '70s, when they were earning more than anyone we knew who had an employer. They did alright in the '80s too, although the the earnings premium for being self-employed diminished a fair bit for them. By the time the last recession started, a lot of them were scrabbling around for any job in their field that had a regular paycheck in it.

In the current job market, there are a lot of piddly little jobs that consist of a few hours here and there, because employers have got wise to the fact that they can vary the size of their workforce from one day to the next by not offering any full-time contracts and using agency workers to minimize their payroll commitment. It was a lot easier to achieve a good standard of living when employers offered full-time contracts; it's not so easy when they only offer 4 hours a day to cover their busiest times.

As for qualifications, the one that employers want these days is NVQ3, in all kinds of bogus shit like event stewardship and customer service; if you have one of those it doesn't matter whether or not you can spell or add up.

[House of Usher]

Ush, am I right in saying that, under the proposed new system, you won't be able to pay your student fees up front?  Also, if "wealthy" students want to pay their student loans off early, isn't there going to be a penalty charge?  Or have I got that wrong?

Sorry, not certain. As far as I know, wealthy students are allowed to just pay cash up front for their fees if they want to. And no, there's not usually a penalty charge for early payment of student loans. You can pay off as much as you like as soon as you like. However, to my knowledge, it's not in any student's interest to pay off any portion of their loans before they absolutely have to.