Thursday's Express: "It's only fair! Rishi defends £1,000 boost to pensions"
Aha, we locked down to save them and our student loans get jacked up 11%, fuck off you twat
Pay the money you borrowed and stop whining. You either benefitted with a good job of you leave the poor to pick up your tab for years pissing it up at uni wasting pensioners hard earned pittance. Stop blaming other people for your uselessness
Are the student loans running at 11%?.... thats horrendous.
What is quite amazing how completely and utterly useless young people are at asserting themselves politically. They don't seem to even realise that they are being screwed over. The NI increase went through without a murmur of dissent. Whack up taxes, change the terms of student loans, keep giving bungs to pensioners so they vote tory.... Zero opposition (or even interest) from young people. It is astonishing.
That is because most are useless. They spend a few years at uni and think they are big shots when in fact they mainly struggle to wipe their own arses. They then whine incessantly about only earning 50k while complaining that all all those nasty pensioners who worked and paid taxes for 50 years are living high on the hog on their 9k pensions.
Yep, they shouldn't go to uni. Better off with a secure job and good income, such as working on the railways.
I think I shall bid you all good day.
The forum is more than normally populated by grumpy old, white, men this morning. I shall leave you all to dribble with anger into your cornflakes.
xx
I was being tongue in cheek, echoing the PB perennial of too many of other people's children going to university, with the notion that they would be better getting proper jobs.
Do you not think there's a point to be made there? Why is 50% of people going to university the magic number? Why not 90%? 20%?
My nephew got the grades to go to uni, but chose instead to go into the Wonderful World of Work. He's now on a significantly higher salary than his friends who went to uni, and has a house (with mortgage).
One of the great education sins of the last 30 yeas has been this idea that kids must go to uni, and that kids who do not are somehow inferior.
Surely the point is that people have the choice. Get the grades, go if you want. Personally I would encourage people to get an education and see the world before locking themselves into he tedious world of work, nappies and mortgages. You’ll spend decades doing that.
You also genuinely can’t do some lines of work without some sort of tertiary education. We don’t have enough engineers in the labour force, and that’s a career that needs a degree. You can start as a technician and get an accelerated degree later, but you still need to go do it. It’s the challenge of a service based economy innt? If you want high value service with a side order of high value manufacturing you need highly educated workers. That isn’t to say there isn’t any role for skilled manual or trades work, the guy who valets my car probably earns more than me, but on an economic level it makes sense to have a lot of university graduates. As Foxy said, poor courses do not help this.
Good point.
I am conscious that this debate is old as the hills. .
Not that long ago, some challenged whether secondary education was valuable and necessary for all kids. Before that, some challenged whether a full primary education was necessary for some kids. Same debate.
Personally, I believe that university education should be an option for all kids with the grades and that kids without a history of education in their family need support to make that informed choice.
I am actually fairly negative about the value of tertiary education, despite (or perhaps because of!) my university work, but to me it is not about numbers.
My dislike is of the consumerist culture of undergraduates, the poor quality of many courses and the post university culture of credentialism in which those without formal qualifications are sidelined.
The undergraduate polling above illustrates the problem of undergraduate consumerism. "Starbucks University" as an academic friend describes it, where students do not want to be challenged, but rather to proceed through three year of socialising, leaving with an entrance ticket to a white collar middle class job. A sort of middle class finishing school.
Other than technical or vocational courses no one actually uses their degree subject, but that doesn't mean that they don't gain advantage by it. Speaking bad Latin helps our PM present a simulacrum of intelligence to the gullible, but what else in his Classics degree do we see him use? Nothing!, but we do he see him constantly using the social skills polished in the Union, and the connections thereby made.
I studied medieval English history at university. The emphasis placed on text analysis, on verifying and then questioning the veracity of sources, on developing timelines and on building strong, well-presented arguments has been pretty fundamental to the way my professional career developed. I was taught to question, question and question again. The skills I learned have been massively helpful.
The entire of education is blighted by functionalism. The sort of thinking that says the whole point of reading, arithmetic and stuff is 'so that you can get a good job' from the age of 4.
This then ends up with people who have degrees in Tibetan languages and Elamite Cuneiform having to justify these things by reference to how it is monetised.
This is a totally rubbish view of what the world is for. Yes, there are extrinsic values in education; but the fun and depth is all in the intrinsic value.
This comes down to an important question: what is the point (or points) of further education? Is it to enrich the individual? Is it to give them important life skills? Is it to teach them how to learn independently? Is it to give them skills for work? Is it to provide the country with the workforce it needs for the future? And if many of these, how do you weight them?
I am a huge believer in the value of education for education's sake. The human brain is the most complex machine in the known universe; if we weren't put on this Earth to seek knowledge and understanding of life in all its intricacies and mysteries than what the hell are we here for?
Thursday's Express: "It's only fair! Rishi defends £1,000 boost to pensions"
Aha, we locked down to save them and our student loans get jacked up 11%, fuck off you twat
Pay the money you borrowed and stop whining. You either benefitted with a good job of you leave the poor to pick up your tab for years pissing it up at uni wasting pensioners hard earned pittance. Stop blaming other people for your uselessness
Are the student loans running at 11%?.... thats horrendous.
What is quite amazing how completely and utterly useless young people are at asserting themselves politically. They don't seem to even realise that they are being screwed over. The NI increase went through without a murmur of dissent. Whack up taxes, change the terms of student loans, keep giving bungs to pensioners so they vote tory.... Zero opposition (or even interest) from young people. It is astonishing.
That is because most are useless. They spend a few years at uni and think they are big shots when in fact they mainly struggle to wipe their own arses. They then whine incessantly about only earning 50k while complaining that all all those nasty pensioners who worked and paid taxes for 50 years are living high on the hog on their 9k pensions.
Yep, they shouldn't go to uni. Better off with a secure job and good income, such as working on the railways.
I think I shall bid you all good day.
The forum is more than normally populated by grumpy old, white, men this morning. I shall leave you all to dribble with anger into your cornflakes.
xx
I was being tongue in cheek, echoing the PB perennial of too many of other people's children going to university, with the notion that they would be better getting proper jobs.
Do you not think there's a point to be made there? Why is 50% of people going to university the magic number? Why not 90%? 20%?
My nephew got the grades to go to uni, but chose instead to go into the Wonderful World of Work. He's now on a significantly higher salary than his friends who went to uni, and has a house (with mortgage).
One of the great education sins of the last 30 yeas has been this idea that kids must go to uni, and that kids who do not are somehow inferior.
Surely the point is that people have the choice. Get the grades, go if you want. Personally I would encourage people to get an education and see the world before locking themselves into he tedious world of work, nappies and mortgages. You’ll spend decades doing that.
We have enough freeloaders thank you.
Aye. The boomers that went to university all expenses paid and chose to break the earnings link for pensioners when they were working, so they didn't have to pay much to pensioners when they were working . . . then whinge about how poor pensions are when they're the ones claiming it and shaft the young.
Truly the most selfish generation that shafted their own parents and their own grandchildren, but keep repeating the bollocks about how much tax you paid.
You do realise 90% of boomers never went to university? Now about 40% of 18 year olds graduate from university.
They also paid into NI just as their parents did as well as private pension schemes for some. It was the government that broke the earnings link
You're being a bit coy there @HYUFD - it was blessed St. Margaret's government that broke the earnings link.
The reason Putin and his acolytes feel sufficiently confident to continue threatening the West is because they have invested heavily in new warships, warplanes, missiles and tanks. Major powers like Britain must do the same if they are to prevent any further acts of Russian aggression.
Really? Is there much evidence for that? I thought one of Russia's problems has been the decrepit state of a lot of their equipment.
I can't read the paywalled article but could Con Coughlin, Defence Editor, have a tiny interest in, er, more defence spending?
Incidentally, has anyone noticed the uncanny resemblance between Coughlin and Peter Mannion?
Russian equipment has been fine. The biggest Russian problem has been a manpower shortage - they've been driving around mostly empty armoured personnel carriers. That and logistics. And strategy and tactics. And middle and training.
A lot of the Russian equipment is pretty good. Or at least it was, before it was destroyed.
I'd argue the number of tanks that have been destroyed with the turrrets attempting to break the height record shows there is a rather significant problem with their tanks design philosophy.
It’s the auto loader I believe. They wanted to cut a crew member to reduce their manpower requirements and improve the ergonomics of the tank, so T series after the 64 have an auto loading mechanism. If you hit the turret bustle the warhead or penetrator will go straight into the auto loading magazine and pop the ammunition reserve. I don’t believe there’s protection between the primary magazine and secondary magazine in the floor so you can re-enact the sinking of the Hood. Abrams has a loader and has a huge, heavy loading door around a wet magazine which stops the whole lot going up at once.
You're up and about early this morning Malc! On the other hand we don't seem to have settled down to a steady argument about anything; bit bitty! I suppose we're waiting for tomorrow and the by-election results.
Incidentally I am now dictating this but having to correct it afterwards; for example 'bitty' in the previous paragraph came out as 'bitchy! Should I have left it unchanged?
There’s a nice argument about percentages of uni educated workers to be had if you fancy chipping in. I need to find some suntan lotion because it’s roasting here and I’m deploying equipment in a field.
My tertiary education was at a time when many professionals learnt on the job. For example my friend who wanted to be a solicitor left school at 16 and went to work for a local firm, taking the professional exams. Yes he worked, yes he got money but he didn't mix with a lot of other people outside his own area. As a pharmacist I went to a technical college and did the professional examinations: a two-year full time course plus a years practical. That did mean I mixed with people from outside Southeast Essex! My wife was a teacher; two year f/t course plus practical training; fortunately that was near the college I went to and that's how we got together! None of the three of us have degrees! Although the NHS subsequently supported me in doing. a Management MA. However my grandson did a completely different course; Sports Science degree and then on-the-job teacher training. He seems to be a good teacher; now doing a headship course.
Both my wife and I valued the experience of leaving home and meeting new people. As did my grandson,
This is a very good point. I know quite a few people, intelligent with good jobs, engineering and stuff like that, who got their qualifications through apprenticeships and the like. They earn very good money, but they have never left here. They hang out with the people they grew up with, holiday with people they went to school with. There's nothing wrong with that, each to their own I don't want to sound like I'm sneering at them because I'm not, they're my friends and acquaintances too, but it does, I think, reinforce the parochialism and insularity that I can see round here.
I got away for a few years, uni and that - I never intended to move back here permanently, but then life happened - and mixed and worked with people from around the country, from around Europe and beyond. It did me a lot of good.
I think it would be a poorer country if we cut numbers going to university, because it means fewer working-class kids going to university, less mixing with people beyond their milieu and a greater insularity. Which I guess is precisely what this government would like to see.
Thanks Mr M. Further to my comments eldest granddaughter went to a Northern University from south Essex and has stayed up north; she's been back but now has no desire to come back to Essex to live. Also both my sons spent time out of the country during their degree courses. One son had an Erasmus trip to Germany; the other an exchange year in Texas. Those options would not have been available, but for university!
That's just not true though. My sister, who I mentioned before does not have a degree, has still spent time in New York working. An old schoolfriend, who also didn't go for a degree, spent a long time in Nepal with VSO.
There are, and should be, opportunities for young people to have all sorts of adventures, whether they go to university or not.
Thursday's Express: "It's only fair! Rishi defends £1,000 boost to pensions"
Aha, we locked down to save them and our student loans get jacked up 11%, fuck off you twat
Pay the money you borrowed and stop whining. You either benefitted with a good job of you leave the poor to pick up your tab for years pissing it up at uni wasting pensioners hard earned pittance. Stop blaming other people for your uselessness
Are the student loans running at 11%?.... thats horrendous.
Most never pay a penny though
You over-stated your case to create board strife. Unsurprisingly.
The current pay back is 23% and expected to rise in 2023/4 to more than 50%.
Expected you dummy, bollox in other words. Bit like me expecting you to post sensible stuff in 2023, never going to happen.
What on Earth is wrong with you today? Why are you always so unspeakably rude? At his most frosty, even Leon doesn’t post in such a disgraceful manner. You’re behaving like a drunken pub boor. It is eminently reasonable for working age people to contest that an inflation indexed pensions rise (which will add significantly to national expenditure) is acceptable while they themselves are not receiving anything like that, and may be paying significant student loan repayments (the terms of which can change at a whim). If you disagree, make your arguments rather than ranting away at those who disagree.
Is there any wonder that the PB memetic pool is narrowing if this is the standard of ad-hominem argumentation which is tolerated? Do you want an echo chamber of elderly, overmonied men who just want to complain about whatever the yoof are up to now? Then there are alternatives. I started posting again because, occasionally, PB produces genuinely insightful debate in a way that only old fashioned forums do and I actually value that, even if you don’t.
Or, to TLDR all of that, I got knocked off my bike on Tuesday and it was less painful than reading your pish. Bloody well behave.
Sympathies. I'm not sure why Malcolm isn't banned, except that he's so consistently rude to almost everyone (to be fair I've not suffered myself) that people don't take it personally - it's like being abused by a drunken stranger, peculiar but not really worth worrying about.
I am surprised you are not banned for being a nasty piece of work. As you say I have never said a bad thing about you yet you want me banned. Pompous hypocritical and plain nasty.
nippy through the string vest this morning? 🙂
Rab C. Nesbit was a much softer and better informed character than some on here.
Thursday's Express: "It's only fair! Rishi defends £1,000 boost to pensions"
Aha, we locked down to save them and our student loans get jacked up 11%, fuck off you twat
Pay the money you borrowed and stop whining. You either benefitted with a good job of you leave the poor to pick up your tab for years pissing it up at uni wasting pensioners hard earned pittance. Stop blaming other people for your uselessness
Are the student loans running at 11%?.... thats horrendous.
What is quite amazing how completely and utterly useless young people are at asserting themselves politically. They don't seem to even realise that they are being screwed over. The NI increase went through without a murmur of dissent. Whack up taxes, change the terms of student loans, keep giving bungs to pensioners so they vote tory.... Zero opposition (or even interest) from young people. It is astonishing.
That is because most are useless. They spend a few years at uni and think they are big shots when in fact they mainly struggle to wipe their own arses. They then whine incessantly about only earning 50k while complaining that all all those nasty pensioners who worked and paid taxes for 50 years are living high on the hog on their 9k pensions.
Yep, they shouldn't go to uni. Better off with a secure job and good income, such as working on the railways.
I think I shall bid you all good day.
The forum is more than normally populated by grumpy old, white, men this morning. I shall leave you all to dribble with anger into your cornflakes.
xx
I was being tongue in cheek, echoing the PB perennial of too many of other people's children going to university, with the notion that they would be better getting proper jobs.
Do you not think there's a point to be made there? Why is 50% of people going to university the magic number? Why not 90%? 20%?
My nephew got the grades to go to uni, but chose instead to go into the Wonderful World of Work. He's now on a significantly higher salary than his friends who went to uni, and has a house (with mortgage).
One of the great education sins of the last 30 yeas has been this idea that kids must go to uni, and that kids who do not are somehow inferior.
Surely the point is that people have the choice. Get the grades, go if you want. Personally I would encourage people to get an education and see the world before locking themselves into he tedious world of work, nappies and mortgages. You’ll spend decades doing that.
This is exactly the sort of issue I mean. Firstly, the idea that they don't have an education if they don't go to uni. Secondly, that not going to uni means they won't see the world. Thirdly, that work has to be tedious (with the implication that uni is all fun and laughter).
Uni is not, and should not be, an extended childhood. It should be a way of people getting skills that will improve their job prospects and enrich their lives. If they have fun doing so, fair enough. But (whispers quietly) working your people can have fun as well.
There is so much crummy disdain for people who do not go to uni. It's especially funny when it comes from people on the left, who decry classism and create their own class where they are the snobs, looking down on the inferior people who did not go to uni.
(I don't mean you in that last para)
I just want a university education to be a choice whatever you background. There’s is more to life than work and taking time out to study is a rich part of life. You can learn things at a university that you cannot learn on the job.
Once tied into the obligations of kids and mortgages it’s hard to find the time not to work. So it’s an import choice at an important moment,
Of course it should be a choice: but there should be other choices as well. At the moment it's basically uni or work with no FE - and too many people stupidly see the latter route as the scrapheap.
For instance, I am suspicious that a nursing degree does not produce a 'better' nurse than on the job vocational training. The same is true for many other degrees.
I am glad that you get a degree these days for nursing training. My sister trained as nurse. She got her degree later. It meant a lot to her.
For choice to be real, kids from families without a history of university education need encouragement and support to go to university.
I have got no problems with nurses getting degrees. There is a problem is if the only way into nursing is having a degree.
There *are* routes to train without full-time study at university, but I think nurses should be recognized as having learnt something substantial and valuable.
It may not be fair, but for whatever reason, employers want to see qualifications. To say to nurses who didn't go to university you don't get a degree would hinder their prospects.
It's where the study of the training takes place; it's what he studied.
One of the skills of a nurse is being empathetic. Very very difficult to teach but I noticed that many of the medics with whom I come in contact seem a great deal more empathetic than their predecessors, and that's, at least in part, down to the training.
Morning all. The big election news isn’t the by-elections but clearly the general election in Jersey which was quite a good warning for the Tories amongst others.
The crazy property market which has been stoked and encouraged by previous assemblies has finally caught up with them and added to the cost of living issues resulted in a large amount of centre-left/left Deputies being elected. Quite unusual for Jersey.
The Reform Party who I think of as “soft Corbin” are the biggest single party with about 20% of seats (political parties are a relatively new thing in Jersey).
The Chief Minister and a number of other Ministers lost their seats and “None of the above” occupied the Lib Dems’ third place in many seats.
Its a good lesson for politicians that thinking there will always be enough people who are benefiting from the general wealth and won’t rock the boat by voting for a good dose of socialism works until there aren’t enough of those people and the middle classes can’t afford to buy or rent.
Coupled with a massive population problem (successive govts went for growth for growth’s sake) where now the EU taps are off for cheap hospitality staff etc the cost of living keeps shooting up - a cleaner costs at least £20 per hour and I saw a kitchen porter job being advertised yesterday for £35k p.a. Which obviously knocks on to all costs.
If it can happen in an ostensibly wealthy place like Jersey then it can happen in the UK and if the Tories don’t do anything to solve it before next election then it might not hurt Labour to be more bold and pursue an identifiably left wing agenda.
Labour already have run on a leftwing agenda, in 2017 and 2019 but lost.
The average house price for a 2 bed in Jersey is now over £600k, hence it is closer to London prices than UK average prices and hence so many in Jersey like London rent. Labour won London even in 2019
Problem is not the prices of two beds - it’s now very very hard for families to buy - avg for three bed is over £800k and for a four bed it’s £1.25m so puts the squeeze on those who are working in well paid jobs - when it just affects those who live on the edge you can get away with it but when it affects middle class families in what are well paid finance jobs who expect to be able to buy a family home then you’ve got problems.
And rental is even crazier with small market and ridiculously expensive so not a great alternative option.
Yes but as I said Jersey is now more expensive than the Home counties and almost as expensive as London whether to buy or rent.
At the last general election as I also said Labour already won London and the Tories made no progress in the Home Counties and indeed have lost Chesham and Amersham since.
It was the cheaper red wall seats Labour lost to the Tories as more there are buying their own homes and they have to win back
Thursday's Express: "It's only fair! Rishi defends £1,000 boost to pensions"
Aha, we locked down to save them and our student loans get jacked up 11%, fuck off you twat
Pay the money you borrowed and stop whining. You either benefitted with a good job of you leave the poor to pick up your tab for years pissing it up at uni wasting pensioners hard earned pittance. Stop blaming other people for your uselessness
Are the student loans running at 11%?.... thats horrendous.
What is quite amazing how completely and utterly useless young people are at asserting themselves politically. They don't seem to even realise that they are being screwed over. The NI increase went through without a murmur of dissent. Whack up taxes, change the terms of student loans, keep giving bungs to pensioners so they vote tory.... Zero opposition (or even interest) from young people. It is astonishing.
That is because most are useless. They spend a few years at uni and think they are big shots when in fact they mainly struggle to wipe their own arses. They then whine incessantly about only earning 50k while complaining that all all those nasty pensioners who worked and paid taxes for 50 years are living high on the hog on their 9k pensions.
Yep, they shouldn't go to uni. Better off with a secure job and good income, such as working on the railways.
I think I shall bid you all good day.
The forum is more than normally populated by grumpy old, white, men this morning. I shall leave you all to dribble with anger into your cornflakes.
xx
I was being tongue in cheek, echoing the PB perennial of too many of other people's children going to university, with the notion that they would be better getting proper jobs.
Do you not think there's a point to be made there? Why is 50% of people going to university the magic number? Why not 90%? 20%?
My nephew got the grades to go to uni, but chose instead to go into the Wonderful World of Work. He's now on a significantly higher salary than his friends who went to uni, and has a house (with mortgage).
One of the great education sins of the last 30 yeas has been this idea that kids must go to uni, and that kids who do not are somehow inferior.
Surely the point is that people have the choice. Get the grades, go if you want. Personally I would encourage people to get an education and see the world before locking themselves into he tedious world of work, nappies and mortgages. You’ll spend decades doing that.
You also genuinely can’t do some lines of work without some sort of tertiary education. We don’t have enough engineers in the labour force, and that’s a career that needs a degree. You can start as a technician and get an accelerated degree later, but you still need to go do it. It’s the challenge of a service based economy innt? If you want high value service with a side order of high value manufacturing you need highly educated workers. That isn’t to say there isn’t any role for skilled manual or trades work, the guy who valets my car probably earns more than me, but on an economic level it makes sense to have a lot of university graduates. As Foxy said, poor courses do not help this.
Good point.
I am conscious that this debate is old as the hills. .
Not that long ago, some challenged whether secondary education was valuable and necessary for all kids. Before that, some challenged whether a full primary education was necessary for some kids. Same debate.
Personally, I believe that university education should be an option for all kids with the grades and that kids without a history of education in their family need support to make that informed choice.
I am actually fairly negative about the value of tertiary education, despite (or perhaps because of!) my university work, but to me it is not about numbers.
My dislike is of the consumerist culture of undergraduates, the poor quality of many courses and the post university culture of credentialism in which those without formal qualifications are sidelined.
The undergraduate polling above illustrates the problem of undergraduate consumerism. "Starbucks University" as an academic friend describes it, where students do not want to be challenged, but rather to proceed through three year of socialising, leaving with an entrance ticket to a white collar middle class job. A sort of middle class finishing school.
Other than technical or vocational courses no one actually uses their degree subject, but that doesn't mean that they don't gain advantage by it. Speaking bad Latin helps our PM present a simulacrum of intelligence to the gullible, but what else in his Classics degree do we see him use? Nothing!, but we do he see him constantly using the social skills polished in the Union, and the connections thereby made.
I studied medieval English history at university. The emphasis placed on text analysis, on verifying and then questioning the veracity of sources, on developing timelines and on building strong, well-presented arguments has been pretty fundamental to the way my professional career developed. I was taught to question, question and question again. The skills I learned have been massively helpful.
The entire of education is blighted by functionalism. The sort of thinking that says the whole point of reading, arithmetic and stuff is 'so that you can get a good job' from the age of 4.
This then ends up with people who have degrees in Tibetan languages and Elamite Cuneiform having to justify these things by reference to how it is monetised.
This is a totally rubbish view of what the world is for. Yes, there are extrinsic values in education; but the fun and depth is all in the intrinsic value.
This comes down to an important question: what is the point (or points) of further education? Is it to enrich the individual? Is it to give them important life skills? Is it to teach them how to learn independently? Is it to give them skills for work? Is it to provide the country with the workforce it needs for the future? And if many of these, how do you weight them?
I am a huge believer in the value of education for education's sake. The human brain is the most complex machine in the known universe; if we weren't put on this Earth to seek knowledge and understanding of life in all its intricacies and mysteries than what the hell are we here for?
People are different. Some people take a joy in effing the ineffable; others may get no joy from seeking knowledge and understanding for its own sake, but rather do enjoy fixing the plumbing. Or cars. Or writing computer code. Or painting. Often people with have hobbies that bring them deep joy and further knowledge.
How long should 'education for education's sake' last? To a degree? Masters? Doctoral? Post-doctoral?
I'd also like to bring up the Open University: a great institution that is sadly nowhere near as prominent as it used to be.
Thursday's Express: "It's only fair! Rishi defends £1,000 boost to pensions"
Aha, we locked down to save them and our student loans get jacked up 11%, fuck off you twat
Pay the money you borrowed and stop whining. You either benefitted with a good job of you leave the poor to pick up your tab for years pissing it up at uni wasting pensioners hard earned pittance. Stop blaming other people for your uselessness
Are the student loans running at 11%?.... thats horrendous.
What is quite amazing how completely and utterly useless young people are at asserting themselves politically. They don't seem to even realise that they are being screwed over. The NI increase went through without a murmur of dissent. Whack up taxes, change the terms of student loans, keep giving bungs to pensioners so they vote tory.... Zero opposition (or even interest) from young people. It is astonishing.
That is because most are useless. They spend a few years at uni and think they are big shots when in fact they mainly struggle to wipe their own arses. They then whine incessantly about only earning 50k while complaining that all all those nasty pensioners who worked and paid taxes for 50 years are living high on the hog on their 9k pensions.
Yep, they shouldn't go to uni. Better off with a secure job and good income, such as working on the railways.
I think I shall bid you all good day.
The forum is more than normally populated by grumpy old, white, men this morning. I shall leave you all to dribble with anger into your cornflakes.
xx
I was being tongue in cheek, echoing the PB perennial of too many of other people's children going to university, with the notion that they would be better getting proper jobs.
Do you not think there's a point to be made there? Why is 50% of people going to university the magic number? Why not 90%? 20%?
My nephew got the grades to go to uni, but chose instead to go into the Wonderful World of Work. He's now on a significantly higher salary than his friends who went to uni, and has a house (with mortgage).
One of the great education sins of the last 30 yeas has been this idea that kids must go to uni, and that kids who do not are somehow inferior.
Surely the point is that people have the choice. Get the grades, go if you want. Personally I would encourage people to get an education and see the world before locking themselves into he tedious world of work, nappies and mortgages. You’ll spend decades doing that.
We have enough freeloaders thank you.
Aye. The boomers that went to university all expenses paid and chose to break the earnings link for pensioners when they were working, so they didn't have to pay much to pensioners when they were working . . . then whinge about how poor pensions are when they're the ones claiming it and shaft the young.
Truly the most selfish generation that shafted their own parents and their own grandchildren, but keep repeating the bollocks about how much tax you paid.
@BartholomewRoberts I don't often agree with your posts (though often find them informative), but this is enjoyably succint and accurate (as far as I'm aware - I didn't know that it was the baby boomer generation that broke the earnings link). Thank you.
He had to guess as he had run out of fingers and toes. He would not know a boomer if he fell over one. A whining whinging Tory snake.
You really are the most miserable poster on this site Malc. I can only assume your life is so shite you have to lash out at everyone else who might actually be enjoying theirs.
On which basis, I hope things improve for you and you learn to hate your fellow human beings a little less.
F Off Loser,I have a great life.Listening to pish from the likes of you would make anyone disappear. Stick to something you know anything about , like being a loser, rather than trying to guess. You could bore for UK at the Olympics and likely get gold.
Thursday's Express: "It's only fair! Rishi defends £1,000 boost to pensions"
Aha, we locked down to save them and our student loans get jacked up 11%, fuck off you twat
Pay the money you borrowed and stop whining. You either benefitted with a good job of you leave the poor to pick up your tab for years pissing it up at uni wasting pensioners hard earned pittance. Stop blaming other people for your uselessness
Are the student loans running at 11%?.... thats horrendous.
What is quite amazing how completely and utterly useless young people are at asserting themselves politically. They don't seem to even realise that they are being screwed over. The NI increase went through without a murmur of dissent. Whack up taxes, change the terms of student loans, keep giving bungs to pensioners so they vote tory.... Zero opposition (or even interest) from young people. It is astonishing.
That is because most are useless. They spend a few years at uni and think they are big shots when in fact they mainly struggle to wipe their own arses. They then whine incessantly about only earning 50k while complaining that all all those nasty pensioners who worked and paid taxes for 50 years are living high on the hog on their 9k pensions.
Yep, they shouldn't go to uni. Better off with a secure job and good income, such as working on the railways.
I think I shall bid you all good day.
The forum is more than normally populated by grumpy old, white, men this morning. I shall leave you all to dribble with anger into your cornflakes.
xx
I was being tongue in cheek, echoing the PB perennial of too many of other people's children going to university, with the notion that they would be better getting proper jobs.
Do you not think there's a point to be made there? Why is 50% of people going to university the magic number? Why not 90%? 20%?
My nephew got the grades to go to uni, but chose instead to go into the Wonderful World of Work. He's now on a significantly higher salary than his friends who went to uni, and has a house (with mortgage).
One of the great education sins of the last 30 yeas has been this idea that kids must go to uni, and that kids who do not are somehow inferior.
Surely the point is that people have the choice. Get the grades, go if you want. Personally I would encourage people to get an education and see the world before locking themselves into he tedious world of work, nappies and mortgages. You’ll spend decades doing that.
You also genuinely can’t do some lines of work without some sort of tertiary education. We don’t have enough engineers in the labour force, and that’s a career that needs a degree. You can start as a technician and get an accelerated degree later, but you still need to go do it. It’s the challenge of a service based economy innt? If you want high value service with a side order of high value manufacturing you need highly educated workers. That isn’t to say there isn’t any role for skilled manual or trades work, the guy who valets my car probably earns more than me, but on an economic level it makes sense to have a lot of university graduates. As Foxy said, poor courses do not help this.
Good point.
I am conscious that this debate is old as the hills. .
Not that long ago, some challenged whether secondary education was valuable and necessary for all kids. Before that, some challenged whether a full primary education was necessary for some kids. Same debate.
Personally, I believe that university education should be an option for all kids with the grades and that kids without a history of education in their family need support to make that informed choice.
I am actually fairly negative about the value of tertiary education, despite (or perhaps because of!) my university work, but to me it is not about numbers.
My dislike is of the consumerist culture of undergraduates, the poor quality of many courses and the post university culture of credentialism in which those without formal qualifications are sidelined.
The undergraduate polling above illustrates the problem of undergraduate consumerism. "Starbucks University" as an academic friend describes it, where students do not want to be challenged, but rather to proceed through three year of socialising, leaving with an entrance ticket to a white collar middle class job. A sort of middle class finishing school.
Other than technical or vocational courses no one actually uses their degree subject, but that doesn't mean that they don't gain advantage by it. Speaking bad Latin helps our PM present a simulacrum of intelligence to the gullible, but what else in his Classics degree do we see him use? Nothing!, but we do he see him constantly using the social skills polished in the Union, and the connections thereby made.
I studied medieval English history at university. The emphasis placed on text analysis, on verifying and then questioning the veracity of sources, on developing timelines and on building strong, well-presented arguments has been pretty fundamental to the way my professional career developed. I was taught to question, question and question again. The skills I learned have been massively helpful.
The entire of education is blighted by functionalism. The sort of thinking that says the whole point of reading, arithmetic and stuff is 'so that you can get a good job' from the age of 4.
This then ends up with people who have degrees in Tibetan languages and Elamite Cuneiform having to justify these things by reference to how it is monetised.
This is a totally rubbish view of what the world is for. Yes, there are extrinsic values in education; but the fun and depth is all in the intrinsic value.
This comes down to an important question: what is the point (or points) of further education? Is it to enrich the individual? Is it to give them important life skills? Is it to teach them how to learn independently? Is it to give them skills for work? Is it to provide the country with the workforce it needs for the future? And if many of these, how do you weight them?
I am a huge believer in the value of education for education's sake. The human brain is the most complex machine in the known universe; if we weren't put on this Earth to seek knowledge and understanding of life in all its intricacies and mysteries than what the hell are we here for?
100% - and (and this is the tricky part) there are diminishing returns from forcing you into formal education if, at a particular stage in life, you don't have a passion for learning.
The system needs to accommodate people coming in and out of education at different times in their life course.
The 16yo who has had a terrible time in primary and secondary education can grow up a huge amount in a apprenticeship (with its soft educational/training component), and then discover a passion for a subject that they wish to take into tertiary education at 25 (the nurse being a great example).
For reasons good and, if not bad, then certainly historical, education is almost stigmatised beyond 21 (just look at how the employability of PhDs drops off a cliff v. undergrad degrees).
And we've broken Universities by promoting people without management skills into important budgetholding jobs, with cargo-cult "business" attitudes totally inappropriate to the role of the institution. With very few exceptions, they are chewing up academics, and gaslighting them into thinking that they wouldn't survive "out in the real world" so they seem to accept any and all curbs on their responsibilities, pay, and conditions. The Unions are, IMHO, very poor as they seem to have almost totally acquiesced to this false idea.
You're up and about early this morning Malc! On the other hand we don't seem to have settled down to a steady argument about anything; bit bitty! I suppose we're waiting for tomorrow and the by-election results.
Incidentally I am now dictating this but having to correct it afterwards; for example 'bitty' in the previous paragraph came out as 'bitchy! Should I have left it unchanged?
There’s a nice argument about percentages of uni educated workers to be had if you fancy chipping in. I need to find some suntan lotion because it’s roasting here and I’m deploying equipment in a field.
My tertiary education was at a time when many professionals learnt on the job. For example my friend who wanted to be a solicitor left school at 16 and went to work for a local firm, taking the professional exams. Yes he worked, yes he got money but he didn't mix with a lot of other people outside his own area. As a pharmacist I went to a technical college and did the professional examinations: a two-year full time course plus a years practical. That did mean I mixed with people from outside Southeast Essex! My wife was a teacher; two year f/t course plus practical training; fortunately that was near the college I went to and that's how we got together! None of the three of us have degrees! Although the NHS subsequently supported me in doing. a Management MA. However my grandson did a completely different course; Sports Science degree and then on-the-job teacher training. He seems to be a good teacher; now doing a headship course.
Both my wife and I valued the experience of leaving home and meeting new people. As did my grandson,
This is a very good point. I know quite a few people, intelligent with good jobs, engineering and stuff like that, who got their qualifications through apprenticeships and the like. They earn very good money, but they have never left here. They hang out with the people they grew up with, holiday with people they went to school with. There's nothing wrong with that, each to their own I don't want to sound like I'm sneering at them because I'm not, they're my friends and acquaintances too, but it does, I think, reinforce the parochialism and insularity that I can see round here.
I got away for a few years, uni and that - I never intended to move back here permanently, but then life happened - and mixed and worked with people from around the country, from around Europe and beyond. It did me a lot of good.
I think it would be a poorer country if we cut numbers going to university, because it means fewer working-class kids going to university, less mixing with people beyond their milieu and a greater insularity. Which I guess is precisely what this government would like to see.
Thanks Mr M. Further to my comments eldest granddaughter went to a Northern University from south Essex and has stayed up north; she's been back but now has no desire to come back to Essex to live. Also both my sons spent time out of the country during their degree courses. One son had an Erasmus trip to Germany; the other an exchange year in Texas. Those options would not have been available, but for university!
That's just not true though. My sister, who I mentioned before does not have a degree, has still spent time in New York working. An old schoolfriend, who also didn't go for a degree, spent a long time in Nepal with VSO.
There are, and should be, opportunities for young people to have all sorts of adventures, whether they go to university or not.
Quite right, although can be easier with Uni backing! One grandson did a VSO type year.
Thursday's Express: "It's only fair! Rishi defends £1,000 boost to pensions"
Aha, we locked down to save them and our student loans get jacked up 11%, fuck off you twat
Pay the money you borrowed and stop whining. You either benefitted with a good job of you leave the poor to pick up your tab for years pissing it up at uni wasting pensioners hard earned pittance. Stop blaming other people for your uselessness
Are the student loans running at 11%?.... thats horrendous.
Most never pay a penny though
You over-stated your case to create board strife. Unsurprisingly.
The current pay back is 23% and expected to rise in 2023/4 to more than 50%.
Expected you dummy, bollox in other words. Bit like me expecting you to post sensible stuff in 2023, never going to happen.
What on Earth is wrong with you today? Why are you always so unspeakably rude? At his most frosty, even Leon doesn’t post in such a disgraceful manner. You’re behaving like a drunken pub boor. It is eminently reasonable for working age people to contest that an inflation indexed pensions rise (which will add significantly to national expenditure) is acceptable while they themselves are not receiving anything like that, and may be paying significant student loan repayments (the terms of which can change at a whim). If you disagree, make your arguments rather than ranting away at those who disagree.
Is there any wonder that the PB memetic pool is narrowing if this is the standard of ad-hominem argumentation which is tolerated? Do you want an echo chamber of elderly, overmonied men who just want to complain about whatever the yoof are up to now? Then there are alternatives. I started posting again because, occasionally, PB produces genuinely insightful debate in a way that only old fashioned forums do and I actually value that, even if you don’t.
Or, to TLDR all of that, I got knocked off my bike on Tuesday and it was less painful than reading your pish. Bloody well behave.
Sympathies. I'm not sure why Malcolm isn't banned, except that he's so consistently rude to almost everyone (to be fair I've not suffered myself) that people don't take it personally - it's like being abused by a drunken stranger, peculiar but not really worth worrying about.
I am surprised you are not banned for being a nasty piece of work. As you say I have never said a bad thing about you yet you want me banned. Pompous hypocritical and plain nasty.
nippy through the string vest this morning? 🙂
Good morning , started well till I encountered the fools and comic singers on here, hopefully mor eof eth intelligent posters will be around later. Convinces me to look in later on in the day when the dross and flotsam have disappeared. There are a few exceptions of course.
Thursday's Express: "It's only fair! Rishi defends £1,000 boost to pensions"
Aha, we locked down to save them and our student loans get jacked up 11%, fuck off you twat
Pay the money you borrowed and stop whining. You either benefitted with a good job of you leave the poor to pick up your tab for years pissing it up at uni wasting pensioners hard earned pittance. Stop blaming other people for your uselessness
Are the student loans running at 11%?.... thats horrendous.
What is quite amazing how completely and utterly useless young people are at asserting themselves politically. They don't seem to even realise that they are being screwed over. The NI increase went through without a murmur of dissent. Whack up taxes, change the terms of student loans, keep giving bungs to pensioners so they vote tory.... Zero opposition (or even interest) from young people. It is astonishing.
That is because most are useless. They spend a few years at uni and think they are big shots when in fact they mainly struggle to wipe their own arses. They then whine incessantly about only earning 50k while complaining that all all those nasty pensioners who worked and paid taxes for 50 years are living high on the hog on their 9k pensions.
Yep, they shouldn't go to uni. Better off with a secure job and good income, such as working on the railways.
I think I shall bid you all good day.
The forum is more than normally populated by grumpy old, white, men this morning. I shall leave you all to dribble with anger into your cornflakes.
xx
I was being tongue in cheek, echoing the PB perennial of too many of other people's children going to university, with the notion that they would be better getting proper jobs.
Do you not think there's a point to be made there? Why is 50% of people going to university the magic number? Why not 90%? 20%?
My nephew got the grades to go to uni, but chose instead to go into the Wonderful World of Work. He's now on a significantly higher salary than his friends who went to uni, and has a house (with mortgage).
One of the great education sins of the last 30 yeas has been this idea that kids must go to uni, and that kids who do not are somehow inferior.
Surely the point is that people have the choice. Get the grades, go if you want. Personally I would encourage people to get an education and see the world before locking themselves into he tedious world of work, nappies and mortgages. You’ll spend decades doing that.
We have enough freeloaders thank you.
Aye. The boomers that went to university all expenses paid and chose to break the earnings link for pensioners when they were working, so they didn't have to pay much to pensioners when they were working . . . then whinge about how poor pensions are when they're the ones claiming it and shaft the young.
Truly the most selfish generation that shafted their own parents and their own grandchildren, but keep repeating the bollocks about how much tax you paid.
You do realise 90% of boomers never went to university? Now about 40% of 18 year olds graduate from university.
They also paid into NI just as their parents did as well as private pension schemes for some. It was the government that broke the earnings link
So frigging what? For either of those points.
Many of those going to university today are doing so to go to jobs that didn't need degrees in the past, but do now. So yes, the student loan is just an age-discriminatory income tax that prior generations never had to pay.
And they never paid NI at the rate we do now, that's a lie. Since boomers have started facing retirement they've ended up voting so that tax goes from income tax to NI.
Besides if the logic that more people going to university means we can't afford to pay for university anymore, perhaps we should use that logic with pensions? Lets put the education budget and the pension budget back to what it was when today's pensioners were studying and working?
The education budget has gone down as a percentage of GDP, not up, from the past.
In 1975 education represented 7.5% of GDP and pensions were 4%
Today education is 3.9% and pensions are 6%.
What a remarkable role reversal, hey? I wonder why that's happened? 🤔
Thursday's Express: "It's only fair! Rishi defends £1,000 boost to pensions"
Aha, we locked down to save them and our student loans get jacked up 11%, fuck off you twat
Pay the money you borrowed and stop whining. You either benefitted with a good job of you leave the poor to pick up your tab for years pissing it up at uni wasting pensioners hard earned pittance. Stop blaming other people for your uselessness
Are the student loans running at 11%?.... thats horrendous.
What is quite amazing how completely and utterly useless young people are at asserting themselves politically. They don't seem to even realise that they are being screwed over. The NI increase went through without a murmur of dissent. Whack up taxes, change the terms of student loans, keep giving bungs to pensioners so they vote tory.... Zero opposition (or even interest) from young people. It is astonishing.
That is because most are useless. They spend a few years at uni and think they are big shots when in fact they mainly struggle to wipe their own arses. They then whine incessantly about only earning 50k while complaining that all all those nasty pensioners who worked and paid taxes for 50 years are living high on the hog on their 9k pensions.
Yep, they shouldn't go to uni. Better off with a secure job and good income, such as working on the railways.
I think I shall bid you all good day.
The forum is more than normally populated by grumpy old, white, men this morning. I shall leave you all to dribble with anger into your cornflakes.
xx
I was being tongue in cheek, echoing the PB perennial of too many of other people's children going to university, with the notion that they would be better getting proper jobs.
Do you not think there's a point to be made there? Why is 50% of people going to university the magic number? Why not 90%? 20%?
My nephew got the grades to go to uni, but chose instead to go into the Wonderful World of Work. He's now on a significantly higher salary than his friends who went to uni, and has a house (with mortgage).
One of the great education sins of the last 30 yeas has been this idea that kids must go to uni, and that kids who do not are somehow inferior.
Surely the point is that people have the choice. Get the grades, go if you want. Personally I would encourage people to get an education and see the world before locking themselves into he tedious world of work, nappies and mortgages. You’ll spend decades doing that.
We have enough freeloaders thank you.
Aye. The boomers that went to university all expenses paid and chose to break the earnings link for pensioners when they were working, so they didn't have to pay much to pensioners when they were working . . . then whinge about how poor pensions are when they're the ones claiming it and shaft the young.
Truly the most selfish generation that shafted their own parents and their own grandchildren, but keep repeating the bollocks about how much tax you paid.
@BartholomewRoberts I don't often agree with your posts (though often find them informative), but this is enjoyably succint and accurate (as far as I'm aware - I didn't know that it was the baby boomer generation that broke the earnings link). Thank you.
He had to guess as he had run out of fingers and toes. He would not know a boomer if he fell over one. A whining whinging Tory snake.
You really are the most miserable poster on this site Malc. I can only assume your life is so shite you have to lash out at everyone else who might actually be enjoying theirs.
On which basis, I hope things improve for you and you learn to hate your fellow human beings a little less.
F Off Loser,I have a great life.Listening to pish from the likes of you would make anyone disappear. Stick to something you know anything about , like being a loser, rather than trying to guess. You could bore for UK at the Olympics and likely get gold.
Nobody else will bore for the UK while Andy Murray lives.
But yet again, we're discussing further education whilst the elephant in the room goes unnoticed.
The hideousness of illiteracy and innumeracy at the bottom end.
Here's a (*) plan: *) Reduce the number of universities drastically. Only 15% of people can go to university. Make those universities, and the degrees they produce world-beaters. *) Massively improve vocational course access. Give tax breaks to companies that encourage take-up of vocational courses, and tax-breaks for employees using them. *) Massively improve adult literacy and numeracy programs. *) Invest in children who are falling behind in school. Test (yes, I know...) children at the end of year 3, detect ones with issues, and develop programs to help them - even if it means smaller classes for them and social workers getting involved.
The reason Putin and his acolytes feel sufficiently confident to continue threatening the West is because they have invested heavily in new warships, warplanes, missiles and tanks. Major powers like Britain must do the same if they are to prevent any further acts of Russian aggression.
Really? Is there much evidence for that? I thought one of Russia's problems has been the decrepit state of a lot of their equipment.
I can't read the paywalled article but could Con Coughlin, Defence Editor, have a tiny interest in, er, more defence spending?
Incidentally, has anyone noticed the uncanny resemblance between Coughlin and Peter Mannion?
Russian equipment has been fine. The biggest Russian problem has been a manpower shortage - they've been driving around mostly empty armoured personnel carriers. That and logistics. And strategy and tactics. And middle and training.
A lot of the Russian equipment is pretty good. Or at least it was, before it was destroyed.
I'd argue the number of tanks that have been destroyed with the turrrets attempting to break the height record shows there is a rather significant problem with their tanks design philosophy.
It’s the auto loader I believe. They wanted to cut a crew member to reduce their manpower requirements and improve the ergonomics of the tank, so T series after the 64 have an auto loading mechanism. If you hit the turret bustle the warhead or penetrator will go straight into the auto loading magazine and pop the ammunition reserve. I don’t believe there’s protection between the primary magazine and secondary magazine in the floor so you can re-enact the sinking of the Hood. Abrams has a loader and has a huge, heavy loading door around a wet magazine which stops the whole lot going up at once.
"It's the auto loader I believe..."
Then a bunch of seemingly highly informed stuff about tanks.
Thursday's Express: "It's only fair! Rishi defends £1,000 boost to pensions"
Aha, we locked down to save them and our student loans get jacked up 11%, fuck off you twat
Pay the money you borrowed and stop whining. You either benefitted with a good job of you leave the poor to pick up your tab for years pissing it up at uni wasting pensioners hard earned pittance. Stop blaming other people for your uselessness
Are the student loans running at 11%?.... thats horrendous.
Most never pay a penny though
You over-stated your case to create board strife. Unsurprisingly.
The current pay back is 23% and expected to rise in 2023/4 to more than 50%.
Expected you dummy, bollox in other words. Bit like me expecting you to post sensible stuff in 2023, never going to happen.
What on Earth is wrong with you today? Why are you always so unspeakably rude? At his most frosty, even Leon doesn’t post in such a disgraceful manner. You’re behaving like a drunken pub boor. It is eminently reasonable for working age people to contest that an inflation indexed pensions rise (which will add significantly to national expenditure) is acceptable while they themselves are not receiving anything like that, and may be paying significant student loan repayments (the terms of which can change at a whim). If you disagree, make your arguments rather than ranting away at those who disagree.
Is there any wonder that the PB memetic pool is narrowing if this is the standard of ad-hominem argumentation which is tolerated? Do you want an echo chamber of elderly, overmonied men who just want to complain about whatever the yoof are up to now? Then there are alternatives. I started posting again because, occasionally, PB produces genuinely insightful debate in a way that only old fashioned forums do and I actually value that, even if you don’t.
Or, to TLDR all of that, I got knocked off my bike on Tuesday and it was less painful than reading your pish. Bloody well behave.
Sympathies. I'm not sure why Malcolm isn't banned, except that he's so consistently rude to almost everyone (to be fair I've not suffered myself) that people don't take it personally - it's like being abused by a drunken stranger, peculiar but not really worth worrying about.
I am surprised you are not banned for being a nasty piece of work. As you say I have never said a bad thing about you yet you want me banned. Pompous hypocritical and plain nasty.
nippy through the string vest this morning? 🙂
Good morning , started well till I encountered the fools and comic singers on here, hopefully mor eof eth intelligent posters will be around later. Convinces me to look in later on in the day when the dross and flotsam have disappeared. There are a few exceptions of course.
Irony alert. Almost certainly the least intelligent poster on PB complains about the intelligence of others. I completely agree with @NickPalmer, this bullying unpleasant and abusive little man should be hit with the ban hammer.
The upping of the state pension and the removal of limits on rich bankers' pay seems utterly tone deaf from the Government.
Are they trying to lose?
Pensioners and bankers are the Tory core vote. No real surprise
Then the Tories deserve to lose.
The more you speak for the Tories, the more I think maybe I should actually just vote Labour, if you represent the Tories. And I despise Labour, but not as much as what you want to stand for.
Thursday's Express: "It's only fair! Rishi defends £1,000 boost to pensions"
Aha, we locked down to save them and our student loans get jacked up 11%, fuck off you twat
Pay the money you borrowed and stop whining. You either benefitted with a good job of you leave the poor to pick up your tab for years pissing it up at uni wasting pensioners hard earned pittance. Stop blaming other people for your uselessness
Are the student loans running at 11%?.... thats horrendous.
Most never pay a penny though
You over-stated your case to create board strife. Unsurprisingly.
The current pay back is 23% and expected to rise in 2023/4 to more than 50%.
Expected you dummy, bollox in other words. Bit like me expecting you to post sensible stuff in 2023, never going to happen.
What on Earth is wrong with you today? Why are you always so unspeakably rude? At his most frosty, even Leon doesn’t post in such a disgraceful manner. You’re behaving like a drunken pub boor. It is eminently reasonable for working age people to contest that an inflation indexed pensions rise (which will add significantly to national expenditure) is acceptable while they themselves are not receiving anything like that, and may be paying significant student loan repayments (the terms of which can change at a whim). If you disagree, make your arguments rather than ranting away at those who disagree.
Is there any wonder that the PB memetic pool is narrowing if this is the standard of ad-hominem argumentation which is tolerated? Do you want an echo chamber of elderly, overmonied men who just want to complain about whatever the yoof are up to now? Then there are alternatives. I started posting again because, occasionally, PB produces genuinely insightful debate in a way that only old fashioned forums do and I actually value that, even if you don’t.
Or, to TLDR all of that, I got knocked off my bike on Tuesday and it was less painful than reading your pish. Bloody well behave.
Sympathies. I'm not sure why Malcolm isn't banned, except that he's so consistently rude to almost everyone (to be fair I've not suffered myself) that people don't take it personally - it's like being abused by a drunken stranger, peculiar but not really worth worrying about.
I am surprised you are not banned for being a nasty piece of work. As you say I have never said a bad thing about you yet you want me banned. Pompous hypocritical and plain nasty.
Thursday's Express: "It's only fair! Rishi defends £1,000 boost to pensions"
Aha, we locked down to save them and our student loans get jacked up 11%, fuck off you twat
Pay the money you borrowed and stop whining. You either benefitted with a good job of you leave the poor to pick up your tab for years pissing it up at uni wasting pensioners hard earned pittance. Stop blaming other people for your uselessness
Are the student loans running at 11%?.... thats horrendous.
Most never pay a penny though
You over-stated your case to create board strife. Unsurprisingly.
The current pay back is 23% and expected to rise in 2023/4 to more than 50%.
Expected you dummy, bollox in other words. Bit like me expecting you to post sensible stuff in 2023, never going to happen.
What on Earth is wrong with you today? Why are you always so unspeakably rude? At his most frosty, even Leon doesn’t post in such a disgraceful manner. You’re behaving like a drunken pub boor. It is eminently reasonable for working age people to contest that an inflation indexed pensions rise (which will add significantly to national expenditure) is acceptable while they themselves are not receiving anything like that, and may be paying significant student loan repayments (the terms of which can change at a whim). If you disagree, make your arguments rather than ranting away at those who disagree.
Is there any wonder that the PB memetic pool is narrowing if this is the standard of ad-hominem argumentation which is tolerated? Do you want an echo chamber of elderly, overmonied men who just want to complain about whatever the yoof are up to now? Then there are alternatives. I started posting again because, occasionally, PB produces genuinely insightful debate in a way that only old fashioned forums do and I actually value that, even if you don’t.
Or, to TLDR all of that, I got knocked off my bike on Tuesday and it was less painful than reading your pish. Bloody well behave.
Sympathies. I'm not sure why Malcolm isn't banned, except that he's so consistently rude to almost everyone (to be fair I've not suffered myself) that people don't take it personally - it's like being abused by a drunken stranger, peculiar but not really worth worrying about.
I am surprised you are not banned for being a nasty piece of work. As you say I have never said a bad thing about you yet you want me banned. Pompous hypocritical and plain nasty.
nippy through the string vest this morning? 🙂
Good morning , started well till I encountered the fools and comic singers on here, hopefully mor eof eth intelligent posters will be around later. Convinces me to look in later on in the day when the dross and flotsam have disappeared. There are a few exceptions of course.
Irony alert. Almost certainly the least intelligent poster on PB complains about the intelligence of others. I completely agree with @NickPalmer, this bullying unpleasant and abusive little man should be hit with the ban hammer.
He is the only Alba supporting poster we have though, so for representative purposes I would keep Malc
Thursday's Express: "It's only fair! Rishi defends £1,000 boost to pensions"
Aha, we locked down to save them and our student loans get jacked up 11%, fuck off you twat
Pay the money you borrowed and stop whining. You either benefitted with a good job of you leave the poor to pick up your tab for years pissing it up at uni wasting pensioners hard earned pittance. Stop blaming other people for your uselessness
Are the student loans running at 11%?.... thats horrendous.
What is quite amazing how completely and utterly useless young people are at asserting themselves politically. They don't seem to even realise that they are being screwed over. The NI increase went through without a murmur of dissent. Whack up taxes, change the terms of student loans, keep giving bungs to pensioners so they vote tory.... Zero opposition (or even interest) from young people. It is astonishing.
That is because most are useless. They spend a few years at uni and think they are big shots when in fact they mainly struggle to wipe their own arses. They then whine incessantly about only earning 50k while complaining that all all those nasty pensioners who worked and paid taxes for 50 years are living high on the hog on their 9k pensions.
Yep, they shouldn't go to uni. Better off with a secure job and good income, such as working on the railways.
I think I shall bid you all good day.
The forum is more than normally populated by grumpy old, white, men this morning. I shall leave you all to dribble with anger into your cornflakes.
xx
I was being tongue in cheek, echoing the PB perennial of too many of other people's children going to university, with the notion that they would be better getting proper jobs.
Do you not think there's a point to be made there? Why is 50% of people going to university the magic number? Why not 90%? 20%?
My nephew got the grades to go to uni, but chose instead to go into the Wonderful World of Work. He's now on a significantly higher salary than his friends who went to uni, and has a house (with mortgage).
One of the great education sins of the last 30 yeas has been this idea that kids must go to uni, and that kids who do not are somehow inferior.
Surely the point is that people have the choice. Get the grades, go if you want. Personally I would encourage people to get an education and see the world before locking themselves into he tedious world of work, nappies and mortgages. You’ll spend decades doing that.
We have enough freeloaders thank you.
Aye. The boomers that went to university all expenses paid and chose to break the earnings link for pensioners when they were working, so they didn't have to pay much to pensioners when they were working . . . then whinge about how poor pensions are when they're the ones claiming it and shaft the young.
Truly the most selfish generation that shafted their own parents and their own grandchildren, but keep repeating the bollocks about how much tax you paid.
@BartholomewRoberts I don't often agree with your posts (though often find them informative), but this is enjoyably succint and accurate (as far as I'm aware - I didn't know that it was the baby boomer generation that broke the earnings link). Thank you.
He had to guess as he had run out of fingers and toes. He would not know a boomer if he fell over one. A whining whinging Tory snake.
You really are the most miserable poster on this site Malc. I can only assume your life is so shite you have to lash out at everyone else who might actually be enjoying theirs.
On which basis, I hope things improve for you and you learn to hate your fellow human beings a little less.
F Off Loser,I have a great life.Listening to pish from the likes of you would make anyone disappear. Stick to something you know anything about , like being a loser, rather than trying to guess. You could bore for UK at the Olympics and likely get gold.
Nobody else will bore for the UK while Andy Murray lives.
He hasn't won a tournament for a while so I think you'll find he currently bores for Scotland.
Disclaimer: I usually find what he says QI, maybe Anglos are addicted to 'entertainers' like BJ.
Thursday's Express: "It's only fair! Rishi defends £1,000 boost to pensions"
Aha, we locked down to save them and our student loans get jacked up 11%, fuck off you twat
Pay the money you borrowed and stop whining. You either benefitted with a good job of you leave the poor to pick up your tab for years pissing it up at uni wasting pensioners hard earned pittance. Stop blaming other people for your uselessness
Are the student loans running at 11%?.... thats horrendous.
What is quite amazing how completely and utterly useless young people are at asserting themselves politically. They don't seem to even realise that they are being screwed over. The NI increase went through without a murmur of dissent. Whack up taxes, change the terms of student loans, keep giving bungs to pensioners so they vote tory.... Zero opposition (or even interest) from young people. It is astonishing.
That is because most are useless. They spend a few years at uni and think they are big shots when in fact they mainly struggle to wipe their own arses. They then whine incessantly about only earning 50k while complaining that all all those nasty pensioners who worked and paid taxes for 50 years are living high on the hog on their 9k pensions.
Yep, they shouldn't go to uni. Better off with a secure job and good income, such as working on the railways.
I think I shall bid you all good day.
The forum is more than normally populated by grumpy old, white, men this morning. I shall leave you all to dribble with anger into your cornflakes.
xx
I was being tongue in cheek, echoing the PB perennial of too many of other people's children going to university, with the notion that they would be better getting proper jobs.
Do you not think there's a point to be made there? Why is 50% of people going to university the magic number? Why not 90%? 20%?
My nephew got the grades to go to uni, but chose instead to go into the Wonderful World of Work. He's now on a significantly higher salary than his friends who went to uni, and has a house (with mortgage).
One of the great education sins of the last 30 yeas has been this idea that kids must go to uni, and that kids who do not are somehow inferior.
Surely the point is that people have the choice. Get the grades, go if you want. Personally I would encourage people to get an education and see the world before locking themselves into he tedious world of work, nappies and mortgages. You’ll spend decades doing that.
You also genuinely can’t do some lines of work without some sort of tertiary education. We don’t have enough engineers in the labour force, and that’s a career that needs a degree. You can start as a technician and get an accelerated degree later, but you still need to go do it. It’s the challenge of a service based economy innt? If you want high value service with a side order of high value manufacturing you need highly educated workers. That isn’t to say there isn’t any role for skilled manual or trades work, the guy who valets my car probably earns more than me, but on an economic level it makes sense to have a lot of university graduates. As Foxy said, poor courses do not help this.
Good point.
I am conscious that this debate is old as the hills. .
Not that long ago, some challenged whether secondary education was valuable and necessary for all kids. Before that, some challenged whether a full primary education was necessary for some kids. Same debate.
Personally, I believe that university education should be an option for all kids with the grades and that kids without a history of education in their family need support to make that informed choice.
I am actually fairly negative about the value of tertiary education, despite (or perhaps because of!) my university work, but to me it is not about numbers.
My dislike is of the consumerist culture of undergraduates, the poor quality of many courses and the post university culture of credentialism in which those without formal qualifications are sidelined.
The undergraduate polling above illustrates the problem of undergraduate consumerism. "Starbucks University" as an academic friend describes it, where students do not want to be challenged, but rather to proceed through three year of socialising, leaving with an entrance ticket to a white collar middle class job. A sort of middle class finishing school.
Other than technical or vocational courses no one actually uses their degree subject, but that doesn't mean that they don't gain advantage by it. Speaking bad Latin helps our PM present a simulacrum of intelligence to the gullible, but what else in his Classics degree do we see him use? Nothing!, but we do he see him constantly using the social skills polished in the Union, and the connections thereby made.
My fear is the culmination of this debate takes us directly into HYUFD's desire that higher education is exclusive to the 5% of those whose parents were wealthy enough to invest in the best primary and secondary education money could buy.
The narrative that non-vocational degrees from non-Russell Group universities are not worth the paper they are written on is incredibly depressing. It is the ultimate suppression of everyone but the elite of the elite.
If 50% of the population choose to go to university to become a Barista rather than a Barrister, so be it.
Yet the facts show the highest level apprentices earn more over their lifetime than all graduates except those who went to Oxbridge and a Russell Group university.
Germany has more apprentices and fewer graduates than us and does fine
But it shouldn't be about statistics. Proper, and I mean proper day and block release to University are very worthwhile for those who want to follow that route. Fantastic.
You dismiss university for all but the top of society. You demand exclusivity and sneer at those who graduate from what you consider to be lesser establishments. The value of a degree shouldn't be measured by some spurious statistical analysis. If the graduate is pleased with the result, both the social and the academic experience, that is good enough for me .
You are desperate to return higher education to be the fiefdom of social elites. That is truly depressing.
The upping of the state pension and the removal of limits on rich bankers' pay seems utterly tone deaf from the Government.
Are they trying to lose?
I wouldn’t big it up as much as that, but the latter undermined them in PMQs and opposing 7% for rail workers this week, so was a bit clumsy in announcement.
The main thing undermining the government in their battle with rail workers is other workers getting deals same as what is being asked for - that is happening.
I thought the governments attack line on teachers today “you can’t go on strike because after covid the kiddies have suffered enough” was a strong opening salvo that hit its mark.
But yet again, we're discussing further education whilst the elephant in the room goes unnoticed.
The hideousness of illiteracy and innumeracy at the bottom end.
Here's a (*) plan: *) Reduce the number of universities drastically. Only 15% of people can go to university. Make those universities, and the degrees they produce world-beaters. *) Massively improve vocational course access. Give tax breaks to companies that encourage take-up of vocational courses, and tax-breaks for employees using them. *) Massively improve adult literacy and numeracy programs. *) Invest in children who are falling behind in school. Test (yes, I know...) children at the end of year 3, detect ones with issues, and develop programs to help them - even if it means smaller classes for them and social workers getting involved.
(*) Potentially rubbish.
Or increase the number of teachers and teaching assistants so the teachers in junior schools don't have to spend the amount of time they do outside the classroom. Preparation, marking and assessing seems to take a great deal of out-of-school time.
Thursday's Express: "It's only fair! Rishi defends £1,000 boost to pensions"
Aha, we locked down to save them and our student loans get jacked up 11%, fuck off you twat
Pay the money you borrowed and stop whining. You either benefitted with a good job of you leave the poor to pick up your tab for years pissing it up at uni wasting pensioners hard earned pittance. Stop blaming other people for your uselessness
Are the student loans running at 11%?.... thats horrendous.
Most never pay a penny though
You over-stated your case to create board strife. Unsurprisingly.
The current pay back is 23% and expected to rise in 2023/4 to more than 50%.
Expected you dummy, bollox in other words. Bit like me expecting you to post sensible stuff in 2023, never going to happen.
What on Earth is wrong with you today? Why are you always so unspeakably rude? At his most frosty, even Leon doesn’t post in such a disgraceful manner. You’re behaving like a drunken pub boor. It is eminently reasonable for working age people to contest that an inflation indexed pensions rise (which will add significantly to national expenditure) is acceptable while they themselves are not receiving anything like that, and may be paying significant student loan repayments (the terms of which can change at a whim). If you disagree, make your arguments rather than ranting away at those who disagree.
Is there any wonder that the PB memetic pool is narrowing if this is the standard of ad-hominem argumentation which is tolerated? Do you want an echo chamber of elderly, overmonied men who just want to complain about whatever the yoof are up to now? Then there are alternatives. I started posting again because, occasionally, PB produces genuinely insightful debate in a way that only old fashioned forums do and I actually value that, even if you don’t.
Or, to TLDR all of that, I got knocked off my bike on Tuesday and it was less painful than reading your pish. Bloody well behave.
Sympathies. I'm not sure why Malcolm isn't banned, except that he's so consistently rude to almost everyone (to be fair I've not suffered myself) that people don't take it personally - it's like being abused by a drunken stranger, peculiar but not really worth worrying about.
I am surprised you are not banned for being a nasty piece of work. As you say I have never said a bad thing about you yet you want me banned. Pompous hypocritical and plain nasty.
nippy through the string vest this morning? 🙂
Good morning , started well till I encountered the fools and comic singers on here, hopefully mor eof eth intelligent posters will be around later. Convinces me to look in later on in the day when the dross and flotsam have disappeared. There are a few exceptions of course.
Irony alert. Almost certainly the least intelligent poster on PB complains about the intelligence of others. I completely agree with @NickPalmer, this bullying unpleasant and abusive little man should be hit with the ban hammer.
He is the only Alba supporting poster we have though, so for representative purposes I would keep Malc
Fine, but he should be warned at the very least. As for representatives of extreme or minority positions, would we need to tolerate someone who supported BNP or suchlike? He is an abusive bully and not enough people on here call him out for it.
The upping of the state pension and the removal of limits on rich bankers' pay seems utterly tone deaf from the Government.
Are they trying to lose?
Isn't the age which the state pension can be claimed going up this year as well?
Yes, my generation will be able to get the pension later and later is the plan, while current pensioners are utterly unaffected and get more and more benefits they didn't save for.
Despite the fact that the demographic problems of so many pensioners and so few workers isn't with our generation, it was the boomers that are disproportionately demographically heavy and that was known all through the time when the boomers were working and dominating politics but they did sod all to fix it, we discussed this in economics classes in the 90s and shows like West Wing etc were discussing what would happen to social security (pensions) as it hadn't been saved for by the boomers and later generations wouldn't be able to afford it when boomers retired.
What they never predicted was a rampant increase rather than reduction in boomer pensions post-retirement.
Thursday's Express: "It's only fair! Rishi defends £1,000 boost to pensions"
Aha, we locked down to save them and our student loans get jacked up 11%, fuck off you twat
Pay the money you borrowed and stop whining. You either benefitted with a good job of you leave the poor to pick up your tab for years pissing it up at uni wasting pensioners hard earned pittance. Stop blaming other people for your uselessness
Are the student loans running at 11%?.... thats horrendous.
Most never pay a penny though
You over-stated your case to create board strife. Unsurprisingly.
The current pay back is 23% and expected to rise in 2023/4 to more than 50%.
Expected you dummy, bollox in other words. Bit like me expecting you to post sensible stuff in 2023, never going to happen.
What on Earth is wrong with you today? Why are you always so unspeakably rude? At his most frosty, even Leon doesn’t post in such a disgraceful manner. You’re behaving like a drunken pub boor. It is eminently reasonable for working age people to contest that an inflation indexed pensions rise (which will add significantly to national expenditure) is acceptable while they themselves are not receiving anything like that, and may be paying significant student loan repayments (the terms of which can change at a whim). If you disagree, make your arguments rather than ranting away at those who disagree.
Is there any wonder that the PB memetic pool is narrowing if this is the standard of ad-hominem argumentation which is tolerated? Do you want an echo chamber of elderly, overmonied men who just want to complain about whatever the yoof are up to now? Then there are alternatives. I started posting again because, occasionally, PB produces genuinely insightful debate in a way that only old fashioned forums do and I actually value that, even if you don’t.
Or, to TLDR all of that, I got knocked off my bike on Tuesday and it was less painful than reading your pish. Bloody well behave.
Sympathies. I'm not sure why Malcolm isn't banned, except that he's so consistently rude to almost everyone (to be fair I've not suffered myself) that people don't take it personally - it's like being abused by a drunken stranger, peculiar but not really worth worrying about.
I am surprised you are not banned for being a nasty piece of work. As you say I have never said a bad thing about you yet you want me banned. Pompous hypocritical and plain nasty.
nippy through the string vest this morning? 🙂
Good morning , started well till I encountered the fools and comic singers on here, hopefully mor eof eth intelligent posters will be around later. Convinces me to look in later on in the day when the dross and flotsam have disappeared. There are a few exceptions of course.
Irony alert. Almost certainly the least intelligent poster on PB complains about the intelligence of others. I completely agree with @NickPalmer, this bullying unpleasant and abusive little man should be hit with the ban hammer.
He is the only Alba supporting poster we have though, so for representative purposes I would keep Malc
First they came for Malc and I said nothing because I wasn't also radged.
YouGov's @PME_Politics has identified a new group of seats where the Tories should be worried: the "Conservative Celtic Fringe". These are 41 South West seats that have returned a Tory MP since 2015 and voted Leave in 2016
The former Lib Dem heartlands, which were responsible for Cameron's 2015 majority.
Now sadly removed if it was ever indeed in wiki. Where's your sense of fun Wikipedia?
Never fuck with a man named Mick Lynch. We know this in Ireland. The Mick Lynchs this world are born without fucks to give. They have no fuck glands. Do not approach a Mick Lynch without caution. Keep your head low and let the Mick Lynch know you mean no harm. https://twitter.com/NiecyOKeeffe/status/1539335139905486849
Thursday's Express: "It's only fair! Rishi defends £1,000 boost to pensions"
Aha, we locked down to save them and our student loans get jacked up 11%, fuck off you twat
Pay the money you borrowed and stop whining. You either benefitted with a good job of you leave the poor to pick up your tab for years pissing it up at uni wasting pensioners hard earned pittance. Stop blaming other people for your uselessness
Are the student loans running at 11%?.... thats horrendous.
What is quite amazing how completely and utterly useless young people are at asserting themselves politically. They don't seem to even realise that they are being screwed over. The NI increase went through without a murmur of dissent. Whack up taxes, change the terms of student loans, keep giving bungs to pensioners so they vote tory.... Zero opposition (or even interest) from young people. It is astonishing.
That is because most are useless. They spend a few years at uni and think they are big shots when in fact they mainly struggle to wipe their own arses. They then whine incessantly about only earning 50k while complaining that all all those nasty pensioners who worked and paid taxes for 50 years are living high on the hog on their 9k pensions.
Yep, they shouldn't go to uni. Better off with a secure job and good income, such as working on the railways.
I think I shall bid you all good day.
The forum is more than normally populated by grumpy old, white, men this morning. I shall leave you all to dribble with anger into your cornflakes.
xx
I was being tongue in cheek, echoing the PB perennial of too many of other people's children going to university, with the notion that they would be better getting proper jobs.
Do you not think there's a point to be made there? Why is 50% of people going to university the magic number? Why not 90%? 20%?
My nephew got the grades to go to uni, but chose instead to go into the Wonderful World of Work. He's now on a significantly higher salary than his friends who went to uni, and has a house (with mortgage).
One of the great education sins of the last 30 yeas has been this idea that kids must go to uni, and that kids who do not are somehow inferior.
Surely the point is that people have the choice. Get the grades, go if you want. Personally I would encourage people to get an education and see the world before locking themselves into he tedious world of work, nappies and mortgages. You’ll spend decades doing that.
We have enough freeloaders thank you.
Aye. The boomers that went to university all expenses paid and chose to break the earnings link for pensioners when they were working, so they didn't have to pay much to pensioners when they were working . . . then whinge about how poor pensions are when they're the ones claiming it and shaft the young.
Truly the most selfish generation that shafted their own parents and their own grandchildren, but keep repeating the bollocks about how much tax you paid.
You do realise 90% of boomers never went to university? Now about 40% of 18 year olds graduate from university.
They also paid into NI just as their parents did as well as private pension schemes for some. It was the government that broke the earnings link
So frigging what? For either of those points.
Many of those going to university today are doing so to go to jobs that didn't need degrees in the past, but do now. So yes, the student loan is just an age-discriminatory income tax that prior generations never had to pay.
And they never paid NI at the rate we do now, that's a lie. Since boomers have started facing retirement they've ended up voting so that tax goes from income tax to NI.
Besides if the logic that more people going to university means we can't afford to pay for university anymore, perhaps we should use that logic with pensions? Lets put the education budget and the pension budget back to what it was when today's pensioners were studying and working?
The education budget has gone down as a percentage of GDP, not up, from the past.
In 1975 education represented 7.5% of GDP and pensions were 4%
Today education is 3.9% and pensions are 6%.
What a remarkable role reversal, hey? I wonder why that's happened? 🤔
Well they could do apprenticeships instead of going to university like their parents and grandparents did and then they wouldn't need a student loan. They probably would also earn more over their lifetime than doing a degree unless at a Russell Group university.
All those earning under £35k have got an NI cut. Life expectancy is higher than decades ago is the reason a higher percentage of the state budget goes on pensions
But yet again, we're discussing further education whilst the elephant in the room goes unnoticed.
The hideousness of illiteracy and innumeracy at the bottom end.
Here's a (*) plan: *) Reduce the number of universities drastically. Only 15% of people can go to university. Make those universities, and the degrees they produce world-beaters. *) Massively improve vocational course access. Give tax breaks to companies that encourage take-up of vocational courses, and tax-breaks for employees using them. *) Massively improve adult literacy and numeracy programs. *) Invest in children who are falling behind in school. Test (yes, I know...) children at the end of year 3, detect ones with issues, and develop programs to help them - even if it means smaller classes for them and social workers getting involved.
(*) Potentially rubbish.
Your first two points have nothing to do with illiteracy and innumeracy at the bottom end.
But yet again, we're discussing further education whilst the elephant in the room goes unnoticed.
The hideousness of illiteracy and innumeracy at the bottom end.
Here's a (*) plan: *) Reduce the number of universities drastically. Only 15% of people can go to university. Make those universities, and the degrees they produce world-beaters. *) Massively improve vocational course access. Give tax breaks to companies that encourage take-up of vocational courses, and tax-breaks for employees using them. *) Massively improve adult literacy and numeracy programs. *) Invest in children who are falling behind in school. Test (yes, I know...) children at the end of year 3, detect ones with issues, and develop programs to help them - even if it means smaller classes for them and social workers getting involved.
(*) Potentially rubbish.
Or increase the number of teachers and teaching assistants so the teachers in junior schools don't have to spend the amount of time they do outside the classroom. Preparation, marking and assessing seems to take a great deal of out-of-school time.
Perhaps - and I'd certainly call for more teachers and TAs. But have the extras helping the bottom end of attainment, not the top end.
Illiteracy and innumeracy is a national scandal and millions of individual tragedies.
Thursday's Express: "It's only fair! Rishi defends £1,000 boost to pensions"
Aha, we locked down to save them and our student loans get jacked up 11%, fuck off you twat
Pay the money you borrowed and stop whining. You either benefitted with a good job of you leave the poor to pick up your tab for years pissing it up at uni wasting pensioners hard earned pittance. Stop blaming other people for your uselessness
Are the student loans running at 11%?.... thats horrendous.
What is quite amazing how completely and utterly useless young people are at asserting themselves politically. They don't seem to even realise that they are being screwed over. The NI increase went through without a murmur of dissent. Whack up taxes, change the terms of student loans, keep giving bungs to pensioners so they vote tory.... Zero opposition (or even interest) from young people. It is astonishing.
That is because most are useless. They spend a few years at uni and think they are big shots when in fact they mainly struggle to wipe their own arses. They then whine incessantly about only earning 50k while complaining that all all those nasty pensioners who worked and paid taxes for 50 years are living high on the hog on their 9k pensions.
Yep, they shouldn't go to uni. Better off with a secure job and good income, such as working on the railways.
I think I shall bid you all good day.
The forum is more than normally populated by grumpy old, white, men this morning. I shall leave you all to dribble with anger into your cornflakes.
xx
I was being tongue in cheek, echoing the PB perennial of too many of other people's children going to university, with the notion that they would be better getting proper jobs.
Do you not think there's a point to be made there? Why is 50% of people going to university the magic number? Why not 90%? 20%?
My nephew got the grades to go to uni, but chose instead to go into the Wonderful World of Work. He's now on a significantly higher salary than his friends who went to uni, and has a house (with mortgage).
One of the great education sins of the last 30 yeas has been this idea that kids must go to uni, and that kids who do not are somehow inferior.
Surely the point is that people have the choice. Get the grades, go if you want. Personally I would encourage people to get an education and see the world before locking themselves into he tedious world of work, nappies and mortgages. You’ll spend decades doing that.
We have enough freeloaders thank you.
Aye. The boomers that went to university all expenses paid and chose to break the earnings link for pensioners when they were working, so they didn't have to pay much to pensioners when they were working . . . then whinge about how poor pensions are when they're the ones claiming it and shaft the young.
Truly the most selfish generation that shafted their own parents and their own grandchildren, but keep repeating the bollocks about how much tax you paid.
You do realise 90% of boomers never went to university? Now about 40% of 18 year olds graduate from university.
They also paid into NI just as their parents did as well as private pension schemes for some. It was the government that broke the earnings link
So frigging what? For either of those points.
Many of those going to university today are doing so to go to jobs that didn't need degrees in the past, but do now. So yes, the student loan is just an age-discriminatory income tax that prior generations never had to pay.
And they never paid NI at the rate we do now, that's a lie. Since boomers have started facing retirement they've ended up voting so that tax goes from income tax to NI.
Besides if the logic that more people going to university means we can't afford to pay for university anymore, perhaps we should use that logic with pensions? Lets put the education budget and the pension budget back to what it was when today's pensioners were studying and working?
The education budget has gone down as a percentage of GDP, not up, from the past.
In 1975 education represented 7.5% of GDP and pensions were 4%
Today education is 3.9% and pensions are 6%.
What a remarkable role reversal, hey? I wonder why that's happened? 🤔
Well they could do apprenticeships instead of going to university like their parents and grandparents did and then they wouldn't need a student loan. They probably would also earn more over their lifetime than doing a degree unless at a Russell Group university.
All those earning under £35k have got an NI cut. Life expectancy is higher than decades ago is the reason a higher percentage of the state budget goes on pensions
Thursday's Express: "It's only fair! Rishi defends £1,000 boost to pensions"
Aha, we locked down to save them and our student loans get jacked up 11%, fuck off you twat
Pay the money you borrowed and stop whining. You either benefitted with a good job of you leave the poor to pick up your tab for years pissing it up at uni wasting pensioners hard earned pittance. Stop blaming other people for your uselessness
Are the student loans running at 11%?.... thats horrendous.
What is quite amazing how completely and utterly useless young people are at asserting themselves politically. They don't seem to even realise that they are being screwed over. The NI increase went through without a murmur of dissent. Whack up taxes, change the terms of student loans, keep giving bungs to pensioners so they vote tory.... Zero opposition (or even interest) from young people. It is astonishing.
That is because most are useless. They spend a few years at uni and think they are big shots when in fact they mainly struggle to wipe their own arses. They then whine incessantly about only earning 50k while complaining that all all those nasty pensioners who worked and paid taxes for 50 years are living high on the hog on their 9k pensions.
Yep, they shouldn't go to uni. Better off with a secure job and good income, such as working on the railways.
I think I shall bid you all good day.
The forum is more than normally populated by grumpy old, white, men this morning. I shall leave you all to dribble with anger into your cornflakes.
xx
I was being tongue in cheek, echoing the PB perennial of too many of other people's children going to university, with the notion that they would be better getting proper jobs.
Do you not think there's a point to be made there? Why is 50% of people going to university the magic number? Why not 90%? 20%?
My nephew got the grades to go to uni, but chose instead to go into the Wonderful World of Work. He's now on a significantly higher salary than his friends who went to uni, and has a house (with mortgage).
One of the great education sins of the last 30 yeas has been this idea that kids must go to uni, and that kids who do not are somehow inferior.
Surely the point is that people have the choice. Get the grades, go if you want. Personally I would encourage people to get an education and see the world before locking themselves into he tedious world of work, nappies and mortgages. You’ll spend decades doing that.
This is exactly the sort of issue I mean. Firstly, the idea that they don't have an education if they don't go to uni. Secondly, that not going to uni means they won't see the world. Thirdly, that work has to be tedious (with the implication that uni is all fun and laughter).
Uni is not, and should not be, an extended childhood. It should be a way of people getting skills that will improve their job prospects and enrich their lives. If they have fun doing so, fair enough. But (whispers quietly) working your people can have fun as well.
There is so much crummy disdain for people who do not go to uni. It's especially funny when it comes from people on the left, who decry classism and create their own class where they are the snobs, looking down on the inferior people who did not go to uni.
(I don't mean you in that last para)
I just want a university education to be a choice whatever you background. There’s is more to life than work and taking time out to study is a rich part of life. You can learn things at a university that you cannot learn on the job.
Once tied into the obligations of kids and mortgages it’s hard to find the time not to work. So it’s an import choice at an important moment,
Of course it should be a choice: but there should be other choices as well. At the moment it's basically uni or work with no FE - and too many people stupidly see the latter route as the scrapheap.
For instance, I am suspicious that a nursing degree does not produce a 'better' nurse than on the job vocational training. The same is true for many other degrees.
I am glad that you get a degree these days for nursing training. My sister trained as nurse. She got her degree later. It meant a lot to her.
For choice to be real, kids from families without a history of university education need encouragement and support to go to university.
I have got no problems with nurses getting degrees. There is a problem is if the only way into nursing is having a degree.
There *are* routes to train without full-time study at university, but I think nurses should be recognized as having learnt something substantial and valuable.
It may not be fair, but for whatever reason, employers want to see qualifications. To say to nurses who didn't go to university you don't get a degree would hinder their prospects.
It's where the study of the training takes place; it's what he studied.
One of the skills of a nurse is being empathetic. Very very difficult to teach but I noticed that many of the medics with whom I come in contact seem a great deal more empathetic than their predecessors, and that's, at least in part, down to the training.
On nursing degrees, we have a lot of nursing and midwifery students. Being a degree has also influenced the content a bit, too. There is more on critical thinking and policy rather than just learning how to do x, y and z. Much of it could of course be taught anywhere, but we do try to integrate them into the department, so they have seminars with active researchers (I normally lead a few each year). Really interesting discussions about how the guidelines and best practice are established, how to read research papers etc (my research has fed into guidelines that they will all be applying daily, so it's also interesting for me to get their views on how that works in practice). Probably not needed at the entry level positions, but potentially important down the line for those who move further up, partcicularly if they're later involved in local policy to have a better handle on those kinds of things.
YouGov's @PME_Politics has identified a new group of seats where the Tories should be worried: the "Conservative Celtic Fringe". These are 41 South West seats that have returned a Tory MP since 2015 and voted Leave in 2016
The former Lib Dem heartlands, which were responsible for Cameron's 2015 majority.
There’s going to be bangs in the fringe.
Suspect only about 3 posters will get my latest pun.
Thursday's Express: "It's only fair! Rishi defends £1,000 boost to pensions"
Aha, we locked down to save them and our student loans get jacked up 11%, fuck off you twat
Pay the money you borrowed and stop whining. You either benefitted with a good job of you leave the poor to pick up your tab for years pissing it up at uni wasting pensioners hard earned pittance. Stop blaming other people for your uselessness
Are the student loans running at 11%?.... thats horrendous.
What is quite amazing how completely and utterly useless young people are at asserting themselves politically. They don't seem to even realise that they are being screwed over. The NI increase went through without a murmur of dissent. Whack up taxes, change the terms of student loans, keep giving bungs to pensioners so they vote tory.... Zero opposition (or even interest) from young people. It is astonishing.
That is because most are useless. They spend a few years at uni and think they are big shots when in fact they mainly struggle to wipe their own arses. They then whine incessantly about only earning 50k while complaining that all all those nasty pensioners who worked and paid taxes for 50 years are living high on the hog on their 9k pensions.
Yep, they shouldn't go to uni. Better off with a secure job and good income, such as working on the railways.
I think I shall bid you all good day.
The forum is more than normally populated by grumpy old, white, men this morning. I shall leave you all to dribble with anger into your cornflakes.
xx
I was being tongue in cheek, echoing the PB perennial of too many of other people's children going to university, with the notion that they would be better getting proper jobs.
Do you not think there's a point to be made there? Why is 50% of people going to university the magic number? Why not 90%? 20%?
My nephew got the grades to go to uni, but chose instead to go into the Wonderful World of Work. He's now on a significantly higher salary than his friends who went to uni, and has a house (with mortgage).
One of the great education sins of the last 30 yeas has been this idea that kids must go to uni, and that kids who do not are somehow inferior.
Surely the point is that people have the choice. Get the grades, go if you want. Personally I would encourage people to get an education and see the world before locking themselves into he tedious world of work, nappies and mortgages. You’ll spend decades doing that.
We have enough freeloaders thank you.
Aye. The boomers that went to university all expenses paid and chose to break the earnings link for pensioners when they were working, so they didn't have to pay much to pensioners when they were working . . . then whinge about how poor pensions are when they're the ones claiming it and shaft the young.
Truly the most selfish generation that shafted their own parents and their own grandchildren, but keep repeating the bollocks about how much tax you paid.
@BartholomewRoberts I don't often agree with your posts (though often find them informative), but this is enjoyably succint and accurate (as far as I'm aware - I didn't know that it was the baby boomer generation that broke the earnings link). Thank you.
He had to guess as he had run out of fingers and toes. He would not know a boomer if he fell over one. A whining whinging Tory snake.
You really are the most miserable poster on this site Malc. I can only assume your life is so shite you have to lash out at everyone else who might actually be enjoying theirs.
On which basis, I hope things improve for you and you learn to hate your fellow human beings a little less.
F Off Loser,I have a great life.Listening to pish from the likes of you would make anyone disappear. Stick to something you know anything about , like being a loser, rather than trying to guess. You could bore for UK at the Olympics and likely get gold.
Nobody else will bore for the UK while Andy Murray lives.
He hasn't won a tournament for a while so I think you'll find he currently bores for Scotland.
Disclaimer: I usually find what he says QI, maybe Anglos are addicted to 'entertainers' like BJ.
Andy Murray is injured. Emma Raducanu is injured. Wimbledon starts on Monday.
Thursday's Express: "It's only fair! Rishi defends £1,000 boost to pensions"
Aha, we locked down to save them and our student loans get jacked up 11%, fuck off you twat
Pay the money you borrowed and stop whining. You either benefitted with a good job of you leave the poor to pick up your tab for years pissing it up at uni wasting pensioners hard earned pittance. Stop blaming other people for your uselessness
Are the student loans running at 11%?.... thats horrendous.
Most never pay a penny though
You over-stated your case to create board strife. Unsurprisingly.
The current pay back is 23% and expected to rise in 2023/4 to more than 50%.
Expected you dummy, bollox in other words. Bit like me expecting you to post sensible stuff in 2023, never going to happen.
What on Earth is wrong with you today? Why are you always so unspeakably rude? At his most frosty, even Leon doesn’t post in such a disgraceful manner. You’re behaving like a drunken pub boor. It is eminently reasonable for working age people to contest that an inflation indexed pensions rise (which will add significantly to national expenditure) is acceptable while they themselves are not receiving anything like that, and may be paying significant student loan repayments (the terms of which can change at a whim). If you disagree, make your arguments rather than ranting away at those who disagree.
Is there any wonder that the PB memetic pool is narrowing if this is the standard of ad-hominem argumentation which is tolerated? Do you want an echo chamber of elderly, overmonied men who just want to complain about whatever the yoof are up to now? Then there are alternatives. I started posting again because, occasionally, PB produces genuinely insightful debate in a way that only old fashioned forums do and I actually value that, even if you don’t.
Or, to TLDR all of that, I got knocked off my bike on Tuesday and it was less painful than reading your pish. Bloody well behave.
Sympathies. I'm not sure why Malcolm isn't banned, except that he's so consistently rude to almost everyone (to be fair I've not suffered myself) that people don't take it personally - it's like being abused by a drunken stranger, peculiar but not really worth worrying about.
I am surprised you are not banned for being a nasty piece of work. As you say I have never said a bad thing about you yet you want me banned. Pompous hypocritical and plain nasty.
nippy through the string vest this morning? 🙂
Good morning , started well till I encountered the fools and comic singers on here, hopefully mor eof eth intelligent posters will be around later. Convinces me to look in later on in the day when the dross and flotsam have disappeared. There are a few exceptions of course.
Irony alert. Almost certainly the least intelligent poster on PB complains about the intelligence of others. I completely agree with @NickPalmer, this bullying unpleasant and abusive little man should be hit with the ban hammer.
He is the only Alba supporting poster we have though, so for representative purposes I would keep Malc
Fine, but he should be warned at the very least. As for representatives of extreme or minority positions, would we need to tolerate someone who supported BNP or suchlike? He is an abusive bully and not enough people on here call him out for it.
Yes, the BNP, Britain First, For Britain etc are legal parties if distasteful
You're up and about early this morning Malc! On the other hand we don't seem to have settled down to a steady argument about anything; bit bitty! I suppose we're waiting for tomorrow and the by-election results.
Incidentally I am now dictating this but having to correct it afterwards; for example 'bitty' in the previous paragraph came out as 'bitchy! Should I have left it unchanged?
There’s a nice argument about percentages of uni educated workers to be had if you fancy chipping in. I need to find some suntan lotion because it’s roasting here and I’m deploying equipment in a field.
My tertiary education was at a time when many professionals learnt on the job. For example my friend who wanted to be a solicitor left school at 16 and went to work for a local firm, taking the professional exams. Yes he worked, yes he got money but he didn't mix with a lot of other people outside his own area. As a pharmacist I went to a technical college and did the professional examinations: a two-year full time course plus a years practical. That did mean I mixed with people from outside Southeast Essex! My wife was a teacher; two year f/t course plus practical training; fortunately that was near the college I went to and that's how we got together! None of the three of us have degrees! Although the NHS subsequently supported me in doing. a Management MA. However my grandson did a completely different course; Sports Science degree and then on-the-job teacher training. He seems to be a good teacher; now doing a headship course.
Both my wife and I valued the experience of leaving home and meeting new people. As did my grandson,
This is a very good point. I know quite a few people, intelligent with good jobs, engineering and stuff like that, who got their qualifications through apprenticeships and the like. They earn very good money, but they have never left here. They hang out with the people they grew up with, holiday with people they went to school with. There's nothing wrong with that, each to their own I don't want to sound like I'm sneering at them because I'm not, they're my friends and acquaintances too, but it does, I think, reinforce the parochialism and insularity that I can see round here.
I got away for a few years, uni and that - I never intended to move back here permanently, but then life happened - and mixed and worked with people from around the country, from around Europe and beyond. It did me a lot of good.
I think it would be a poorer country if we cut numbers going to university, because it means fewer working-class kids going to university, less mixing with people beyond their milieu and a greater insularity. Which I guess is precisely what this government would like to see.
Thanks Mr M. Further to my comments eldest granddaughter went to a Northern University from south Essex and has stayed up north; she's been back but now has no desire to come back to Essex to live. Also both my sons spent time out of the country during their degree courses. One son had an Erasmus trip to Germany; the other an exchange year in Texas. Those options would not have been available, but for university!
That's just not true though. My sister, who I mentioned before does not have a degree, has still spent time in New York working. An old schoolfriend, who also didn't go for a degree, spent a long time in Nepal with VSO.
There are, and should be, opportunities for young people to have all sorts of adventures, whether they go to university or not.
Agreed. Wouldn't it be nice if our young people could go and work, live or study anywhere in Europe, with no strings attached, no complex bureaucracy to deal with. Opportunities to experience another culture, make friends with people from different cultural backgrounds, maybe find love in Barcelona or Berlin? Ah.
But yet again, we're discussing further education whilst the elephant in the room goes unnoticed.
The hideousness of illiteracy and innumeracy at the bottom end.
Here's a (*) plan: *) Reduce the number of universities drastically. Only 15% of people can go to university. Make those universities, and the degrees they produce world-beaters. *) Massively improve vocational course access. Give tax breaks to companies that encourage take-up of vocational courses, and tax-breaks for employees using them. *) Massively improve adult literacy and numeracy programs. *) Invest in children who are falling behind in school. Test (yes, I know...) children at the end of year 3, detect ones with issues, and develop programs to help them - even if it means smaller classes for them and social workers getting involved.
(*) Potentially rubbish.
Your first two points have nothing to do with illiteracy and innumeracy at the bottom end.
It does with funding, though. All those unrepaid student loans, and the cost of the institutions themselves...
I'd also argue my second point *does* help with illiteracy and innumeracy at the lower end. Once someone gains those basic skills, make it easier for them to gain other skills, whatever stage their life is at. Give people an additional reason to get literate and numerate.
Years ago I listened to a very interesting sci-fi podcast series, where someone reviewed sci-fi books. I was amazed to discover he had never read a book until he was in his twenties, when a girlfriend encouraged him to learn to read properly.
Thursday's Express: "It's only fair! Rishi defends £1,000 boost to pensions"
Aha, we locked down to save them and our student loans get jacked up 11%, fuck off you twat
Pay the money you borrowed and stop whining. You either benefitted with a good job of you leave the poor to pick up your tab for years pissing it up at uni wasting pensioners hard earned pittance. Stop blaming other people for your uselessness
Are the student loans running at 11%?.... thats horrendous.
What is quite amazing how completely and utterly useless young people are at asserting themselves politically. They don't seem to even realise that they are being screwed over. The NI increase went through without a murmur of dissent. Whack up taxes, change the terms of student loans, keep giving bungs to pensioners so they vote tory.... Zero opposition (or even interest) from young people. It is astonishing.
That is because most are useless. They spend a few years at uni and think they are big shots when in fact they mainly struggle to wipe their own arses. They then whine incessantly about only earning 50k while complaining that all all those nasty pensioners who worked and paid taxes for 50 years are living high on the hog on their 9k pensions.
Yep, they shouldn't go to uni. Better off with a secure job and good income, such as working on the railways.
I think I shall bid you all good day.
The forum is more than normally populated by grumpy old, white, men this morning. I shall leave you all to dribble with anger into your cornflakes.
xx
I was being tongue in cheek, echoing the PB perennial of too many of other people's children going to university, with the notion that they would be better getting proper jobs.
Do you not think there's a point to be made there? Why is 50% of people going to university the magic number? Why not 90%? 20%?
My nephew got the grades to go to uni, but chose instead to go into the Wonderful World of Work. He's now on a significantly higher salary than his friends who went to uni, and has a house (with mortgage).
One of the great education sins of the last 30 yeas has been this idea that kids must go to uni, and that kids who do not are somehow inferior.
Surely the point is that people have the choice. Get the grades, go if you want. Personally I would encourage people to get an education and see the world before locking themselves into he tedious world of work, nappies and mortgages. You’ll spend decades doing that.
We have enough freeloaders thank you.
Aye. The boomers that went to university all expenses paid and chose to break the earnings link for pensioners when they were working, so they didn't have to pay much to pensioners when they were working . . . then whinge about how poor pensions are when they're the ones claiming it and shaft the young.
Truly the most selfish generation that shafted their own parents and their own grandchildren, but keep repeating the bollocks about how much tax you paid.
You do realise 90% of boomers never went to university? Now about 40% of 18 year olds graduate from university.
They also paid into NI just as their parents did as well as private pension schemes for some. It was the government that broke the earnings link
So frigging what? For either of those points.
Many of those going to university today are doing so to go to jobs that didn't need degrees in the past, but do now. So yes, the student loan is just an age-discriminatory income tax that prior generations never had to pay.
And they never paid NI at the rate we do now, that's a lie. Since boomers have started facing retirement they've ended up voting so that tax goes from income tax to NI.
Besides if the logic that more people going to university means we can't afford to pay for university anymore, perhaps we should use that logic with pensions? Lets put the education budget and the pension budget back to what it was when today's pensioners were studying and working?
The education budget has gone down as a percentage of GDP, not up, from the past.
In 1975 education represented 7.5% of GDP and pensions were 4%
Today education is 3.9% and pensions are 6%.
What a remarkable role reversal, hey? I wonder why that's happened? 🤔
Well they could do apprenticeships instead of going to university like their parents and grandparents did and then they wouldn't need a student loan. They probably would also earn more over their lifetime than doing a degree unless at a Russell Group university.
All those earning under £35k have got an NI cut. Life expectancy is higher than decades ago is the reason a higher percentage of the state budget goes on pensions
Oh do STOP!
Off Topic
Morning Pete
I watched the PMQ again yesterday and I am now clear in my mind that you are a cchq troll. Johnson blustered and prevaricated the whole time, waiting for Starmer's last question so that he could spend 2 or 3 minutes spouting a Party political broadcast on behalf of the "going nowhere very fast" Party. What a twat he is.
YouGov's @PME_Politics has identified a new group of seats where the Tories should be worried: the "Conservative Celtic Fringe". These are 41 South West seats that have returned a Tory MP since 2015 and voted Leave in 2016
The former Lib Dem heartlands, which were responsible for Cameron's 2015 majority.
There’s going to be bangs in the fringe.
Suspect only about 3 posters will get my latest pun.
The upping of the state pension and the removal of limits on rich bankers' pay seems utterly tone deaf from the Government.
Are they trying to lose?
Pensioners and bankers are the Tory core vote. No real surprise
Then the Tories deserve to lose.
The more you speak for the Tories, the more I think maybe I should actually just vote Labour, if you represent the Tories. And I despise Labour, but not as much as what you want to stand for.
Really? You even voted for Labour in 2001 when I voted Tory
Thursday's Express: "It's only fair! Rishi defends £1,000 boost to pensions"
Aha, we locked down to save them and our student loans get jacked up 11%, fuck off you twat
Pay the money you borrowed and stop whining. You either benefitted with a good job of you leave the poor to pick up your tab for years pissing it up at uni wasting pensioners hard earned pittance. Stop blaming other people for your uselessness
Are the student loans running at 11%?.... thats horrendous.
What is quite amazing how completely and utterly useless young people are at asserting themselves politically. They don't seem to even realise that they are being screwed over. The NI increase went through without a murmur of dissent. Whack up taxes, change the terms of student loans, keep giving bungs to pensioners so they vote tory.... Zero opposition (or even interest) from young people. It is astonishing.
That is because most are useless. They spend a few years at uni and think they are big shots when in fact they mainly struggle to wipe their own arses. They then whine incessantly about only earning 50k while complaining that all all those nasty pensioners who worked and paid taxes for 50 years are living high on the hog on their 9k pensions.
Yep, they shouldn't go to uni. Better off with a secure job and good income, such as working on the railways.
I think I shall bid you all good day.
The forum is more than normally populated by grumpy old, white, men this morning. I shall leave you all to dribble with anger into your cornflakes.
xx
I was being tongue in cheek, echoing the PB perennial of too many of other people's children going to university, with the notion that they would be better getting proper jobs.
Do you not think there's a point to be made there? Why is 50% of people going to university the magic number? Why not 90%? 20%?
My nephew got the grades to go to uni, but chose instead to go into the Wonderful World of Work. He's now on a significantly higher salary than his friends who went to uni, and has a house (with mortgage).
One of the great education sins of the last 30 yeas has been this idea that kids must go to uni, and that kids who do not are somehow inferior.
Surely the point is that people have the choice. Get the grades, go if you want. Personally I would encourage people to get an education and see the world before locking themselves into he tedious world of work, nappies and mortgages. You’ll spend decades doing that.
We have enough freeloaders thank you.
Aye. The boomers that went to university all expenses paid and chose to break the earnings link for pensioners when they were working, so they didn't have to pay much to pensioners when they were working . . . then whinge about how poor pensions are when they're the ones claiming it and shaft the young.
Truly the most selfish generation that shafted their own parents and their own grandchildren, but keep repeating the bollocks about how much tax you paid.
You do realise 90% of boomers never went to university? Now about 40% of 18 year olds graduate from university.
They also paid into NI just as their parents did as well as private pension schemes for some. It was the government that broke the earnings link
So frigging what? For either of those points.
Many of those going to university today are doing so to go to jobs that didn't need degrees in the past, but do now. So yes, the student loan is just an age-discriminatory income tax that prior generations never had to pay.
And they never paid NI at the rate we do now, that's a lie. Since boomers have started facing retirement they've ended up voting so that tax goes from income tax to NI.
Besides if the logic that more people going to university means we can't afford to pay for university anymore, perhaps we should use that logic with pensions? Lets put the education budget and the pension budget back to what it was when today's pensioners were studying and working?
The education budget has gone down as a percentage of GDP, not up, from the past.
In 1975 education represented 7.5% of GDP and pensions were 4%
Today education is 3.9% and pensions are 6%.
What a remarkable role reversal, hey? I wonder why that's happened? 🤔
Well they could do apprenticeships instead of going to university like their parents and grandparents did and then they wouldn't need a student loan. They probably would also earn more over their lifetime than doing a degree unless at a Russell Group university.
All those earning under £35k have got an NI cut. Life expectancy is higher than decades ago is the reason a higher percentage of the state budget goes on pensions
Oh do STOP!
A cry from the heart no less and so understandable
Thursday's Express: "It's only fair! Rishi defends £1,000 boost to pensions"
Aha, we locked down to save them and our student loans get jacked up 11%, fuck off you twat
Pay the money you borrowed and stop whining. You either benefitted with a good job of you leave the poor to pick up your tab for years pissing it up at uni wasting pensioners hard earned pittance. Stop blaming other people for your uselessness
Are the student loans running at 11%?.... thats horrendous.
What is quite amazing how completely and utterly useless young people are at asserting themselves politically. They don't seem to even realise that they are being screwed over. The NI increase went through without a murmur of dissent. Whack up taxes, change the terms of student loans, keep giving bungs to pensioners so they vote tory.... Zero opposition (or even interest) from young people. It is astonishing.
That is because most are useless. They spend a few years at uni and think they are big shots when in fact they mainly struggle to wipe their own arses. They then whine incessantly about only earning 50k while complaining that all all those nasty pensioners who worked and paid taxes for 50 years are living high on the hog on their 9k pensions.
Yep, they shouldn't go to uni. Better off with a secure job and good income, such as working on the railways.
I think I shall bid you all good day.
The forum is more than normally populated by grumpy old, white, men this morning. I shall leave you all to dribble with anger into your cornflakes.
xx
I was being tongue in cheek, echoing the PB perennial of too many of other people's children going to university, with the notion that they would be better getting proper jobs.
Do you not think there's a point to be made there? Why is 50% of people going to university the magic number? Why not 90%? 20%?
My nephew got the grades to go to uni, but chose instead to go into the Wonderful World of Work. He's now on a significantly higher salary than his friends who went to uni, and has a house (with mortgage).
One of the great education sins of the last 30 yeas has been this idea that kids must go to uni, and that kids who do not are somehow inferior.
Surely the point is that people have the choice. Get the grades, go if you want. Personally I would encourage people to get an education and see the world before locking themselves into he tedious world of work, nappies and mortgages. You’ll spend decades doing that.
We have enough freeloaders thank you.
Aye. The boomers that went to university all expenses paid and chose to break the earnings link for pensioners when they were working, so they didn't have to pay much to pensioners when they were working . . . then whinge about how poor pensions are when they're the ones claiming it and shaft the young.
Truly the most selfish generation that shafted their own parents and their own grandchildren, but keep repeating the bollocks about how much tax you paid.
You do realise 90% of boomers never went to university? Now about 40% of 18 year olds graduate from university.
They also paid into NI just as their parents did as well as private pension schemes for some. It was the government that broke the earnings link
So frigging what? For either of those points.
Many of those going to university today are doing so to go to jobs that didn't need degrees in the past, but do now. So yes, the student loan is just an age-discriminatory income tax that prior generations never had to pay.
And they never paid NI at the rate we do now, that's a lie. Since boomers have started facing retirement they've ended up voting so that tax goes from income tax to NI.
Besides if the logic that more people going to university means we can't afford to pay for university anymore, perhaps we should use that logic with pensions? Lets put the education budget and the pension budget back to what it was when today's pensioners were studying and working?
The education budget has gone down as a percentage of GDP, not up, from the past.
In 1975 education represented 7.5% of GDP and pensions were 4%
Today education is 3.9% and pensions are 6%.
What a remarkable role reversal, hey? I wonder why that's happened? 🤔
Well they could do apprenticeships instead of going to university like their parents and grandparents did and then they wouldn't need a student loan. They probably would also earn more over their lifetime than doing a degree unless at a Russell Group university.
All those earning under £35k have got an NI cut. Life expectancy is higher than decades ago is the reason a higher percentage of the state budget goes on pensions
Oh do STOP!
Off Topic
Morning Pete
I watched the PMQ again yesterday and I am now clear in my mind that you are a cchq troll. Johnson blustered and prevaricated the whole time, waiting for Starmer's last question so that he could spend 2 or 3 minutes spouting a Party political broadcast on behalf of the "going nowhere very fast" Party. What a twat he is.
No he isn't, Pete is a good chap and one of the kindest posters here. He looked out for me when I was at my lowest.
But yet again, we're discussing further education whilst the elephant in the room goes unnoticed.
The hideousness of illiteracy and innumeracy at the bottom end.
Here's a (*) plan: *) Reduce the number of universities drastically. Only 15% of people can go to university. Make those universities, and the degrees they produce world-beaters. *) Massively improve vocational course access. Give tax breaks to companies that encourage take-up of vocational courses, and tax-breaks for employees using them. *) Massively improve adult literacy and numeracy programs. *) Invest in children who are falling behind in school. Test (yes, I know...) children at the end of year 3, detect ones with issues, and develop programs to help them - even if it means smaller classes for them and social workers getting involved.
(*) Potentially rubbish.
One of the things we do is run night schools to help literacy and numeracy for adults. Government funded, I assume, but it's a good use of facilities that otherwise get only light use after 6-7pm. They seem to be well attended, from the times I've been on campus later playing sports etc.
Agree about extra support for those struggling. When I was at school there were a number of people employed to assist SEN children has that changed?
But yet again, we're discussing further education whilst the elephant in the room goes unnoticed.
The hideousness of illiteracy and innumeracy at the bottom end.
Here's a (*) plan: *) Reduce the number of universities drastically. Only 15% of people can go to university. Make those universities, and the degrees they produce world-beaters. *) Massively improve vocational course access. Give tax breaks to companies that encourage take-up of vocational courses, and tax-breaks for employees using them. *) Massively improve adult literacy and numeracy programs. *) Invest in children who are falling behind in school. Test (yes, I know...) children at the end of year 3, detect ones with issues, and develop programs to help them - even if it means smaller classes for them and social workers getting involved.
(*) Potentially rubbish.
Or increase the number of teachers and teaching assistants so the teachers in junior schools don't have to spend the amount of time they do outside the classroom. Preparation, marking and assessing seems to take a great deal of out-of-school time.
Perhaps - and I'd certainly call for more teachers and TAs. But have the extras helping the bottom end of attainment, not the top end.
Illiteracy and innumeracy is a national scandal and millions of individual tragedies.
The upping of the state pension and the removal of limits on rich bankers' pay seems utterly tone deaf from the Government.
Are they trying to lose?
Pensioners and bankers are the Tory core vote. No real surprise
Then the Tories deserve to lose.
The more you speak for the Tories, the more I think maybe I should actually just vote Labour, if you represent the Tories. And I despise Labour, but not as much as what you want to stand for.
Really? You even voted for Labour in 2001 when I voted Tory
Yes, because I'm a sentient human who has principles and thinks about why I should vote. Those principles generally align with the Tories more, but if they don't, then the Tories don't deserve my vote.
I don't just vote for a monkey with a blue rosette, and I don't put party before country.
Most university students enjoy being at university with their peers, and it's probably better to take leisure time in your teens and 20s than as early retirement in your 60s.
But yet again, we're discussing further education whilst the elephant in the room goes unnoticed.
The hideousness of illiteracy and innumeracy at the bottom end.
Here's a (*) plan: *) Reduce the number of universities drastically. Only 15% of people can go to university. Make those universities, and the degrees they produce world-beaters. *) Massively improve vocational course access. Give tax breaks to companies that encourage take-up of vocational courses, and tax-breaks for employees using them. *) Massively improve adult literacy and numeracy programs. *) Invest in children who are falling behind in school. Test (yes, I know...) children at the end of year 3, detect ones with issues, and develop programs to help them - even if it means smaller classes for them and social workers getting involved.
(*) Potentially rubbish.
One of the things we do is run night schools to help literacy and numeracy for adults. Government funded, I assume, but it's a good use of facilities that otherwise get only light use after 6-7pm. They seem to be well attended, from the times I've been on campus later playing sports etc.
Agree about extra support for those struggling. When I was at school there were a number of people employed to assist SEN children has that changed?
No, they're still about.
I am being slightly optimistic on this. So much education occurs at home, and if you have parents who cannot cope, then the children are automatically at a disadvantage (though one many overcome). Many homes do not even have books in them. How do we help kids whose parents are either overwhelmed, or simply do not care?
The upping of the state pension and the removal of limits on rich bankers' pay seems utterly tone deaf from the Government.
Are they trying to lose?
Pensioners and bankers are the Tory core vote. No real surprise
Then the Tories deserve to lose.
The more you speak for the Tories, the more I think maybe I should actually just vote Labour, if you represent the Tories. And I despise Labour, but not as much as what you want to stand for.
Really? You even voted for Labour in 2001 when I voted Tory
Really childish remark.
So what, I did in 1997 and in 2001 and it demonstrates we are not tribal but have minds of our own
Thursday's Express: "It's only fair! Rishi defends £1,000 boost to pensions"
Aha, we locked down to save them and our student loans get jacked up 11%, fuck off you twat
Pay the money you borrowed and stop whining. You either benefitted with a good job of you leave the poor to pick up your tab for years pissing it up at uni wasting pensioners hard earned pittance. Stop blaming other people for your uselessness
Are the student loans running at 11%?.... thats horrendous.
What is quite amazing how completely and utterly useless young people are at asserting themselves politically. They don't seem to even realise that they are being screwed over. The NI increase went through without a murmur of dissent. Whack up taxes, change the terms of student loans, keep giving bungs to pensioners so they vote tory.... Zero opposition (or even interest) from young people. It is astonishing.
That is because most are useless. They spend a few years at uni and think they are big shots when in fact they mainly struggle to wipe their own arses. They then whine incessantly about only earning 50k while complaining that all all those nasty pensioners who worked and paid taxes for 50 years are living high on the hog on their 9k pensions.
Yep, they shouldn't go to uni. Better off with a secure job and good income, such as working on the railways.
I think I shall bid you all good day.
The forum is more than normally populated by grumpy old, white, men this morning. I shall leave you all to dribble with anger into your cornflakes.
xx
I was being tongue in cheek, echoing the PB perennial of too many of other people's children going to university, with the notion that they would be better getting proper jobs.
Do you not think there's a point to be made there? Why is 50% of people going to university the magic number? Why not 90%? 20%?
My nephew got the grades to go to uni, but chose instead to go into the Wonderful World of Work. He's now on a significantly higher salary than his friends who went to uni, and has a house (with mortgage).
One of the great education sins of the last 30 yeas has been this idea that kids must go to uni, and that kids who do not are somehow inferior.
Surely the point is that people have the choice. Get the grades, go if you want. Personally I would encourage people to get an education and see the world before locking themselves into he tedious world of work, nappies and mortgages. You’ll spend decades doing that.
This is exactly the sort of issue I mean. Firstly, the idea that they don't have an education if they don't go to uni. Secondly, that not going to uni means they won't see the world. Thirdly, that work has to be tedious (with the implication that uni is all fun and laughter).
Uni is not, and should not be, an extended childhood. It should be a way of people getting skills that will improve their job prospects and enrich their lives. If they have fun doing so, fair enough. But (whispers quietly) working your people can have fun as well.
There is so much crummy disdain for people who do not go to uni. It's especially funny when it comes from people on the left, who decry classism and create their own class where they are the snobs, looking down on the inferior people who did not go to uni.
(I don't mean you in that last para)
I just want a university education to be a choice whatever you background. There’s is more to life than work and taking time out to study is a rich part of life. You can learn things at a university that you cannot learn on the job.
Once tied into the obligations of kids and mortgages it’s hard to find the time not to work. So it’s an import choice at an important moment,
Of course it should be a choice: but there should be other choices as well. At the moment it's basically uni or work with no FE - and too many people stupidly see the latter route as the scrapheap.
For instance, I am suspicious that a nursing degree does not produce a 'better' nurse than on the job vocational training. The same is true for many other degrees.
I am glad that you get a degree these days for nursing training. My sister trained as nurse. She got her degree later. It meant a lot to her.
For choice to be real, kids from families without a history of university education need encouragement and support to go to university.
I have got no problems with nurses getting degrees. There is a problem is if the only way into nursing is having a degree.
There *are* routes to train without full-time study at university, but I think nurses should be recognized as having learnt something substantial and valuable.
It may not be fair, but for whatever reason, employers want to see qualifications. To say to nurses who didn't go to university you don't get a degree would hinder their prospects.
It's where the study of the training takes place; it's what he studied.
One of the skills of a nurse is being empathetic. Very very difficult to teach but I noticed that many of the medics with whom I come in contact seem a great deal more empathetic than their predecessors, and that's, at least in part, down to the training.
On nursing degrees, we have a lot of nursing and midwifery students. Being a degree has also influenced the content a bit, too. There is more on critical thinking and policy rather than just learning how to do x, y and z. Much of it could of course be taught anywhere, but we do try to integrate them into the department, so they have seminars with active researchers (I normally lead a few each year). Really interesting discussions about how the guidelines and best practice are established, how to read research papers etc (my research has fed into guidelines that they will all be applying daily, so it's also interesting for me to get their views on how that works in practice). Probably not needed at the entry level positions, but potentially important down the line for those who move further up, partcicularly if they're later involved in local policy to have a better handle on those kinds of things.
Also, to add, the vast majority* of the lecturers on these courses are qualified nurses/midwives or other clinicians. Some a little research active, but the focus is on the teaching. So much the same as if they were just taught somewhere else, I guess.
*the only ones that are not are researchers like me who are pulled in to cover some of the other, non-clinical, aspects of the courses
In my view, there's too much emphasis on the level and type of education and training, rather than on its quality. It's quality that counts. Some degrees are high quality; some are poor. Some apprenticeships are brilliant; others are terrible. We need to focus on the quality more than the subject. It doesn't actually matter too much if you're doing on-the-job training in carpentry, a basic numeracy course, or a degree in 15th C violin making.
What matters is whether the quality of what you're studying is sufficiently high to lead to rapid improvements in your ability to think, understand or do whatever it is. And that isn't focused on enough, as quality of the curriculum, teaching etc. is far too variable at all levels of education and training.
Thursday's Express: "It's only fair! Rishi defends £1,000 boost to pensions"
Aha, we locked down to save them and our student loans get jacked up 11%, fuck off you twat
Pay the money you borrowed and stop whining. You either benefitted with a good job of you leave the poor to pick up your tab for years pissing it up at uni wasting pensioners hard earned pittance. Stop blaming other people for your uselessness
Are the student loans running at 11%?.... thats horrendous.
What is quite amazing how completely and utterly useless young people are at asserting themselves politically. They don't seem to even realise that they are being screwed over. The NI increase went through without a murmur of dissent. Whack up taxes, change the terms of student loans, keep giving bungs to pensioners so they vote tory.... Zero opposition (or even interest) from young people. It is astonishing.
That is because most are useless. They spend a few years at uni and think they are big shots when in fact they mainly struggle to wipe their own arses. They then whine incessantly about only earning 50k while complaining that all all those nasty pensioners who worked and paid taxes for 50 years are living high on the hog on their 9k pensions.
Yep, they shouldn't go to uni. Better off with a secure job and good income, such as working on the railways.
I think I shall bid you all good day.
The forum is more than normally populated by grumpy old, white, men this morning. I shall leave you all to dribble with anger into your cornflakes.
xx
I was being tongue in cheek, echoing the PB perennial of too many of other people's children going to university, with the notion that they would be better getting proper jobs.
Do you not think there's a point to be made there? Why is 50% of people going to university the magic number? Why not 90%? 20%?
My nephew got the grades to go to uni, but chose instead to go into the Wonderful World of Work. He's now on a significantly higher salary than his friends who went to uni, and has a house (with mortgage).
One of the great education sins of the last 30 yeas has been this idea that kids must go to uni, and that kids who do not are somehow inferior.
Surely the point is that people have the choice. Get the grades, go if you want. Personally I would encourage people to get an education and see the world before locking themselves into he tedious world of work, nappies and mortgages. You’ll spend decades doing that.
We have enough freeloaders thank you.
Aye. The boomers that went to university all expenses paid and chose to break the earnings link for pensioners when they were working, so they didn't have to pay much to pensioners when they were working . . . then whinge about how poor pensions are when they're the ones claiming it and shaft the young.
Truly the most selfish generation that shafted their own parents and their own grandchildren, but keep repeating the bollocks about how much tax you paid.
You do realise 90% of boomers never went to university? Now about 40% of 18 year olds graduate from university.
They also paid into NI just as their parents did as well as private pension schemes for some. It was the government that broke the earnings link
So frigging what? For either of those points.
Many of those going to university today are doing so to go to jobs that didn't need degrees in the past, but do now. So yes, the student loan is just an age-discriminatory income tax that prior generations never had to pay.
And they never paid NI at the rate we do now, that's a lie. Since boomers have started facing retirement they've ended up voting so that tax goes from income tax to NI.
Besides if the logic that more people going to university means we can't afford to pay for university anymore, perhaps we should use that logic with pensions? Lets put the education budget and the pension budget back to what it was when today's pensioners were studying and working?
The education budget has gone down as a percentage of GDP, not up, from the past.
In 1975 education represented 7.5% of GDP and pensions were 4%
Today education is 3.9% and pensions are 6%.
What a remarkable role reversal, hey? I wonder why that's happened? 🤔
Well they could do apprenticeships instead of going to university like their parents and grandparents did and then they wouldn't need a student loan. They probably would also earn more over their lifetime than doing a degree unless at a Russell Group university.
All those earning under £35k have got an NI cut. Life expectancy is higher than decades ago is the reason a higher percentage of the state budget goes on pensions
Oh do STOP!
Off Topic
Morning Pete
I watched the PMQ again yesterday and I am now clear in my mind that you are a cchq troll. Johnson blustered and prevaricated the whole time, waiting for Starmer's last question so that he could spend 2 or 3 minutes spouting a Party political broadcast on behalf of the "going nowhere very fast" Party. What a twat he is.
No he isn't, Pete is a good chap and one of the kindest posters here. He looked out for me when I was at my lowest.
Thursday's Express: "It's only fair! Rishi defends £1,000 boost to pensions"
Aha, we locked down to save them and our student loans get jacked up 11%, fuck off you twat
Pay the money you borrowed and stop whining. You either benefitted with a good job of you leave the poor to pick up your tab for years pissing it up at uni wasting pensioners hard earned pittance. Stop blaming other people for your uselessness
Are the student loans running at 11%?.... thats horrendous.
What is quite amazing how completely and utterly useless young people are at asserting themselves politically. They don't seem to even realise that they are being screwed over. The NI increase went through without a murmur of dissent. Whack up taxes, change the terms of student loans, keep giving bungs to pensioners so they vote tory.... Zero opposition (or even interest) from young people. It is astonishing.
That is because most are useless. They spend a few years at uni and think they are big shots when in fact they mainly struggle to wipe their own arses. They then whine incessantly about only earning 50k while complaining that all all those nasty pensioners who worked and paid taxes for 50 years are living high on the hog on their 9k pensions.
Yep, they shouldn't go to uni. Better off with a secure job and good income, such as working on the railways.
I think I shall bid you all good day.
The forum is more than normally populated by grumpy old, white, men this morning. I shall leave you all to dribble with anger into your cornflakes.
xx
I was being tongue in cheek, echoing the PB perennial of too many of other people's children going to university, with the notion that they would be better getting proper jobs.
Do you not think there's a point to be made there? Why is 50% of people going to university the magic number? Why not 90%? 20%?
My nephew got the grades to go to uni, but chose instead to go into the Wonderful World of Work. He's now on a significantly higher salary than his friends who went to uni, and has a house (with mortgage).
One of the great education sins of the last 30 yeas has been this idea that kids must go to uni, and that kids who do not are somehow inferior.
Surely the point is that people have the choice. Get the grades, go if you want. Personally I would encourage people to get an education and see the world before locking themselves into he tedious world of work, nappies and mortgages. You’ll spend decades doing that.
You also genuinely can’t do some lines of work without some sort of tertiary education. We don’t have enough engineers in the labour force, and that’s a career that needs a degree. You can start as a technician and get an accelerated degree later, but you still need to go do it. It’s the challenge of a service based economy innt? If you want high value service with a side order of high value manufacturing you need highly educated workers. That isn’t to say there isn’t any role for skilled manual or trades work, the guy who valets my car probably earns more than me, but on an economic level it makes sense to have a lot of university graduates. As Foxy said, poor courses do not help this.
Good point.
I am conscious that this debate is old as the hills. .
Not that long ago, some challenged whether secondary education was valuable and necessary for all kids. Before that, some challenged whether a full primary education was necessary for some kids. Same debate.
Personally, I believe that university education should be an option for all kids with the grades and that kids without a history of education in their family need support to make that informed choice.
I am actually fairly negative about the value of tertiary education, despite (or perhaps because of!) my university work, but to me it is not about numbers.
My dislike is of the consumerist culture of undergraduates, the poor quality of many courses and the post university culture of credentialism in which those without formal qualifications are sidelined.
The undergraduate polling above illustrates the problem of undergraduate consumerism. "Starbucks University" as an academic friend describes it, where students do not want to be challenged, but rather to proceed through three year of socialising, leaving with an entrance ticket to a white collar middle class job. A sort of middle class finishing school.
Other than technical or vocational courses no one actually uses their degree subject, but that doesn't mean that they don't gain advantage by it. Speaking bad Latin helps our PM present a simulacrum of intelligence to the gullible, but what else in his Classics degree do we see him use? Nothing!, but we do he see him constantly using the social skills polished in the Union, and the connections thereby made.
I studied medieval English history at university. The emphasis placed on text analysis, on verifying and then questioning the veracity of sources, on developing timelines and on building strong, well-presented arguments has been pretty fundamental to the way my professional career developed. I was taught to question, question and question again. The skills I learned have been massively helpful.
The entire of education is blighted by functionalism. The sort of thinking that says the whole point of reading, arithmetic and stuff is 'so that you can get a good job' from the age of 4.
This then ends up with people who have degrees in Tibetan languages and Elamite Cuneiform having to justify these things by reference to how it is monetised.
This is a totally rubbish view of what the world is for. Yes, there are extrinsic values in education; but the fun and depth is all in the intrinsic value.
This comes down to an important question: what is the point (or points) of further education? Is it to enrich the individual? Is it to give them important life skills? Is it to teach them how to learn independently? Is it to give them skills for work? Is it to provide the country with the workforce it needs for the future? And if many of these, how do you weight them?
I am a huge believer in the value of education for education's sake. The human brain is the most complex machine in the known universe; if we weren't put on this Earth to seek knowledge and understanding of life in all its intricacies and mysteries than what the hell are we here for?
Oh indeed. I like the idea of people going to university to study a subject for the love of that subject, without it having to justify itself as being directly practical to the economy. But university courses that are more directly practical are also worth while.
The problem we have is not one of a tension between those two extremes. A lot of people are at university for a very definite practical purpose, rather than the love of their subject. But the practical purpose is not to learn anything useful (or interesting), but to obtain the [first-class] degree that they've paid for, as their passport to a middle-class lifestyle.
This doesn't mean that I think we are sending too many people to university, but I do think we are sending them to university for the wrong reasons, largely to do the wrong things, in the wrong way.
The upping of the state pension and the removal of limits on rich bankers' pay seems utterly tone deaf from the Government.
Are they trying to lose?
Pensioners and bankers are the Tory core vote. No real surprise
Then the Tories deserve to lose.
The more you speak for the Tories, the more I think maybe I should actually just vote Labour, if you represent the Tories. And I despise Labour, but not as much as what you want to stand for.
Really? You even voted for Labour in 2001 when I voted Tory
But he has never voted Plaid.
You say you voted Plaid because you never waste your vote (even though in a multi candidate ward that can work against your candidates if they don't have a full slate). So what would you do if your choice was Labour and only something more reprehensible was available. Wouldn't that make you a Labour voter?
In my view, there's too much emphasis on the level and type of education and training, rather than on its quality. It's quality that counts. Some degrees are high quality; some are poor. Some apprenticeships are brilliant; others are terrible. We need to focus on the quality more than the subject. It doesn't actually matter too much if you're doing on-the-job training in carpentry, a basic numeracy course, or a degree in 15th C violin making.
What matters is whether the quality of what you're studying is sufficiently high to lead to rapid improvements in your ability to think, understand or do whatever it is. And that isn't focused on enough, as quality of the curriculum, teaching etc. is far too variable at all levels of education and training.
Yep, non-academic learning is undervalued. I'm an epidemiologist with a PhD in something else entirely and learned some of the stats and certainly the clinical aspects on the job. That has sometimes caused trouble with some funders (generally solved by ensuring someone 'suitably qualified' on paper is also on the application).
Thursday's Express: "It's only fair! Rishi defends £1,000 boost to pensions"
Aha, we locked down to save them and our student loans get jacked up 11%, fuck off you twat
Pay the money you borrowed and stop whining. You either benefitted with a good job of you leave the poor to pick up your tab for years pissing it up at uni wasting pensioners hard earned pittance. Stop blaming other people for your uselessness
Are the student loans running at 11%?.... thats horrendous.
What is quite amazing how completely and utterly useless young people are at asserting themselves politically. They don't seem to even realise that they are being screwed over. The NI increase went through without a murmur of dissent. Whack up taxes, change the terms of student loans, keep giving bungs to pensioners so they vote tory.... Zero opposition (or even interest) from young people. It is astonishing.
That is because most are useless. They spend a few years at uni and think they are big shots when in fact they mainly struggle to wipe their own arses. They then whine incessantly about only earning 50k while complaining that all all those nasty pensioners who worked and paid taxes for 50 years are living high on the hog on their 9k pensions.
Yep, they shouldn't go to uni. Better off with a secure job and good income, such as working on the railways.
I think I shall bid you all good day.
The forum is more than normally populated by grumpy old, white, men this morning. I shall leave you all to dribble with anger into your cornflakes.
xx
I was being tongue in cheek, echoing the PB perennial of too many of other people's children going to university, with the notion that they would be better getting proper jobs.
Do you not think there's a point to be made there? Why is 50% of people going to university the magic number? Why not 90%? 20%?
My nephew got the grades to go to uni, but chose instead to go into the Wonderful World of Work. He's now on a significantly higher salary than his friends who went to uni, and has a house (with mortgage).
One of the great education sins of the last 30 yeas has been this idea that kids must go to uni, and that kids who do not are somehow inferior.
Surely the point is that people have the choice. Get the grades, go if you want. Personally I would encourage people to get an education and see the world before locking themselves into he tedious world of work, nappies and mortgages. You’ll spend decades doing that.
We have enough freeloaders thank you.
Aye. The boomers that went to university all expenses paid and chose to break the earnings link for pensioners when they were working, so they didn't have to pay much to pensioners when they were working . . . then whinge about how poor pensions are when they're the ones claiming it and shaft the young.
Truly the most selfish generation that shafted their own parents and their own grandchildren, but keep repeating the bollocks about how much tax you paid.
You do realise 90% of boomers never went to university? Now about 40% of 18 year olds graduate from university.
They also paid into NI just as their parents did as well as private pension schemes for some. It was the government that broke the earnings link
So frigging what? For either of those points.
Many of those going to university today are doing so to go to jobs that didn't need degrees in the past, but do now. So yes, the student loan is just an age-discriminatory income tax that prior generations never had to pay.
And they never paid NI at the rate we do now, that's a lie. Since boomers have started facing retirement they've ended up voting so that tax goes from income tax to NI.
Besides if the logic that more people going to university means we can't afford to pay for university anymore, perhaps we should use that logic with pensions? Lets put the education budget and the pension budget back to what it was when today's pensioners were studying and working?
The education budget has gone down as a percentage of GDP, not up, from the past.
In 1975 education represented 7.5% of GDP and pensions were 4%
Today education is 3.9% and pensions are 6%.
What a remarkable role reversal, hey? I wonder why that's happened? 🤔
Well they could do apprenticeships instead of going to university like their parents and grandparents did and then they wouldn't need a student loan. They probably would also earn more over their lifetime than doing a degree unless at a Russell Group university.
All those earning under £35k have got an NI cut. Life expectancy is higher than decades ago is the reason a higher percentage of the state budget goes on pensions
Oh do STOP!
Off Topic
Morning Pete
I watched the PMQ again yesterday and I am now clear in my mind that you are a cchq troll. Johnson blustered and prevaricated the whole time, waiting for Starmer's last question so that he could spend 2 or 3 minutes spouting a Party political broadcast on behalf of the "going nowhere very fast" Party. What a twat he is.
No he isn't, Pete is a good chap and one of the kindest posters here. He looked out for me when I was at my lowest.
I agree with Daveyboy. Calling yesterdays PMQs a stonking win for Boris, when it’s obvious calling yesterdays PMQ that means you havn’t even watched or heard it yet, shows a not too subtle agenda - such agenda and posts just grate on here with some of us trying to provide fresh fair summing up for those fellow PBers busy and missed something.
Thursday's Express: "It's only fair! Rishi defends £1,000 boost to pensions"
Aha, we locked down to save them and our student loans get jacked up 11%, fuck off you twat
Pay the money you borrowed and stop whining. You either benefitted with a good job of you leave the poor to pick up your tab for years pissing it up at uni wasting pensioners hard earned pittance. Stop blaming other people for your uselessness
Are the student loans running at 11%?.... thats horrendous.
What is quite amazing how completely and utterly useless young people are at asserting themselves politically. They don't seem to even realise that they are being screwed over. The NI increase went through without a murmur of dissent. Whack up taxes, change the terms of student loans, keep giving bungs to pensioners so they vote tory.... Zero opposition (or even interest) from young people. It is astonishing.
That is because most are useless. They spend a few years at uni and think they are big shots when in fact they mainly struggle to wipe their own arses. They then whine incessantly about only earning 50k while complaining that all all those nasty pensioners who worked and paid taxes for 50 years are living high on the hog on their 9k pensions.
Yep, they shouldn't go to uni. Better off with a secure job and good income, such as working on the railways.
I think I shall bid you all good day.
The forum is more than normally populated by grumpy old, white, men this morning. I shall leave you all to dribble with anger into your cornflakes.
xx
I was being tongue in cheek, echoing the PB perennial of too many of other people's children going to university, with the notion that they would be better getting proper jobs.
Do you not think there's a point to be made there? Why is 50% of people going to university the magic number? Why not 90%? 20%?
My nephew got the grades to go to uni, but chose instead to go into the Wonderful World of Work. He's now on a significantly higher salary than his friends who went to uni, and has a house (with mortgage).
One of the great education sins of the last 30 yeas has been this idea that kids must go to uni, and that kids who do not are somehow inferior.
Surely the point is that people have the choice. Get the grades, go if you want. Personally I would encourage people to get an education and see the world before locking themselves into he tedious world of work, nappies and mortgages. You’ll spend decades doing that.
We have enough freeloaders thank you.
Aye. The boomers that went to university all expenses paid and chose to break the earnings link for pensioners when they were working, so they didn't have to pay much to pensioners when they were working . . . then whinge about how poor pensions are when they're the ones claiming it and shaft the young.
Truly the most selfish generation that shafted their own parents and their own grandchildren, but keep repeating the bollocks about how much tax you paid.
@BartholomewRoberts I don't often agree with your posts (though often find them informative), but this is enjoyably succint and accurate (as far as I'm aware - I didn't know that it was the baby boomer generation that broke the earnings link). Thank you.
He had to guess as he had run out of fingers and toes. He would not know a boomer if he fell over one. A whining whinging Tory snake.
You really are the most miserable poster on this site Malc. I can only assume your life is so shite you have to lash out at everyone else who might actually be enjoying theirs.
On which basis, I hope things improve for you and you learn to hate your fellow human beings a little less.
F Off Loser,I have a great life.Listening to pish from the likes of you would make anyone disappear. Stick to something you know anything about , like being a loser, rather than trying to guess. You could bore for UK at the Olympics and likely get gold.
Nobody else will bore for the UK while Andy Murray lives.
He hasn't won a tournament for a while so I think you'll find he currently bores for Scotland.
Disclaimer: I usually find what he says QI, maybe Anglos are addicted to 'entertainers' like BJ.
It's more his oratorical style - or lack of it - than the content.
I once had a really interesting chat with Steve Davis at a funk gig in Camden.
YouGov's @PME_Politics has identified a new group of seats where the Tories should be worried: the "Conservative Celtic Fringe". These are 41 South West seats that have returned a Tory MP since 2015 and voted Leave in 2016
The former Lib Dem heartlands, which were responsible for Cameron's 2015 majority.
There’s going to be bangs in the fringe.
Suspect only about 3 posters will get my latest pun.
Ministers are becoming increasingly concerned about the danger of looking like a government that promises the world but doesn’t deliver. ‘It’s a critique we need to be very careful about,’ admits one of them
Is there any talent at No 10 left? This is just embarrassing
Thursday's Express: "It's only fair! Rishi defends £1,000 boost to pensions"
Aha, we locked down to save them and our student loans get jacked up 11%, fuck off you twat
Pay the money you borrowed and stop whining. You either benefitted with a good job of you leave the poor to pick up your tab for years pissing it up at uni wasting pensioners hard earned pittance. Stop blaming other people for your uselessness
Are the student loans running at 11%?.... thats horrendous.
What is quite amazing how completely and utterly useless young people are at asserting themselves politically. They don't seem to even realise that they are being screwed over. The NI increase went through without a murmur of dissent. Whack up taxes, change the terms of student loans, keep giving bungs to pensioners so they vote tory.... Zero opposition (or even interest) from young people. It is astonishing.
That is because most are useless. They spend a few years at uni and think they are big shots when in fact they mainly struggle to wipe their own arses. They then whine incessantly about only earning 50k while complaining that all all those nasty pensioners who worked and paid taxes for 50 years are living high on the hog on their 9k pensions.
Yep, they shouldn't go to uni. Better off with a secure job and good income, such as working on the railways.
I think I shall bid you all good day.
The forum is more than normally populated by grumpy old, white, men this morning. I shall leave you all to dribble with anger into your cornflakes.
xx
I was being tongue in cheek, echoing the PB perennial of too many of other people's children going to university, with the notion that they would be better getting proper jobs.
Do you not think there's a point to be made there? Why is 50% of people going to university the magic number? Why not 90%? 20%?
My nephew got the grades to go to uni, but chose instead to go into the Wonderful World of Work. He's now on a significantly higher salary than his friends who went to uni, and has a house (with mortgage).
One of the great education sins of the last 30 yeas has been this idea that kids must go to uni, and that kids who do not are somehow inferior.
Surely the point is that people have the choice. Get the grades, go if you want. Personally I would encourage people to get an education and see the world before locking themselves into he tedious world of work, nappies and mortgages. You’ll spend decades doing that.
We have enough freeloaders thank you.
Aye. The boomers that went to university all expenses paid and chose to break the earnings link for pensioners when they were working, so they didn't have to pay much to pensioners when they were working . . . then whinge about how poor pensions are when they're the ones claiming it and shaft the young.
Truly the most selfish generation that shafted their own parents and their own grandchildren, but keep repeating the bollocks about how much tax you paid.
You do realise 90% of boomers never went to university? Now about 40% of 18 year olds graduate from university.
They also paid into NI just as their parents did as well as private pension schemes for some. It was the government that broke the earnings link
So frigging what? For either of those points.
Many of those going to university today are doing so to go to jobs that didn't need degrees in the past, but do now. So yes, the student loan is just an age-discriminatory income tax that prior generations never had to pay.
And they never paid NI at the rate we do now, that's a lie. Since boomers have started facing retirement they've ended up voting so that tax goes from income tax to NI.
Besides if the logic that more people going to university means we can't afford to pay for university anymore, perhaps we should use that logic with pensions? Lets put the education budget and the pension budget back to what it was when today's pensioners were studying and working?
The education budget has gone down as a percentage of GDP, not up, from the past.
In 1975 education represented 7.5% of GDP and pensions were 4%
Today education is 3.9% and pensions are 6%.
What a remarkable role reversal, hey? I wonder why that's happened? 🤔
Well they could do apprenticeships instead of going to university like their parents and grandparents did and then they wouldn't need a student loan. They probably would also earn more over their lifetime than doing a degree unless at a Russell Group university.
All those earning under £35k have got an NI cut. Life expectancy is higher than decades ago is the reason a higher percentage of the state budget goes on pensions
Oh do STOP!
Off Topic
Morning Pete
I watched the PMQ again yesterday and I am now clear in my mind that you are a cchq troll. Johnson blustered and prevaricated the whole time, waiting for Starmer's last question so that he could spend 2 or 3 minutes spouting a Party political broadcast on behalf of the "going nowhere very fast" Party. What a twat he is.
No he isn't, Pete is a good chap and one of the kindest posters here. He looked out for me when I was at my lowest.
I agree with Daveyboy. Calling yesterdays PMQs a stonking win for Boris, when it’s obvious calling yesterdays PMQ that means you havn’t even watched or heard it yet, shows a not too subtle agenda - such agenda and posts just grate on here with some of us trying to provide fresh fair summing up for those fellow PBers busy and missed something.
No it's utter nonsense, Pete is as leftie as me and is a good chap. I will not have rubbish written about somebody I respect.
YouGov's @PME_Politics has identified a new group of seats where the Tories should be worried: the "Conservative Celtic Fringe". These are 41 South West seats that have returned a Tory MP since 2015 and voted Leave in 2016
The former Lib Dem heartlands, which were responsible for Cameron's 2015 majority.
There’s going to be bangs in the fringe.
Suspect only about 3 posters will get my latest pun.
Thursday's Express: "It's only fair! Rishi defends £1,000 boost to pensions"
Aha, we locked down to save them and our student loans get jacked up 11%, fuck off you twat
Pay the money you borrowed and stop whining. You either benefitted with a good job of you leave the poor to pick up your tab for years pissing it up at uni wasting pensioners hard earned pittance. Stop blaming other people for your uselessness
Are the student loans running at 11%?.... thats horrendous.
What is quite amazing how completely and utterly useless young people are at asserting themselves politically. They don't seem to even realise that they are being screwed over. The NI increase went through without a murmur of dissent. Whack up taxes, change the terms of student loans, keep giving bungs to pensioners so they vote tory.... Zero opposition (or even interest) from young people. It is astonishing.
That is because most are useless. They spend a few years at uni and think they are big shots when in fact they mainly struggle to wipe their own arses. They then whine incessantly about only earning 50k while complaining that all all those nasty pensioners who worked and paid taxes for 50 years are living high on the hog on their 9k pensions.
Yep, they shouldn't go to uni. Better off with a secure job and good income, such as working on the railways.
I think I shall bid you all good day.
The forum is more than normally populated by grumpy old, white, men this morning. I shall leave you all to dribble with anger into your cornflakes.
xx
I was being tongue in cheek, echoing the PB perennial of too many of other people's children going to university, with the notion that they would be better getting proper jobs.
Do you not think there's a point to be made there? Why is 50% of people going to university the magic number? Why not 90%? 20%?
My nephew got the grades to go to uni, but chose instead to go into the Wonderful World of Work. He's now on a significantly higher salary than his friends who went to uni, and has a house (with mortgage).
One of the great education sins of the last 30 yeas has been this idea that kids must go to uni, and that kids who do not are somehow inferior.
Surely the point is that people have the choice. Get the grades, go if you want. Personally I would encourage people to get an education and see the world before locking themselves into he tedious world of work, nappies and mortgages. You’ll spend decades doing that.
You also genuinely can’t do some lines of work without some sort of tertiary education. We don’t have enough engineers in the labour force, and that’s a career that needs a degree. You can start as a technician and get an accelerated degree later, but you still need to go do it. It’s the challenge of a service based economy innt? If you want high value service with a side order of high value manufacturing you need highly educated workers. That isn’t to say there isn’t any role for skilled manual or trades work, the guy who valets my car probably earns more than me, but on an economic level it makes sense to have a lot of university graduates. As Foxy said, poor courses do not help this.
Good point.
I am conscious that this debate is old as the hills. .
Not that long ago, some challenged whether secondary education was valuable and necessary for all kids. Before that, some challenged whether a full primary education was necessary for some kids. Same debate.
Personally, I believe that university education should be an option for all kids with the grades and that kids without a history of education in their family need support to make that informed choice.
I am actually fairly negative about the value of tertiary education, despite (or perhaps because of!) my university work, but to me it is not about numbers.
My dislike is of the consumerist culture of undergraduates, the poor quality of many courses and the post university culture of credentialism in which those without formal qualifications are sidelined.
The undergraduate polling above illustrates the problem of undergraduate consumerism. "Starbucks University" as an academic friend describes it, where students do not want to be challenged, but rather to proceed through three year of socialising, leaving with an entrance ticket to a white collar middle class job. A sort of middle class finishing school.
Other than technical or vocational courses no one actually uses their degree subject, but that doesn't mean that they don't gain advantage by it. Speaking bad Latin helps our PM present a simulacrum of intelligence to the gullible, but what else in his Classics degree do we see him use? Nothing!, but we do he see him constantly using the social skills polished in the Union, and the connections thereby made.
I studied medieval English history at university. The emphasis placed on text analysis, on verifying and then questioning the veracity of sources, on developing timelines and on building strong, well-presented arguments has been pretty fundamental to the way my professional career developed. I was taught to question, question and question again. The skills I learned have been massively helpful.
The entire of education is blighted by functionalism. The sort of thinking that says the whole point of reading, arithmetic and stuff is 'so that you can get a good job' from the age of 4.
This then ends up with people who have degrees in Tibetan languages and Elamite Cuneiform having to justify these things by reference to how it is monetised.
This is a totally rubbish view of what the world is for. Yes, there are extrinsic values in education; but the fun and depth is all in the intrinsic value.
This comes down to an important question: what is the point (or points) of further education? Is it to enrich the individual? Is it to give them important life skills? Is it to teach them how to learn independently? Is it to give them skills for work? Is it to provide the country with the workforce it needs for the future? And if many of these, how do you weight them?
I am a huge believer in the value of education for education's sake. The human brain is the most complex machine in the known universe; if we weren't put on this Earth to seek knowledge and understanding of life in all its intricacies and mysteries than what the hell are we here for?
Oh indeed. I like the idea of people going to university to study a subject for the love of that subject, without it having to justify itself as being directly practical to the economy. But university courses that are more directly practical are also worth while.
The problem we have is not one of a tension between those two extremes. A lot of people are at university for a very definite practical purpose, rather than the love of their subject. But the practical purpose is not to learn anything useful (or interesting), but to obtain the [first-class] degree that they've paid for, as their passport to a middle-class lifestyle.
This doesn't mean that I think we are sending too many people to university, but I do think we are sending them to university for the wrong reasons, largely to do the wrong things, in the wrong way.
Part of the problem is the size of the gap between those living a comfortable middle class lifestyle and everyone else. You can't blame young people for chasing that upper middle class dream if the alternative is renting until you are 50 and counting every penny, living one paycheck away from a visit to the food bank. Even the winners in this lottery, those who "make it", are victims of it because they are forced into the wrong choices rather than following their dreams. If people could live an affordable, pleasant life whether they had gone to Uni or not then people will be able to make the right choice to study the right thing for the right reasons.
Thursday's Express: "It's only fair! Rishi defends £1,000 boost to pensions"
Aha, we locked down to save them and our student loans get jacked up 11%, fuck off you twat
Pay the money you borrowed and stop whining. You either benefitted with a good job of you leave the poor to pick up your tab for years pissing it up at uni wasting pensioners hard earned pittance. Stop blaming other people for your uselessness
Are the student loans running at 11%?.... thats horrendous.
What is quite amazing how completely and utterly useless young people are at asserting themselves politically. They don't seem to even realise that they are being screwed over. The NI increase went through without a murmur of dissent. Whack up taxes, change the terms of student loans, keep giving bungs to pensioners so they vote tory.... Zero opposition (or even interest) from young people. It is astonishing.
That is because most are useless. They spend a few years at uni and think they are big shots when in fact they mainly struggle to wipe their own arses. They then whine incessantly about only earning 50k while complaining that all all those nasty pensioners who worked and paid taxes for 50 years are living high on the hog on their 9k pensions.
Yep, they shouldn't go to uni. Better off with a secure job and good income, such as working on the railways.
I think I shall bid you all good day.
The forum is more than normally populated by grumpy old, white, men this morning. I shall leave you all to dribble with anger into your cornflakes.
xx
I was being tongue in cheek, echoing the PB perennial of too many of other people's children going to university, with the notion that they would be better getting proper jobs.
Do you not think there's a point to be made there? Why is 50% of people going to university the magic number? Why not 90%? 20%?
My nephew got the grades to go to uni, but chose instead to go into the Wonderful World of Work. He's now on a significantly higher salary than his friends who went to uni, and has a house (with mortgage).
One of the great education sins of the last 30 yeas has been this idea that kids must go to uni, and that kids who do not are somehow inferior.
Surely the point is that people have the choice. Get the grades, go if you want. Personally I would encourage people to get an education and see the world before locking themselves into he tedious world of work, nappies and mortgages. You’ll spend decades doing that.
We have enough freeloaders thank you.
Aye. The boomers that went to university all expenses paid and chose to break the earnings link for pensioners when they were working, so they didn't have to pay much to pensioners when they were working . . . then whinge about how poor pensions are when they're the ones claiming it and shaft the young.
Truly the most selfish generation that shafted their own parents and their own grandchildren, but keep repeating the bollocks about how much tax you paid.
@BartholomewRoberts I don't often agree with your posts (though often find them informative), but this is enjoyably succint and accurate (as far as I'm aware - I didn't know that it was the baby boomer generation that broke the earnings link). Thank you.
He had to guess as he had run out of fingers and toes. He would not know a boomer if he fell over one. A whining whinging Tory snake.
You really are the most miserable poster on this site Malc. I can only assume your life is so shite you have to lash out at everyone else who might actually be enjoying theirs.
On which basis, I hope things improve for you and you learn to hate your fellow human beings a little less.
F Off Loser,I have a great life.Listening to pish from the likes of you would make anyone disappear. Stick to something you know anything about , like being a loser, rather than trying to guess. You could bore for UK at the Olympics and likely get gold.
Nobody else will bore for the UK while Andy Murray lives.
He hasn't won a tournament for a while so I think you'll find he currently bores for Scotland.
Disclaimer: I usually find what he says QI, maybe Anglos are addicted to 'entertainers' like BJ.
It's more his oratorical style - or lack of it - than the content.
I once had a really interesting chat with Steve Davis at a funk gig in Camden.
Thank you for your kind words yesterday. I hope you are keeping well.
Thursday's Express: "It's only fair! Rishi defends £1,000 boost to pensions"
Aha, we locked down to save them and our student loans get jacked up 11%, fuck off you twat
Pay the money you borrowed and stop whining. You either benefitted with a good job of you leave the poor to pick up your tab for years pissing it up at uni wasting pensioners hard earned pittance. Stop blaming other people for your uselessness
Are the student loans running at 11%?.... thats horrendous.
What is quite amazing how completely and utterly useless young people are at asserting themselves politically. They don't seem to even realise that they are being screwed over. The NI increase went through without a murmur of dissent. Whack up taxes, change the terms of student loans, keep giving bungs to pensioners so they vote tory.... Zero opposition (or even interest) from young people. It is astonishing.
That is because most are useless. They spend a few years at uni and think they are big shots when in fact they mainly struggle to wipe their own arses. They then whine incessantly about only earning 50k while complaining that all all those nasty pensioners who worked and paid taxes for 50 years are living high on the hog on their 9k pensions.
Yep, they shouldn't go to uni. Better off with a secure job and good income, such as working on the railways.
I think I shall bid you all good day.
The forum is more than normally populated by grumpy old, white, men this morning. I shall leave you all to dribble with anger into your cornflakes.
xx
I was being tongue in cheek, echoing the PB perennial of too many of other people's children going to university, with the notion that they would be better getting proper jobs.
Do you not think there's a point to be made there? Why is 50% of people going to university the magic number? Why not 90%? 20%?
My nephew got the grades to go to uni, but chose instead to go into the Wonderful World of Work. He's now on a significantly higher salary than his friends who went to uni, and has a house (with mortgage).
One of the great education sins of the last 30 yeas has been this idea that kids must go to uni, and that kids who do not are somehow inferior.
Surely the point is that people have the choice. Get the grades, go if you want. Personally I would encourage people to get an education and see the world before locking themselves into he tedious world of work, nappies and mortgages. You’ll spend decades doing that.
We have enough freeloaders thank you.
Aye. The boomers that went to university all expenses paid and chose to break the earnings link for pensioners when they were working, so they didn't have to pay much to pensioners when they were working . . . then whinge about how poor pensions are when they're the ones claiming it and shaft the young.
Truly the most selfish generation that shafted their own parents and their own grandchildren, but keep repeating the bollocks about how much tax you paid.
You do realise 90% of boomers never went to university? Now about 40% of 18 year olds graduate from university.
They also paid into NI just as their parents did as well as private pension schemes for some. It was the government that broke the earnings link
So frigging what? For either of those points.
Many of those going to university today are doing so to go to jobs that didn't need degrees in the past, but do now. So yes, the student loan is just an age-discriminatory income tax that prior generations never had to pay.
And they never paid NI at the rate we do now, that's a lie. Since boomers have started facing retirement they've ended up voting so that tax goes from income tax to NI.
Besides if the logic that more people going to university means we can't afford to pay for university anymore, perhaps we should use that logic with pensions? Lets put the education budget and the pension budget back to what it was when today's pensioners were studying and working?
The education budget has gone down as a percentage of GDP, not up, from the past.
In 1975 education represented 7.5% of GDP and pensions were 4%
Today education is 3.9% and pensions are 6%.
What a remarkable role reversal, hey? I wonder why that's happened? 🤔
Well they could do apprenticeships instead of going to university like their parents and grandparents did and then they wouldn't need a student loan. They probably would also earn more over their lifetime than doing a degree unless at a Russell Group university.
All those earning under £35k have got an NI cut. Life expectancy is higher than decades ago is the reason a higher percentage of the state budget goes on pensions
Oh do STOP!
Off Topic
Morning Pete
I watched the PMQ again yesterday and I am now clear in my mind that you are a cchq troll. Johnson blustered and prevaricated the whole time, waiting for Starmer's last question so that he could spend 2 or 3 minutes spouting a Party political broadcast on behalf of the "going nowhere very fast" Party. What a twat he is.
You've got me. I share a desk with BJO.
I had been sympathetic to Starmer, but he doesn't have the dynamism needed to overcome the Conservatives. I listened to PMQs as it happened and Starmer doesn't have an answer for Johnson's bluster, it is as though Starmer can't think on his feet when Johnson goes off at a tangent. Johnson makes stuff up and Starmer is naïve enough not to realise he is lying. Starmer appears bewildered. He is a dud.
Labour need an attack dog to call Johnson out, I am not sure who that is. Like Blair I rated Philips, but I suspect her time has passed.
This seems like a really really dumb attempt to argue justification to carry your deadly toy around with you whenever you want.
A medieval English law dating back nearly seven centuries is now at the heart of the most important US Supreme Court gun case in a decade.
The case - which stems from a New York legal battle - challenges a state law that requires that gun users who want a concealed carry permit first prove they have a valid reason.
To help them determine how broad the rights of America's many gun owners go, the country's nine supreme court judges are also looking back to the 1328 Statute of Northampton, which dates back to the reign of Edward III...
In a separate 2008 Supreme Court case that struck down strict Washington DC handgun laws, the late Justice Antonin Scalia argued that the Second Amendment to the US constitution codified "a pre-existing right" from England.
He added that by the time the United States was founded in 1776, the "right to have arms had become fundamental for English subjects."
Some historians, however, have disagreed with that assessment, noting that by the late 1200s, English authorities had passed laws restricting the right to carry weapons while traveling in public or in London.
The later 1328 Statute of Northampton - which predates the first recorded use of a firearm in Europe by several decades - declared that nobody "except the King's servants in his presence" will "go nor ride armed by night nor by day" in fairs, markets "nor in no part elsewhere"...
In a brief for the Supreme Court, attorney Paul Clement - who represents Mr Nash, Mr Koch and the New York Rifle and Pistol Association - wrote that the statute was only meant to control "unusual weapons" that would frighten the public
I don't understand why if the 2nd Amendment allows 18 year olds to own semi-automatic weapons, why doesn't it also allow them to own fully automatic weapons, or grenades, or rocket launchers, or Napalm, or Tactical Nuclear Weapons
I thought it was all about avoiding a situation where religious fundamentalists got into power and forced women to wear certain clothing: hence their right to bare arms.
That’s entirely wrong.
I’ve implemented the correct version - which is why all the bears in the neighbourhood have Davy Crocketts.
Thursday's Express: "It's only fair! Rishi defends £1,000 boost to pensions"
Aha, we locked down to save them and our student loans get jacked up 11%, fuck off you twat
Pay the money you borrowed and stop whining. You either benefitted with a good job of you leave the poor to pick up your tab for years pissing it up at uni wasting pensioners hard earned pittance. Stop blaming other people for your uselessness
Are the student loans running at 11%?.... thats horrendous.
What is quite amazing how completely and utterly useless young people are at asserting themselves politically. They don't seem to even realise that they are being screwed over. The NI increase went through without a murmur of dissent. Whack up taxes, change the terms of student loans, keep giving bungs to pensioners so they vote tory.... Zero opposition (or even interest) from young people. It is astonishing.
That is because most are useless. They spend a few years at uni and think they are big shots when in fact they mainly struggle to wipe their own arses. They then whine incessantly about only earning 50k while complaining that all all those nasty pensioners who worked and paid taxes for 50 years are living high on the hog on their 9k pensions.
Yep, they shouldn't go to uni. Better off with a secure job and good income, such as working on the railways.
I think I shall bid you all good day.
The forum is more than normally populated by grumpy old, white, men this morning. I shall leave you all to dribble with anger into your cornflakes.
xx
I was being tongue in cheek, echoing the PB perennial of too many of other people's children going to university, with the notion that they would be better getting proper jobs.
Do you not think there's a point to be made there? Why is 50% of people going to university the magic number? Why not 90%? 20%?
My nephew got the grades to go to uni, but chose instead to go into the Wonderful World of Work. He's now on a significantly higher salary than his friends who went to uni, and has a house (with mortgage).
One of the great education sins of the last 30 yeas has been this idea that kids must go to uni, and that kids who do not are somehow inferior.
Surely the point is that people have the choice. Get the grades, go if you want. Personally I would encourage people to get an education and see the world before locking themselves into he tedious world of work, nappies and mortgages. You’ll spend decades doing that.
We have enough freeloaders thank you.
Aye. The boomers that went to university all expenses paid and chose to break the earnings link for pensioners when they were working, so they didn't have to pay much to pensioners when they were working . . . then whinge about how poor pensions are when they're the ones claiming it and shaft the young.
Truly the most selfish generation that shafted their own parents and their own grandchildren, but keep repeating the bollocks about how much tax you paid.
You do realise 90% of boomers never went to university? Now about 40% of 18 year olds graduate from university.
They also paid into NI just as their parents did as well as private pension schemes for some. It was the government that broke the earnings link
So frigging what? For either of those points.
Many of those going to university today are doing so to go to jobs that didn't need degrees in the past, but do now. So yes, the student loan is just an age-discriminatory income tax that prior generations never had to pay.
And they never paid NI at the rate we do now, that's a lie. Since boomers have started facing retirement they've ended up voting so that tax goes from income tax to NI.
Besides if the logic that more people going to university means we can't afford to pay for university anymore, perhaps we should use that logic with pensions? Lets put the education budget and the pension budget back to what it was when today's pensioners were studying and working?
The education budget has gone down as a percentage of GDP, not up, from the past.
In 1975 education represented 7.5% of GDP and pensions were 4%
Today education is 3.9% and pensions are 6%.
What a remarkable role reversal, hey? I wonder why that's happened? 🤔
Well they could do apprenticeships instead of going to university like their parents and grandparents did and then they wouldn't need a student loan. They probably would also earn more over their lifetime than doing a degree unless at a Russell Group university.
All those earning under £35k have got an NI cut. Life expectancy is higher than decades ago is the reason a higher percentage of the state budget goes on pensions
Oh do STOP!
A cry from the heart no less and so understandable
In my view, there's too much emphasis on the level and type of education and training, rather than on its quality. It's quality that counts. Some degrees are high quality; some are poor. Some apprenticeships are brilliant; others are terrible. We need to focus on the quality more than the subject. It doesn't actually matter too much if you're doing on-the-job training in carpentry, a basic numeracy course, or a degree in 15th C violin making.
What matters is whether the quality of what you're studying is sufficiently high to lead to rapid improvements in your ability to think, understand or do whatever it is. And that isn't focused on enough, as quality of the curriculum, teaching etc. is far too variable at all levels of education and training.
One thing which would help would be a level playing field in qualifications. No-one believes that a 2:1 in Stuff Studies from Dumpville University actually equates in worth and difficulty with a 2:1 in engineering from Imperial. So people use guesswork.
BTW my (now Russell group) university in the 1970s was famous for being ultra parsimonious with firsts. Whole departments would give out none at all in a particular year (I have a class list in front of me from the 1970s as I write). This makes comparisons invidious and meaningless.
The upping of the state pension and the removal of limits on rich bankers' pay seems utterly tone deaf from the Government.
Are they trying to lose?
Pensioners and bankers are the Tory core vote. No real surprise
Then the Tories deserve to lose.
The more you speak for the Tories, the more I think maybe I should actually just vote Labour, if you represent the Tories. And I despise Labour, but not as much as what you want to stand for.
Really? You even voted for Labour in 2001 when I voted Tory
Yes, because I'm a sentient human who has principles and thinks about why I should vote. Those principles generally align with the Tories more, but if they don't, then the Tories don't deserve my vote.
I don't just vote for a monkey with a blue rosette, and I don't put party before country.
Oh, and don't forget, you lost in 2001. 😕
Barty, I can’t stand your ideology, but I do admire your principles.
Thursday's Express: "It's only fair! Rishi defends £1,000 boost to pensions"
Aha, we locked down to save them and our student loans get jacked up 11%, fuck off you twat
Pay the money you borrowed and stop whining. You either benefitted with a good job of you leave the poor to pick up your tab for years pissing it up at uni wasting pensioners hard earned pittance. Stop blaming other people for your uselessness
Are the student loans running at 11%?.... thats horrendous.
What is quite amazing how completely and utterly useless young people are at asserting themselves politically. They don't seem to even realise that they are being screwed over. The NI increase went through without a murmur of dissent. Whack up taxes, change the terms of student loans, keep giving bungs to pensioners so they vote tory.... Zero opposition (or even interest) from young people. It is astonishing.
That is because most are useless. They spend a few years at uni and think they are big shots when in fact they mainly struggle to wipe their own arses. They then whine incessantly about only earning 50k while complaining that all all those nasty pensioners who worked and paid taxes for 50 years are living high on the hog on their 9k pensions.
Yep, they shouldn't go to uni. Better off with a secure job and good income, such as working on the railways.
I think I shall bid you all good day.
The forum is more than normally populated by grumpy old, white, men this morning. I shall leave you all to dribble with anger into your cornflakes.
xx
I was being tongue in cheek, echoing the PB perennial of too many of other people's children going to university, with the notion that they would be better getting proper jobs.
Do you not think there's a point to be made there? Why is 50% of people going to university the magic number? Why not 90%? 20%?
My nephew got the grades to go to uni, but chose instead to go into the Wonderful World of Work. He's now on a significantly higher salary than his friends who went to uni, and has a house (with mortgage).
One of the great education sins of the last 30 yeas has been this idea that kids must go to uni, and that kids who do not are somehow inferior.
Surely the point is that people have the choice. Get the grades, go if you want. Personally I would encourage people to get an education and see the world before locking themselves into he tedious world of work, nappies and mortgages. You’ll spend decades doing that.
We have enough freeloaders thank you.
Aye. The boomers that went to university all expenses paid and chose to break the earnings link for pensioners when they were working, so they didn't have to pay much to pensioners when they were working . . . then whinge about how poor pensions are when they're the ones claiming it and shaft the young.
Truly the most selfish generation that shafted their own parents and their own grandchildren, but keep repeating the bollocks about how much tax you paid.
You do realise 90% of boomers never went to university? Now about 40% of 18 year olds graduate from university.
They also paid into NI just as their parents did as well as private pension schemes for some. It was the government that broke the earnings link
So frigging what? For either of those points.
Many of those going to university today are doing so to go to jobs that didn't need degrees in the past, but do now. So yes, the student loan is just an age-discriminatory income tax that prior generations never had to pay.
And they never paid NI at the rate we do now, that's a lie. Since boomers have started facing retirement they've ended up voting so that tax goes from income tax to NI.
Besides if the logic that more people going to university means we can't afford to pay for university anymore, perhaps we should use that logic with pensions? Lets put the education budget and the pension budget back to what it was when today's pensioners were studying and working?
The education budget has gone down as a percentage of GDP, not up, from the past.
In 1975 education represented 7.5% of GDP and pensions were 4%
Today education is 3.9% and pensions are 6%.
What a remarkable role reversal, hey? I wonder why that's happened? 🤔
Well they could do apprenticeships instead of going to university like their parents and grandparents did and then they wouldn't need a student loan. They probably would also earn more over their lifetime than doing a degree unless at a Russell Group university.
All those earning under £35k have got an NI cut. Life expectancy is higher than decades ago is the reason a higher percentage of the state budget goes on pensions
Oh do STOP!
Off Topic
Morning Pete
I watched the PMQ again yesterday and I am now clear in my mind that you are a cchq troll. Johnson blustered and prevaricated the whole time, waiting for Starmer's last question so that he could spend 2 or 3 minutes spouting a Party political broadcast on behalf of the "going nowhere very fast" Party. What a twat he is.
You've got me. I share a desk with BJO.
I had been sympathetic to Starmer, but he doesn't have the dynamism needed to overcome the Conservatives. I listened to PMQs as it happened and Starmer doesn't have an answer for Johnson's bluster, it is as though Starmer can't think on his feet when Johnson goes off.at a tangent. Johnson makes stuff up and Starmer is naïve enough not to realise he is lying. Starmer appears bewildered. He is a dud.
Labour need an attack dog to call Johnson out, I am not sure who that is. Like Blair I rated Philips, but I suspect her time has passed.
If Johnson goes it changes the dynamic - but if both leaders stay till the election I think Labour wins by 5 or six points, forms stable government with libdems.
I think the die is already cast on that one, not much chance of this Johnson government getting swingback against a centrist Labour Party. As HY says, Starmer has led on best PM like no labour LOTO since Blair.
Can they get rid of Johnson? Do enough of them even want to - a huge mistake is thinking it only needs a few switchers on top the 148, truth is the 148 can go down more likely than up the more we enter general election territory. Do candidates like Mourdant want to own the fag end of 14 years in power and a likely defeat?
If I actually thought you genuine poster Pete, trying to help PB come to right conclusions I would say relax, it’s going okay for change of government - but I don’t think you are genuine I think you have an agenda.
The upping of the state pension and the removal of limits on rich bankers' pay seems utterly tone deaf from the Government.
Are they trying to lose?
Pensioners and bankers are the Tory core vote. No real surprise
Then the Tories deserve to lose.
The more you speak for the Tories, the more I think maybe I should actually just vote Labour, if you represent the Tories. And I despise Labour, but not as much as what you want to stand for.
Really? You even voted for Labour in 2001 when I voted Tory
Yes, because I'm a sentient human who has principles and thinks about why I should vote. Those principles generally align with the Tories more, but if they don't, then the Tories don't deserve my vote.
I don't just vote for a monkey with a blue rosette, and I don't put party before country.
Oh, and don't forget, you lost in 2001. 😕
Barty, I can’t stand your ideology, but I do admire your principles.
To be honest I think most people here are the same. They generally strongly align with one party, but are not zombies. That has been clear with Tories here rebelling against Boris and Labour supporters rebelling against Corbyn.
In my view, there's too much emphasis on the level and type of education and training, rather than on its quality. It's quality that counts. Some degrees are high quality; some are poor. Some apprenticeships are brilliant; others are terrible. We need to focus on the quality more than the subject. It doesn't actually matter too much if you're doing on-the-job training in carpentry, a basic numeracy course, or a degree in 15th C violin making.
What matters is whether the quality of what you're studying is sufficiently high to lead to rapid improvements in your ability to think, understand or do whatever it is. And that isn't focused on enough, as quality of the curriculum, teaching etc. is far too variable at all levels of education and training.
One thing which would help would be a level playing field in qualifications. No-one believes that a 2:1 in Stuff Studies from Dumpville University actually equates in worth and difficulty with a 2:1 in engineering from Imperial. So people use guesswork.
This.
I recall one politician being led down the road by an interviewer to the point of being asked if she really thought a Maths degree from Cambridge was equal to one from Southbank… Hilariously the politician tried to stick to the “all degrees are equal” bullshit.
Incidentally, the subject of the degree is not so important. With a bit of thought and will, you could make any subject intellectually challenging and rigorous. A degree on surfing could be made into a degree including literature, multiple cultures round the world, materials engineering, ecology, oceanic engineering, wave physics, sports science, human biomechanics etc etc
Biden is now the most unpopular US president since approval started being measured (Truman onward) at day 519 in his presidency.
Its the economy oil, stupid.
As bad as the price of petrol here is, jumping from ~£1.20 to ~£1.80 in a year, the fact that most of the price is tax has shielded the true rise in costs.
"Gas" prices in the US have gone from $2.20 per gallon when Biden was elected, to about $5 per gallon now.
As much as that's Trump's best mate's fault, that's not going to make Biden popular.
In my view, there's too much emphasis on the level and type of education and training, rather than on its quality. It's quality that counts. Some degrees are high quality; some are poor. Some apprenticeships are brilliant; others are terrible. We need to focus on the quality more than the subject. It doesn't actually matter too much if you're doing on-the-job training in carpentry, a basic numeracy course, or a degree in 15th C violin making.
What matters is whether the quality of what you're studying is sufficiently high to lead to rapid improvements in your ability to think, understand or do whatever it is. And that isn't focused on enough, as quality of the curriculum, teaching etc. is far too variable at all levels of education and training.
One thing which would help would be a level playing field in qualifications. No-one believes that a 2:1 in Stuff Studies from Dumpville University actually equates in worth and difficulty with a 2:1 in engineering from Imperial. So people use guesswork.
This.
I recall one politician being led down the road by an interviewer to the point of being asked if she really thought a Maths degree from Cambridge was equal to one from Southbank… Hilariously the politician tried to stick to the “all degrees are equal” bullshit.
Incidentally, the subject of the degree is not so important. With a bit of thought and will, you could make any subject intellectually challenging and rigorous. A degree on surfing could be made into a degree including literature, multiple cultures round the world, materials engineering, ecology, oceanic engineering, wave physics, sports science, human biomechanics etc etc
Not this. A maths degree from Southbank should be the same as one from Cambridge. That is why we have external examiners. If it isn't, for non-maths reasons, that is because Cambridge's higher reputation and network effects. Take Boris. He got his first job through family connections and after he was sacked, got a better one through connections made at Oxford. Does that mean an Oxford Classics degree is better than a Southbank Classics degree or might there be something else going on?
In my view, there's too much emphasis on the level and type of education and training, rather than on its quality. It's quality that counts. Some degrees are high quality; some are poor. Some apprenticeships are brilliant; others are terrible. We need to focus on the quality more than the subject. It doesn't actually matter too much if you're doing on-the-job training in carpentry, a basic numeracy course, or a degree in 15th C violin making.
What matters is whether the quality of what you're studying is sufficiently high to lead to rapid improvements in your ability to think, understand or do whatever it is. And that isn't focused on enough, as quality of the curriculum, teaching etc. is far too variable at all levels of education and training.
One thing which would help would be a level playing field in qualifications. No-one believes that a 2:1 in Stuff Studies from Dumpville University actually equates in worth and difficulty with a 2:1 in engineering from Imperial. So people use guesswork.
This.
I recall one politician being led down the road by an interviewer to the point of being asked if she really thought a Maths degree from Cambridge was equal to one from Southbank… Hilariously the politician tried to stick to the “all degrees are equal” bullshit.
Incidentally, the subject of the degree is not so important. With a bit of thought and will, you could make any subject intellectually challenging and rigorous. A degree on surfing could be made into a degree including literature, multiple cultures round the world, materials engineering, ecology, oceanic engineering, wave physics, sports science, human biomechanics etc etc
Not this. A maths degree from Southbank should be the same as one from Cambridge. That is why we have external examiners. If it isn't, for non-maths reasons, that is because Cambridge's higher reputation and network effects. Take Boris. He got his first job through family connections and after he was sacked, got a better one through connections made at Oxford. Does that mean an Oxford Classics degree is better than a Southbank Classics degree or might there be something else going on?
In my view, there's too much emphasis on the level and type of education and training, rather than on its quality. It's quality that counts. Some degrees are high quality; some are poor. Some apprenticeships are brilliant; others are terrible. We need to focus on the quality more than the subject. It doesn't actually matter too much if you're doing on-the-job training in carpentry, a basic numeracy course, or a degree in 15th C violin making.
What matters is whether the quality of what you're studying is sufficiently high to lead to rapid improvements in your ability to think, understand or do whatever it is. And that isn't focused on enough, as quality of the curriculum, teaching etc. is far too variable at all levels of education and training.
One thing which would help would be a level playing field in qualifications. No-one believes that a 2:1 in Stuff Studies from Dumpville University actually equates in worth and difficulty with a 2:1 in engineering from Imperial. So people use guesswork.
This.
I recall one politician being led down the road by an interviewer to the point of being asked if she really thought a Maths degree from Cambridge was equal to one from Southbank… Hilariously the politician tried to stick to the “all degrees are equal” bullshit.
Incidentally, the subject of the degree is not so important. With a bit of thought and will, you could make any subject intellectually challenging and rigorous. A degree on surfing could be made into a degree including literature, multiple cultures round the world, materials engineering, ecology, oceanic engineering, wave physics, sports science, human biomechanics etc etc
I once came across a postgraduate diploma in 'inspection'. At first I laughed; which way up to hold the clipboard? I And then, when I'd done a Care Home inspection I realised that there were many issues that needed thinking about.
In my view, there's too much emphasis on the level and type of education and training, rather than on its quality. It's quality that counts. Some degrees are high quality; some are poor. Some apprenticeships are brilliant; others are terrible. We need to focus on the quality more than the subject. It doesn't actually matter too much if you're doing on-the-job training in carpentry, a basic numeracy course, or a degree in 15th C violin making.
What matters is whether the quality of what you're studying is sufficiently high to lead to rapid improvements in your ability to think, understand or do whatever it is. And that isn't focused on enough, as quality of the curriculum, teaching etc. is far too variable at all levels of education and training.
One thing which would help would be a level playing field in qualifications. No-one believes that a 2:1 in Stuff Studies from Dumpville University actually equates in worth and difficulty with a 2:1 in engineering from Imperial. So people use guesswork.
This.
I recall one politician being led down the road by an interviewer to the point of being asked if she really thought a Maths degree from Cambridge was equal to one from Southbank… Hilariously the politician tried to stick to the “all degrees are equal” bullshit.
Incidentally, the subject of the degree is not so important. With a bit of thought and will, you could make any subject intellectually challenging and rigorous. A degree on surfing could be made into a degree including literature, multiple cultures round the world, materials engineering, ecology, oceanic engineering, wave physics, sports science, human biomechanics etc etc
Not this. A maths degree from Southbank should be the same as one from Cambridge. That is why we have external examiners. If it isn't, for non-maths reasons, that is because Cambridge's higher reputation and network effects. Take Boris. He got his first job through family connections and after he was sacked, got a better one through connections made at Oxford. Does that mean an Oxford Classics degree is better than a Southbank Classics degree or might there be something else going on?
In my view, there's too much emphasis on the level and type of education and training, rather than on its quality. It's quality that counts. Some degrees are high quality; some are poor. Some apprenticeships are brilliant; others are terrible. We need to focus on the quality more than the subject. It doesn't actually matter too much if you're doing on-the-job training in carpentry, a basic numeracy course, or a degree in 15th C violin making.
What matters is whether the quality of what you're studying is sufficiently high to lead to rapid improvements in your ability to think, understand or do whatever it is. And that isn't focused on enough, as quality of the curriculum, teaching etc. is far too variable at all levels of education and training.
One thing which would help would be a level playing field in qualifications. No-one believes that a 2:1 in Stuff Studies from Dumpville University actually equates in worth and difficulty with a 2:1 in engineering from Imperial. So people use guesswork.
This.
I recall one politician being led down the road by an interviewer to the point of being asked if she really thought a Maths degree from Cambridge was equal to one from Southbank… Hilariously the politician tried to stick to the “all degrees are equal” bullshit.
Incidentally, the subject of the degree is not so important. With a bit of thought and will, you could make any subject intellectually challenging and rigorous. A degree on surfing could be made into a degree including literature, multiple cultures round the world, materials engineering, ecology, oceanic engineering, wave physics, sports science, human biomechanics etc etc
Whilst I agree with you entirely, the problem is one of putting those accurate comparisons into practice. Within my subject of Geology, in the 1980s there was a set of 'first class' institutions providing high quality qualifications in the subject and that list did not always correspond with what would otherwise have been considered the top ranking universities. As an example Kingston and Portsmouth Polys were both considered easily the equal of almost every other geology department and the Open University course was considered to be the Gold Standard for many aspects of the subject. At the same time one of the Oxbridge Universities was considered very poor in the subject.
A decade later that may well have changed entirely and keeping the level playing field mentioned earlier would be problematic to say the least. If am sure the same applies to many different courses particularly as it can depend on the presence of one or two key individuals.
Thursday's Express: "It's only fair! Rishi defends £1,000 boost to pensions"
Aha, we locked down to save them and our student loans get jacked up 11%, fuck off you twat
Pay the money you borrowed and stop whining. You either benefitted with a good job of you leave the poor to pick up your tab for years pissing it up at uni wasting pensioners hard earned pittance. Stop blaming other people for your uselessness
Are the student loans running at 11%?.... thats horrendous.
What is quite amazing how completely and utterly useless young people are at asserting themselves politically. They don't seem to even realise that they are being screwed over. The NI increase went through without a murmur of dissent. Whack up taxes, change the terms of student loans, keep giving bungs to pensioners so they vote tory.... Zero opposition (or even interest) from young people. It is astonishing.
That is because most are useless. They spend a few years at uni and think they are big shots when in fact they mainly struggle to wipe their own arses. They then whine incessantly about only earning 50k while complaining that all all those nasty pensioners who worked and paid taxes for 50 years are living high on the hog on their 9k pensions.
Yep, they shouldn't go to uni. Better off with a secure job and good income, such as working on the railways.
I think I shall bid you all good day.
The forum is more than normally populated by grumpy old, white, men this morning. I shall leave you all to dribble with anger into your cornflakes.
xx
I was being tongue in cheek, echoing the PB perennial of too many of other people's children going to university, with the notion that they would be better getting proper jobs.
Do you not think there's a point to be made there? Why is 50% of people going to university the magic number? Why not 90%? 20%?
My nephew got the grades to go to uni, but chose instead to go into the Wonderful World of Work. He's now on a significantly higher salary than his friends who went to uni, and has a house (with mortgage).
One of the great education sins of the last 30 yeas has been this idea that kids must go to uni, and that kids who do not are somehow inferior.
Surely the point is that people have the choice. Get the grades, go if you want. Personally I would encourage people to get an education and see the world before locking themselves into he tedious world of work, nappies and mortgages. You’ll spend decades doing that.
We have enough freeloaders thank you.
Aye. The boomers that went to university all expenses paid and chose to break the earnings link for pensioners when they were working, so they didn't have to pay much to pensioners when they were working . . . then whinge about how poor pensions are when they're the ones claiming it and shaft the young.
Truly the most selfish generation that shafted their own parents and their own grandchildren, but keep repeating the bollocks about how much tax you paid.
@BartholomewRoberts I don't often agree with your posts (though often find them informative), but this is enjoyably succint and accurate (as far as I'm aware - I didn't know that it was the baby boomer generation that broke the earnings link). Thank you.
He had to guess as he had run out of fingers and toes. He would not know a boomer if he fell over one. A whining whinging Tory snake.
You really are the most miserable poster on this site Malc. I can only assume your life is so shite you have to lash out at everyone else who might actually be enjoying theirs.
On which basis, I hope things improve for you and you learn to hate your fellow human beings a little less.
F Off Loser,I have a great life.Listening to pish from the likes of you would make anyone disappear. Stick to something you know anything about , like being a loser, rather than trying to guess. You could bore for UK at the Olympics and likely get gold.
Nobody else will bore for the UK while Andy Murray lives.
He hasn't won a tournament for a while so I think you'll find he currently bores for Scotland.
Disclaimer: I usually find what he says QI, maybe Anglos are addicted to 'entertainers' like BJ.
It's more his oratorical style - or lack of it - than the content.
I once had a really interesting chat with Steve Davis at a funk gig in Camden.
Do you mean the tone of his voice? Agree it has a touch of the Starmers, but unlike poor old Keir, Andy is usually good value for content.
Comments
There are, and should be, opportunities for young people to have all sorts of adventures, whether they go to university or not.
Invited to apply, confirm you are interested - they ask questions - it all falls apart.
One of the skills of a nurse is being empathetic. Very very difficult to teach but I noticed that many of the medics with whom I come in contact seem a great deal more empathetic than their predecessors, and that's, at least in part, down to the training.
At the last general election as I also said Labour already won London and the Tories made no progress in the Home Counties and indeed have lost Chesham and Amersham since.
It was the cheaper red wall seats Labour lost to the Tories as more there are buying their own homes and they have to win back
How long should 'education for education's sake' last? To a degree? Masters? Doctoral? Post-doctoral?
I'd also like to bring up the Open University: a great institution that is sadly nowhere near as prominent as it used to be.
Are they trying to lose?
You could bore for UK at the Olympics and likely get gold.
The system needs to accommodate people coming in and out of education at different times in their life course.
The 16yo who has had a terrible time in primary and secondary education can grow up a huge amount in a apprenticeship (with its soft educational/training component), and then discover a passion for a subject that they wish to take into tertiary education at 25 (the nurse being a great example).
For reasons good and, if not bad, then certainly historical, education is almost stigmatised beyond 21 (just look at how the employability of PhDs drops off a cliff v. undergrad degrees).
And we've broken Universities by promoting people without management skills into important budgetholding jobs, with cargo-cult "business" attitudes totally inappropriate to the role of the institution. With very few exceptions, they are chewing up academics, and gaslighting them into thinking that they wouldn't survive "out in the real world" so they seem to accept any and all curbs on their responsibilities, pay, and conditions. The Unions are, IMHO, very poor as they seem to have almost totally acquiesced to this false idea.
There are a few exceptions of course.
Many of those going to university today are doing so to go to jobs that didn't need degrees in the past, but do now. So yes, the student loan is just an age-discriminatory income tax that prior generations never had to pay.
And they never paid NI at the rate we do now, that's a lie. Since boomers have started facing retirement they've ended up voting so that tax goes from income tax to NI.
Besides if the logic that more people going to university means we can't afford to pay for university anymore, perhaps we should use that logic with pensions? Lets put the education budget and the pension budget back to what it was when today's pensioners were studying and working?
The education budget has gone down as a percentage of GDP, not up, from the past.
In 1975 education represented 7.5% of GDP and pensions were 4%
Today education is 3.9% and pensions are 6%.
What a remarkable role reversal, hey? I wonder why that's happened? 🤔
The hideousness of illiteracy and innumeracy at the bottom end.
Here's a (*) plan:
*) Reduce the number of universities drastically. Only 15% of people can go to university. Make those universities, and the degrees they produce world-beaters.
*) Massively improve vocational course access. Give tax breaks to companies that encourage take-up of vocational courses, and tax-breaks for employees using them.
*) Massively improve adult literacy and numeracy programs.
*) Invest in children who are falling behind in school. Test (yes, I know...) children at the end of year 3, detect ones with issues, and develop programs to help them - even if it means smaller classes for them and social workers getting involved.
(*) Potentially rubbish.
Then a bunch of seemingly highly informed stuff about tanks.
Such modesty...
The more you speak for the Tories, the more I think maybe I should actually just vote Labour, if you represent the Tories. And I despise Labour, but not as much as what you want to stand for.
Disclaimer: I usually find what he says QI, maybe Anglos are addicted to 'entertainers' like BJ.
You dismiss university for all but the top of society. You demand exclusivity and sneer at those who graduate from what you consider to be lesser establishments. The value of a degree shouldn't be measured by some spurious statistical analysis. If the graduate is pleased with the result, both the social and the academic experience, that is good enough for me .
You are desperate to return higher education to be the fiefdom of social elites. That is truly depressing.
The main thing undermining the government in their battle with rail workers is other workers getting deals same as what is being asked for - that is happening.
I thought the governments attack line on teachers today “you can’t go on strike because after covid the kiddies have suffered enough” was a strong opening salvo that hit its mark.
Despite the fact that the demographic problems of so many pensioners and so few workers isn't with our generation, it was the boomers that are disproportionately demographically heavy and that was known all through the time when the boomers were working and dominating politics but they did sod all to fix it, we discussed this in economics classes in the 90s and shows like West Wing etc were discussing what would happen to social security (pensions) as it hadn't been saved for by the boomers and later generations wouldn't be able to afford it when boomers retired.
What they never predicted was a rampant increase rather than reduction in boomer pensions post-retirement.
The former Lib Dem heartlands, which were responsible for Cameron's 2015 majority.
https://twitter.com/NiecyOKeeffe/status/1539335139905486849
All those earning under £35k have got
an NI cut. Life expectancy is higher than decades ago is the reason a higher percentage of the state budget goes on pensions
I assume the minimum wage will also rise at the same time so maybe a late 2023 election, post boundary changes is coming into view
I expect terrible results today for the conservatives but I am becoming less bullish that Boris is going to be overthrown, but one can always hope
Support or oppose strike?
Support 25%
Oppose 39%
Appropriate time or not?
Appropriate 24%
Inappropriate 49%
11% pay rise reasonable or not?
Reasonable 26%
Unreasonable 52%
11% rise affordable?
Affordable 17%
Unaffordable 57%
Illiteracy and innumeracy is a national scandal and millions of individual tragedies.
Suspect only about 3 posters will get my latest pun.
Ah.
I'd also argue my second point *does* help with illiteracy and innumeracy at the lower end. Once someone gains those basic skills, make it easier for them to gain other skills, whatever stage their life is at. Give people an additional reason to get literate and numerate.
Years ago I listened to a very interesting sci-fi podcast series, where someone reviewed sci-fi books. I was amazed to discover he had never read a book until he was in his twenties, when a girlfriend encouraged him to learn to read properly.
Morning Pete
I watched the PMQ again yesterday and I am now clear in my mind that you are a cchq troll. Johnson blustered and prevaricated the whole time, waiting for Starmer's last question so that he could spend 2 or 3 minutes spouting a Party political broadcast on behalf of the "going nowhere very fast" Party. What a twat he is.
Agree about extra support for those struggling. When I was at school there were a number of people employed to assist SEN children has that changed?
Ask people if they think the strikes are justified and most say yes. If you ask people if they support them they say no.
I don't just vote for a monkey with a blue rosette, and I don't put party before country.
Oh, and don't forget, you lost in 2001. 😕
I am being slightly optimistic on this. So much education occurs at home, and if you have parents who cannot cope, then the children are automatically at a disadvantage (though one many overcome). Many homes do not even have books in them. How do we help kids whose parents are either overwhelmed, or simply do not care?
So what, I did in 1997 and in 2001 and it demonstrates we are not tribal but have minds of our own
*the only ones that are not are researchers like me who are pulled in to cover some of the other, non-clinical, aspects of the courses
What matters is whether the quality of what you're studying is sufficiently high to lead to rapid improvements in your ability to think, understand or do whatever it is. And that isn't focused on enough, as quality of the curriculum, teaching etc. is far too variable at all levels of education and training.
The problem we have is not one of a tension between those two extremes. A lot of people are at university for a very definite practical purpose, rather than the love of their subject. But the practical purpose is not to learn anything useful (or interesting), but to obtain the [first-class] degree that they've paid for, as their passport to a middle-class lifestyle.
This doesn't mean that I think we are sending too many people to university, but I do think we are sending them to university for the wrong reasons, largely to do the wrong things, in the wrong way.
The balls of this man
You say you voted Plaid because you never waste your vote (even though in a multi candidate ward that can work against your candidates if they don't have a full slate). So what would you do if your choice was Labour and only something more reprehensible was available. Wouldn't that make you a Labour voter?
I once had a really interesting chat with Steve Davis at a funk gig in Camden.
https://www.paramountbeauty.com/blog/trending_now/the_abridged_history_of_bangs
Is there any talent at No 10 left? This is just embarrassing
Even the winners in this lottery, those who "make it", are victims of it because they are forced into the wrong choices rather than following their dreams. If people could live an affordable, pleasant life whether they had gone to Uni or not then people will be able to make the right choice to study the right thing for the right reasons.
https://www.prospects.ac.uk/job-profiles/teaching-assistant
TL:DR.
Starts at £18k. ZHC. Rarely paid out of term time, so pro rata much less. It's about quality as much as raw numbers.
You'd be better off cleaning.
I had been sympathetic to Starmer, but he doesn't have the dynamism needed to overcome the Conservatives. I listened to PMQs as it happened and Starmer doesn't have an answer for Johnson's bluster, it is as though Starmer can't think on his feet when Johnson goes off at a tangent. Johnson makes stuff up and Starmer is naïve enough not to realise he is lying. Starmer appears bewildered. He is a dud.
Labour need an attack dog to call Johnson out, I am not sure who that is. Like Blair I rated Philips, but I suspect her time has passed.
I’ve implemented the correct version - which is why all the bears in the neighbourhood have Davy Crocketts.
So don’t dis Paddington.
BTW my (now Russell group) university in the 1970s was famous for being ultra parsimonious with firsts. Whole departments would give out none at all in a particular year (I have a class list in front of me from the 1970s as I write). This makes comparisons invidious and meaningless.
I think the die is already cast on that one, not much chance of this Johnson government getting swingback against a centrist Labour Party. As HY says, Starmer has led on best PM like no labour LOTO since Blair.
Can they get rid of Johnson? Do enough of them even want to - a huge mistake is thinking it only needs a few switchers on top the 148, truth is the 148 can go down more likely than up the more we enter general election territory. Do candidates like Mourdant want to own the fag end of 14 years in power and a likely defeat?
If I actually thought you genuine poster Pete, trying to help PB come to right conclusions I would say relax, it’s going okay for change of government - but I don’t think you are genuine I think you have an agenda.
I recall one politician being led down the road by an interviewer to the point of being asked if she really thought a Maths degree from Cambridge was equal to one from Southbank… Hilariously the politician tried to stick to the “all degrees are equal” bullshit.
Incidentally, the subject of the degree is not so important. With a bit of thought and will, you could make any subject intellectually challenging and rigorous. A degree on surfing could be made into a degree including literature, multiple cultures round the world, materials engineering, ecology, oceanic engineering, wave physics, sports science, human biomechanics etc etc
As bad as the price of petrol here is, jumping from ~£1.20 to ~£1.80 in a year, the fact that most of the price is tax has shielded the true rise in costs.
"Gas" prices in the US have gone from $2.20 per gallon when Biden was elected, to about $5 per gallon now.
As much as that's Trump's best mate's fault, that's not going to make Biden popular.
A decade later that may well have changed entirely and keeping the level playing field mentioned earlier would be problematic to say the least. If am sure the same applies to many different courses particularly as it can depend on the presence of one or two key individuals.