Theory: France is a nation famous for its cooking. So they all grow up thinking they have a talent for it
Which is utter nonsense and results in awful food. It’s like Italians imagining they can all sing opera
Just testing that theory out….
I am open to others
French cuisine was always at its best at the bottom of the scale, where you could rely on a perfectly good three-course meal for a fiver in any small town before 8pm. The higher up the scale the more preposterous it gets, reaching its apotheosis with all that Escoffier crap for bored aristocrats.
Just testing a theory...
Thinking you could disguise poor ingredients by slopping some rich source on top of it was never a great idea.
Mind you, the Slovenian lunch I have just finished was a tad too hearty for this really hot weather, even if today we have the first wisp of clouds I have seen for a week.
I am getting my rugby predictions in early for this weekends games- - Thurs - France v Uruguay - Fri - New Zealand v Namibia - Sun - South Africa v Romania These three games will be walkovers for Fra, NZ & SA - with potential for record scores.
- Sat - Samoa v Chile - Sat - Ireland v Tonga - Sat - Wal v Portugal - Sun - England v Japan These four games will be comfortable wins for Sam, Ire, Wal & Jap, but with 20-40 point margins 'only'
The only real competive game this weekend is Australia v Fiji....and that will be an absolute cracker. More on this game to follow.
Are you trolling? I think Eng v Japan may be a tough game, but 30 to 40 point win?
I have just spotted my typo... That should have been England (Welsh Twitter would explode if Japan...)
I am getting my rugby predictions in early for this weekends games- - Thurs - France v Uruguay - Fri - New Zealand v Namibia - Sun - South Africa v Romania These three games will be walkovers for Fra, NZ & SA - with potential for record scores.
- Sat - Samoa v Chile - Sat - Ireland v Tonga - Sat - Wal v Portugal - Sun - England v Japan These four games will be comfortable wins for Sam, Ire, Wal & Jap, but with 20-40 point margins 'only'
The only real competive game this weekend is Australia v Fiji....and that will be an absolute cracker. More on this game to follow.
Betfair has Japan at 14.5. I assume you have filled your boots...
Typo...albeit an amusing one...
I assumed it was just your natural Welsh passion clouding your vision...
Theory: France is a nation famous for its cooking. So they all grow up thinking they have a talent for it
Which is utter nonsense and results in awful food. It’s like Italians imagining they can all sing opera
Just testing that theory out….
I am open to others
French cuisine was always at its best at the bottom of the scale, where you could rely on a perfectly good three-course meal for a fiver in any small town before 8pm. The higher up the scale the more preposterous it gets, reaching its apotheosis with all that Escoffier crap for bored aristocrats.
Just testing a theory...
But now even the basic “menu du jour” places are shit as well. That’s another part of the problem
It will likely be tinned or even likelier be microwaved frozen meals - shipped out of Paris
I’m in a much-vaunted new lunch gaff in beautiful Pont de Montvert
They have managed to fuck up a salad
Seriously. What the fuck has happened to French food??
How have they fucked up the salad ?
Like so much French food, over-ambition meeting lack of basic talent and taste
It’s meant to be an inventive new salad, i think, mixing bread with melon and goat’s cheese and ham and tomatoes and a harder cheese… and lettuce, and onions…. And a spreadable cheese and sliced carrot (unpeeled) and another different cheese (with the rind on) and sunflower seeds… and on top of that they told me to pour this weird sweet mustard vinaigrette.. all served in a bowl which makes it hard to eat
it is actually disgusting, so many flavours colliding. It’s like a failed vegan puked on the table
This is consistently the worst food I have had on a Gazette assignment since God knows when. Ukrainian food was arguably better than this. At least they don’t boast about it
Ask for a Waldorf Salad.
Then do a Basil Fawlty when they don't have one.
You might be good at Basil Fawlty .
Ou sont Les Waldorfs, Francois?
(I have just unfortunately rather burnt a duck-leg, so my Thai Curry might be slightly carbonated.)
Theory: France is a nation famous for its cooking. So they all grow up thinking they have a talent for it
Which is utter nonsense and results in awful food. It’s like Italians imagining they can all sing opera
Just testing that theory out….
I am open to others
I have a similar theory about Australians. Because there have been a few excellent sportsmen and women, the entire country seems to think they are all super fit athletes. They are not.
Theory: France is a nation famous for its cooking. So they all grow up thinking they have a talent for it
Which is utter nonsense and results in awful food. It’s like Italians imagining they can all sing opera
Just testing that theory out….
I am open to others
You've an ironic narrative "The French can no longer cook". Tis under fitted but suitable for LLoyd's new mag. You are now to beat on it like one of HYUFD's children.
On topic, you only have to look at the hyperventilating comments beneath the line in The Mail, Express, Times or Telegraph to see that most pensioners think they're absolutely entitled to the triple lock and it's too small, if anything.
Sunak's job, politically, is to save as many Tory seats as possible so they at least have a chance to rebuild in opposition. Since pensioners are the only group that's still vaguely inclined to vote Tory he's trapped and has to keep it because otherwise he might get no votes at all.
I'm amazed it's even been floated as an idea, politically its suicide for him.
"RTÉ believes that it could lose €21m in TV licence fee revenue by the end of 2023, with renewals down a third."
The license fee was a hack to get round a technical problem in the 1950s - encrypting TV signals couldn't be made to work with the technology of the day.
I’m in a much-vaunted new lunch gaff in beautiful Pont de Montvert
They have managed to fuck up a salad
Seriously. What the fuck has happened to French food??
It's always been overrated* - like football in the UK, we codified it so think we have the divine right to be the best at it at all times. Most French cuisine is essentially butter seasoned with cruelty.
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
Assuming you trust that the British State will still be solvent after indexing pensions for 40 years. Otherwise you ain't gettin' nuffink either way.
William Hague of course being such an expert in how to win general elections he led the Conservatives to their second worst defeat in 150 years in 2001
If you wish that stat to stay unchanged then maybe listen to him ?
Hague seems to want the Tories to lose the over 65 vote, that really would see them face a 1997 rout or worse.
Over 65s are the only age group mostly still voting Conservative
Hypothetically would you rather the current gov accept defeat and spent the last year doing things that are electorally unpopular that would lead to a two term labour administration but would absolutely transform the future prospects of the country or would you rather they only tinkered around the edges for political reasons...
.
Might even help transform the future prospects of the Tories.
Clinging on to the pensioner vote might mitigate their loss, but it won't win the election, and is literally a dead end strategy.
Yes, the party needs to be a true party of ambition and aspiration which means providing a platform for anyone and everyone to succeed to the point where they don’t need to look after the pensioner vote because the pensioner vote was already helped to their comfortable positions by the party in the first place and they recognise the benefits of helping future generations the same way they were helped.
The Tories need to become THE party of the young - support completely entrepreneurship, education, skills, ability to buy homes. Effectively be a version of my father who said to me “do not expect any inheritance, I’m going to pay for a great education, life experiences and support to get you started in life but then you have to do it for yourself”. I know too many people who weren’t pushed who are still sitting stewing waiting for inheritances.
Tories, be like Dad.
The support for the Tories amongst the young will never be a majority, the young almost always vote Labour.
The Tory core vote is pensioners and the swing voters the middle aged and always will be.
Even if you get top school grades does not guarantee you will get a high paid job or you will be able to afford a house in London and the SE even if you do without assistance. Support for inheritance is a key Tory principle.
73% of Tory voters want to keep the triple lock, even 53% of 18 to 24s want to keep the triple lock
Some day the Tories need to change - if they keep saying they are the party of pensioners then they will never get the vote of the young. If they become the party of the young and give everyone every chance for a better life by providing a platform then they will eventually become the party of the young, and maybe, just maybe, also the party of the pensioners as they will also have benefited from the platform when they were young and now they are comfortable they want their children and grandchildren to benefit from the same platform.
Otherwise the country will stagnate and I want the UK to prosper even if it means a bit of pain for the Tories for a decade.
The Tories have never been the party of the young, the only young people who vote Tory are slightly weird like William Hague or Rees Mogg
"RTÉ believes that it could lose €21m in TV licence fee revenue by the end of 2023, with renewals down a third."
The license fee was a hack to get round a technical problem in the 1950s - encrypting TV signals couldn't be made to work with the technology of the day.
The license fee junkies at the BBC, who think they are entitled to our money for their services and shouldn’t have to earn it, are already proposing other means of raising funding without having to get it from the market.
A tax on broadband is one such favoured means. Every broadband account holder would have to pay a tax which would then be taken to fund the BBC. This would save money as it would eliminate a lot of the costs associated with collection due to the inept capita and the income would be pretty much guaranteed and likely to increase as we build more homes, certainly it would not decrease as people would not opt out of broadband like they could the license fee.
I have retreated to a classically basic French cafe for consumables that even the French can’t fuck up
I've had some terrible, terrible coffee in France.
Germany seems to be better at coffee these days.
French coffee has always been terrible.
They prefer Robusta over Arabica, or at least a mixture, if I remember correctly. I think most other western european countries have been using Arabica-only for decades now.
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
Assuming you trust that the British State will still be solvent after indexing pensions for 40 years. Otherwise you ain't gettin' nuffink either way.
I'm a civil servant and I'm working on the assumption that economic Armageddon comes well before I retire.
I’m in a much-vaunted new lunch gaff in beautiful Pont de Montvert
They have managed to fuck up a salad
Seriously. What the fuck has happened to French food??
How have they fucked up the salad ?
Like so much French food, over-ambition meeting lack of basic talent and taste
It’s meant to be an inventive new salad, i think, mixing bread with melon and goat’s cheese and ham and tomatoes and a harder cheese… and lettuce, and onions…. And a spreadable cheese and sliced carrot (unpeeled) and another different cheese (with the rind on) and sunflower seeds… and on top of that they told me to pour this weird sweet mustard vinaigrette.. all served in a bowl which makes it hard to eat
it is actually disgusting, so many flavours colliding. It’s like a failed vegan puked on the table
This is consistently the worst food I have had on a Gazette assignment since God knows when. Ukrainian food was arguably better than this. At least they don’t boast about it
Ask for a Waldorf Salad.
Then do a Basil Fawlty when they don't have one.
You might be good at Basil Fawlty .
Ou sont Les Waldorfs, Francois?
(I have just unfortunately rather burnt a duck-leg, so my Thai Curry might be slightly carbonated.)
On topic, you only have to look at the hyperventilating comments beneath the line in The Mail, Express, Times or Telegraph to see that most pensioners think they're absolutely entitled to the triple lock and it's too small, if anything.
Sunak's job, politically, is to save as many Tory seats as possible so they at least have a chance to rebuild in opposition. Since pensioners are the only group that's still vaguely inclined to vote Tory he's trapped and has to keep it because otherwise he might get no votes at all.
I'm amazed it's even been floated as an idea, politically its suicide for him.
Indeed, if the Tories even lose the pensioner vote who is left to vote for Sunak and Hunt? Those earning £100k+ a year who voted Leave and live in Kensington and Chelsea or the Home Counties.
And if ReformUK promise to keep the triple lock as they likely would the former are rather bigger than the latter
The implication that stress makes you commit sexual assault/ rape colleagues is 😱. Very many women do stressful jobs without turning to sexual abuse to relieve their "stress". My niece is a consultant anaesthetist at a major teaching hospital who suffered an appalling amount of stress working during Covid and who managed to do so without sexually assaulting colleagues.
Maybe it is men like the doctor writing this letter - who seemingly cannot cope with this "stress" - who are wrong for this profession. Or, indeed, all the other professions with a problem with men assaulting their female colleagues or clients.
There are letters/emails you write - which you then print off, read, screw up and throw in the bin. If you send them you make a fool of yourself - or worse.
This was one of those letters.
Tldr; Women... Man up! Incredible stuff, someone actually wrote that.
And the Times thought it right to publish it too.
Buried in the ludicrous 1970's views, there is a point somewhere about expectations of hard work in medical training and the workplace. Clearly people need to go into training and jobs with full understanding of what is required.
At Bath we have an issue with students who need extra time to complete exams, based on declarations of disability. I'd estimate around 40% of our pharmacy students receive extra time (for things such as dyslexia etc).
All well and good, although I think many are playing the system. But I doubt that Boots or the Hospital trust who employs them is going to give them extra time to sort the ward round, or 10 minutes rest every hour. At some point people do need to man/woman up.
The Times was right to publish. Why do you think they shouldn’t have?
They have a right to publish what they want. I wonder what they want to achieve by publishing this letter though? I runs so counter to current legal, and cultural standards that they cannot have thought "yes, this guy has it right". I mean the BBC puts disclaimers when it shows TV form the 1970's - perhaps the Times could do the same here?
It’s not an endorsement - they want attention and to get people talking about them… and it worked
I have retreated to a classically basic French cafe for consumables that even the French can’t fuck up
Lunch today in Arden (borders): fresh-baked focaccia (£1), brie (20p), gruyère (30p) and tomatoes (£0, yanked ruthlessly from the greenhouse before their feet hit the ground). It's hard to recall those days when we'd arrive back from the continent heavy laden with cheese and charcuterie, when French food seemed better because it was so bad over here.
I have retreated to a classically basic French cafe for consumables that even the French can’t fuck up
I've had some terrible, terrible coffee in France.
Germany seems to be better at coffee these days.
French coffee has always been terrible.
They prefer Robusta over Arabica, or at least a mixture, if I remember correctly. I think most other western european countries have been using Arabica-only for decades now.
I think that's right. And to be fair, you can absolutely get a good coffee in France, but it'll be of the NZ-ish modern craft coffee type.
On which, Budapest (which has a coffee tradition of its own, of course) is probably the most widespread adopter of that international coffee style of anywhere I've been recently - more so than Copenhagen, London or Stockholm for example. Loads of really fantastic coffee places.
The implication that stress makes you commit sexual assault/ rape colleagues is 😱. Very many women do stressful jobs without turning to sexual abuse to relieve their "stress". My niece is a consultant anaesthetist at a major teaching hospital who suffered an appalling amount of stress working during Covid and who managed to do so without sexually assaulting colleagues.
Maybe it is men like the doctor writing this letter - who seemingly cannot cope with this "stress" - who are wrong for this profession. Or, indeed, all the other professions with a problem with men assaulting their female colleagues or clients.
There are letters/emails you write - which you then print off, read, screw up and throw in the bin. If you send them you make a fool of yourself - or worse.
This was one of those letters.
Tldr; Women... Man up! Incredible stuff, someone actually wrote that.
And the Times thought it right to publish it too.
Buried in the ludicrous 1970's views, there is a point somewhere about expectations of hard work in medical training and the workplace. Clearly people need to go into training and jobs with full understanding of what is required.
At Bath we have an issue with students who need extra time to complete exams, based on declarations of disability. I'd estimate around 40% of our pharmacy students receive extra time (for things such as dyslexia etc).
All well and good, although I think many are playing the system. But I doubt that Boots or the Hospital trust who employs them is going to give them extra time to sort the ward round, or 10 minutes rest every hour. At some point people do need to man/woman up.
The Times was right to publish. Why do you think they shouldn’t have?
They have a right to publish what they want. I wonder what they want to achieve by publishing this letter though? I runs so counter to current legal, and cultural standards that they cannot have thought "yes, this guy has it right". I mean the BBC puts disclaimers when it shows TV form the 1970's - perhaps the Times could do the same here?
It is worth hearing bad arguments, to distinguish them from the good.
The problem is a quarter of the population don't distinguish the bad arguments as bad, resulting in populist leaders and parties in many parts of the world getting more and more electoral success.
"RTÉ believes that it could lose €21m in TV licence fee revenue by the end of 2023, with renewals down a third."
The license fee was a hack to get round a technical problem in the 1950s - encrypting TV signals couldn't be made to work with the technology of the day.
The license fee junkies at the BBC, who think they are entitled to our money for their services and shouldn’t have to earn it, are already proposing other means of raising funding without having to get it from the market.
A tax on broadband is one such favoured means. Every broadband account holder would have to pay a tax which would then be taken to fund the BBC. This would save money as it would eliminate a lot of the costs associated with collection due to the inept capita and the income would be pretty much guaranteed and likely to increase as we build more homes, certainly it would not decrease as people would not opt out of broadband like they could the license fee.
And it's exactly how they now do it in France - so I'm at a loss as to where the problem is.
After all no Government is going to stand for election on the basis that the BBC will be closed down so the question comes down to where is the money to keep it going going to come from...
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
"RTÉ believes that it could lose €21m in TV licence fee revenue by the end of 2023, with renewals down a third."
The license fee was a hack to get round a technical problem in the 1950s - encrypting TV signals couldn't be made to work with the technology of the day.
The license fee junkies at the BBC, who think they are entitled to our money for their services and shouldn’t have to earn it, are already proposing other means of raising funding without having to get it from the market.
A tax on broadband is one such favoured means. Every broadband account holder would have to pay a tax which would then be taken to fund the BBC. This would save money as it would eliminate a lot of the costs associated with collection due to the inept capita and the income would be pretty much guaranteed and likely to increase as we build more homes, certainly it would not decrease as people would not opt out of broadband like they could the license fee.
I've thought long and hard about the licence fee. In many ways it does a good job - you get TV without adverts. However you also get that now by streaming, so that argument is falling away.
The things I dislike about the BBC are where they splash the licence payers money flying endless staff round the world to events. Take the Olympics. You can pretty much guarantee that the BBC will have more staff attending than any other nation. And they don't need to be there. They can have UK based studio hosts, and take the TV feeds from the host nation. But of course the staff see it as a perk of the job.
And then there is the need to pay huge sums to star names. Why? Why are newsreaders star names? Why is Lineker paid so much? If he won't do it for 1/10th the salary, find someone else who will. There are plenty of ex footballers out there, many who have a much more recent knowledge of the game.
And yet the BBC does some seriously good stuff, so I don't resent the money I pay for it.
"RTÉ believes that it could lose €21m in TV licence fee revenue by the end of 2023, with renewals down a third."
The license fee was a hack to get round a technical problem in the 1950s - encrypting TV signals couldn't be made to work with the technology of the day.
The license fee junkies at the BBC, who think they are entitled to our money for their services and shouldn’t have to earn it, are already proposing other means of raising funding without having to get it from the market.
A tax on broadband is one such favoured means. Every broadband account holder would have to pay a tax which would then be taken to fund the BBC. This would save money as it would eliminate a lot of the costs associated with collection due to the inept capita and the income would be pretty much guaranteed and likely to increase as we build more homes, certainly it would not decrease as people would not opt out of broadband like they could the license fee.
And it's exactly how they now do it in France - so I'm at a loss as to where the problem is.
After all no Government is going to stand for election on the basis that the BBC will be closed down so the question comes down to where is the money to keep it going going to come from...
The BBC could be entirely self funded by it's own customers, no different to Netflix of any other competitors. Problem solved.
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Fucking hell, has Elon Musk been taking history lessons from Morris Dancer?
As any child knows the Pearl Harbour attack happened after the US invaded Japan.
Elon Musk on the request from the Ukrainian Government to turn on Starlink in Crimea: “We figured out that this was kind of like a Pearl Harbor like attack...So they really asked us to proactively take part in a major act of war”
The implication that stress makes you commit sexual assault/ rape colleagues is 😱. Very many women do stressful jobs without turning to sexual abuse to relieve their "stress". My niece is a consultant anaesthetist at a major teaching hospital who suffered an appalling amount of stress working during Covid and who managed to do so without sexually assaulting colleagues.
Maybe it is men like the doctor writing this letter - who seemingly cannot cope with this "stress" - who are wrong for this profession. Or, indeed, all the other professions with a problem with men assaulting their female colleagues or clients.
There are letters/emails you write - which you then print off, read, screw up and throw in the bin. If you send them you make a fool of yourself - or worse.
This was one of those letters.
Tldr; Women... Man up! Incredible stuff, someone actually wrote that.
And the Times thought it right to publish it too.
Buried in the ludicrous 1970's views, there is a point somewhere about expectations of hard work in medical training and the workplace. Clearly people need to go into training and jobs with full understanding of what is required.
At Bath we have an issue with students who need extra time to complete exams, based on declarations of disability. I'd estimate around 40% of our pharmacy students receive extra time (for things such as dyslexia etc).
All well and good, although I think many are playing the system. But I doubt that Boots or the Hospital trust who employs them is going to give them extra time to sort the ward round, or 10 minutes rest every hour. At some point people do need to man/woman up.
The Times was right to publish. Why do you think they shouldn’t have?
They have a right to publish what they want. I wonder what they want to achieve by publishing this letter though? I runs so counter to current legal, and cultural standards that they cannot have thought "yes, this guy has it right". I mean the BBC puts disclaimers when it shows TV form the 1970's - perhaps the Times could do the same here?
It is worth hearing bad arguments, to distinguish them from the good.
Yes, imagine a letter from a senior police officer - "All the suspects were guilty, in my day, even if we had to tune up a few of them to get them to confess. And there is nothing wrong with a few pounds in an envelope from grateful shop keepers, either."
Come now, you'll trigger Anabob with stuff like that.
Best not post a pic of the utterly delicious Ethiopian meal I had the other evening at a cash-only restaurant
That;s a cuisine I am keen to try, Dixiedean, IIRC, of this parish went to an Ethiopian/Eritrean restaurant in the toon this year and raved about it.
They eat weird fermented flat bread which tastes like a quickly decaying sea sponge, with the texture to match
Some like it. Many do not
It's like tripe, made of bread. Truly weird.
An Ethiopian beef curry was the hottest foodstuff I have ever eaten.
William Hague of course being such an expert in how to win general elections he led the Conservatives to their second worst defeat in 150 years in 2001
If you wish that stat to stay unchanged then maybe listen to him ?
Hague seems to want the Tories to lose the over 65 vote, that really would see them face a 1997 rout or worse.
Over 65s are the only age group mostly still voting Conservative
Hypothetically would you rather the current gov accept defeat and spent the last year doing things that are electorally unpopular that would lead to a two term labour administration but would absolutely transform the future prospects of the country or would you rather they only tinkered around the edges for political reasons...
.
Might even help transform the future prospects of the Tories.
Clinging on to the pensioner vote might mitigate their loss, but it won't win the election, and is literally a dead end strategy.
Yes, the party needs to be a true party of ambition and aspiration which means providing a platform for anyone and everyone to succeed to the point where they don’t need to look after the pensioner vote because the pensioner vote was already helped to their comfortable positions by the party in the first place and they recognise the benefits of helping future generations the same way they were helped.
The Tories need to become THE party of the young - support completely entrepreneurship, education, skills, ability to buy homes. Effectively be a version of my father who said to me “do not expect any inheritance, I’m going to pay for a great education, life experiences and support to get you started in life but then you have to do it for yourself”. I know too many people who weren’t pushed who are still sitting stewing waiting for inheritances.
Tories, be like Dad.
The support for the Tories amongst the young will never be a majority, the young almost always vote Labour.
The Tory core vote is pensioners and the swing voters the middle aged and always will be.
Even if you get top school grades does not guarantee you will get a high paid job or you will be able to afford a house in London and the SE even if you do without assistance. Support for inheritance is a key Tory principle.
73% of Tory voters want to keep the triple lock, even 53% of 18 to 24s want to keep the triple lock
Some day the Tories need to change - if they keep saying they are the party of pensioners then they will never get the vote of the young. If they become the party of the young and give everyone every chance for a better life by providing a platform then they will eventually become the party of the young, and maybe, just maybe, also the party of the pensioners as they will also have benefited from the platform when they were young and now they are comfortable they want their children and grandchildren to benefit from the same platform.
Otherwise the country will stagnate and I want the UK to prosper even if it means a bit of pain for the Tories for a decade.
The Tories have never been the party of the young, the only young people who vote Tory are slightly weird like William Hague or Rees Mogg
I think you are missing my point. You are correct that they have never been the party of the young but they can and should transition to being so because being the party of the old and of vested interests is not sustainable.
They need to be the Party of the country, of the ambitious, of people who want to improve their lives, of the entrepreneurs, of those who want to keep more of what they earn so they can have homes, nice pensions, nice retirements.
The Tories were the flag bearers for capitalism, for low taxes, for business.
They need to realise that if they pivot to being a party where young people look at them and think - theses guys are giving me the chance to push, earn, create, dream, work, live then they will get the votes of the young. They will leave Labour as a party who seem to just want to ban, control and aim for equal outcome rather than equal opportunity.
Obviously the best time will be when they lose the next election but surely the future of the country is most important, and the solution isn’t Labour, and so whilst it will be painful for the Tories in the short term they can change and benefit from this pivot for a long time.
I understand that to a lot of Conservatives the clue is in the name but there is a need for a party that provides a platform for anyone to do things with a bit of government support, direction, frameworks which isn’t provided by Labour or the Lib Dem’s and the Conservatives are desiccating along their current path of being the party of the old and established.
When you are 70 will you want your grandchildren to be able to vote for a government that helps them with free enterprise, homes, jobs, new industries and opportunities or just say to them to vote Tory because you will be looked after in 50 years time?
British cruise missiles were used in significant Ukrainian attack on Russian submarine
The UK gave Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine's armed forces earlier in the year. They are able to be fired by Ukrainian aircraft, with a range of more than 150 miles
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Theresa May, graduate of Oxford University. Boris Johnson, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
On topic, you only have to look at the hyperventilating comments beneath the line in The Mail, Express, Times or Telegraph to see that most pensioners think they're absolutely entitled to the triple lock and it's too small, if anything.
Sunak's job, politically, is to save as many Tory seats as possible so they at least have a chance to rebuild in opposition. Since pensioners are the only group that's still vaguely inclined to vote Tory he's trapped and has to keep it because otherwise he might get no votes at all.
I'm amazed it's even been floated as an idea, politically its suicide for him.
Indeed, if the Tories even lose the pensioner vote who is left to vote for Sunak and Hunt? Those earning £100k+ a year who voted Leave and live in Kensington and Chelsea or the Home Counties.
And if ReformUK promise to keep the triple lock as they likely would the former are rather bigger than the latter
I thought you were always going on about how the Hindu vote would assuredly turn out for Mr S.
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Theory: France is a nation famous for its cooking. So they all grow up thinking they have a talent for it
Which is utter nonsense and results in awful food. It’s like Italians imagining they can all sing opera
Just testing that theory out….
I am open to others
I have a similar theory about Australians. Because there have been a few excellent sportsmen and women, the entire country seems to think they are all super fit athletes. They are not.
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
Fucking hell, has Elon Musk been taking history lessons from Morris Dancer?
As any child knows the Pearl Harbour attack happened after the US invaded Japan.
Elon Musk on the request from the Ukrainian Government to turn on Starlink in Crimea: “We figured out that this was kind of like a Pearl Harbor like attack...So they really asked us to proactively take part in a major act of war”
The implication that stress makes you commit sexual assault/ rape colleagues is 😱. Very many women do stressful jobs without turning to sexual abuse to relieve their "stress". My niece is a consultant anaesthetist at a major teaching hospital who suffered an appalling amount of stress working during Covid and who managed to do so without sexually assaulting colleagues.
Maybe it is men like the doctor writing this letter - who seemingly cannot cope with this "stress" - who are wrong for this profession. Or, indeed, all the other professions with a problem with men assaulting their female colleagues or clients.
There are letters/emails you write - which you then print off, read, screw up and throw in the bin. If you send them you make a fool of yourself - or worse.
This was one of those letters.
Tldr; Women... Man up! Incredible stuff, someone actually wrote that.
And the Times thought it right to publish it too.
Buried in the ludicrous 1970's views, there is a point somewhere about expectations of hard work in medical training and the workplace. Clearly people need to go into training and jobs with full understanding of what is required.
At Bath we have an issue with students who need extra time to complete exams, based on declarations of disability. I'd estimate around 40% of our pharmacy students receive extra time (for things such as dyslexia etc).
All well and good, although I think many are playing the system. But I doubt that Boots or the Hospital trust who employs them is going to give them extra time to sort the ward round, or 10 minutes rest every hour. At some point people do need to man/woman up.
The Times was right to publish. Why do you think they shouldn’t have?
They have a right to publish what they want. I wonder what they want to achieve by publishing this letter though? I runs so counter to current legal, and cultural standards that they cannot have thought "yes, this guy has it right". I mean the BBC puts disclaimers when it shows TV form the 1970's - perhaps the Times could do the same here?
It is worth hearing bad arguments, to distinguish them from the good.
The problem is a quarter of the population don't distinguish the bad arguments as bad, resulting in populist leaders and parties in many parts of the world getting more and more electoral success.
That's always the risk.
But, one can't really know if one's own argument is good, until one hears the bad. That was one of several justifications that Mill gave for free speech.
Fermeture Indefinitive is when you can't tell if it's closed or open until you knock on the door...
The first time I went to the US I embarassed myself several times walking into small shops which had not yet opened for the day. It seems tradition there is to have the front door open for deliveries as soon as the owners are on the premises.
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
In that sense, no, though in return the Mafia loan sharks seem to have got involved with an offer one can't refuse. On the other hand, in those days, there were polytechnics, and technical colleges, and lots more apprenticeships inclding some quite high level ones as I recall ...
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
In that sense, no, though in return the Mafia loan sharks seem to have got involved with an offer one can't refuse. On the other hand, in those days, there were polytechnics, and technical colleges, and lots more apprenticeships inclding some quite high level ones as I recall ...
The implication that stress makes you commit sexual assault/ rape colleagues is 😱. Very many women do stressful jobs without turning to sexual abuse to relieve their "stress". My niece is a consultant anaesthetist at a major teaching hospital who suffered an appalling amount of stress working during Covid and who managed to do so without sexually assaulting colleagues.
Maybe it is men like the doctor writing this letter - who seemingly cannot cope with this "stress" - who are wrong for this profession. Or, indeed, all the other professions with a problem with men assaulting their female colleagues or clients.
There are letters/emails you write - which you then print off, read, screw up and throw in the bin. If you send them you make a fool of yourself - or worse.
This was one of those letters.
Tldr; Women... Man up! Incredible stuff, someone actually wrote that.
And the Times thought it right to publish it too.
Buried in the ludicrous 1970's views, there is a point somewhere about expectations of hard work in medical training and the workplace. Clearly people need to go into training and jobs with full understanding of what is required.
At Bath we have an issue with students who need extra time to complete exams, based on declarations of disability. I'd estimate around 40% of our pharmacy students receive extra time (for things such as dyslexia etc).
All well and good, although I think many are playing the system. But I doubt that Boots or the Hospital trust who employs them is going to give them extra time to sort the ward round, or 10 minutes rest every hour. At some point people do need to man/woman up.
Yeah there is probably some truth in that, based on accounts from friends and relatives of some of the young people they work with, where a certain amount of mental toughness seems to be lacking. I've not really experienced it myself though.
Mental toughness is one thing.
Learning to cope with senior colleagues assaulting you should not be a requirement of any job.
British cruise missiles were used in significant Ukrainian attack on Russian submarine
The UK gave Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine's armed forces earlier in the year. They are able to be fired by Ukrainian aircraft, with a range of more than 150 miles
I see that our "Bullying happens. Sexually inappropriate comments and actions do occur" doctor has written a book about his life as an anaesthetist - "It's a Gas".
Love the passive voice - "bullying happens", "comments and actions occur". No - it is done by people to other people. It doesn't just happen or occur.
The GOP Is Starting to Plot Against Donald Trump Republican Party donors and leaders are talking about how best to stop Trump from running away with the nomination again in 2024. But they don’t have a clear plan to stop him.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/02/09/gop-trump-2024-election-00081944? ..“I don’t think it is fair to call Donald Trump a damaged candidate,” said Eric Levine, a top GOP fundraiser who has been calling on the party to move on from Trump since the 2020 election and the uprising at the Capitol. “He is a metastasizing cancer who if he is not stopped is going to destroy the party. Donald Trump is a loser. He is the first president since Hoover to lose the House, the Senate and the presidency in a single term. Because of him Chuck Schumer is the Leader Schumer, and the progressive agenda is threatening to take over the country. And he is probably the only Republican in the country, if not the only person in the country, who can’t beat Joe Biden.”..
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
"RTÉ believes that it could lose €21m in TV licence fee revenue by the end of 2023, with renewals down a third."
The license fee was a hack to get round a technical problem in the 1950s - encrypting TV signals couldn't be made to work with the technology of the day.
The license fee junkies at the BBC, who think they are entitled to our money for their services and shouldn’t have to earn it, are already proposing other means of raising funding without having to get it from the market.
A tax on broadband is one such favoured means. Every broadband account holder would have to pay a tax which would then be taken to fund the BBC. This would save money as it would eliminate a lot of the costs associated with collection due to the inept capita and the income would be pretty much guaranteed and likely to increase as we build more homes, certainly it would not decrease as people would not opt out of broadband like they could the license fee.
I've thought long and hard about the licence fee. In many ways it does a good job - you get TV without adverts. However you also get that now by streaming, so that argument is falling away.
The things I dislike about the BBC are where they splash the licence payers money flying endless staff round the world to events. Take the Olympics. You can pretty much guarantee that the BBC will have more staff attending than any other nation. And they don't need to be there. They can have UK based studio hosts, and take the TV feeds from the host nation. But of course the staff see it as a perk of the job.
And then there is the need to pay huge sums to star names. Why? Why are newsreaders star names? Why is Lineker paid so much? If he won't do it for 1/10th the salary, find someone else who will. There are plenty of ex footballers out there, many who have a much more recent knowledge of the game.
And yet the BBC does some seriously good stuff, so I don't resent the money I pay for it.
Apart from the summary, I do resent the money I pay, I agree with this.
Like you I do not get the need to send an army of people overseas on a large jolly. Olympics, World Cups, any major sporting event. The local feed worked fine with the Tokyo olympics.
Countdown replaced Vorderman with Rachel Riley for about a tenth of the salary.
The BBC MOTD contingent largely finished their careers years ago. SKY has a much more interesting and recent contingent of players.
The BBC squanders our money. It lacks accountability. This should change and they should seek their funding via non compulsory means.
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
The implication that stress makes you commit sexual assault/ rape colleagues is 😱. Very many women do stressful jobs without turning to sexual abuse to relieve their "stress". My niece is a consultant anaesthetist at a major teaching hospital who suffered an appalling amount of stress working during Covid and who managed to do so without sexually assaulting colleagues.
Maybe it is men like the doctor writing this letter - who seemingly cannot cope with this "stress" - who are wrong for this profession. Or, indeed, all the other professions with a problem with men assaulting their female colleagues or clients.
There are letters/emails you write - which you then print off, read, screw up and throw in the bin. If you send them you make a fool of yourself - or worse.
This was one of those letters.
Tldr; Women... Man up! Incredible stuff, someone actually wrote that.
And the Times thought it right to publish it too.
Buried in the ludicrous 1970's views, there is a point somewhere about expectations of hard work in medical training and the workplace. Clearly people need to go into training and jobs with full understanding of what is required.
At Bath we have an issue with students who need extra time to complete exams, based on declarations of disability. I'd estimate around 40% of our pharmacy students receive extra time (for things such as dyslexia etc).
All well and good, although I think many are playing the system. But I doubt that Boots or the Hospital trust who employs them is going to give them extra time to sort the ward round, or 10 minutes rest every hour. At some point people do need to man/woman up.
The Times was right to publish. Why do you think they shouldn’t have?
They have a right to publish what they want. I wonder what they want to achieve by publishing this letter though? I runs so counter to current legal, and cultural standards that they cannot have thought "yes, this guy has it right". I mean the BBC puts disclaimers when it shows TV form the 1970's - perhaps the Times could do the same here?
It is worth hearing bad arguments, to distinguish them from the good.
Yes, imagine a letter from a senior police officer - "All the suspects were guilty, in my day, even if we had to tune up a few of them to get them to confess. And there is nothing wrong with a few pounds in an envelope from grateful shop keepers, either."
Come now, you'll trigger Anabob with stuff like that.
Best not post a pic of the utterly delicious Ethiopian meal I had the other evening at a cash-only restaurant
That;s a cuisine I am keen to try, Dixiedean, IIRC, of this parish went to an Ethiopian/Eritrean restaurant in the toon this year and raved about it.
They eat weird fermented flat bread which tastes like a quickly decaying sea sponge, with the texture to match
Some like it. Many do not
It's like tripe, made of bread. Truly weird.
An Ethiopian beef curry was the hottest foodstuff I have ever eaten.
Actually it is kind of tripelike now you mention it (in terms of texture and appearance, not at all in flavour). To our tastes it is a bit weird, as there's no obvious counterpart (it immediately recalls a massive crumpet or pikelet, but doesn't taste at all similar). Once you've got the taste for it though, it really is quite a compelling food, and the slight sourness can help cut through the heat of some of the hotter stews.
I see that our "Bullying happens. Sexually inappropriate comments and actions do occur" doctor has written a book about his life as an anaesthetist - "It's a Gas".
Love the passive voice - "bullying happens", "comments and actions occur". No - it is done by people to other people. It doesn't just happen or occur.
Isn't there a medical folk tradition that anaesthetists are often a bit weird?
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
In that sense, no, though in return the Mafia loan sharks seem to have got involved with an offer one can't refuse. On the other hand, in those days, there were polytechnics, and technical colleges, and lots more apprenticeships inclding some quite high level ones as I recall ...
“Mafia loan sharks”, are you being serious?
Interest rates compared to the bank rate? I wished HMG were offering ME that sort of interest for my savings, if they were forcing it on the poor graduates.
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
Who created tuition fees? Blair and how else are we supposed to fund our top universities.
Who are most opposed to new housing, especially on the greenbelt? LDs and Residents and Independents and Greens who took control of most formerly Tory councils in the South of England in May's local elections precisely because voters felt Tory councils Local Plans were building too much and in too many green spaces.
Automatic enrolment in workplace pensions came in in 2012 under the Coalition, however that is no reason to cut the state pensions of those who have no other retirement income
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
On topic, you only have to look at the hyperventilating comments beneath the line in The Mail, Express, Times or Telegraph to see that most pensioners think they're absolutely entitled to the triple lock and it's too small, if anything.
Sunak's job, politically, is to save as many Tory seats as possible so they at least have a chance to rebuild in opposition. Since pensioners are the only group that's still vaguely inclined to vote Tory he's trapped and has to keep it because otherwise he might get no votes at all.
I'm amazed it's even been floated as an idea, politically its suicide for him.
Indeed, if the Tories even lose the pensioner vote who is left to vote for Sunak and Hunt? Those earning £100k+ a year who voted Leave and live in Kensington and Chelsea or the Home Counties.
And if ReformUK promise to keep the triple lock as they likely would the former are rather bigger than the latter
I thought you were always going on about how the Hindu vote would assuredly turn out for Mr S.
It will but there are even fewer of them then high earning Leave voters, the pensioner vote still massively exceeds their vote combined
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
No, its not proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings.
Going to university may increase your earnings, hence "in some cases" but ironically many of those studies are based on when fewer people were going to university and those people who did . . . *drumroll please* do not pay the graduate tax today.
So the people who benefited the most, by people an 'elite' few who were graduates when not many were, are the ones who don't pay taxes, whereas people who go to university because its expected and to not do so marks you out more than having done so, do pay. Utterly insane.
If you benefit, if you get high incomes - like Oxford University graduate Tony Blair has for instance, then you should be paying Income Tax.
But for some reason Oxford University graduate and multimillionaire Tony Blair felt it was a good idea if he didn't have to pay the tax, but others did instead.
There is no moral, ethical or economic justification for that.
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
Indeed, why should someone on minimum wage or below average or even average earnings pay the tuition fees of a law student who becomes or corporate lawyer or QC, or a medical student who becomes a consultant or doctor or an economics student who works for a hedge fund or bank or an IT student who works for Apple or Google or Microsoft and will earn multiple times their salary? Those students, especially at top universities, should pay fees and have the highest course fees
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
It depends on the university and the degree subject.
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
No, its not proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings.
Going to university may increase your earnings, hence "in some cases" but ironically many of those studies are based on when fewer people were going to university and those people who did . . . *drumroll please* do not pay the graduate tax today.
So the people who benefited the most, by people an 'elite' few who were graduates when not many were, are the ones who don't pay taxes, whereas people who go to university because its expected and to not do so marks you out more than having done so, do pay. Utterly insane.
If you benefit, if you get high incomes - like Oxford University graduate Tony Blair has for instance, then you should be paying Income Tax.
But for some reason Oxford University graduate and multimillionaire Tony Blair felt it was a good idea if he didn't have to pay the tax, but others did instead.
There is no moral, ethical or economic justification for that.
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
No, its not proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings.
Going to university may increase your earnings, hence "in some cases" but ironically many of those studies are based on when fewer people were going to university and those people who did . . . *drumroll please* do not pay the graduate tax today.
So the people who benefited the most, by people an 'elite' few who were graduates when not many were, are the ones who don't pay taxes, whereas people who go to university because its expected and to not do so marks you out more than having done so, do pay. Utterly insane.
If you benefit, if you get high incomes - like Oxford University graduate Tony Blair has for instance, then you should be paying Income Tax.
But for some reason Oxford University graduate and multimillionaire Tony Blair felt it was a good idea if he didn't have to pay the tax, but others did instead.
There is no moral, ethical or economic justification for that.
That's an average, not a guarantee. Averages are not the same as everyone.
And if a graduate, like Oxford University Graduate Tony Blair earns hundreds of thousands of pounds a year, as he does, then he should be paying income tax on that.
So why should Oxford University Graduate Tony Blair who is earning hundreds of thousands of pounds be contributing have 0% income tax to fund education.
But a newly qualified young graduate early in their career and still theoretically on 20% income tax by paying 9% of their marginal income as taxation to fund education?
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
No, its not proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings.
Going to university may increase your earnings, hence "in some cases" but ironically many of those studies are based on when fewer people were going to university and those people who did . . . *drumroll please* do not pay the graduate tax today.
So the people who benefited the most, by people an 'elite' few who were graduates when not many were, are the ones who don't pay taxes, whereas people who go to university because its expected and to not do so marks you out more than having done so, do pay. Utterly insane.
If you benefit, if you get high incomes - like Oxford University graduate Tony Blair has for instance, then you should be paying Income Tax.
But for some reason Oxford University graduate and multimillionaire Tony Blair felt it was a good idea if he didn't have to pay the tax, but others did instead.
There is no moral, ethical or economic justification for that.
Two years ago the IFS did a study based on graduates at age 30 and found that “Average returns to undergraduate degrees at age 30 are positive for people from all socioeconomic and ethnic groups we study”.
I’d say that’s pretty unequivocal about the financial benefits. While there will certainly be a small minority that don’t benefit, that can be handled with a suitable repayment threshold.
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
Indeed, why should someone on minimum wage or below average or even average earnings pay the tuition fees of a law student who becomes or corporate lawyer or QC, or a medical student who becomes a consultant or doctor or an economics student who works for a hedge fund or bank or an IT student who works for Apple or Google or Microsoft and will earn multiple times their salary? Those students, especially at top universities, should pay fees and have the highest course fees
Because they don't. Someone on minimum wage pays minimal income tax, whereas the high earners pay more. That's the entire point of income tax.
But instead of linking income tax to income, today its linked to age and how you earn the income.
If you're earning £95k a year through non-salaried means then you pay 40% income tax, even if you graduated from university 30 years ago and benefited accordingly.
Whereas if you're a young graduate earning £30k a year through salaried means you pay 41% income tax.
Its unjustifiable to have a higher rate of income tax on £30k than £95k. It is simply wrong.
If you want a tax via income, then it should be as low as possible, but fairly applied to everyone, consistently, all at the same rate, not inconsistently tax others much higher rates.
I see that our "Bullying happens. Sexually inappropriate comments and actions do occur" doctor has written a book about his life as an anaesthetist - "It's a Gas".
Love the passive voice - "bullying happens", "comments and actions occur". No - it is done by people to other people. It doesn't just happen or occur.
Isn't there a medical folk tradition that anaesthetists are often a bit weird?
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
No, its not proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings.
Going to university may increase your earnings, hence "in some cases" but ironically many of those studies are based on when fewer people were going to university and those people who did . . . *drumroll please* do not pay the graduate tax today.
So the people who benefited the most, by people an 'elite' few who were graduates when not many were, are the ones who don't pay taxes, whereas people who go to university because its expected and to not do so marks you out more than having done so, do pay. Utterly insane.
If you benefit, if you get high incomes - like Oxford University graduate Tony Blair has for instance, then you should be paying Income Tax.
But for some reason Oxford University graduate and multimillionaire Tony Blair felt it was a good idea if he didn't have to pay the tax, but others did instead.
There is no moral, ethical or economic justification for that.
Two years ago the IFS did a study based on graduates at age 30 and found that “Average returns to undergraduate degrees at age 30 are positive for people from all socioeconomic and ethnic groups we study”.
I’d say that’s pretty unequivocal about the financial benefits. While there will certainly be a small minority that don’t benefit, that can be handled with a suitable repayment threshold.
Great, so if its positive as it has been for Tony Blair and Oxford University graduates on the list then they should be paying income tax.
So why should only a minority be paying 9% additional income tax, for being in the same situation as Blair, but he and his ilk doesn't pay it?
Taxing everyone 1% (or however it works out to balance the maths) would be much fairer than taxing some 9% and others 0%
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
No, its not proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings.
Going to university may increase your earnings, hence "in some cases" but ironically many of those studies are based on when fewer people were going to university and those people who did . . . *drumroll please* do not pay the graduate tax today.
So the people who benefited the most, by people an 'elite' few who were graduates when not many were, are the ones who don't pay taxes, whereas people who go to university because its expected and to not do so marks you out more than having done so, do pay. Utterly insane.
If you benefit, if you get high incomes - like Oxford University graduate Tony Blair has for instance, then you should be paying Income Tax.
But for some reason Oxford University graduate and multimillionaire Tony Blair felt it was a good idea if he didn't have to pay the tax, but others did instead.
There is no moral, ethical or economic justification for that.
Two years ago the IFS did a study based on graduates at age 30 and found that “Average returns to undergraduate degrees at age 30 are positive for people from all socioeconomic and ethnic groups we study”.
I’d say that’s pretty unequivocal about the financial benefits. While there will certainly be a small minority that don’t benefit, that can be handled with a suitable repayment threshold.
Does correlation = causation here? Do they earn more because they went to university, or do they ear more because they're cleverer - and cleverer people are more likely to go to university?
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
No, its not proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings.
Going to university may increase your earnings, hence "in some cases" but ironically many of those studies are based on when fewer people were going to university and those people who did . . . *drumroll please* do not pay the graduate tax today.
So the people who benefited the most, by people an 'elite' few who were graduates when not many were, are the ones who don't pay taxes, whereas people who go to university because its expected and to not do so marks you out more than having done so, do pay. Utterly insane.
If you benefit, if you get high incomes - like Oxford University graduate Tony Blair has for instance, then you should be paying Income Tax.
But for some reason Oxford University graduate and multimillionaire Tony Blair felt it was a good idea if he didn't have to pay the tax, but others did instead.
There is no moral, ethical or economic justification for that.
So over a 40 year working life they will earn 460k more than a non graduate.
If you make university out of general taxation you would therefore reduce the extra 158k tax they pay (which exlcudes the loan repayment just using normal tax and ni) to a mere 98k over those 40 years,
So the average graduate would benefit to the tune of 360k over a 40 year working life. Seems fair to me they pay the cost and not the non graduate. Now where we agree is the interest on the loans is too high and in my opinion should be set at the base rate
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
No, its not proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings.
Going to university may increase your earnings, hence "in some cases" but ironically many of those studies are based on when fewer people were going to university and those people who did . . . *drumroll please* do not pay the graduate tax today.
So the people who benefited the most, by people an 'elite' few who were graduates when not many were, are the ones who don't pay taxes, whereas people who go to university because its expected and to not do so marks you out more than having done so, do pay. Utterly insane.
If you benefit, if you get high incomes - like Oxford University graduate Tony Blair has for instance, then you should be paying Income Tax.
But for some reason Oxford University graduate and multimillionaire Tony Blair felt it was a good idea if he didn't have to pay the tax, but others did instead.
There is no moral, ethical or economic justification for that.
Two years ago the IFS did a study based on graduates at age 30 and found that “Average returns to undergraduate degrees at age 30 are positive for people from all socioeconomic and ethnic groups we study”.
I’d say that’s pretty unequivocal about the financial benefits. While there will certainly be a small minority that don’t benefit, that can be handled with a suitable repayment threshold.
Does correlation = causation here? Do they earn more because they went to university, or do they ear more because they're cleverer - and cleverer people are more likely to go to university?
I believe there is a stronger correlation with IQ than with education.
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
No, its not proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings.
Going to university may increase your earnings, hence "in some cases" but ironically many of those studies are based on when fewer people were going to university and those people who did . . . *drumroll please* do not pay the graduate tax today.
So the people who benefited the most, by people an 'elite' few who were graduates when not many were, are the ones who don't pay taxes, whereas people who go to university because its expected and to not do so marks you out more than having done so, do pay. Utterly insane.
If you benefit, if you get high incomes - like Oxford University graduate Tony Blair has for instance, then you should be paying Income Tax.
But for some reason Oxford University graduate and multimillionaire Tony Blair felt it was a good idea if he didn't have to pay the tax, but others did instead.
There is no moral, ethical or economic justification for that.
So over a 40 year working life they will earn 460k more than a non graduate.
If you make university out of general taxation you would therefore reduce the extra 158k tax they pay (which exlcudes the loan repayment just using normal tax and ni) to a mere 98k over those 40 years,
So the average graduate would benefit to the tune of 360k over a 40 year working life. Seems fair to me they pay the cost and not the non graduate. Now where we agree is the interest on the loans is too high and in my opinion should be set at the base rate
But you're assuming the only difference between the two populations are whether they went to university. Whereas the university-going group are likely to be a) cleverer than the non-university-going group, and b) from a more privileged background. Both of which will impact their ability to earn far more than three years studying history.
Fucking hell, has Elon Musk been taking history lessons from Morris Dancer?
As any child knows the Pearl Harbour attack happened after the US invaded Japan.
Elon Musk on the request from the Ukrainian Government to turn on Starlink in Crimea: “We figured out that this was kind of like a Pearl Harbor like attack...So they really asked us to proactively take part in a major act of war”
An attack on occupiers of your own territory is hardly a 'major act of war'.
It's not even as though the daft tw@t has factories in Russia.
There are a lot of people who cannot conceive of a Russian defeat and so are determined to prevent it.
We've now seen a major attack on the Russian Black Sea fleet in Sevastopol harbour using British-supplied weapons. Where are the consequences Musk was worried about? I'm glad that the British government is braver than that self-important billionaire.
The Government has published its draft statutory code of practice for non-party campaigning for approval by parliament. It will come into effect in November 2023 in time for a 2024 general election.
This code will provide certainty for non-party campaigners on how to comply with the rules relating to non-party campaigning by putting guidance on a statutory footing. It also provides a defence for campaigners who are charged with offences under Part 6 of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 (PPERA) and can demonstrate compliance with the code of practice.
"He said scientists used radiocarbon dating to gather DNA evidence and X-rays had shown one to have 'eggs' inside."
Not sure whether that's Sky mangling, the original source, translation or whatever, but if they think they've used radiocarbon dating to gather DNA evidence then it's hard to have any confidence in anything else they say!
Fucking hell, has Elon Musk been taking history lessons from Morris Dancer?
As any child knows the Pearl Harbour attack happened after the US invaded Japan.
Elon Musk on the request from the Ukrainian Government to turn on Starlink in Crimea: “We figured out that this was kind of like a Pearl Harbor like attack...So they really asked us to proactively take part in a major act of war”
An attack on occupiers of your own territory is hardly a 'major act of war'.
It's not even as though the daft tw@t has factories in Russia.
There are a lot of people who cannot conceive of a Russian defeat and so are determined to prevent it.
We've now seen a major attack on the Russian Black Sea fleet in Sevastopol harbour using British-supplied weapons. Where are the consequences Musk was worried about? I'm glad that the British government is braver than that self-important billionaire.
Of interest is that something changed - the drone boats used in the attack yesterday use Starlink to communicate.
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
No, its not proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings.
Going to university may increase your earnings, hence "in some cases" but ironically many of those studies are based on when fewer people were going to university and those people who did . . . *drumroll please* do not pay the graduate tax today.
So the people who benefited the most, by people an 'elite' few who were graduates when not many were, are the ones who don't pay taxes, whereas people who go to university because its expected and to not do so marks you out more than having done so, do pay. Utterly insane.
If you benefit, if you get high incomes - like Oxford University graduate Tony Blair has for instance, then you should be paying Income Tax.
But for some reason Oxford University graduate and multimillionaire Tony Blair felt it was a good idea if he didn't have to pay the tax, but others did instead.
There is no moral, ethical or economic justification for that.
So over a 40 year working life they will earn 460k more than a non graduate.
If you make university out of general taxation you would therefore reduce the extra 158k tax they pay (which exlcudes the loan repayment just using normal tax and ni) to a mere 98k over those 40 years,
So the average graduate would benefit to the tune of 360k over a 40 year working life. Seems fair to me they pay the cost and not the non graduate. Now where we agree is the interest on the loans is too high and in my opinion should be set at the base rate
But you're assuming the only difference between the two populations are whether they went to university. Whereas the university-going group are likely to be a) cleverer than the non-university-going group, and b) from a more privileged background. Both of which will impact their ability to earn far more than three years studying history.
I am not assuming anything those are the statistics....people with a degree on average earn 11.5k more than those that dont. Yes there will be people that have no degree that earn more than some with degrees that earn less than those without. Thats why its called an average.
It is clear though from those averages that the average graduate will earn more over their lifetime than those without. I don't see why you find that controversial
Fucking hell, has Elon Musk been taking history lessons from Morris Dancer?
As any child knows the Pearl Harbour attack happened after the US invaded Japan.
Elon Musk on the request from the Ukrainian Government to turn on Starlink in Crimea: “We figured out that this was kind of like a Pearl Harbor like attack...So they really asked us to proactively take part in a major act of war”
An attack on occupiers of your own territory is hardly a 'major act of war'.
It's not even as though the daft tw@t has factories in Russia.
There are a lot of people who cannot conceive of a Russian defeat and so are determined to prevent it.
We've now seen a major attack on the Russian Black Sea fleet in Sevastopol harbour using British-supplied weapons. Where are the consequences Musk was worried about? I'm glad that the British government is braver than that self-important billionaire.
Of interest is that something changed - the drone boats used in the attack yesterday use Starlink to communicate.
There was a bit of a fuss at some point about who was going to pay for providing the starlink service. I believe initially they were provided for free, but then as time passed Musk decided he'd rather be paid (itself not unreasonable).
It's possible that, with the Department of Defence (or whoever) paying the bill, Musk now has less discretion over where to activate the service.
"He said scientists used radiocarbon dating to gather DNA evidence and X-rays had shown one to have 'eggs' inside."
Not sure whether that's Sky mangling, the original source, translation or whatever, but if they think they've used radiocarbon dating to gather DNA evidence then it's hard to have any confidence in anything else they say!
Though C14 dating is about right for that time frame, at least! But can you spot the howling fallacy of using radiocarbon - or indeed radioisotope - dating at all?
PS Not to mention that 2/3 of their DNA is not "unknown", so they must be terrestrial ...
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
No, its not proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings.
Going to university may increase your earnings, hence "in some cases" but ironically many of those studies are based on when fewer people were going to university and those people who did . . . *drumroll please* do not pay the graduate tax today.
So the people who benefited the most, by people an 'elite' few who were graduates when not many were, are the ones who don't pay taxes, whereas people who go to university because its expected and to not do so marks you out more than having done so, do pay. Utterly insane.
If you benefit, if you get high incomes - like Oxford University graduate Tony Blair has for instance, then you should be paying Income Tax.
But for some reason Oxford University graduate and multimillionaire Tony Blair felt it was a good idea if he didn't have to pay the tax, but others did instead.
There is no moral, ethical or economic justification for that.
So over a 40 year working life they will earn 460k more than a non graduate.
If you make university out of general taxation you would therefore reduce the extra 158k tax they pay (which exlcudes the loan repayment just using normal tax and ni) to a mere 98k over those 40 years,
So the average graduate would benefit to the tune of 360k over a 40 year working life. Seems fair to me they pay the cost and not the non graduate. Now where we agree is the interest on the loans is too high and in my opinion should be set at the base rate
If they earn extra then they pay extra, via both tax and NI.
But why should high earning graduates like Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak all be on a 9% lower income tax rate than their younger compatriots?
Comments
Mind you, the Slovenian lunch I have just finished was a tad too hearty for this really hot weather, even if today we have the first wisp of clouds I have seen for a week.
It will likely be tinned or even likelier be microwaved frozen meals - shipped out of Paris
Germany seems to be better at coffee these days.
The BBC did a 6N advert on similar lines.
Then do a Basil Fawlty when they don't have one.
You might be good at Basil Fawlty
Ou sont Les Waldorfs, Francois?
(I have just unfortunately rather burnt a duck-leg, so my Thai Curry might be slightly carbonated.)
https://www.rte.ie/news/2023/0913/1404962-rte-board-oireachtas/
"RTÉ believes that it could lose €21m in TV licence fee revenue by the end of 2023, with renewals down a third."
*See also: French fashion.
https://twitter.com/dsquareddigest/status/1701888713481929055
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
A tax on broadband is one such favoured means. Every broadband account holder would have to pay a tax which would then be taken to fund the BBC. This would save money as it would eliminate a lot of the costs associated with collection due to the inept capita and the income would be pretty much guaranteed and likely to increase as we build more homes, certainly it would not decrease as people would not opt out of broadband like they could the license fee.
And if ReformUK promise to keep the triple lock as they likely would the former are rather bigger than the latter
On which, Budapest (which has a coffee tradition of its own, of course) is probably the most widespread adopter of that international coffee style of anywhere I've been recently - more so than Copenhagen, London or Stockholm for example. Loads of really fantastic coffee places.
After all no Government is going to stand for election on the basis that the BBC will be closed down so the question comes down to where is the money to keep it going going to come from...
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The things I dislike about the BBC are where they splash the licence payers money flying endless staff round the world to events. Take the Olympics. You can pretty much guarantee that the BBC will have more staff attending than any other nation. And they don't need to be there. They can have UK based studio hosts, and take the TV feeds from the host nation. But of course the staff see it as a perk of the job.
And then there is the need to pay huge sums to star names. Why? Why are newsreaders star names? Why is Lineker paid so much? If he won't do it for 1/10th the salary, find someone else who will. There are plenty of ex footballers out there, many who have a much more recent knowledge of the game.
And yet the BBC does some seriously good stuff, so I don't resent the money I pay for it.
It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
As any child knows the Pearl Harbour attack happened after the US invaded Japan.
Elon Musk on the request from the Ukrainian Government to turn on Starlink in Crimea: “We figured out that this was kind of like a Pearl Harbor like attack...So they really asked us to proactively take part in a major act of war”
https://twitter.com/alx/status/1701656123709722660
An Ethiopian beef curry was the hottest foodstuff I have ever eaten.
They need to be the Party of the country, of the ambitious, of people who want to improve their lives, of the entrepreneurs, of those who want to keep more of what they earn so they can have homes, nice pensions, nice retirements.
The Tories were the flag bearers for capitalism, for low taxes, for business.
They need to realise that if they pivot to being a party where young people look at them and think - theses guys are giving me the chance to push, earn, create, dream, work, live then they will get the votes of the young. They will leave Labour as a party who seem to just want to ban, control and aim for equal outcome rather than equal opportunity.
Obviously the best time will be when they lose the next election but surely the future of the country is most important, and the solution isn’t Labour, and so whilst it will be painful for the Tories in the short term they can change and benefit from this pivot for a long time.
I understand that to a lot of Conservatives the clue is in the name but there is a need for a party that provides a platform for anyone to do things with a bit of government support, direction, frameworks which isn’t provided by Labour or the Lib Dem’s and the Conservatives are desiccating along their current path of being the party of the old and established.
When you are 70 will you want your grandchildren to be able to vote for a government that helps them with free enterprise, homes, jobs, new industries and opportunities or just say to them to vote Tory because you will be looked after in 50 years time?
British cruise missiles were used in significant Ukrainian attack on Russian submarine
The UK gave Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine's armed forces earlier in the year. They are able to be fired by Ukrainian aircraft, with a range of more than 150 miles
https://news.sky.com/story/ukraine-strikes-russian-submarine-and-landing-ship-in-audacious-assault-on-crimea-naval-base-12960336
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University.
Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University.
David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University.
Theresa May, graduate of Oxford University.
Boris Johnson, graduate of Oxford University.
Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University.
Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
Both Oxford University too.
It's not even as though the daft tw@t has factories in Russia.
But, one can't really know if one's own argument is good, until one hears the bad. That was one of several justifications that Mill gave for free speech.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/chris-pincher-tamworth-nadine-dorries-staffordshire-b2410561.html
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/sep/12/two-women-describe-sexual-assaults-in-surgery
Love the passive voice - "bullying happens", "comments and actions occur". No - it is done by people to other people. It doesn't just happen or occur.
Republican Party donors and leaders are talking about how best to stop Trump from running away with the nomination again in 2024. But they don’t have a clear plan to stop him.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/02/09/gop-trump-2024-election-00081944?
..“I don’t think it is fair to call Donald Trump a damaged candidate,” said Eric Levine, a top GOP fundraiser who has been calling on the party to move on from Trump since the 2020 election and the uprising at the Capitol. “He is a metastasizing cancer who if he is not stopped is going to destroy the party. Donald Trump is a loser. He is the first president since Hoover to lose the House, the Senate and the presidency in a single term. Because of him Chuck Schumer is the Leader Schumer, and the progressive agenda is threatening to take over the country. And he is probably the only Republican in the country, if not the only person in the country, who can’t beat Joe Biden.”..
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
Like you I do not get the need to send an army of people overseas on a large jolly. Olympics, World Cups, any major sporting event. The local feed worked fine with the Tokyo olympics.
Countdown replaced Vorderman with Rachel Riley for about a tenth of the salary.
The BBC MOTD contingent largely finished their careers years ago. SKY has a much more interesting and recent contingent of players.
The BBC squanders our money. It lacks accountability. This should change and they should seek their funding via non compulsory means.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Who are most opposed to new housing, especially on the greenbelt? LDs and Residents and Independents and Greens who took control of most formerly Tory councils in the South of England in May's local elections precisely because voters felt Tory councils Local Plans were building too much and in too many green spaces.
Automatic enrolment in workplace pensions came in in 2012 under the Coalition, however that is no reason to cut the state pensions of those who have no other retirement income
https://news.sky.com/story/patisserie-valerie-four-people-face-fraud-charges-over-bakery-chains-collapse-12960495
Going to university may increase your earnings, hence "in some cases" but ironically many of those studies are based on when fewer people were going to university and those people who did . . . *drumroll please* do not pay the graduate tax today.
So the people who benefited the most, by people an 'elite' few who were graduates when not many were, are the ones who don't pay taxes, whereas people who go to university because its expected and to not do so marks you out more than having done so, do pay. Utterly insane.
If you benefit, if you get high incomes - like Oxford University graduate Tony Blair has for instance, then you should be paying Income Tax.
But for some reason Oxford University graduate and multimillionaire Tony Blair felt it was a good idea if he didn't have to pay the tax, but others did instead.
There is no moral, ethical or economic justification for that.
https://ifs.org.uk/publications/how-much-does-it-pay-get-good-grades-university
A one legged Stokes is still better than most opposition.
What it doesn't say IMV.
Does that make us crooks?
That's an average, not a guarantee. Averages are not the same as everyone.
And if a graduate, like Oxford University Graduate Tony Blair earns hundreds of thousands of pounds a year, as he does, then he should be paying income tax on that.
So why should Oxford University Graduate Tony Blair who is earning hundreds of thousands of pounds be contributing have 0% income tax to fund education.
But a newly qualified young graduate early in their career and still theoretically on 20% income tax by paying 9% of their marginal income as taxation to fund education?
Its unjustifiable.
https://ifs.org.uk/publications/returns-undergraduate-degrees-socio-economic-group-and-ethnicity
I’d say that’s pretty unequivocal about the financial benefits. While there will certainly be a small minority that don’t benefit, that can be handled with a suitable repayment threshold.
But instead of linking income tax to income, today its linked to age and how you earn the income.
If you're earning £95k a year through non-salaried means then you pay 40% income tax, even if you graduated from university 30 years ago and benefited accordingly.
Whereas if you're a young graduate earning £30k a year through salaried means you pay 41% income tax.
Its unjustifiable to have a higher rate of income tax on £30k than £95k. It is simply wrong.
If you want a tax via income, then it should be as low as possible, but fairly applied to everyone, consistently, all at the same rate, not inconsistently tax others much higher rates.
So why should only a minority be paying 9% additional income tax, for being in the same situation as Blair, but he and his ilk doesn't pay it?
Taxing everyone 1% (or however it works out to balance the maths) would be much fairer than taxing some 9% and others 0%
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/government-considering-new-laws-to-tackle-dangerous-cycling-says-minister/ar-AA1gBjTv?cvid=aa082b78ef034431ad3f6239db49edf0&ocid=socialshare&ei=12
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191970/annual-salary-of-graduates-in-england/
So over a 40 year working life they will earn 460k more than a non graduate.
If you make university out of general taxation you would therefore reduce the extra 158k tax they pay (which exlcudes the loan repayment just using normal tax and ni) to a mere 98k over those 40 years,
So the average graduate would benefit to the tune of 360k over a 40 year working life. Seems fair to me they pay the cost and not the non graduate. Now where we agree is the interest on the loans is too high and in my opinion should be set at the base rate
Whereas the university-going group are likely to be a) cleverer than the non-university-going group, and b) from a more privileged background. Both of which will impact their ability to earn far more than three years studying history.
We've now seen a major attack on the Russian Black Sea fleet in Sevastopol harbour using British-supplied weapons. Where are the consequences Musk was worried about? I'm glad that the British government is braver than that self-important billionaire.
This code will provide certainty for non-party campaigners on how to comply with the rules relating to non-party campaigning by putting guidance on a statutory footing. It also provides a defence for campaigners who are charged with offences under Part 6 of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 (PPERA) and can demonstrate compliance with the code of practice.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/non-party-campaigning-draft-code-of-practice/non-party-campaigning-draft-code-of-practice
Not sure whether that's Sky mangling, the original source, translation or whatever, but if they think they've used radiocarbon dating to gather DNA evidence then it's hard to have any confidence in anything else they say!
ETA: He has form on this, from 2017, apparently: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaime_Maussan#Career
It is clear though from those averages that the average graduate will earn more over their lifetime than those without. I don't see why you find that controversial
It's possible that, with the Department of Defence (or whoever) paying the bill, Musk now has less discretion over where to activate the service.
PS Not to mention that 2/3 of their DNA is not "unknown", so they must be terrestrial ...
But why should high earning graduates like Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak all be on a 9% lower income tax rate than their younger compatriots?