Sign of the times! Last week a student nurse looked surreptitiously at her phone to tell the time, despite wearing the traditional nurse's fob watch on her right breast.
University of York posts £24m deficit (£14m operating deficit) after 16% drop in international student numbers, also blaming England’s “unsustainable funding model”
Basically our university finance system has reached the end of the road
There are issues (the student fees not rising as costs have, for instance). Unis have utility bills too.
However whenever I see a big deficit I like to dig a bit deeper. A few years ago Leeds got into trouble, around the time that they built some stupendous new buildings. Other Unis have had unwise financial activity - at one point Bristol (I think) were borrowing money and then lending it out, but got screwed when the loan rates changed. They even asked staff to voluntarily take some unpaid leave (which was rejected).
Our Uni has put a 'chill' (note - definitely not a freeze) on recruitment. Basically you have to make a really watertight case. I suspect retiring staff will be a lot harder to replace for a while.
Some of the expansion is quite startling. Southampton, the town, is dying. Southampton, the university, is swallowing the place wholesale.
Another symptom of declining Britain. Let's have a consultation on the best way to provide a worse public service, in this case Royal Mail.
Since the only things I get through the post seem to be junk mail, tax bills and traffic fines I'd be happy if they stopped delivering altogether.
Kind of why RM is in a bit of a death spiral having failed to invest properly since privatisation - with the money going out as dividends that should have been invested in making it competitive with the non-Amazon delivery firms.
If you can't provide a regular and reliable service, people and firms stop using you for anything useful that needs to reach someone urgently or promptly. So your revenue decreases and you provide a worse service. Three or five days a week would just worsen that problem.
Another legacy of the many failures of the Tory Party over the past 14 years.
The Ofcom options are informed by the experience in other European countries. Most have moved to a five-day model, with little impact on service or popularity, and in Scandinavia alternate-day models appear to work - again, despite opposition prior, once implemented they don't appear to have caused any significant concerns. Denmark moved to a one-day-per-week delivery of regular (non-urgent) mail, and this has led to a significant collapse in volumes.
"...despite opposition prior, once implemented they don't appear to have caused any significant concerns..."
Were concerns measured? Lack of screams does not mean the patient enjoys the experience.
"...Denmark moved to a one-day-per-week delivery of regular (non-urgent) mail, and this has led to a significant collapse in volumes..."
University of York posts £24m deficit (£14m operating deficit) after 16% drop in international student numbers, also blaming England’s “unsustainable funding model”
Basically our university finance system has reached the end of the road
There are issues (the student fees not rising as costs have, for instance). Unis have utility bills too.
However whenever I see a big deficit I like to dig a bit deeper. A few years ago Leeds got into trouble, around the time that they built some stupendous new buildings. Other Unis have had unwise financial activity - at one point Bristol (I think) were borrowing money and then lending it out, but got screwed when the loan rates changed. They even asked staff to voluntarily take some unpaid leave (which was rejected).
Our Uni has put a 'chill' (note - definitely not a freeze) on recruitment. Basically you have to make a really watertight case. I suspect retiring staff will be a lot harder to replace for a while.
Some of the expansion is quite startling. Southampton, the town, is dying. Southampton, the university, is swallowing the place wholesale.
Yes, and a lot of it financed a while ago on low interest rates that may have changed. Certainly the cap on Uni fees needs looking at, especially for STEM with the associated lab costs etc.
I'm long Biden on re-election for the White House but starting to question whether he'll beat Trump. It's historically not particularly difficult for a president to be re-elected but Biden's approval ratings are looking utterly dire. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-approval-rating/
Bit weird considering how well the US economy has performed during his tenure. Tbh I think US voters are a bit ungrateful for their ~ $70,000+ jobs that would be paid £35k here.
University of York posts £24m deficit (£14m operating deficit) after 16% drop in international student numbers, also blaming England’s “unsustainable funding model”
Another symptom of declining Britain. Let's have a consultation on the best way to provide a worse public service, in this case Royal Mail.
Since the only things I get through the post seem to be junk mail, tax bills and traffic fines I'd be happy if they stopped delivering altogether.
Kind of why RM is in a bit of a death spiral having failed to invest properly since privatisation - with the money going out as dividends that should have been invested in making it competitive with the non-Amazon delivery firms.
If you can't provide a regular and reliable service, people and firms stop using you for anything useful that needs to reach someone urgently or promptly. So your revenue decreases and you provide a worse service. Three or five days a week would just worsen that problem.
Another legacy of the many failures of the Tory Party over the past 14 years.
Three days a week would obviously be a regular service, especially if they can make it more reliable. And would add little if anything to delivery times as we all know that first class mail isn't delivered next working day
We’ve had a defacto 3 day a week service on and off for a while due staff shortages - I’ve never noticed any issues with it
I'm long Biden on re-election for the White House but starting to question whether he'll beat Trump. It's historically not particularly difficult for a president to be re-elected but Biden's approval ratings are looking utterly dire. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-approval-rating/
Bit weird considering how well the US economy has performed during his tenure. Tbh I think US voters are a bit ungrateful for their ~ $70,000 jobs that would be paid £35k here.
NY Times calling it a "vibecession". More people feel better off or ok economically under biden but are convinced everyone else is struggling and economy is going down toilet. Krugman says there are a few signs this is finally starting to wear off.
Either Ukrainian POWs or missiles on board, depending on who you believe...
My instinct is the plane was probably carrying POWs but was caused by General Neg Upkeep rather than anything Ukranian. Might be wrong but I doubt Ukraine would target their own POWs.
There's a video that seems to show an explosion earlier in the plane's flightpath, so I think there's a good chance it was shot down - of course, it wouldn't be the first time Russia had shot down one of its own planes.
Not really sure why you'd be using a military transport plane to move PoWs, or S-300 missiles around, so who knows?
Still, if Russia are having increasing difficulty keeping their planes in the sky, while Ukraine are working towards restarting civil aviation - it's another sign of the war not trending to Russia's advantage.
Lee Anderson says he ‘should have voted’ for Rwanda Bill – and he wants his old job back
Former deputy Tory chairman insists there is ‘no chance’ of Rishi Sunak being deposed before election and Conservative MPs should back him
Lee Anderson has said he should have voted for the Rwanda Bill and would take back his old job as deputy Tory chairman if asked by Rishi Sunak.
Speaking to the Telegraph, the outspoken MP said he should have been “brave” and sided with the Government instead of abstaining in last week’s crunch vote on the latest iteration of the migrant deportation plan.
He also said there is “no chance” of Mr Sunak being deposed before the next election and revealed he would back Donald Trump “by default” if he lived in the US, as he could never vote for Joe Biden.
Mr Anderson resigned as deputy party chairman on Jan 16 in order to support amendments aimed at toughening up Mr Sunak’s proposals to get Rwanda flights off the ground, before refusing to back the Bill itself.
I do not buy people saying they favour Trump because Biden is such a grim or scary proposition. The guy is knocking on, sure, and his health would be a standing concern in a 2nd term, but in his 1st term he's been an able competent president who has sought to govern by consensus. No way does he represent something so terrible as to drive someone into supporting Donald Trump. It's a crock of shit when anyone says that. They are lying.
They're not lying so much as disappearing down the American right wing rabbit hole. 30p Lee probably really does fear Joe Biden confiscating his guns.
Yes I suppose that's in the mix too. Via total immersion in something that appeals to your brain chemistry despite being objectively nonsense you can end up 'thinking' you truly believe it. This could be Lee. But my money is on him liking Donald Trump and the framing of it as mere 'default' due to the supposedly terrible Biden alternative being a calculated misdirect.
How is that different to what I already get? Often don't get deliveries. Its like back in the day when the 2nd post got canned. I had never had a 2nd post.
Editor of Spectator has been warning about effect on weekly news mags of no delivery over weekend.
He presumably knows his business, but I think he's making an error here.
The problem, which has been going on for some time, is that magazine delivery is highly unreliable, so they don't arrive on the scheduled day. That frustrates readers and they tend to blame the magazine.
It's perfectly possible that reducing frequency would improve reliability (not necessarily, but both are features that cost money the Royal Mail simply doesn't have).
If we’re not going to get next day deliveries, why pay the extra for a first class stamp?
Why should it cost the same to post a letter one mile as to post it from Cornwall to the Shetland Isles?
Or Norwich to Scilly.
Been out for a bit - but has anyone remembered the universal delivery requirement? It's a massive issue for anyone living in rural areas and islands, and one the SNP has often raised in the context of the increasing privatisation of delivery services over the last 2-3 decades.
Lee Anderson says he ‘should have voted’ for Rwanda Bill – and he wants his old job back
Former deputy Tory chairman insists there is ‘no chance’ of Rishi Sunak being deposed before election and Conservative MPs should back him
Lee Anderson has said he should have voted for the Rwanda Bill and would take back his old job as deputy Tory chairman if asked by Rishi Sunak.
Speaking to the Telegraph, the outspoken MP said he should have been “brave” and sided with the Government instead of abstaining in last week’s crunch vote on the latest iteration of the migrant deportation plan.
He also said there is “no chance” of Mr Sunak being deposed before the next election and revealed he would back Donald Trump “by default” if he lived in the US, as he could never vote for Joe Biden.
Mr Anderson resigned as deputy party chairman on Jan 16 in order to support amendments aimed at toughening up Mr Sunak’s proposals to get Rwanda flights off the ground, before refusing to back the Bill itself.
I do not buy people saying they favour Trump because Biden is such a grim or scary proposition. The guy is knocking on, sure, and his health would be a standing concern in a 2nd term, but in his 1st term he's been an able competent president who has sought to govern by consensus. No way does he represent something so terrible as to drive someone into supporting Donald Trump. It's a crock of shit when anyone says that. They are lying.
On my last road trip I was surprised at the depth of hatred for 'Washington' once you got away from the big cities. To the extent that people would tell you (quite passionately) not to go there because it was such a horrible place. Like it or not, Trump and the alt-right have been more successful in tapping into this disaffection than the Dems who, despite their policy agenda being more favourable for poorer working Americans, are seen as exemplifying much about their politics that many ordinary Americans dislike. Biden's a nicer guy, for sure, but he's also a Washington insider through and through.
Have they 'tapped into dissatisfaction' with Washington - or have they simply succeeded in making it a scapegoat for the general problems of life ?
Just as UK politicians spent forty years blaming the evil EUrocrats for policies they had backed but didn’t want to take responsibility for, I suspect it’s very tempting in the US for a local politician to try and push blame the for local problems onto those out of touch Washington know-it-alls.
The former eventually rebounded badly on all of us in the form of the shitty Brexit we ended with (regardless of what might have been). I imagine the same is true in the US - the local polity may eventually discover that kicking out the Federal government doesn’t actually end up helping them very much, if at all. Not that this will stop them blaming the Federal government for everything that goes wrong anyway.
The counterpart to that is Republican Congresspeople loudly taking credit for federal spending in their state... that they voted against.
If you can't provide a regular and reliable service, people and firms stop using you for anything useful that needs to reach someone urgently or promptly. So your revenue decreases and you provide a worse service. Three or five days a week would just worsen that problem.
It's hard to see how Royal Mail get out of this death spiral. The letters business is dying, but RM now needs massive investment to offer a level of parcel service their competitors have had for years.
The customer experience they offer is wretched; my big personal bug-bear is redelivery and collection. If I'm not in RM will not leave a package on the doorstep, even though I live in a sleepy village where nothing ever gets nicked. The package goes back to the delivery office in another town, which is officially open 8am-10am but is often closed anyway. Redelivery can't be booked for next day, only the day after.
I actively avoid ordering anything that's delivered by RM unless there's no other option. Professionally, I still use them but only because every package I ship is small enough to go through a letterbox. That will change later this year and there's zero chance RM will be getting my large package business.
You can go online and give RM delivery options if you are out. My stuff is always left for me
I'm long Biden on re-election for the White House but starting to question whether he'll beat Trump. It's historically not particularly difficult for a president to be re-elected but Biden's approval ratings are looking utterly dire. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-approval-rating/
Bit weird considering how well the US economy has performed during his tenure. Tbh I think US voters are a bit ungrateful for their ~ $70,000 jobs that would be paid £35k here.
NY Times calling it a "vibecession". More people feel better off or ok economically under biden but are convinced everyone else is struggling and economy is going down toilet. Krugman says there are a few signs this is finally starting to wear off.
But at moment looks like Trump 2.0 is on.
Yougov poll Jan 14-16
Would you say that you and your family are... Better off financially than you were a year ago 14% About the same financially as you were a year ago 38% Worse off financially than you were a year ago 45% Not sure 3%
I'm long Biden on re-election for the White House but starting to question whether he'll beat Trump. It's historically not particularly difficult for a president to be re-elected but Biden's approval ratings are looking utterly dire. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-approval-rating/
Bit weird considering how well the US economy has performed during his tenure. Tbh I think US voters are a bit ungrateful for their ~ $70,000+ jobs that would be paid £35k here.
Electoral popularity has become decoupled from growth. Growth does not necessarily improve one's personal circumstances nor make one happy. People are unhappy. Unhappy people do not vote for incumbents.
University of York posts £24m deficit (£14m operating deficit) after 16% drop in international student numbers, also blaming England’s “unsustainable funding model”
Basically our university finance system has reached the end of the road
There are issues (the student fees not rising as costs have, for instance). Unis have utility bills too.
However whenever I see a big deficit I like to dig a bit deeper. A few years ago Leeds got into trouble, around the time that they built some stupendous new buildings. Other Unis have had unwise financial activity - at one point Bristol (I think) were borrowing money and then lending it out, but got screwed when the loan rates changed. They even asked staff to voluntarily take some unpaid leave (which was rejected).
Our Uni has put a 'chill' (note - definitely not a freeze) on recruitment. Basically you have to make a really watertight case. I suspect retiring staff will be a lot harder to replace for a while.
York has spent a lot on buildings in the past 10-20 years. Also has an awful lot of grotty old buildings that are really not fit for purpose and all needing a lot of work at similar times. Tricky situation for them. Worth noting though that their overseas student numbers have not been all that high compared to some other places, so (unless the drop in international students is York-specific) there might be others in even more bother if they were more reliant on the international fees.
Trouble is, a shitty campus will tend to put potential students off, so to some extent the money has to be spent. Possibly easier for the more city-based unis (e.g. Leeds) where uni-life is less dominated by the actual uni buildings.
Another symptom of declining Britain. Let's have a consultation on the best way to provide a worse public service, in this case Royal Mail.
Since the only things I get through the post seem to be junk mail, tax bills and traffic fines I'd be happy if they stopped delivering altogether.
Kind of why RM is in a bit of a death spiral having failed to invest properly since privatisation - with the money going out as dividends that should have been invested in making it competitive with the non-Amazon delivery firms.
If you can't provide a regular and reliable service, people and firms stop using you for anything useful that needs to reach someone urgently or promptly. So your revenue decreases and you provide a worse service. Three or five days a week would just worsen that problem.
Another legacy of the many failures of the Tory Party over the past 14 years.
The Ofcom options are informed by the experience in other European countries. Most have moved to a five-day model, with little impact on service or popularity, and in Scandinavia alternate-day models appear to work - again, despite opposition prior, once implemented they don't appear to have caused any significant concerns. Denmark moved to a one-day-per-week delivery of regular (non-urgent) mail, and this has led to a significant collapse in volumes.
"...despite opposition prior, once implemented they don't appear to have caused any significant concerns..."
Were concerns measured? Lack of screams does not mean the patient enjoys the experience.
"...Denmark moved to a one-day-per-week delivery of regular (non-urgent) mail, and this has led to a significant collapse in volumes..."
That's not a success, that's a failure.
That was pointing out the difference between an every other day service - which appears to work pretty well in a number of countries - and a once per week service, which doesn't work very well.
I'm long Biden on re-election for the White House but starting to question whether he'll beat Trump. It's historically not particularly difficult for a president to be re-elected but Biden's approval ratings are looking utterly dire. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-approval-rating/
Bit weird considering how well the US economy has performed during his tenure. Tbh I think US voters are a bit ungrateful for their ~ $70,000+ jobs that would be paid £35k here.
Electoral popularity has become decoupled from growth. Growth does not necessarily improve one's personal circumstances nor make one happy. People are unhappy. Unhappy people do not vote for incumbents.
University of York posts £24m deficit (£14m operating deficit) after 16% drop in international student numbers, also blaming England’s “unsustainable funding model”
Basically our university finance system has reached the end of the road
There are issues (the student fees not rising as costs have, for instance). Unis have utility bills too.
However whenever I see a big deficit I like to dig a bit deeper. A few years ago Leeds got into trouble, around the time that they built some stupendous new buildings. Other Unis have had unwise financial activity - at one point Bristol (I think) were borrowing money and then lending it out, but got screwed when the loan rates changed. They even asked staff to voluntarily take some unpaid leave (which was rejected).
Our Uni has put a 'chill' (note - definitely not a freeze) on recruitment. Basically you have to make a really watertight case. I suspect retiring staff will be a lot harder to replace for a while.
York has spent a lot on buildings in the past 10-20 years. Also has an awful lot of grotty old buildings that are really not fit for purpose and all needing a lot of work at similar times. Tricky situation for them. Worth noting though that their overseas student numbers have not been all that high compared to some other places, so (unless the drop in international students is York-specific) there might be others in even more bother if they were more reliant on the international fees.
Trouble is, a shitty campus will tend to put potential students off, so to some extent the money has to be spent. Possibly easier for the more city-based unis (e.g. Leeds) where uni-life is less dominated by the actual uni buildings.
Oh, it's not just duck and goose shite, is it? Well, I never.
Lee Anderson says he ‘should have voted’ for Rwanda Bill – and he wants his old job back
Former deputy Tory chairman insists there is ‘no chance’ of Rishi Sunak being deposed before election and Conservative MPs should back him
Lee Anderson has said he should have voted for the Rwanda Bill and would take back his old job as deputy Tory chairman if asked by Rishi Sunak.
Speaking to the Telegraph, the outspoken MP said he should have been “brave” and sided with the Government instead of abstaining in last week’s crunch vote on the latest iteration of the migrant deportation plan.
He also said there is “no chance” of Mr Sunak being deposed before the next election and revealed he would back Donald Trump “by default” if he lived in the US, as he could never vote for Joe Biden.
Mr Anderson resigned as deputy party chairman on Jan 16 in order to support amendments aimed at toughening up Mr Sunak’s proposals to get Rwanda flights off the ground, before refusing to back the Bill itself.
I do not buy people saying they favour Trump because Biden is such a grim or scary proposition. The guy is knocking on, sure, and his health would be a standing concern in a 2nd term, but in his 1st term he's been an able competent president who has sought to govern by consensus. No way does he represent something so terrible as to drive someone into supporting Donald Trump. It's a crock of shit when anyone says that. They are lying.
On my last road trip I was surprised at the depth of hatred for 'Washington' once you got away from the big cities. To the extent that people would tell you (quite passionately) not to go there because it was such a horrible place. Like it or not, Trump and the alt-right have been more successful in tapping into this disaffection than the Dems who, despite their policy agenda being more favourable for poorer working Americans, are seen as exemplifying much about their politics that many ordinary Americans dislike. Biden's a nicer guy, for sure, but he's also a Washington insider through and through.
Good point. Shades of Brexit as rebellion against - going Farage voice - the polidical clarse.
But I also agree with Nigel (our 'B' one not Farage) that much of it is just a general moan about life and looking for a suitable scapegoat.
Another symptom of declining Britain. Let's have a consultation on the best way to provide a worse public service, in this case Royal Mail.
Since the only things I get through the post seem to be junk mail, tax bills and traffic fines I'd be happy if they stopped delivering altogether.
Kind of why RM is in a bit of a death spiral having failed to invest properly since privatisation - with the money going out as dividends that should have been invested in making it competitive with the non-Amazon delivery firms.
If you can't provide a regular and reliable service, people and firms stop using you for anything useful that needs to reach someone urgently or promptly. So your revenue decreases and you provide a worse service. Three or five days a week would just worsen that problem.
Another legacy of the many failures of the Tory Party over the past 14 years.
The Ofcom options are informed by the experience in other European countries. Most have moved to a five-day model, with little impact on service or popularity, and in Scandinavia alternate-day models appear to work - again, despite opposition prior, once implemented they don't appear to have caused any significant concerns. Denmark moved to a one-day-per-week delivery of regular (non-urgent) mail, and this has led to a significant collapse in volumes.
"...despite opposition prior, once implemented they don't appear to have caused any significant concerns..."
Were concerns measured? Lack of screams does not mean the patient enjoys the experience.
"...Denmark moved to a one-day-per-week delivery of regular (non-urgent) mail, and this has led to a significant collapse in volumes..."
That's not a success, that's a failure.
Absolutely, the Danish experience doesn't look like one to repeat.
But the every other day model is a bit like alternate week refuse collections - the proposals are always strongly opposed, yet where it's implemented, people get used to it quite quickly. We have them here, and it's only an issue for flats where there isn't space for a wheelie bin.
How is that different to what I already get? Often don't get deliveries. Its like back in the day when the 2nd post got canned. I had never had a 2nd post.
Editor of Spectator has been warning about effect on weekly news mags of no delivery over weekend.
He presumably knows his business, but I think he's making an error here.
The problem, which has been going on for some time, is that magazine delivery is highly unreliable, so they don't arrive on the scheduled day. That frustrates readers and they tend to blame the magazine.
It's perfectly possible that reducing frequency would improve reliability (not necessarily, but both are features that cost money the Royal Mail simply doesn't have).
If we’re not going to get next day deliveries, why pay the extra for a first class stamp?
Why should it cost the same to post a letter one mile as to post it from Cornwall to the Shetland Isles?
Cost spreading
Otherwise the Cornwall>Shetland route would be much more expensive than intra London and the Nats would whine some more.
University of York posts £24m deficit (£14m operating deficit) after 16% drop in international student numbers, also blaming England’s “unsustainable funding model”
Basically our university finance system has reached the end of the road
There are issues (the student fees not rising as costs have, for instance). Unis have utility bills too.
However whenever I see a big deficit I like to dig a bit deeper. A few years ago Leeds got into trouble, around the time that they built some stupendous new buildings. Other Unis have had unwise financial activity - at one point Bristol (I think) were borrowing money and then lending it out, but got screwed when the loan rates changed. They even asked staff to voluntarily take some unpaid leave (which was rejected).
Our Uni has put a 'chill' (note - definitely not a freeze) on recruitment. Basically you have to make a really watertight case. I suspect retiring staff will be a lot harder to replace for a while.
Some of the expansion is quite startling. Southampton, the town, is dying. Southampton, the university, is swallowing the place wholesale.
Yes, and a lot of it financed a while ago on low interest rates that may have changed. Certainly the cap on Uni fees needs looking at, especially for STEM with the associated lab costs etc.
I can talk about economics of Student Accommodation in a medium sized Midlands city; Universities treat it as cash cows; after all the student has access to the parents' money.
15 years ago said University declared that 300-400 purpose built student residential housing units (ie rooms in 60-70 5-6 bed houses) they had on long-term lease were no longer required because one bathroom per three bedrooms was not good enough, and built a phalanx of higher end properties in the city centre, going so far as included gyms, en-suites etc.
In previous years the Uni had driven rent levels *hard*, the worst being 30-50% over inflation over one 5 year period. Obviously the benefits of that increase stayed in the University, whilst levels passed through to the owners stayed with inflation increases. That's an observation not a complaint, it's basically a semi-monopoly supplier charging what the closed market will bear.
Without exception all the LLs refurbished their properties (which had been under University management for 15-17 years), and put them back on the market via private agencies. Just replacement of the margin the Uni had been taking with the margin the private sector was taking increased the % of the rent making it through to the LL by 15-20 percentage points, whilst delivering a far higher quality of accommodation for the student.
The University concerned was offering cashbacks of up to £500-£700 per annum to students to get its properties filled for the next 5 years.
You can say that that approach is OK for student accommodation, or you can say that they are just not very good.
It's being suggested that the military plane downed in Russia was flying NE, away from the front lines, when it crashed. Doesn't make much sense for either story of what was on board.
University of York posts £24m deficit (£14m operating deficit) after 16% drop in international student numbers, also blaming England’s “unsustainable funding model”
Basically our university finance system has reached the end of the road
There are issues (the student fees not rising as costs have, for instance). Unis have utility bills too.
However whenever I see a big deficit I like to dig a bit deeper. A few years ago Leeds got into trouble, around the time that they built some stupendous new buildings. Other Unis have had unwise financial activity - at one point Bristol (I think) were borrowing money and then lending it out, but got screwed when the loan rates changed. They even asked staff to voluntarily take some unpaid leave (which was rejected).
Our Uni has put a 'chill' (note - definitely not a freeze) on recruitment. Basically you have to make a really watertight case. I suspect retiring staff will be a lot harder to replace for a while.
Some of the expansion is quite startling. Southampton, the town, is dying. Southampton, the university, is swallowing the place wholesale.
Yes, and a lot of it financed a while ago on low interest rates that may have changed. Certainly the cap on Uni fees needs looking at, especially for STEM with the associated lab costs etc.
Solution - lift the cap, but allow any uni (not just the Russell Group) to recruit as many as students as they like.
Or alternatively, we retain the cap, possibly at a higher rate, but put an end to the ridiculous snobbery that the Russell Group is somehow 'better' because reasons (which are nothing to do with most of our political leaders having gone there because they went to particular schools and having no point of comparison to other unis to see whether they're better or worse).
How is that different to what I already get? Often don't get deliveries. Its like back in the day when the 2nd post got canned. I had never had a 2nd post.
Editor of Spectator has been warning about effect on weekly news mags of no delivery over weekend.
He presumably knows his business, but I think he's making an error here.
The problem, which has been going on for some time, is that magazine delivery is highly unreliable, so they don't arrive on the scheduled day. That frustrates readers and they tend to blame the magazine.
It's perfectly possible that reducing frequency would improve reliability (not necessarily, but both are features that cost money the Royal Mail simply doesn't have).
If we’re not going to get next day deliveries, why pay the extra for a first class stamp?
Why should it cost the same to post a letter one mile as to post it from Cornwall to the Shetland Isles?
Cost spreading
Otherwise the Cornwall>Shetland route would be much more expensive than intra London and the Nats would whine some more.
Yes, but as I said above, the plane is going to Shetland anyway, and your extra letter doesn't cost any more. The big challenge RM has is managing a fixed cost business that has declining volumes. The same issue affects all postal administrations around the world and they respond with a mix of service 'adjustments', price rises, and government subsidy.
If you weight the service reliability, comparative price, and financial performance, ours is still one of the best in the world. Helped by our population density, geography and infrastructure, of course.
And the mail comes in to your house, not left in a box by the street. A big extra cost in rural areas.
God, can you imagine? I'm on a Whatsapp group of 30-odd parents of a children's sports team and it never shuts up. Can you imagine what utter drivel you'd get, constantly, from a Whatsapp group of everyone in the country? The government have done a few things you might query the wisdom of, but this would take unprecedented levels of stupidty.
University of York posts £24m deficit (£14m operating deficit) after 16% drop in international student numbers, also blaming England’s “unsustainable funding model”
Basically our university finance system has reached the end of the road
There are issues (the student fees not rising as costs have, for instance). Unis have utility bills too.
However whenever I see a big deficit I like to dig a bit deeper. A few years ago Leeds got into trouble, around the time that they built some stupendous new buildings. Other Unis have had unwise financial activity - at one point Bristol (I think) were borrowing money and then lending it out, but got screwed when the loan rates changed. They even asked staff to voluntarily take some unpaid leave (which was rejected).
Our Uni has put a 'chill' (note - definitely not a freeze) on recruitment. Basically you have to make a really watertight case. I suspect retiring staff will be a lot harder to replace for a while.
Some of the expansion is quite startling. Southampton, the town, is dying. Southampton, the university, is swallowing the place wholesale.
Yes, and a lot of it financed a while ago on low interest rates that may have changed. Certainly the cap on Uni fees needs looking at, especially for STEM with the associated lab costs etc.
Solution - lift the cap, but allow any uni (not just the Russell Group) to recruit as many as students as they like.
Or alternatively, we retain the cap, possibly at a higher rate, but put an end to the ridiculous snobbery that the Russell Group is somehow 'better' because reasons (which are nothing to do with most of our political leaders having gone there because they went to particular schools and having no point of comparison to other unis to see whether they're better or worse).
Either we have a market in HE, or we don't.
Lift the cap, but don’t let government backstop student loans.
Fees need to be agreed between each uni, their applicants, and the banks lending the money at their own risk.
STEM subjects good, Mickey Mouse Studies not so much.
University of York posts £24m deficit (£14m operating deficit) after 16% drop in international student numbers, also blaming England’s “unsustainable funding model”
Basically our university finance system has reached the end of the road
There are issues (the student fees not rising as costs have, for instance). Unis have utility bills too.
However whenever I see a big deficit I like to dig a bit deeper. A few years ago Leeds got into trouble, around the time that they built some stupendous new buildings. Other Unis have had unwise financial activity - at one point Bristol (I think) were borrowing money and then lending it out, but got screwed when the loan rates changed. They even asked staff to voluntarily take some unpaid leave (which was rejected).
Our Uni has put a 'chill' (note - definitely not a freeze) on recruitment. Basically you have to make a really watertight case. I suspect retiring staff will be a lot harder to replace for a while.
Some of the expansion is quite startling. Southampton, the town, is dying. Southampton, the university, is swallowing the place wholesale.
Yes, and a lot of it financed a while ago on low interest rates that may have changed. Certainly the cap on Uni fees needs looking at, especially for STEM with the associated lab costs etc.
I can talk about economics of Student Accommodation in a medium sized Midlands city; Universities treat it as cash cows; after all the student has access to the parents' money.
15 years ago said University declared that 300-400 purpose built student residential housing units (ie rooms in 60-70 5-6 bed houses) they had on long-term lease were no longer required because one bathroom per three bedrooms was not good enough, and built a phalanx of higher end properties in the city centre, going so far as included gyms, en-suites etc.
In previous years the Uni had driven rent levels *hard*, the worst being 30-50% over inflation over one 5 year period. Obviously the benefits of that increase stayed in the University, whilst levels passed through to the owners stayed with inflation increases. That's an observation not a complaint, it's basically a semi-monopoly supplier charging what the closed market will bear.
Without exception all the LLs refurbished their properties (which had been under University management for 15-17 years), and put them back on the market via private agencies. Just replacement of the margin the Uni had been taking with the margin the private sector was taking increased the % of the rent making it through to the LL by 15-20 percentage points, whilst delivering a far higher quality of accommodation for the student.
The University concerned was offering cashbacks of up to £500-£700 per annum to students to get its properties filled for the next 5 years.
You can say that that approach is OK for student accommodation, or you can say that they are just not very good.
Bah. Timed out.
Or you can say that as a semi-monopolist (Uni market position, and heavy Council student rental restrictions / regulation) the approach is being acceptably expoitative without regulation by free-market competition. Take your pick.
For context, my family own a couple of these for investment / pension purposes - back in the 1990s we took houses rather than cash for a development plot which had been the site of a family business.
University of York posts £24m deficit (£14m operating deficit) after 16% drop in international student numbers, also blaming England’s “unsustainable funding model”
Basically our university finance system has reached the end of the road
There are issues (the student fees not rising as costs have, for instance). Unis have utility bills too.
However whenever I see a big deficit I like to dig a bit deeper. A few years ago Leeds got into trouble, around the time that they built some stupendous new buildings. Other Unis have had unwise financial activity - at one point Bristol (I think) were borrowing money and then lending it out, but got screwed when the loan rates changed. They even asked staff to voluntarily take some unpaid leave (which was rejected).
Our Uni has put a 'chill' (note - definitely not a freeze) on recruitment. Basically you have to make a really watertight case. I suspect retiring staff will be a lot harder to replace for a while.
Some of the expansion is quite startling. Southampton, the town, is dying. Southampton, the university, is swallowing the place wholesale.
Yes, and a lot of it financed a while ago on low interest rates that may have changed. Certainly the cap on Uni fees needs looking at, especially for STEM with the associated lab costs etc.
Solution - lift the cap, but allow any uni (not just the Russell Group) to recruit as many as students as they like.
Or alternatively, we retain the cap, possibly at a higher rate, but put an end to the ridiculous snobbery that the Russell Group is somehow 'better' because reasons (which are nothing to do with most of our political leaders having gone there because they went to particular schools and having no point of comparison to other unis to see whether they're better or worse).
Either we have a market in HE, or we don't.
I think you can both lift the cap and allow unis to recruit as many students as they like. Would be challenging for Bath because of accommodation, and for many unis because they are a bit rubbish, but Man City don't worry about the fate of Rochdale do they?
I have no idea how to end the Russell Group snobbery. I try as hard as I can to challenge it whenever it comes up, but its fighting a many headed hydra.
I'm long Biden on re-election for the White House but starting to question whether he'll beat Trump. It's historically not particularly difficult for a president to be re-elected but Biden's approval ratings are looking utterly dire. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-approval-rating/
Bit weird considering how well the US economy has performed during his tenure. Tbh I think US voters are a bit ungrateful for their ~ $70,000 jobs that would be paid £35k here.
NY Times calling it a "vibecession". More people feel better off or ok economically under biden but are convinced everyone else is struggling and economy is going down toilet. Krugman says there are a few signs this is finally starting to wear off.
But at moment looks like Trump 2.0 is on.
"I don’t agree with Nikki Haley on everything, but we agree on this much: She is not Nancy Pelosi." — Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) January 21, 2024
"If the Republican Party wants to go forward with a senile nominee who’s on his way to prison, that’s up to them. But Donald Trump is becoming less viable by the hour – not just as a candidate, but even in terms of someone who’s able to function in public without adult supervision. Trump’s senility will only get worse. And Biden will keep using it against him." Not my words pinched from elsewhere, but I totally agree.
Lee Anderson says he ‘should have voted’ for Rwanda Bill – and he wants his old job back
Former deputy Tory chairman insists there is ‘no chance’ of Rishi Sunak being deposed before election and Conservative MPs should back him
Lee Anderson has said he should have voted for the Rwanda Bill and would take back his old job as deputy Tory chairman if asked by Rishi Sunak.
Speaking to the Telegraph, the outspoken MP said he should have been “brave” and sided with the Government instead of abstaining in last week’s crunch vote on the latest iteration of the migrant deportation plan.
He also said there is “no chance” of Mr Sunak being deposed before the next election and revealed he would back Donald Trump “by default” if he lived in the US, as he could never vote for Joe Biden.
Mr Anderson resigned as deputy party chairman on Jan 16 in order to support amendments aimed at toughening up Mr Sunak’s proposals to get Rwanda flights off the ground, before refusing to back the Bill itself.
I do not buy people saying they favour Trump because Biden is such a grim or scary proposition. The guy is knocking on, sure, and his health would be a standing concern in a 2nd term, but in his 1st term he's been an able competent president who has sought to govern by consensus. No way does he represent something so terrible as to drive someone into supporting Donald Trump. It's a crock of shit when anyone says that. They are lying.
On my last road trip I was surprised at the depth of hatred for 'Washington' once you got away from the big cities. To the extent that people would tell you (quite passionately) not to go there because it was such a horrible place. Like it or not, Trump and the alt-right have been more successful in tapping into this disaffection than the Dems who, despite their policy agenda being more favourable for poorer working Americans, are seen as exemplifying much about their politics that many ordinary Americans dislike. Biden's a nicer guy, for sure, but he's also a Washington insider through and through.
Have they 'tapped into dissatisfaction' with Washington - or have they simply succeeded in making it a scapegoat for the general problems of life ?
University of York posts £24m deficit (£14m operating deficit) after 16% drop in international student numbers, also blaming England’s “unsustainable funding model”
Basically our university finance system has reached the end of the road
There are issues (the student fees not rising as costs have, for instance). Unis have utility bills too.
However whenever I see a big deficit I like to dig a bit deeper. A few years ago Leeds got into trouble, around the time that they built some stupendous new buildings. Other Unis have had unwise financial activity - at one point Bristol (I think) were borrowing money and then lending it out, but got screwed when the loan rates changed. They even asked staff to voluntarily take some unpaid leave (which was rejected).
Our Uni has put a 'chill' (note - definitely not a freeze) on recruitment. Basically you have to make a really watertight case. I suspect retiring staff will be a lot harder to replace for a while.
Some of the expansion is quite startling. Southampton, the town, is dying. Southampton, the university, is swallowing the place wholesale.
Yes, and a lot of it financed a while ago on low interest rates that may have changed. Certainly the cap on Uni fees needs looking at, especially for STEM with the associated lab costs etc.
Solution - lift the cap, but allow any uni (not just the Russell Group) to recruit as many as students as they like.
Or alternatively, we retain the cap, possibly at a higher rate, but put an end to the ridiculous snobbery that the Russell Group is somehow 'better' because reasons (which are nothing to do with most of our political leaders having gone there because they went to particular schools and having no point of comparison to other unis to see whether they're better or worse).
Either we have a market in HE, or we don't.
I think you can both lift the cap and allow unis to recruit as many students as they like. Would be challenging for Bath because of accommodation, and for many unis because they are a bit rubbish, but Man City don't worry about the fate of Rochdale do they?
I have no idea how to end the Russell Group snobbery. I try as hard as I can to challenge it whenever it comes up, but its fighting a many headed hydra.
Indeed. We see the RG snobbery on here many a day, alas.
University of York posts £24m deficit (£14m operating deficit) after 16% drop in international student numbers, also blaming England’s “unsustainable funding model”
Basically our university finance system has reached the end of the road
There are issues (the student fees not rising as costs have, for instance). Unis have utility bills too.
However whenever I see a big deficit I like to dig a bit deeper. A few years ago Leeds got into trouble, around the time that they built some stupendous new buildings. Other Unis have had unwise financial activity - at one point Bristol (I think) were borrowing money and then lending it out, but got screwed when the loan rates changed. They even asked staff to voluntarily take some unpaid leave (which was rejected).
Our Uni has put a 'chill' (note - definitely not a freeze) on recruitment. Basically you have to make a really watertight case. I suspect retiring staff will be a lot harder to replace for a while.
Some of the expansion is quite startling. Southampton, the town, is dying. Southampton, the university, is swallowing the place wholesale.
Yes, and a lot of it financed a while ago on low interest rates that may have changed. Certainly the cap on Uni fees needs looking at, especially for STEM with the associated lab costs etc.
Solution - lift the cap, but allow any uni (not just the Russell Group) to recruit as many as students as they like.
Or alternatively, we retain the cap, possibly at a higher rate, but put an end to the ridiculous snobbery that the Russell Group is somehow 'better' because reasons (which are nothing to do with most of our political leaders having gone there because they went to particular schools and having no point of comparison to other unis to see whether they're better or worse).
Either we have a market in HE, or we don't.
Lift the cap, but don’t let government backstop student loans.
Fees need to be agreed between each uni, their applicants, and the banks lending the money at their own risk.
STEM subjects good, Mickey Mouse Studies not so much.
Agreed. The sooner we get rid of Classics, the better.
More seriously, if you do want to go down a proper market route you'd want to charge by degree anyway, because the quality of faculties in unis can vary so much. I've never heard anybody be rude about medicine at Oxford, but Classics, well. And Cambridge, science is excellent, English Literature, er... York must have one of the best History departments in the country, but its Politics course is a bit of a joke.
Of course, there is still a cachet to getting degrees from such places even if in practical terms they're not very educative. And the networking opportunities may be worth something. But should they really be paid for at the same level?
One thing I have learned from all my travels is this. The key to national happiness is not to be rich. Otherwise France or America (etc) would be the happiest places on earth, and they definitely are not
What you need for national happiness is for people to be getting richER, and with a sense this will continue. So they can be really quite poor, but if they assess that things are improving, they are happy
Cambodia is a good example of this. It’s a seriously poor country. GDP per capita is less than $2000
But they are - it seems to me, and I’ve been here a lot in the last 12 months - some of the happiest people anywhere. There is a national cheeriness. And then you notice that their economy grew 7% a year, for a solid decade, pre-pandemic
The reverse of this is a country like the USA or UK where poor people are constantly seeing wealth all around them but don't believe they're ever going to be rich themselves.
University of York posts £24m deficit (£14m operating deficit) after 16% drop in international student numbers, also blaming England’s “unsustainable funding model”
Basically our university finance system has reached the end of the road
There are issues (the student fees not rising as costs have, for instance). Unis have utility bills too.
However whenever I see a big deficit I like to dig a bit deeper. A few years ago Leeds got into trouble, around the time that they built some stupendous new buildings. Other Unis have had unwise financial activity - at one point Bristol (I think) were borrowing money and then lending it out, but got screwed when the loan rates changed. They even asked staff to voluntarily take some unpaid leave (which was rejected).
Our Uni has put a 'chill' (note - definitely not a freeze) on recruitment. Basically you have to make a really watertight case. I suspect retiring staff will be a lot harder to replace for a while.
Some of the expansion is quite startling. Southampton, the town, is dying. Southampton, the university, is swallowing the place wholesale.
Yes, and a lot of it financed a while ago on low interest rates that may have changed. Certainly the cap on Uni fees needs looking at, especially for STEM with the associated lab costs etc.
I can talk about economics of Student Accommodation in a medium sized Midlands city; Universities treat it as cash cows; after all the student has access to the parents' money.
15 years ago said University declared that 300-400 purpose built student residential housing units (ie rooms in 60-70 5-6 bed houses) they had on long-term lease were no longer required because one bathroom per three bedrooms was not good enough, and built a phalanx of higher end properties in the city centre, going so far as included gyms, en-suites etc.
In previous years the Uni had driven rent levels *hard*, the worst being 30-50% over inflation over one 5 year period. Obviously the benefits of that increase stayed in the University, whilst levels passed through to the owners stayed with inflation increases. That's an observation not a complaint, it's basically a semi-monopoly supplier charging what the closed market will bear.
Without exception all the LLs refurbished their properties (which had been under University management for 15-17 years), and put them back on the market via private agencies. Just replacement of the margin the Uni had been taking with the margin the private sector was taking increased the % of the rent making it through to the LL by 15-20 percentage points, whilst delivering a far higher quality of accommodation for the student.
The University concerned was offering cashbacks of up to £500-£700 per annum to students to get its properties filled for the next 5 years.
You can say that that approach is OK for student accommodation, or you can say that they are just not very good.
Bah. Timed out.
Or you can say that as a semi-monopolist (Uni market position, and heavy Council student rental restrictions / regulation) the approach is being acceptably expoitative without regulation by free-market competition. Take your pick.
For context, my family own a couple of these for investment / pension purposes - back in the 1990s we took houses rather than cash for a development plot which had been the site of a family business.
The commercial offerings - such as Unite or Empiric - have been safe good income generating investments for some years - but their value has taken a knock this past year. Significantly due to higher interest rates, of course, but there seem to be vulnerabilities in the model, especially if the asset values fall.
University of York posts £24m deficit (£14m operating deficit) after 16% drop in international student numbers, also blaming England’s “unsustainable funding model”
Basically our university finance system has reached the end of the road
There are issues (the student fees not rising as costs have, for instance). Unis have utility bills too.
However whenever I see a big deficit I like to dig a bit deeper. A few years ago Leeds got into trouble, around the time that they built some stupendous new buildings. Other Unis have had unwise financial activity - at one point Bristol (I think) were borrowing money and then lending it out, but got screwed when the loan rates changed. They even asked staff to voluntarily take some unpaid leave (which was rejected).
Our Uni has put a 'chill' (note - definitely not a freeze) on recruitment. Basically you have to make a really watertight case. I suspect retiring staff will be a lot harder to replace for a while.
Some of the expansion is quite startling. Southampton, the town, is dying. Southampton, the university, is swallowing the place wholesale.
Yes, and a lot of it financed a while ago on low interest rates that may have changed. Certainly the cap on Uni fees needs looking at, especially for STEM with the associated lab costs etc.
Solution - lift the cap, but allow any uni (not just the Russell Group) to recruit as many as students as they like.
Or alternatively, we retain the cap, possibly at a higher rate, but put an end to the ridiculous snobbery that the Russell Group is somehow 'better' because reasons (which are nothing to do with most of our political leaders having gone there because they went to particular schools and having no point of comparison to other unis to see whether they're better or worse).
Either we have a market in HE, or we don't.
Lift the cap, but don’t let government backstop student loans.
Fees need to be agreed between each uni, their applicants, and the banks lending the money at their own risk.
STEM subjects good, Mickey Mouse Studies not so much.
Agreed. The sooner we get rid of Classics, the better.
More seriously, if you do want to go down a proper market route you'd want to charge by degree anyway, because the quality of faculties in unis can vary so much. I've never heard anybody be rude about medicine at Oxford, but Classics, well. And Cambridge, science is excellent, English Literature, er... York must have one of the best History departments in the country, but its Politics course is a bit of a joke.
Of course, there is still a cachet to getting degrees from such places even if in practical terms they're not very educative. And the networking opportunities may be worth something. But should they really be paid for at the same level?
It won’t take long for the banks to work out which courses at which universities lead to loans being paid back, and which lead to loan defaults.
The likes of Classics are interesting, because those students probably do quite well in life for a whole load of reasons unrelated to the subject matter of the course.
University of York posts £24m deficit (£14m operating deficit) after 16% drop in international student numbers, also blaming England’s “unsustainable funding model”
Basically our university finance system has reached the end of the road
There are issues (the student fees not rising as costs have, for instance). Unis have utility bills too.
However whenever I see a big deficit I like to dig a bit deeper. A few years ago Leeds got into trouble, around the time that they built some stupendous new buildings. Other Unis have had unwise financial activity - at one point Bristol (I think) were borrowing money and then lending it out, but got screwed when the loan rates changed. They even asked staff to voluntarily take some unpaid leave (which was rejected).
Our Uni has put a 'chill' (note - definitely not a freeze) on recruitment. Basically you have to make a really watertight case. I suspect retiring staff will be a lot harder to replace for a while.
Some of the expansion is quite startling. Southampton, the town, is dying. Southampton, the university, is swallowing the place wholesale.
Yes, and a lot of it financed a while ago on low interest rates that may have changed. Certainly the cap on Uni fees needs looking at, especially for STEM with the associated lab costs etc.
Solution - lift the cap, but allow any uni (not just the Russell Group) to recruit as many as students as they like.
Or alternatively, we retain the cap, possibly at a higher rate, but put an end to the ridiculous snobbery that the Russell Group is somehow 'better' because reasons (which are nothing to do with most of our political leaders having gone there because they went to particular schools and having no point of comparison to other unis to see whether they're better or worse).
Either we have a market in HE, or we don't.
Lift the cap, but don’t let government backstop student loans.
Fees need to be agreed between each uni, their applicants, and the banks lending the money at their own risk.
STEM subjects good, Mickey Mouse Studies not so much.
People need to lose this snobbery about the Arts and Humanities. Look at the Post Office scandal: it took a well written work of drama, an artistic creation, to give the story the profile it needed. And as a country these creative industries are ones we are actually quite good at, our successes there help us to pay our way in the world. We need an upgrading of skills across the board, not a singular focus on STEM subjects, useful as they are.
One thing I have learned from all my travels is this. The key to national happiness is not to be rich. Otherwise France or America (etc) would be the happiest places on earth, and they definitely are not
What you need for national happiness is for people to be getting richER, and with a sense this will continue. So they can be really quite poor, but if they assess that things are improving, they are happy
Cambodia is a good example of this. It’s a seriously poor country. GDP per capita is less than $2000
But they are - it seems to me, and I’ve been here a lot in the last 12 months - some of the happiest people anywhere. There is a national cheeriness. And then you notice that their economy grew 7% a year, for a solid decade, pre-pandemic
The reverse of this is a country like the USA or UK where poor people are constantly seeing wealth all around them but don't believe they're ever going to be rich themselves.
Julia Neuberger on this morning's Prayer for Today had it right. Wealth brings happiness up to a sufficient level of comfort. Above that you need family, friends and community for happiness, not more money.
Sunak is just dire. Absolutely nothing he says sticks
Sounding very rattled to be honest. the voice gets shriller when he is under sustained fire.
That was the most dire performance yet from Rishi Sunak at PMQs, 🫣 It wasn’t even that Starmer was on form that it went 5.0, it was like Rishi was a football team not playing for the manager any more., maybe a player completely fallen out of love with tge game. At one point he seemed to be laughing at the obvious fact the buoyant picture he was painting of child care success, was a laughable fiction.
Anyone who still thinks Rishi Sunak has plans to do more PMQs after March the 26th needs to watch that.
University of York posts £24m deficit (£14m operating deficit) after 16% drop in international student numbers, also blaming England’s “unsustainable funding model”
Basically our university finance system has reached the end of the road
There are issues (the student fees not rising as costs have, for instance). Unis have utility bills too.
However whenever I see a big deficit I like to dig a bit deeper. A few years ago Leeds got into trouble, around the time that they built some stupendous new buildings. Other Unis have had unwise financial activity - at one point Bristol (I think) were borrowing money and then lending it out, but got screwed when the loan rates changed. They even asked staff to voluntarily take some unpaid leave (which was rejected).
Our Uni has put a 'chill' (note - definitely not a freeze) on recruitment. Basically you have to make a really watertight case. I suspect retiring staff will be a lot harder to replace for a while.
Some of the expansion is quite startling. Southampton, the town, is dying. Southampton, the university, is swallowing the place wholesale.
Yes, and a lot of it financed a while ago on low interest rates that may have changed. Certainly the cap on Uni fees needs looking at, especially for STEM with the associated lab costs etc.
Solution - lift the cap, but allow any uni (not just the Russell Group) to recruit as many as students as they like.
Or alternatively, we retain the cap, possibly at a higher rate, but put an end to the ridiculous snobbery that the Russell Group is somehow 'better' because reasons (which are nothing to do with most of our political leaders having gone there because they went to particular schools and having no point of comparison to other unis to see whether they're better or worse).
Either we have a market in HE, or we don't.
Lift the cap, but don’t let government backstop student loans.
Fees need to be agreed between each uni, their applicants, and the banks lending the money at their own risk.
STEM subjects good, Mickey Mouse Studies not so much.
Agreed. The sooner we get rid of Classics, the better.
More seriously, if you do want to go down a proper market route you'd want to charge by degree anyway, because the quality of faculties in unis can vary so much. I've never heard anybody be rude about medicine at Oxford, but Classics, well. And Cambridge, science is excellent, English Literature, er... York must have one of the best History departments in the country, but its Politics course is a bit of a joke.
Of course, there is still a cachet to getting degrees from such places even if in practical terms they're not very educative. And the networking opportunities may be worth something. But should they really be paid for at the same level?
It won’t take long for the banks to work out which courses at which universities lead to loans being paid back, and which lead to loan defaults.
The likes of Classics are interesting, because those students probably do quite well in life for a whole load of reasons unrelated to the subject matter of the course.
Nevil Shute, on telling one of his father's friends he was going to Oxford to read engineering, was told, 'I've never known a engineering graduate from Oxford fail to succeed in life, but none of them have reached the top in engineering.'
Oddly, Shute himself arguably did reach the top in engineering, helping design an airship that unusually didn't crash or explode, founding a company that not only built the first aeroplane for the Royal Flight and the first production aircraft with a retractable undercarriage, but built over 8,000 twin engined trainers for the RAF in WWII, and working successfully on a number of classified research projects for the Navy in the war itself.
Sign of the times! Last week a student nurse looked surreptitiously at her phone to tell the time, despite wearing the traditional nurse's fob watch on her right breast.
Sign of the times! Last week a student nurse looked surreptitiously at her phone to tell the time, despite wearing the traditional nurse's fob watch on her right breast.
Another symptom of declining Britain. Let's have a consultation on the best way to provide a worse public service, in this case Royal Mail.
Since the only things I get through the post seem to be junk mail, tax bills and traffic fines I'd be happy if they stopped delivering altogether.
Kind of why RM is in a bit of a death spiral having failed to invest properly since privatisation - with the money going out as dividends that should have been invested in making it competitive with the non-Amazon delivery firms.
If you can't provide a regular and reliable service, people and firms stop using you for anything useful that needs to reach someone urgently or promptly. So your revenue decreases and you provide a worse service. Three or five days a week would just worsen that problem.
Another legacy of the many failures of the Tory Party over the past 14 years.
But prior to privatisation, Gordon Brown was using RM as a cash cow, also depriving it of investment.
University of York posts £24m deficit (£14m operating deficit) after 16% drop in international student numbers, also blaming England’s “unsustainable funding model”
Basically our university finance system has reached the end of the road
There are issues (the student fees not rising as costs have, for instance). Unis have utility bills too.
However whenever I see a big deficit I like to dig a bit deeper. A few years ago Leeds got into trouble, around the time that they built some stupendous new buildings. Other Unis have had unwise financial activity - at one point Bristol (I think) were borrowing money and then lending it out, but got screwed when the loan rates changed. They even asked staff to voluntarily take some unpaid leave (which was rejected).
Our Uni has put a 'chill' (note - definitely not a freeze) on recruitment. Basically you have to make a really watertight case. I suspect retiring staff will be a lot harder to replace for a while.
Some of the expansion is quite startling. Southampton, the town, is dying. Southampton, the university, is swallowing the place wholesale.
Yes, and a lot of it financed a while ago on low interest rates that may have changed. Certainly the cap on Uni fees needs looking at, especially for STEM with the associated lab costs etc.
Solution - lift the cap, but allow any uni (not just the Russell Group) to recruit as many as students as they like.
Or alternatively, we retain the cap, possibly at a higher rate, but put an end to the ridiculous snobbery that the Russell Group is somehow 'better' because reasons (which are nothing to do with most of our political leaders having gone there because they went to particular schools and having no point of comparison to other unis to see whether they're better or worse).
Either we have a market in HE, or we don't.
Lift the cap, but don’t let government backstop student loans.
Fees need to be agreed between each uni, their applicants, and the banks lending the money at their own risk.
STEM subjects good, Mickey Mouse Studies not so much.
Agreed. The sooner we get rid of Classics, the better.
More seriously, if you do want to go down a proper market route you'd want to charge by degree anyway, because the quality of faculties in unis can vary so much. I've never heard anybody be rude about medicine at Oxford, but Classics, well. And Cambridge, science is excellent, English Literature, er... York must have one of the best History departments in the country, but its Politics course is a bit of a joke.
Of course, there is still a cachet to getting degrees from such places even if in practical terms they're not very educative. And the networking opportunities may be worth something. But should they really be paid for at the same level?
My son is applying for politics at university and has selected Bath, Warwick, York, Sheffield and Durham.
Sign of the times! Last week a student nurse looked surreptitiously at her phone to tell the time, despite wearing the traditional nurse's fob watch on her right breast.
University of York posts £24m deficit (£14m operating deficit) after 16% drop in international student numbers, also blaming England’s “unsustainable funding model”
Basically our university finance system has reached the end of the road
There are issues (the student fees not rising as costs have, for instance). Unis have utility bills too.
However whenever I see a big deficit I like to dig a bit deeper. A few years ago Leeds got into trouble, around the time that they built some stupendous new buildings. Other Unis have had unwise financial activity - at one point Bristol (I think) were borrowing money and then lending it out, but got screwed when the loan rates changed. They even asked staff to voluntarily take some unpaid leave (which was rejected).
Our Uni has put a 'chill' (note - definitely not a freeze) on recruitment. Basically you have to make a really watertight case. I suspect retiring staff will be a lot harder to replace for a while.
Some of the expansion is quite startling. Southampton, the town, is dying. Southampton, the university, is swallowing the place wholesale.
Yes, and a lot of it financed a while ago on low interest rates that may have changed. Certainly the cap on Uni fees needs looking at, especially for STEM with the associated lab costs etc.
Solution - lift the cap, but allow any uni (not just the Russell Group) to recruit as many as students as they like.
Or alternatively, we retain the cap, possibly at a higher rate, but put an end to the ridiculous snobbery that the Russell Group is somehow 'better' because reasons (which are nothing to do with most of our political leaders having gone there because they went to particular schools and having no point of comparison to other unis to see whether they're better or worse).
Either we have a market in HE, or we don't.
Lift the cap, but don’t let government backstop student loans.
Fees need to be agreed between each uni, their applicants, and the banks lending the money at their own risk.
STEM subjects good, Mickey Mouse Studies not so much.
Agreed. The sooner we get rid of Classics, the better.
More seriously, if you do want to go down a proper market route you'd want to charge by degree anyway, because the quality of faculties in unis can vary so much. I've never heard anybody be rude about medicine at Oxford, but Classics, well. And Cambridge, science is excellent, English Literature, er... York must have one of the best History departments in the country, but its Politics course is a bit of a joke.
Of course, there is still a cachet to getting degrees from such places even if in practical terms they're not very educative. And the networking opportunities may be worth something. But should they really be paid for at the same level?
My son is applying for politics at university and has selected Bath, Warwick, York, Sheffield and Durham.
Which would you recommend if not York?
Aberystwyth.
Yes, I am serious. It's a better department than any of those. Just not Russell Group (but then nor is Bath).
An interesting start to today's Post Office proceedings.
The witness has only provided a two and a half page statement, because he was so busy over Christmas with his current job at a homeless charity, and also walking his dog.
Either Ukrainian POWs or missiles on board, depending on who you believe...
Massively explosive POWs if so...
Someone has already mentioned on Alt-History that Russia saying it contained 65 POWs (even though its untrue) is a win-win for them:
- They get sympathy from the West against the evil jewish nazi homosexuals. - They can deny anything major was lost (except the plane itself) - Best of all, at the end of the war, when Ukraine asks for its POWs back, they can tell them that all 20,000 POWs they took were on that plane, definitely not murdered whilst in prison camps, and stop asking anymore questions about them.
An interesting start to today's Post Office proceedings.
The witness has only provided a two and a half page statement, because he was so busy over Christmas with his current job at a homeless charity, and also walking his dog.
University of York posts £24m deficit (£14m operating deficit) after 16% drop in international student numbers, also blaming England’s “unsustainable funding model”
Basically our university finance system has reached the end of the road
There are issues (the student fees not rising as costs have, for instance). Unis have utility bills too.
However whenever I see a big deficit I like to dig a bit deeper. A few years ago Leeds got into trouble, around the time that they built some stupendous new buildings. Other Unis have had unwise financial activity - at one point Bristol (I think) were borrowing money and then lending it out, but got screwed when the loan rates changed. They even asked staff to voluntarily take some unpaid leave (which was rejected).
Our Uni has put a 'chill' (note - definitely not a freeze) on recruitment. Basically you have to make a really watertight case. I suspect retiring staff will be a lot harder to replace for a while.
Some of the expansion is quite startling. Southampton, the town, is dying. Southampton, the university, is swallowing the place wholesale.
Yes, and a lot of it financed a while ago on low interest rates that may have changed. Certainly the cap on Uni fees needs looking at, especially for STEM with the associated lab costs etc.
Solution - lift the cap, but allow any uni (not just the Russell Group) to recruit as many as students as they like.
Or alternatively, we retain the cap, possibly at a higher rate, but put an end to the ridiculous snobbery that the Russell Group is somehow 'better' because reasons (which are nothing to do with most of our political leaders having gone there because they went to particular schools and having no point of comparison to other unis to see whether they're better or worse).
Either we have a market in HE, or we don't.
Lift the cap, but don’t let government backstop student loans.
Fees need to be agreed between each uni, their applicants, and the banks lending the money at their own risk.
STEM subjects good, Mickey Mouse Studies not so much.
Agreed. The sooner we get rid of Classics, the better.
More seriously, if you do want to go down a proper market route you'd want to charge by degree anyway, because the quality of faculties in unis can vary so much. I've never heard anybody be rude about medicine at Oxford, but Classics, well. And Cambridge, science is excellent, English Literature, er... York must have one of the best History departments in the country, but its Politics course is a bit of a joke.
Of course, there is still a cachet to getting degrees from such places even if in practical terms they're not very educative. And the networking opportunities may be worth something. But should they really be paid for at the same level?
My son is applying for politics at university and has selected Bath, Warwick, York, Sheffield and Durham.
Which would you recommend if not York?
Aberystwyth.
Yes, I am serious. It's a better department than any of those. Just not Russell Group (but then nor is Bath).
Unfortunately those are the univeristies he selected on this UCAS form.
Another symptom of declining Britain. Let's have a consultation on the best way to provide a worse public service, in this case Royal Mail.
Since the only things I get through the post seem to be junk mail, tax bills and traffic fines I'd be happy if they stopped delivering altogether.
Kind of why RM is in a bit of a death spiral having failed to invest properly since privatisation - with the money going out as dividends that should have been invested in making it competitive with the non-Amazon delivery firms.
If you can't provide a regular and reliable service, people and firms stop using you for anything useful that needs to reach someone urgently or promptly. So your revenue decreases and you provide a worse service. Three or five days a week would just worsen that problem.
Another legacy of the many failures of the Tory Party over the past 14 years.
But prior to privatisation, Gordon Brown was using RM as a cash cow, also depriving it of investment.
A fine example of the first rule of PB: if any subject is discussed for suffient time it will eventually be blamed on Gordon Brown.
University of York posts £24m deficit (£14m operating deficit) after 16% drop in international student numbers, also blaming England’s “unsustainable funding model”
Basically our university finance system has reached the end of the road
There are issues (the student fees not rising as costs have, for instance). Unis have utility bills too.
However whenever I see a big deficit I like to dig a bit deeper. A few years ago Leeds got into trouble, around the time that they built some stupendous new buildings. Other Unis have had unwise financial activity - at one point Bristol (I think) were borrowing money and then lending it out, but got screwed when the loan rates changed. They even asked staff to voluntarily take some unpaid leave (which was rejected).
Our Uni has put a 'chill' (note - definitely not a freeze) on recruitment. Basically you have to make a really watertight case. I suspect retiring staff will be a lot harder to replace for a while.
Some of the expansion is quite startling. Southampton, the town, is dying. Southampton, the university, is swallowing the place wholesale.
Yes, and a lot of it financed a while ago on low interest rates that may have changed. Certainly the cap on Uni fees needs looking at, especially for STEM with the associated lab costs etc.
Solution - lift the cap, but allow any uni (not just the Russell Group) to recruit as many as students as they like.
Or alternatively, we retain the cap, possibly at a higher rate, but put an end to the ridiculous snobbery that the Russell Group is somehow 'better' because reasons (which are nothing to do with most of our political leaders having gone there because they went to particular schools and having no point of comparison to other unis to see whether they're better or worse).
Either we have a market in HE, or we don't.
Lift the cap, but don’t let government backstop student loans.
Fees need to be agreed between each uni, their applicants, and the banks lending the money at their own risk.
STEM subjects good, Mickey Mouse Studies not so much.
Agreed. The sooner we get rid of Classics, the better.
More seriously, if you do want to go down a proper market route you'd want to charge by degree anyway, because the quality of faculties in unis can vary so much. I've never heard anybody be rude about medicine at Oxford, but Classics, well. And Cambridge, science is excellent, English Literature, er... York must have one of the best History departments in the country, but its Politics course is a bit of a joke.
Of course, there is still a cachet to getting degrees from such places even if in practical terms they're not very educative. And the networking opportunities may be worth something. But should they really be paid for at the same level?
My son is applying for politics at university and has selected Bath, Warwick, York, Sheffield and Durham.
Which would you recommend if not York?
Aberystwyth.
Yes, I am serious. It's a better department than any of those. Just not Russell Group (but then nor is Bath).
Unfortunately those are the univeristies he selected on this UCAS form.
Well, York is a lovely city. And in many respects an excellent uni. But it isn't the uni I personally would choose for a degree in Politics.
University of York posts £24m deficit (£14m operating deficit) after 16% drop in international student numbers, also blaming England’s “unsustainable funding model”
Basically our university finance system has reached the end of the road
There are issues (the student fees not rising as costs have, for instance). Unis have utility bills too.
However whenever I see a big deficit I like to dig a bit deeper. A few years ago Leeds got into trouble, around the time that they built some stupendous new buildings. Other Unis have had unwise financial activity - at one point Bristol (I think) were borrowing money and then lending it out, but got screwed when the loan rates changed. They even asked staff to voluntarily take some unpaid leave (which was rejected).
Our Uni has put a 'chill' (note - definitely not a freeze) on recruitment. Basically you have to make a really watertight case. I suspect retiring staff will be a lot harder to replace for a while.
Some of the expansion is quite startling. Southampton, the town, is dying. Southampton, the university, is swallowing the place wholesale.
Yes, and a lot of it financed a while ago on low interest rates that may have changed. Certainly the cap on Uni fees needs looking at, especially for STEM with the associated lab costs etc.
Solution - lift the cap, but allow any uni (not just the Russell Group) to recruit as many as students as they like.
Or alternatively, we retain the cap, possibly at a higher rate, but put an end to the ridiculous snobbery that the Russell Group is somehow 'better' because reasons (which are nothing to do with most of our political leaders having gone there because they went to particular schools and having no point of comparison to other unis to see whether they're better or worse).
Either we have a market in HE, or we don't.
Lift the cap, but don’t let government backstop student loans.
Fees need to be agreed between each uni, their applicants, and the banks lending the money at their own risk.
STEM subjects good, Mickey Mouse Studies not so much.
Agreed. The sooner we get rid of Classics, the better.
More seriously, if you do want to go down a proper market route you'd want to charge by degree anyway, because the quality of faculties in unis can vary so much. I've never heard anybody be rude about medicine at Oxford, but Classics, well. And Cambridge, science is excellent, English Literature, er... York must have one of the best History departments in the country, but its Politics course is a bit of a joke.
Of course, there is still a cachet to getting degrees from such places even if in practical terms they're not very educative. And the networking opportunities may be worth something. But should they really be paid for at the same level?
It won’t take long for the banks to work out which courses at which universities lead to loans being paid back, and which lead to loan defaults.
The likes of Classics are interesting, because those students probably do quite well in life for a whole load of reasons unrelated to the subject matter of the course.
Nevil Shute, on telling one of his father's friends he was going to Oxford to read engineering, was told, 'I've never known a engineering graduate from Oxford fail to succeed in life, but none of them have reached the top in engineering.'
Oddly, Shute himself arguably did reach the top in engineering, helping design an airship that unusually didn't crash or explode, founding a company that not only built the first aeroplane for the Royal Flight and the first production aircraft with a retractable undercarriage, but built over 8,000 twin engined trainers for the RAF in WWII, and working successfully on a number of classified research projects for the Navy in the war itself.
He is, however, best remembered as a novelist...
There are very very few (if any) famous aeronautical Engineers.
Kelly Johnson, Harrison Storms, Ed Heinemann - who knows who they are without Wikipedia?
In the UK a few people might know Barnes Wallis. Who was Shute's boss on R101, of course.
Ever since Brexit & Trump liberals have told us the Old White Men will soon die. But this is lazy thinking. Look across much of the West and it's often the young, not the old, who are driving national populism"
I'm long Biden on re-election for the White House but starting to question whether he'll beat Trump. It's historically not particularly difficult for a president to be re-elected but Biden's approval ratings are looking utterly dire. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-approval-rating/
Bit weird considering how well the US economy has performed during his tenure. Tbh I think US voters are a bit ungrateful for their ~ $70,000+ jobs that would be paid £35k here.
Trump has underperformed the polls in Iowa and NH. There are people telling pollsters that they are voting Trump but in the secret ballot they don't. Perhaps husband/wife split votes where the wife doesn't openly admit she is not a Trumper?
Whatever the reason it is being picked up on PreditIt.
Trump has gone from 94% Rep Nom to 91% following NH.
A Democrat presidency is also a clear favorite. Don't give up hope. Polls are dodgy. 10 months to go. Biden is on an upward path with the economy. Trump is on a downward path with his TIAs.
I think Haley will run out of momentum before Super Tuesday. The next few big states to vote are not favourable for her.
I think that, actually, the real reason she'll struggle to make Super Tuesday is not that the states voting before then are unfavourable for her, but that one of the largest OUGHT to be very favourable for her but probably won't be - the state where she was Governor, South Carolina.
She can explain away other states. But, if she loses badly in South Carolina, that's not just bad for her campaign but highly embarrassing and bad for her brand and future career beyond 2024. Obviously, she needs to do her "I fight on and fight to win!" thing today. As soon as she indicates she is thinking about quitting, she has effectively quit. However, it's pretty questionable whether she'll even get to the starting line in South Carolina and, if she does, it could well deal the knock-out blow.
Another symptom of declining Britain. Let's have a consultation on the best way to provide a worse public service, in this case Royal Mail.
Since the only things I get through the post seem to be junk mail, tax bills and traffic fines I'd be happy if they stopped delivering altogether.
Kind of why RM is in a bit of a death spiral having failed to invest properly since privatisation - with the money going out as dividends that should have been invested in making it competitive with the non-Amazon delivery firms.
If you can't provide a regular and reliable service, people and firms stop using you for anything useful that needs to reach someone urgently or promptly. So your revenue decreases and you provide a worse service. Three or five days a week would just worsen that problem.
Another legacy of the many failures of the Tory Party over the past 14 years.
But prior to privatisation, Gordon Brown was using RM as a cash cow, also depriving it of investment.
That was the standard behaviour of the Treasury towards all nationalised organisations over the years - no to investment. Anything like profit taken away.
Sign of the times! Last week a student nurse looked surreptitiously at her phone to tell the time, despite wearing the traditional nurse's fob watch on her right breast.
University of York posts £24m deficit (£14m operating deficit) after 16% drop in international student numbers, also blaming England’s “unsustainable funding model”
Basically our university finance system has reached the end of the road
There are issues (the student fees not rising as costs have, for instance). Unis have utility bills too.
However whenever I see a big deficit I like to dig a bit deeper. A few years ago Leeds got into trouble, around the time that they built some stupendous new buildings. Other Unis have had unwise financial activity - at one point Bristol (I think) were borrowing money and then lending it out, but got screwed when the loan rates changed. They even asked staff to voluntarily take some unpaid leave (which was rejected).
Our Uni has put a 'chill' (note - definitely not a freeze) on recruitment. Basically you have to make a really watertight case. I suspect retiring staff will be a lot harder to replace for a while.
Some of the expansion is quite startling. Southampton, the town, is dying. Southampton, the university, is swallowing the place wholesale.
Yes, and a lot of it financed a while ago on low interest rates that may have changed. Certainly the cap on Uni fees needs looking at, especially for STEM with the associated lab costs etc.
Solution - lift the cap, but allow any uni (not just the Russell Group) to recruit as many as students as they like.
Or alternatively, we retain the cap, possibly at a higher rate, but put an end to the ridiculous snobbery that the Russell Group is somehow 'better' because reasons (which are nothing to do with most of our political leaders having gone there because they went to particular schools and having no point of comparison to other unis to see whether they're better or worse).
Either we have a market in HE, or we don't.
Lift the cap, but don’t let government backstop student loans.
Fees need to be agreed between each uni, their applicants, and the banks lending the money at their own risk.
STEM subjects good, Mickey Mouse Studies not so much.
Agreed. The sooner we get rid of Classics, the better.
More seriously, if you do want to go down a proper market route you'd want to charge by degree anyway, because the quality of faculties in unis can vary so much. I've never heard anybody be rude about medicine at Oxford, but Classics, well. And Cambridge, science is excellent, English Literature, er... York must have one of the best History departments in the country, but its Politics course is a bit of a joke.
Of course, there is still a cachet to getting degrees from such places even if in practical terms they're not very educative. And the networking opportunities may be worth something. But should they really be paid for at the same level?
My son is applying for politics at university and has selected Bath, Warwick, York, Sheffield and Durham.
Which would you recommend if not York?
Aberystwyth.
Yes, I am serious. It's a better department than any of those. Just not Russell Group (but then nor is Bath).
Unfortunately those are the univeristies he selected on this UCAS form.
Thats no problem. He could always try being obnoxious at interview and thus fail to get any offers. He can also withdraw and then go back into clearing. There are routes, but take professional advice...
Either Ukrainian POWs or missiles on board, depending on who you believe...
Massively explosive POWs if so...
Someone has already mentioned on Alt-History that Russia saying it contained 65 POWs (even though its untrue) is a win-win for them:
- They get sympathy from the West against the evil jewish nazi homosexuals. - They can deny anything major was lost (except the plane itself) - Best of all, at the end of the war, when Ukraine asks for its POWs back, they can tell them that all 20,000 POWs they took were on that plane, definitely not murdered whilst in prison camps, and stop asking anymore questions about them.
Ukraine would definitely have shot it down if they could. They would trade 60 malnourished gopnik conscriptees for a Candid any day. What's more like is it crashed (Il-76s tend to do that) so the Russians just shot 60 pows for the psyop.
University of York posts £24m deficit (£14m operating deficit) after 16% drop in international student numbers, also blaming England’s “unsustainable funding model”
Basically our university finance system has reached the end of the road
There are issues (the student fees not rising as costs have, for instance). Unis have utility bills too.
However whenever I see a big deficit I like to dig a bit deeper. A few years ago Leeds got into trouble, around the time that they built some stupendous new buildings. Other Unis have had unwise financial activity - at one point Bristol (I think) were borrowing money and then lending it out, but got screwed when the loan rates changed. They even asked staff to voluntarily take some unpaid leave (which was rejected).
Our Uni has put a 'chill' (note - definitely not a freeze) on recruitment. Basically you have to make a really watertight case. I suspect retiring staff will be a lot harder to replace for a while.
Some of the expansion is quite startling. Southampton, the town, is dying. Southampton, the university, is swallowing the place wholesale.
Yes, and a lot of it financed a while ago on low interest rates that may have changed. Certainly the cap on Uni fees needs looking at, especially for STEM with the associated lab costs etc.
Solution - lift the cap, but allow any uni (not just the Russell Group) to recruit as many as students as they like.
Or alternatively, we retain the cap, possibly at a higher rate, but put an end to the ridiculous snobbery that the Russell Group is somehow 'better' because reasons (which are nothing to do with most of our political leaders having gone there because they went to particular schools and having no point of comparison to other unis to see whether they're better or worse).
Either we have a market in HE, or we don't.
Lift the cap, but don’t let government backstop student loans.
Fees need to be agreed between each uni, their applicants, and the banks lending the money at their own risk.
STEM subjects good, Mickey Mouse Studies not so much.
Agreed. The sooner we get rid of Classics, the better.
More seriously, if you do want to go down a proper market route you'd want to charge by degree anyway, because the quality of faculties in unis can vary so much. I've never heard anybody be rude about medicine at Oxford, but Classics, well. And Cambridge, science is excellent, English Literature, er... York must have one of the best History departments in the country, but its Politics course is a bit of a joke.
Of course, there is still a cachet to getting degrees from such places even if in practical terms they're not very educative. And the networking opportunities may be worth something. But should they really be paid for at the same level?
It won’t take long for the banks to work out which courses at which universities lead to loans being paid back, and which lead to loan defaults.
The likes of Classics are interesting, because those students probably do quite well in life for a whole load of reasons unrelated to the subject matter of the course.
Nevil Shute, on telling one of his father's friends he was going to Oxford to read engineering, was told, 'I've never known a engineering graduate from Oxford fail to succeed in life, but none of them have reached the top in engineering.'
Oddly, Shute himself arguably did reach the top in engineering, helping design an airship that unusually didn't crash or explode, founding a company that not only built the first aeroplane for the Royal Flight and the first production aircraft with a retractable undercarriage, but built over 8,000 twin engined trainers for the RAF in WWII, and working successfully on a number of classified research projects for the Navy in the war itself.
He is, however, best remembered as a novelist...
There are very very few (if any) famous aeronautical Engineers.
Kelly Johnson, Harrison Storms, Ed Heinemann - who knows who they are without Wikipedia?
In the UK a few people might know Barnes Wallis. Who was Shute's boss on R101, of course.
Barnes Wallis was an SE14 man, he attended my son's school (it was a grammar then) and there's a blue plaque for him locally. Also a vegetarian! According to Wiki he and his wife adopted her sister's children after their parents were killed in an air raid, which given his role in perhaps the most famous British air raid of WW2 has a certain piquancy.
Another symptom of declining Britain. Let's have a consultation on the best way to provide a worse public service, in this case Royal Mail.
Since the only things I get through the post seem to be junk mail, tax bills and traffic fines I'd be happy if they stopped delivering altogether.
Kind of why RM is in a bit of a death spiral having failed to invest properly since privatisation - with the money going out as dividends that should have been invested in making it competitive with the non-Amazon delivery firms.
If you can't provide a regular and reliable service, people and firms stop using you for anything useful that needs to reach someone urgently or promptly. So your revenue decreases and you provide a worse service. Three or five days a week would just worsen that problem.
Another legacy of the many failures of the Tory Party over the past 14 years.
But prior to privatisation, Gordon Brown was using RM as a cash cow, also depriving it of investment.
A fine example of the first rule of PB: if any subject is discussed for suffient time it will eventually be blamed on Gordon Brown.
University of York posts £24m deficit (£14m operating deficit) after 16% drop in international student numbers, also blaming England’s “unsustainable funding model”
Basically our university finance system has reached the end of the road
There are issues (the student fees not rising as costs have, for instance). Unis have utility bills too.
However whenever I see a big deficit I like to dig a bit deeper. A few years ago Leeds got into trouble, around the time that they built some stupendous new buildings. Other Unis have had unwise financial activity - at one point Bristol (I think) were borrowing money and then lending it out, but got screwed when the loan rates changed. They even asked staff to voluntarily take some unpaid leave (which was rejected).
Our Uni has put a 'chill' (note - definitely not a freeze) on recruitment. Basically you have to make a really watertight case. I suspect retiring staff will be a lot harder to replace for a while.
Some of the expansion is quite startling. Southampton, the town, is dying. Southampton, the university, is swallowing the place wholesale.
Yes, and a lot of it financed a while ago on low interest rates that may have changed. Certainly the cap on Uni fees needs looking at, especially for STEM with the associated lab costs etc.
Solution - lift the cap, but allow any uni (not just the Russell Group) to recruit as many as students as they like.
Or alternatively, we retain the cap, possibly at a higher rate, but put an end to the ridiculous snobbery that the Russell Group is somehow 'better' because reasons (which are nothing to do with most of our political leaders having gone there because they went to particular schools and having no point of comparison to other unis to see whether they're better or worse).
Either we have a market in HE, or we don't.
Lift the cap, but don’t let government backstop student loans.
Fees need to be agreed between each uni, their applicants, and the banks lending the money at their own risk.
STEM subjects good, Mickey Mouse Studies not so much.
Agreed. The sooner we get rid of Classics, the better.
More seriously, if you do want to go down a proper market route you'd want to charge by degree anyway, because the quality of faculties in unis can vary so much. I've never heard anybody be rude about medicine at Oxford, but Classics, well. And Cambridge, science is excellent, English Literature, er... York must have one of the best History departments in the country, but its Politics course is a bit of a joke.
Of course, there is still a cachet to getting degrees from such places even if in practical terms they're not very educative. And the networking opportunities may be worth something. But should they really be paid for at the same level?
My son is applying for politics at university and has selected Bath, Warwick, York, Sheffield and Durham.
Which would you recommend if not York?
Aberystwyth.
Yes, I am serious. It's a better department than any of those. Just not Russell Group (but then nor is Bath).
Unfortunately those are the univeristies he selected on this UCAS form.
Thats no problem. He could always try being obnoxious at interview and thus fail to get any offers. He can also withdraw and then go back into clearing. There are routes, but take professional advice...
Well we will be going around the university offer days to try and help the decision making process.
University of York posts £24m deficit (£14m operating deficit) after 16% drop in international student numbers, also blaming England’s “unsustainable funding model”
Basically our university finance system has reached the end of the road
There are issues (the student fees not rising as costs have, for instance). Unis have utility bills too.
However whenever I see a big deficit I like to dig a bit deeper. A few years ago Leeds got into trouble, around the time that they built some stupendous new buildings. Other Unis have had unwise financial activity - at one point Bristol (I think) were borrowing money and then lending it out, but got screwed when the loan rates changed. They even asked staff to voluntarily take some unpaid leave (which was rejected).
Our Uni has put a 'chill' (note - definitely not a freeze) on recruitment. Basically you have to make a really watertight case. I suspect retiring staff will be a lot harder to replace for a while.
Some of the expansion is quite startling. Southampton, the town, is dying. Southampton, the university, is swallowing the place wholesale.
Yes, and a lot of it financed a while ago on low interest rates that may have changed. Certainly the cap on Uni fees needs looking at, especially for STEM with the associated lab costs etc.
Solution - lift the cap, but allow any uni (not just the Russell Group) to recruit as many as students as they like.
Or alternatively, we retain the cap, possibly at a higher rate, but put an end to the ridiculous snobbery that the Russell Group is somehow 'better' because reasons (which are nothing to do with most of our political leaders having gone there because they went to particular schools and having no point of comparison to other unis to see whether they're better or worse).
Either we have a market in HE, or we don't.
Lift the cap, but don’t let government backstop student loans.
Fees need to be agreed between each uni, their applicants, and the banks lending the money at their own risk.
STEM subjects good, Mickey Mouse Studies not so much.
Agreed. The sooner we get rid of Classics, the better.
More seriously, if you do want to go down a proper market route you'd want to charge by degree anyway, because the quality of faculties in unis can vary so much. I've never heard anybody be rude about medicine at Oxford, but Classics, well. And Cambridge, science is excellent, English Literature, er... York must have one of the best History departments in the country, but its Politics course is a bit of a joke.
Of course, there is still a cachet to getting degrees from such places even if in practical terms they're not very educative. And the networking opportunities may be worth something. But should they really be paid for at the same level?
My son is applying for politics at university and has selected Bath, Warwick, York, Sheffield and Durham.
Which would you recommend if not York?
Aberystwyth.
Yes, I am serious. It's a better department than any of those. Just not Russell Group (but then nor is Bath).
Unfortunately those are the univeristies he selected on this UCAS form.
Well, York is a lovely city. And in many respects an excellent uni. But it isn't the uni I personally would choose for a degree in Politics.
Perhaps he could check which courses at which universities gave us our current crop of MPs. Oxford PPE would probably win but after that, things might be interesting. Same for political journalists or politics teachers or whatever is his ambition. Probably such a list already exists, in which case Google should find it, or could easily be created from Wikipedia, where AI like ChatGPT might be better. (Leon could probably advise.)
Lee Anderson says he ‘should have voted’ for Rwanda Bill – and he wants his old job back
Former deputy Tory chairman insists there is ‘no chance’ of Rishi Sunak being deposed before election and Conservative MPs should back him
Lee Anderson has said he should have voted for the Rwanda Bill and would take back his old job as deputy Tory chairman if asked by Rishi Sunak.
Speaking to the Telegraph, the outspoken MP said he should have been “brave” and sided with the Government instead of abstaining in last week’s crunch vote on the latest iteration of the migrant deportation plan.
He also said there is “no chance” of Mr Sunak being deposed before the next election and revealed he would back Donald Trump “by default” if he lived in the US, as he could never vote for Joe Biden.
Mr Anderson resigned as deputy party chairman on Jan 16 in order to support amendments aimed at toughening up Mr Sunak’s proposals to get Rwanda flights off the ground, before refusing to back the Bill itself.
I do not buy people saying they favour Trump because Biden is such a grim or scary proposition. The guy is knocking on, sure, and his health would be a standing concern in a 2nd term, but in his 1st term he's been an able competent president who has sought to govern by consensus. No way does he represent something so terrible as to drive someone into supporting Donald Trump. It's a crock of shit when anyone says that. They are lying.
On my last road trip I was surprised at the depth of hatred for 'Washington' once you got away from the big cities. To the extent that people would tell you (quite passionately) not to go there because it was such a horrible place. Like it or not, Trump and the alt-right have been more successful in tapping into this disaffection than the Dems who, despite their policy agenda being more favourable for poorer working Americans, are seen as exemplifying much about their politics that many ordinary Americans dislike. Biden's a nicer guy, for sure, but he's also a Washington insider through and through.
But where does the hatred come from? Is it part of the American psyche to distrust government? Does it reflect a very large country, so the political “centre” always feels remote? Or is right-wing media constantly lying, scapegoating ‘Washington’ for the ills of deindustrialisation and the actions of big business?
What did all that disaffection get people in Trump’s first term? A ballooning deficit, tax cuts for the rich and a Supreme Court in hock to plutocrats.
Another symptom of declining Britain. Let's have a consultation on the best way to provide a worse public service, in this case Royal Mail.
Since the only things I get through the post seem to be junk mail, tax bills and traffic fines I'd be happy if they stopped delivering altogether.
Kind of why RM is in a bit of a death spiral having failed to invest properly since privatisation - with the money going out as dividends that should have been invested in making it competitive with the non-Amazon delivery firms.
If you can't provide a regular and reliable service, people and firms stop using you for anything useful that needs to reach someone urgently or promptly. So your revenue decreases and you provide a worse service. Three or five days a week would just worsen that problem.
Another legacy of the many failures of the Tory Party over the past 14 years.
But prior to privatisation, Gordon Brown was using RM as a cash cow, also depriving it of investment.
A fine example of the first rule of PB: if any subject is discussed for suffient time it will eventually be blamed on Gordon Brown.
University of York posts £24m deficit (£14m operating deficit) after 16% drop in international student numbers, also blaming England’s “unsustainable funding model”
Basically our university finance system has reached the end of the road
There’s been a glut of students from China and the UK government has been happy for the money they bring, which avoids the UK government having to worry about how universities are paid for. But we’re now seeing something of a downturn in Chinese student applications, possibly to do with economic problems in China. At least, that’s how it’s been explained to me.
Another symptom of declining Britain. Let's have a consultation on the best way to provide a worse public service, in this case Royal Mail.
Since the only things I get through the post seem to be junk mail, tax bills and traffic fines I'd be happy if they stopped delivering altogether.
Kind of why RM is in a bit of a death spiral having failed to invest properly since privatisation - with the money going out as dividends that should have been invested in making it competitive with the non-Amazon delivery firms.
If you can't provide a regular and reliable service, people and firms stop using you for anything useful that needs to reach someone urgently or promptly. So your revenue decreases and you provide a worse service. Three or five days a week would just worsen that problem.
Another legacy of the many failures of the Tory Party over the past 14 years.
But prior to privatisation, Gordon Brown was using RM as a cash cow, also depriving it of investment.
A fine example of the first rule of PB: if any subject is discussed for suffient time it will eventually be blamed on Gordon Brown.
Gordwin's Law
Gordon Brown wasn't responsible for the crash of R100.
There's probably a huge disparity in the types of people who still rely on the Royal Mail for delivering important documents. Older and poorer people probably use it a lot, where younger and wealthier people almost entirely use electronic methods of communication.
Lee Anderson says he ‘should have voted’ for Rwanda Bill – and he wants his old job back
Former deputy Tory chairman insists there is ‘no chance’ of Rishi Sunak being deposed before election and Conservative MPs should back him
Lee Anderson has said he should have voted for the Rwanda Bill and would take back his old job as deputy Tory chairman if asked by Rishi Sunak.
Speaking to the Telegraph, the outspoken MP said he should have been “brave” and sided with the Government instead of abstaining in last week’s crunch vote on the latest iteration of the migrant deportation plan.
He also said there is “no chance” of Mr Sunak being deposed before the next election and revealed he would back Donald Trump “by default” if he lived in the US, as he could never vote for Joe Biden.
Mr Anderson resigned as deputy party chairman on Jan 16 in order to support amendments aimed at toughening up Mr Sunak’s proposals to get Rwanda flights off the ground, before refusing to back the Bill itself.
I do not buy people saying they favour Trump because Biden is such a grim or scary proposition. The guy is knocking on, sure, and his health would be a standing concern in a 2nd term, but in his 1st term he's been an able competent president who has sought to govern by consensus. No way does he represent something so terrible as to drive someone into supporting Donald Trump. It's a crock of shit when anyone says that. They are lying.
On my last road trip I was surprised at the depth of hatred for 'Washington' once you got away from the big cities. To the extent that people would tell you (quite passionately) not to go there because it was such a horrible place. Like it or not, Trump and the alt-right have been more successful in tapping into this disaffection than the Dems who, despite their policy agenda being more favourable for poorer working Americans, are seen as exemplifying much about their politics that many ordinary Americans dislike. Biden's a nicer guy, for sure, but he's also a Washington insider through and through.
But where does the hatred come from? Is it part of the American psyche to distrust government? Does it reflect a very large country, so the political “centre” always feels remote? Or is right-wing media constantly lying, scapegoating ‘Washington’ for the ills of deindustrialisation and the actions of big business?
What did all that disaffection get people in Trump’s first term? A ballooning deficit, tax cuts for the rich and a Supreme Court in hock to plutocrats.
The funny thing is that Washington DC (the place rather than the concept) is actually a nice place and almost certainly a much nicer place than the places where the people telling you not to go to Washington live. Especially the bits that anyone actually visiting Washington would go to.
Lee Anderson says he ‘should have voted’ for Rwanda Bill – and he wants his old job back
Former deputy Tory chairman insists there is ‘no chance’ of Rishi Sunak being deposed before election and Conservative MPs should back him
Lee Anderson has said he should have voted for the Rwanda Bill and would take back his old job as deputy Tory chairman if asked by Rishi Sunak.
Speaking to the Telegraph, the outspoken MP said he should have been “brave” and sided with the Government instead of abstaining in last week’s crunch vote on the latest iteration of the migrant deportation plan.
He also said there is “no chance” of Mr Sunak being deposed before the next election and revealed he would back Donald Trump “by default” if he lived in the US, as he could never vote for Joe Biden.
Mr Anderson resigned as deputy party chairman on Jan 16 in order to support amendments aimed at toughening up Mr Sunak’s proposals to get Rwanda flights off the ground, before refusing to back the Bill itself.
I do not buy people saying they favour Trump because Biden is such a grim or scary proposition. The guy is knocking on, sure, and his health would be a standing concern in a 2nd term, but in his 1st term he's been an able competent president who has sought to govern by consensus. No way does he represent something so terrible as to drive someone into supporting Donald Trump. It's a crock of shit when anyone says that. They are lying.
On my last road trip I was surprised at the depth of hatred for 'Washington' once you got away from the big cities. To the extent that people would tell you (quite passionately) not to go there because it was such a horrible place. Like it or not, Trump and the alt-right have been more successful in tapping into this disaffection than the Dems who, despite their policy agenda being more favourable for poorer working Americans, are seen as exemplifying much about their politics that many ordinary Americans dislike. Biden's a nicer guy, for sure, but he's also a Washington insider through and through.
But where does the hatred come from? Is it part of the American psyche to distrust government? Does it reflect a very large country, so the political “centre” always feels remote? Or is right-wing media constantly lying, scapegoating ‘Washington’ for the ills of deindustrialisation and the actions of big business?
What did all that disaffection get people in Trump’s first term? A ballooning deficit, tax cuts for the rich and a Supreme Court in hock to plutocrats.
And tougher immigration controls, tariffs on imports from China and the EU and for evangelicals an end to an automatic abortion right
Lee Anderson says he ‘should have voted’ for Rwanda Bill – and he wants his old job back
Former deputy Tory chairman insists there is ‘no chance’ of Rishi Sunak being deposed before election and Conservative MPs should back him
Lee Anderson has said he should have voted for the Rwanda Bill and would take back his old job as deputy Tory chairman if asked by Rishi Sunak.
Speaking to the Telegraph, the outspoken MP said he should have been “brave” and sided with the Government instead of abstaining in last week’s crunch vote on the latest iteration of the migrant deportation plan.
He also said there is “no chance” of Mr Sunak being deposed before the next election and revealed he would back Donald Trump “by default” if he lived in the US, as he could never vote for Joe Biden.
Mr Anderson resigned as deputy party chairman on Jan 16 in order to support amendments aimed at toughening up Mr Sunak’s proposals to get Rwanda flights off the ground, before refusing to back the Bill itself.
I do not buy people saying they favour Trump because Biden is such a grim or scary proposition. The guy is knocking on, sure, and his health would be a standing concern in a 2nd term, but in his 1st term he's been an able competent president who has sought to govern by consensus. No way does he represent something so terrible as to drive someone into supporting Donald Trump. It's a crock of shit when anyone says that. They are lying.
On my last road trip I was surprised at the depth of hatred for 'Washington' once you got away from the big cities. To the extent that people would tell you (quite passionately) not to go there because it was such a horrible place. Like it or not, Trump and the alt-right have been more successful in tapping into this disaffection than the Dems who, despite their policy agenda being more favourable for poorer working Americans, are seen as exemplifying much about their politics that many ordinary Americans dislike. Biden's a nicer guy, for sure, but he's also a Washington insider through and through.
But where does the hatred come from? Is it part of the American psyche to distrust government? Does it reflect a very large country, so the political “centre” always feels remote? Or is right-wing media constantly lying, scapegoating ‘Washington’ for the ills of deindustrialisation and the actions of big business?
What did all that disaffection get people in Trump’s first term? A ballooning deficit, tax cuts for the rich and a Supreme Court in hock to plutocrats.
The funny thing is that Washington DC (the place rather than the concept) is actually a nice place and almost certainly a much nicer place than the places where the people telling you not to go to Washington live. Especially the bits that anyone actually visiting Washington would go to.
I remember Andrew Sullivan (who lives there) describing how awful the climate is in winter and summer.
University of York posts £24m deficit (£14m operating deficit) after 16% drop in international student numbers, also blaming England’s “unsustainable funding model”
Basically our university finance system has reached the end of the road
There are issues (the student fees not rising as costs have, for instance). Unis have utility bills too.
However whenever I see a big deficit I like to dig a bit deeper. A few years ago Leeds got into trouble, around the time that they built some stupendous new buildings. Other Unis have had unwise financial activity - at one point Bristol (I think) were borrowing money and then lending it out, but got screwed when the loan rates changed. They even asked staff to voluntarily take some unpaid leave (which was rejected).
Our Uni has put a 'chill' (note - definitely not a freeze) on recruitment. Basically you have to make a really watertight case. I suspect retiring staff will be a lot harder to replace for a while.
Some of the expansion is quite startling. Southampton, the town, is dying. Southampton, the university, is swallowing the place wholesale.
Yes, and a lot of it financed a while ago on low interest rates that may have changed. Certainly the cap on Uni fees needs looking at, especially for STEM with the associated lab costs etc.
Solution - lift the cap, but allow any uni (not just the Russell Group) to recruit as many as students as they like.
Or alternatively, we retain the cap, possibly at a higher rate, but put an end to the ridiculous snobbery that the Russell Group is somehow 'better' because reasons (which are nothing to do with most of our political leaders having gone there because they went to particular schools and having no point of comparison to other unis to see whether they're better or worse).
Either we have a market in HE, or we don't.
Lift the cap, but don’t let government backstop student loans.
Fees need to be agreed between each uni, their applicants, and the banks lending the money at their own risk.
STEM subjects good, Mickey Mouse Studies not so much.
Agreed. The sooner we get rid of Classics, the better.
More seriously, if you do want to go down a proper market route you'd want to charge by degree anyway, because the quality of faculties in unis can vary so much. I've never heard anybody be rude about medicine at Oxford, but Classics, well. And Cambridge, science is excellent, English Literature, er... York must have one of the best History departments in the country, but its Politics course is a bit of a joke.
Of course, there is still a cachet to getting degrees from such places even if in practical terms they're not very educative. And the networking opportunities may be worth something. But should they really be paid for at the same level?
It won’t take long for the banks to work out which courses at which universities lead to loans being paid back, and which lead to loan defaults.
The likes of Classics are interesting, because those students probably do quite well in life for a whole load of reasons unrelated to the subject matter of the course.
Nevil Shute, on telling one of his father's friends he was going to Oxford to read engineering, was told, 'I've never known a engineering graduate from Oxford fail to succeed in life, but none of them have reached the top in engineering.'
Oddly, Shute himself arguably did reach the top in engineering, helping design an airship that unusually didn't crash or explode, founding a company that not only built the first aeroplane for the Royal Flight and the first production aircraft with a retractable undercarriage, but built over 8,000 twin engined trainers for the RAF in WWII, and working successfully on a number of classified research projects for the Navy in the war itself.
He is, however, best remembered as a novelist...
There are very very few (if any) famous aeronautical Engineers.
Kelly Johnson, Harrison Storms, Ed Heinemann - who knows who they are without Wikipedia?
In the UK a few people might know Barnes Wallis. Who was Shute's boss on R101, of course.
Today's PO witness just said he still regards one of the postmasters he investigated as guilty, despite the conviction having being overturned by the court.
Comments
Were concerns measured? Lack of screams does not mean the patient enjoys the experience.
"...Denmark moved to a one-day-per-week delivery of regular (non-urgent) mail, and this has led to a significant collapse in volumes..."
That's not a success, that's a failure.
Bit weird considering how well the US economy has performed during his tenure. Tbh I think US voters are a bit ungrateful for their ~ $70,000+ jobs that would be paid £35k here.
Is it the £9000 cash cap that has been put on fees since 2012?
(Inflation 2012 to now is ~40%, which is similar to the resource reductions forced on for example local authorities.)
Tuition fee caps aiui:
1998 - £1000
2004 - £3000
2012 - £9000
2017 - £9250 (I think for Unis with a "Certificate of Excellent), £9000 the rest.
That 2012 freeze is very similar to freezes in other areas of life.
In any case I predict self-serving weasel words from the Minister; it is Wednesday which has a D in it.
But at moment looks like Trump 2.0 is on.
Not really sure why you'd be using a military transport plane to move PoWs, or S-300 missiles around, so who knows?
Still, if Russia are having increasing difficulty keeping their planes in the sky, while Ukraine are working towards restarting civil aviation - it's another sign of the war not trending to Russia's advantage.
I wasn't even thinking of horse racing, just the things I used to always clip in the hurdles race on sportsday!
Been out for a bit - but has anyone remembered the universal delivery requirement? It's a massive issue for anyone living in rural areas and islands, and one the SNP has often raised in the context of the increasing privatisation of delivery services over the last 2-3 decades.
Yougov poll Jan 14-16
Would you say that you and your family are...
Better off financially than you were a year ago 14%
About the same financially as you were a year ago 38%
Worse off financially than you were a year ago 45%
Not sure 3%
https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/econTabReport_HvTrDQB.pdf
Trouble is, a shitty campus will tend to put potential students off, so to some extent the money has to be spent. Possibly easier for the more city-based unis (e.g. Leeds) where uni-life is less dominated by the actual uni buildings.
Specially for you at the rustic peasantry hypermarket:
https://www.watermanscountrysupplies.co.uk/sheep-1/shepherd-sheep-hurdle-pack/
Simon @SimonXIX
Jan 22
The UK Government is adding every British citizen to one big WhatsApp group.
https://nitter.net/SimonXIX/status/1749384952477605916#m
*innocent face*
But I also agree with Nigel (our 'B' one not Farage) that much of it is just a general moan about life and looking for a suitable scapegoat.
But the every other day model is a bit like alternate week refuse collections - the proposals are always strongly opposed, yet where it's implemented, people get used to it quite quickly. We have them here, and it's only an issue for flats where there isn't space for a wheelie bin.
Otherwise the Cornwall>Shetland route would be much more expensive than intra London and the Nats would whine some more.
15 years ago said University declared that 300-400 purpose built student residential housing units (ie rooms in 60-70 5-6 bed houses) they had on long-term lease were no longer required because one bathroom per three bedrooms was not good enough, and built a phalanx of higher end properties in the city centre, going so far as included gyms, en-suites etc.
In previous years the Uni had driven rent levels *hard*, the worst being 30-50% over inflation over one 5 year period. Obviously the benefits of that increase stayed in the University, whilst levels passed through to the owners stayed with inflation increases. That's an observation not a complaint, it's basically a semi-monopoly supplier charging what the closed market will bear.
Without exception all the LLs refurbished their properties (which had been under University management for 15-17 years), and put them back on the market via private agencies. Just replacement of the margin the Uni had been taking with the margin the private sector was taking increased the % of the rent making it through to the LL by 15-20 percentage points, whilst delivering a far higher quality of accommodation for the student.
The University concerned was offering cashbacks of up to £500-£700 per annum to students to get its properties filled for the next 5 years.
You can say that that approach is OK for student accommodation, or you can say that they are just not very good.
Or alternatively, we retain the cap, possibly at a higher rate, but put an end to the ridiculous snobbery that the Russell Group is somehow 'better' because reasons (which are nothing to do with most of our political leaders having gone there because they went to particular schools and having no point of comparison to other unis to see whether they're better or worse).
Either we have a market in HE, or we don't.
If you weight the service reliability, comparative price, and financial performance, ours is still one of the best in the world. Helped by our population density, geography and infrastructure, of course.
And the mail comes in to your house, not left in a box by the street. A big extra cost in rural areas.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-government-whatsapp-channel-to-provide-public-information
ETA one-way only!
Have they thought this through?
Fees need to be agreed between each uni, their applicants, and the banks lending the money at their own risk.
STEM subjects good, Mickey Mouse Studies not so much.
Or you can say that as a semi-monopolist (Uni market position, and heavy Council student rental restrictions / regulation) the approach is being acceptably expoitative without regulation by free-market competition. Take your pick.
For context, my family own a couple of these for investment / pension purposes - back in the 1990s we took houses rather than cash for a development plot which had been the site of a family business.
Also hide contact information from members of the group.
I have no idea how to end the Russell Group snobbery. I try as hard as I can to challenge it whenever it comes up, but its fighting a many headed hydra.
"If the Republican Party wants to go forward with a senile nominee who’s on his way to prison, that’s up to them. But Donald Trump is becoming less viable by the hour – not just as a candidate, but even in terms of someone who’s able to function in public without adult supervision. Trump’s senility will only get worse. And Biden will keep using it against him."
Not my words pinched from elsewhere, but I totally agree.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRkaiRt_q2k
Not sure I can watch much more of this shite.
https://unherd.com/2024/01/new-hampshire-revealed-americas-true-divide/?tl_inbound=1&tl_groups
More seriously, if you do want to go down a proper market route you'd want to charge by degree anyway, because the quality of faculties in unis can vary so much. I've never heard anybody be rude about medicine at Oxford, but Classics, well. And Cambridge, science is excellent, English Literature, er... York must have one of the best History departments in the country, but its Politics course is a bit of a joke.
Of course, there is still a cachet to getting degrees from such places even if in practical terms they're not very educative. And the networking opportunities may be worth something. But should they really be paid for at the same level?
Assumption, according to the great American philosopher, "Makes as Ass out of U and 'mption."
Utterly tone deaf. I guess we should all be grateful
The likes of Classics are interesting, because those students probably do quite well in life for a whole load of reasons unrelated to the subject matter of the course.
Next, PT before breakfast.
You would have thought that this should have been a positive news story for the Government, but it looks as if they have been incompetent?
Anyone who still thinks Rishi Sunak has plans to do more PMQs after March the 26th needs to watch that.
Oddly, Shute himself arguably did reach the top in engineering, helping design an airship that unusually didn't crash or explode, founding a company that not only built the first aeroplane for the Royal Flight and the first production aircraft with a retractable undercarriage, but built over 8,000 twin engined trainers for the RAF in WWII, and working successfully on a number of classified research projects for the Navy in the war itself.
He is, however, best remembered as a novelist...
(I secretly love the PB tradition of "millennials can't use toasters" etc etc )
Which would you recommend if not York?
You've let me down, you've let the school down and you've let yourself down...
Yes, I am serious. It's a better department than any of those. Just not Russell Group (but then nor is Bath).
The witness has only provided a two and a half page statement, because he was so busy over Christmas with his current job at a homeless charity, and also walking his dog.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivoKhfyVAW8
- They get sympathy from the West against the evil jewish nazi homosexuals.
- They can deny anything major was lost (except the plane itself)
- Best of all, at the end of the war, when Ukraine asks for its POWs back, they can tell them that all 20,000 POWs they took were on that plane, definitely not murdered whilst in prison camps, and stop asking anymore questions about them.
Kelly Johnson, Harrison Storms, Ed Heinemann - who knows who they are without Wikipedia?
In the UK a few people might know Barnes Wallis. Who was Shute's boss on R101, of course.
https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1750109971100901534
"Matt Goodwin
@GoodwinMJ
Ever since Brexit & Trump liberals have told us the Old White Men will soon die. But this is lazy thinking. Look across much of the West and it's often the young, not the old, who are driving national populism"
Whatever the reason it is being picked up on PreditIt.
Trump has gone from 94% Rep Nom to 91% following NH.
A Democrat presidency is also a clear favorite.
Don't give up hope. Polls are dodgy. 10 months to go. Biden is on an upward path with the economy. Trump is on a downward path with his TIAs.
She can explain away other states. But, if she loses badly in South Carolina, that's not just bad for her campaign but highly embarrassing and bad for her brand and future career beyond 2024. Obviously, she needs to do her "I fight on and fight to win!" thing today. As soon as she indicates she is thinking about quitting, she has effectively quit. However, it's pretty questionable whether she'll even get to the starting line in South Carolina and, if she does, it could well deal the knock-out blow.
And it was in no way convincing. I could provide them with a 5,000 word statement on a topic I knew in a day if I had to.
So either he's not very good - which would partly explain the Horizon debacle - or he's lying, which is much the same.
What a numpty.
Why not both?
Latest averages (from 8 pollsters)
SPD 14.3%
Greens 13.7%
Free Democrats 4.9%
https://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/
What did all that disaffection get people in Trump’s first term? A ballooning deficit, tax cuts for the rich and a Supreme Court in hock to plutocrats.