How would you fund Unis if you don't allow them to increase fees? Genuine question?
They should have a genuine market. Charging economics students at LSE and Cambridge or law students at UCL and Oxford who will go on to earn a fortune as investment bankers, KCs and corporate lawyers the same as arts and humanities graduates at lower ranked universities who will earn average salaries at best if that is just absurd and always has been.
The higher the graduate earnings premium of the course the higher should be the fees
The level of the fees is largely irrelevant now, because the interest charged is greater than the the amount most people are paying it back.
They pay 9% of their marginal income past £25k. If they got the average maintenance loan and the standard fees level, then they'd start with nearly £55k of loan. Unless they are earning over £70k per year, they will be paying less than the interest on the loan and the principal will continue rising.
At this point, then if fees go up to £10,000 per year, or £15,000 per year, or £20,000 per year, or £100,000 per year, the net effect on the graduate is unchanged: they have 9% of their income above £25k per year deducted from their pay slip until the age at which they are exempted from further payments. This is 30 years after the first repayment due for those who started between 2012 and 2023, and 40 years for the poor sods who started in September 2023 and onwards.
Yeah, the system is a mess.
That's broadly the system working as intended - it's a graduate tax dressed up as a loan.
Increasing the level of the fee increases the funding to universities, and marginally increases the future expected loan repayments for the minority who do pay the loan back and escape the graduate tax early.
If they were to double the interest rate charged then it would make the system more progressive - higher earners would pay more before paying it off. But people struggle to see past the words used and can't help but think about it in conventional debt terms.
How does the loan appear in government books? An asset?
Calling it a graduate tax would presumably add more to government debt?
lol. This hotel in the Philippines is…. £2,500 a night
However on its website it says “welcome to barefoot luxury, there is no need for a wallet here”
I SHOULD FUCKING WELL HOPE SO, IF I AM PAYING £2,500 A NIGHT
But *you* are not paying, right?
no, obvs not
looks like I am going tho, at least as things stand, so you can stare out at the London grey feeling a tiny bit happier, knowing that I’ll soon be in the 15th best hotel in the world, inshallah
Random question - have you actually paid for a holiday in the last 10 years?
Yes, but not often, and when it happens, I kinda resent it
I mean, I am unused to getting a bill, so I bridle - “What? You expect me to PAY???”
One day not that far off my lucky life will end & I shall have to retire, but as long as it continues it is a blast. Not gonna lie
How would you fund Unis if you don't allow them to increase fees? Genuine question?
They should have a genuine market. Charging economics students at LSE and Cambridge or law students at UCL and Oxford who will go on to earn a fortune as investment bankers, KCs and corporate lawyers the same as arts and humanities graduates at lower ranked universities who will earn average salaries at best if that is just absurd and always has been.
The higher the graduate earnings premium of the course the higher should be the fees
The level of the fees is largely irrelevant now, because the interest charged is greater than the the amount most people are paying it back.
They pay 9% of their marginal income past £25k. If they got the average maintenance loan and the standard fees level, then they'd start with nearly £55k of loan. Unless they are earning over £70k per year, they will be paying less than the interest on the loan and the principal will continue rising.
At this point, then if fees go up to £10,000 per year, or £15,000 per year, or £20,000 per year, or £100,000 per year, the net effect on the graduate is unchanged: they have 9% of their income above £25k per year deducted from their pay slip until the age at which they are exempted from further payments. This is 30 years after the first repayment due for those who started between 2012 and 2023, and 40 years for the poor sods who started in September 2023 and onwards.
Yeah, the system is a mess.
That's broadly the system working as intended - it's a graduate tax dressed up as a loan.
Increasing the level of the fee increases the funding to universities, and marginally increases the future expected loan repayments for the minority who do pay the loan back and escape the graduate tax early.
If they were to double the interest rate charged then it would make the system more progressive - higher earners would pay more before paying it off. But people struggle to see past the words used and can't help but think about it in conventional debt terms.
It may be working as intended but the intention is wrong. Living costs for young adults are appalling and it's no coincidence the birth rate is plummeting if people can't afford children.
The interest rate should be the lower of the BoE Base Rate or CPI, and make it a state loan on the government's books.
The much lesser talked about massive increase cost in going to university, cost of accommodation.
Also, again, as always, very few of those going to uni now are paying back their loan, so another £750, its just another liability for the taxpayer 30 years down the line, rather than the individual really being on the hook for it.
Are you suggesting that it's another example of the Housing Theory of Everything?
Not exactly. Universities, not being able to being able to increase fees, things like accommodation costs they have quietly rammed up more and more to bring in extra income. In conjunction, more going to university, more need spaces, so squeeze, and private operators have come into the market funded by big investors who see it as a way to make superior returns than other capital projects.
And this can be "afforded' by the fact students can take out this much bigger loan.
I'd argue also that the general standard of Uni accommodation has vastly improved in the 30 years since I was an UG. Students expect en suite rooms, decent wi-fi/internet etc. I'd suspect that off campus is vastly better too (although that may be wrong).
Uni's have been very constrained by the funding model and have responded in the ways that they have.
I think that is true, but with that increase in quality (which I think matches the demands of students e.g. wanting an en-suite), the costs have been vastly inflated. Also lots of naughty things, like having to pay for larger number of weeks, when they aren't even there.
There is a reason a number of these mega private hall operators have got into the game in the past 20 years, there is really good money to be made.
Certainly quality has consistently trended upwards.
When my family received a couple of purpose built student houses back from a longer term lease to a local University back in 2012 or so ("no longer required as not good enough eg no ensuites"), which were two from a terrace of 10 identicals, everyone refurbished. I specified that ours would have dishwashers as a "nicer-place-to-live" distinctive vs the others in the terrace, to make sure we had an extra edge and ceteris paribus would rent out first.
At that point it was quite unusual. Now my letting agent tells me that half of their student housing stock has dishwashers installed; I asked them at a meeting last month.
That's basically across the board within any segment.
A dishwasher starts at £219 on Currys.com and lasts circa 10 years. So amortised that's £21.90 a year, or £5.48 per student assuming a four person house.
Please be advised that between 1 and 2pm today I bet the following
LOW RISK: STATE: MINNESOTA: 1/14 Kamela to win: £200 bet LOW RISK: STATE: VIRGINIA: 2/17 Kamela to win: £500 bet MEDIUM RISK: SENATE: ARIZONA: 2/9 Reuben Gallego to win (D): £200 bet MEDIUM RISK: SENATE: MONTANA: 1/5 Tim Sheehy to win (R): £100
Total waged: £1000 (fuuuck) Total returns if all win: 558.82+214.29+244.44+120 = £1,137.55 Potential profit: £137.55 Potential loss: £1000.
Hmm. As you may have noticed I lost track during the betting and bet £500 not £250 on Virginia as intended. Lots of talking and bingy sounds, brain got confused. Doesn't look like a good idea now you say it out loud. Ah well, don't walk into the shop with money if you don't want to spend it: we will see what happens.
#BigBoyPants
Virginia is pretty damn safe, though.
If it were me, I'd just have stuck £100 on Georgia. More potential profit; downside £100.
lol. This hotel in the Philippines is…. £2,500 a night
However on its website it says “welcome to barefoot luxury, there is no need for a wallet here”
I SHOULD FUCKING WELL HOPE SO, IF I AM PAYING £2,500 A NIGHT
But *you* are not paying, right?
no, obvs not
looks like I am going tho, at least as things stand, so you can stare out at the London grey feeling a tiny bit happier, knowing that I’ll soon be in the 15th best hotel in the world, inshallah
Each to his own, but I've spent far too many nights in "luxury" hotels in foreign cities to be jealous. Personally, despite the often shitty weather and depressing grey skies, I prefer my own bedroom, possessions, home-prepared food, etc.
Luxury hotels are overrated. But then luxury is overrated, in my opinion, at the cost charged. It's like first class air: it's not remotely worth the value for the flight unless you take as sufficiently important not mixing with common people.
How would you fund Unis if you don't allow them to increase fees? Genuine question?
They should have a genuine market. Charging economics students at LSE and Cambridge or law students at UCL and Oxford who will go on to earn a fortune as investment bankers, KCs and corporate lawyers the same as arts and humanities graduates at lower ranked universities who will earn average salaries at best if that is just absurd and always has been.
The higher the graduate earnings premium of the course the higher should be the fees
The level of the fees is largely irrelevant now, because the interest charged is greater than the the amount most people are paying it back.
They pay 9% of their marginal income past £25k. If they got the average maintenance loan and the standard fees level, then they'd start with nearly £55k of loan. Unless they are earning over £70k per year, they will be paying less than the interest on the loan and the principal will continue rising.
At this point, then if fees go up to £10,000 per year, or £15,000 per year, or £20,000 per year, or £100,000 per year, the net effect on the graduate is unchanged: they have 9% of their income above £25k per year deducted from their pay slip until the age at which they are exempted from further payments. This is 30 years after the first repayment due for those who started between 2012 and 2023, and 40 years for the poor sods who started in September 2023 and onwards.
Yeah, the system is a mess.
It is a mess. I think it was well intentioned but has gotten out of control. The original idea was that it wouldn't be a graduate tax because you could clear the debt, whereas a graduate tax would keep on being paid. But the practice of it, plus the interest has changed it rather fundamentally.
Sadly the best advice to an 18 year old, once established that they genuinely want to go on the HE either for learning or vocational (or both) reasons, is to entirely disregard how much you borrow and max out, because what you pay back will relate to earnings, not to the size of the debt.
This is especially true for those people (they do exist - O fortunatos nimium) who love learning and education but don't regard it as a springboard to wealth untold.
Best advice is
1) find a degree apprenticeship within the Civil Service 2) find a degree apprenticeship outside the Civil Service 3) go to uni...
Best advice for young people is go abroad. Uni fees are cheap in Europe, you'll learn another language. In US you can probably get a scholarship if you're good academically or at sports and you'll be in a country where salaries are much higher.
Not as easy as it used to be post Brexit. Worse it's getting harder - Holland (as one example) are insisting that all teaching will now be done in Dutch rather than English).
lol. This hotel in the Philippines is…. £2,500 a night
However on its website it says “welcome to barefoot luxury, there is no need for a wallet here”
I SHOULD FUCKING WELL HOPE SO, IF I AM PAYING £2,500 A NIGHT
But *you* are not paying, right?
no, obvs not
looks like I am going tho, at least as things stand, so you can stare out at the London grey feeling a tiny bit happier, knowing that I’ll soon be in the 15th best hotel in the world, inshallah
Each to his own, but I've spent far too many nights in "luxury" hotels in foreign cities to be jealous. Personally, despite the often shitty weather and depressing grey skies, I prefer my own bedroom, possessions, home-prepared food, etc.
Luxury hotels are overrated. But then luxury is overrated, in my opinion, at the cost charged. It's like first class air: it's not remotely worth the value for the flight unless you take as sufficiently important not mixing with common people.
That's probably the luxury that you're paying for. And then Leon shows up...
Please be advised that between 1 and 2pm today I bet the following
LOW RISK: STATE: MINNESOTA: 1/14 Kamela to win: £200 bet LOW RISK: STATE: VIRGINIA: 2/17 Kamela to win: £500 bet MEDIUM RISK: SENATE: ARIZONA: 2/9 Reuben Gallego to win (D): £200 bet MEDIUM RISK: SENATE: MONTANA: 1/5 Tim Sheehy to win (R): £100
Total waged: £1000 (fuuuck) Total returns if all win: 558.82+214.29+244.44+120 = £1,137.55 Potential profit: £137.55 Potential loss: £1000.
Hmm. As you may have noticed I lost track during the betting and bet £500 not £250 on Virginia as intended. Lots of talking and bingy sounds, brain got confused. Doesn't look like a good idea now you say it out loud. Ah well, don't walk into the shop with money if you don't want to spend it: we will see what happens.
#BigBoyPants
Virginia is pretty damn safe, though.
If it were me, I'd just have stuck £100 on Georgia. More potential profit; downside £100.
It involved me placing a £500 bet with 8 50s and the rest in £20s. It set of a flag in the FOBTS and the bloke behind the desk asked me for my name. I gave him my name (not all of it!) which was stupid. I am never going back in that shop again except to pick up winnings if win
Please be advised that between 1 and 2pm today I bet the following
LOW RISK: STATE: MINNESOTA: 1/14 Kamela to win: £200 bet LOW RISK: STATE: VIRGINIA: 2/17 Kamela to win: £500 bet MEDIUM RISK: SENATE: ARIZONA: 2/9 Reuben Gallego to win (D): £200 bet MEDIUM RISK: SENATE: MONTANA: 1/5 Tim Sheehy to win (R): £100
Total waged: £1000 (fuuuck) Total returns if all win: 558.82+214.29+244.44+120 = £1,137.55 Potential profit: £137.55 Potential loss: £1000.
Hmm. As you may have noticed I lost track during the betting and bet £500 not £250 on Virginia as intended. Lots of talking and bingy sounds, brain got confused. Doesn't look like a good idea now you say it out loud. Ah well, don't walk into the shop with money if you don't want to spend it: we will see what happens.
#BigBoyPants
If it goes all tits up, it could be Trump diapers.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges Again, I genuinely hope I’m wrong. Women, the Abortion issue, younger voters, seniors, a better GOTV operation. They could conceivably all combine to give Harris the win. But at the moment, looking at the fundamentals, I just can’t see anything but a Trump victory. Sorry.
The much lesser talked about massive increase cost in going to university, cost of accommodation.
Also, again, as always, very few of those going to uni now are paying back their loan, so another £750, its just another liability for the taxpayer 30 years down the line, rather than the individual really being on the hook for it.
Are you suggesting that it's another example of the Housing Theory of Everything?
Not exactly. Universities, not being able to being able to increase fees, things like accommodation costs they have quietly rammed up more and more to bring in extra income. In conjunction, more going to university, more need spaces, so squeeze, and private operators have come into the market funded by big investors who see it as a way to make superior returns than other capital projects.
And this can be "afforded' by the fact students can take out this much bigger loan.
I'd argue also that the general standard of Uni accommodation has vastly improved in the 30 years since I was an UG. Students expect en suite rooms, decent wi-fi/internet etc. I'd suspect that off campus is vastly better too (although that may be wrong).
Uni's have been very constrained by the funding model and have responded in the ways that they have.
I'm not 100% sure about that - for Newcastle to rebuild Castle Leazes (1250 student halls of residence built in the 60s) they've had to enter a joint venture with Unite Students...
And I think the cost is looking at £250m or £125,000 per bedroom.
You then have places like Durham where rent seems to have increased to £180 per room this year (that's for rooms not managed. by the University who continue to expand even though there is little extra accommodation and it restriction on turning more houses into student lets).
Need to be carful about comparables here. A quick check on Durham with Stu Rents says average of £155 pw excl bills for a room in purpose build apartments on current adverts. The £25 is roughly the cost for bills to be included.
One slight question is whether that is leftover 24/25 or for 25/26. Anybody sensible is already advertising for next year.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges Again, I genuinely hope I’m wrong. Women, the Abortion issue, younger voters, seniors, a better GOTV operation. They could conceivably all combine to give Harris the win. But at the moment, looking at the fundamentals, I just can’t see anything but a Trump victory. Sorry.
How would you fund Unis if you don't allow them to increase fees? Genuine question?
They should have a genuine market. Charging economics students at LSE and Cambridge or law students at UCL and Oxford who will go on to earn a fortune as investment bankers, KCs and corporate lawyers the same as arts and humanities graduates at lower ranked universities who will earn average salaries at best if that is just absurd and always has been.
The higher the graduate earnings premium of the course the higher should be the fees
The level of the fees is largely irrelevant now, because the interest charged is greater than the the amount most people are paying it back.
They pay 9% of their marginal income past £25k. If they got the average maintenance loan and the standard fees level, then they'd start with nearly £55k of loan. Unless they are earning over £70k per year, they will be paying less than the interest on the loan and the principal will continue rising.
At this point, then if fees go up to £10,000 per year, or £15,000 per year, or £20,000 per year, or £100,000 per year, the net effect on the graduate is unchanged: they have 9% of their income above £25k per year deducted from their pay slip until the age at which they are exempted from further payments. This is 30 years after the first repayment due for those who started between 2012 and 2023, and 40 years for the poor sods who started in September 2023 and onwards.
Yeah, the system is a mess.
That's broadly the system working as intended - it's a graduate tax dressed up as a loan.
Increasing the level of the fee increases the funding to universities, and marginally increases the future expected loan repayments for the minority who do pay the loan back and escape the graduate tax early.
If they were to double the interest rate charged then it would make the system more progressive - higher earners would pay more before paying it off. But people struggle to see past the words used and can't help but think about it in conventional debt terms.
How does the loan appear in government books? An asset?
Calling it a graduate tax would presumably add more to government debt?
I'm not entirely sure, but I think there was discussion at some point about the loan book being sold off, so it might have some impact on how the debt is accounted for.
Thinking over my first response to this news, the short term impact of an increase in fees is an increase in borrowing to spend more on universities. Any extra income from graduates is some distance down the track into the future.
So its better than a freeze for the universities, but in the short-term it's more spending on current expenditure by the government.
How would you fund Unis if you don't allow them to increase fees? Genuine question?
They should have a genuine market. Charging economics students at LSE and Cambridge or law students at UCL and Oxford who will go on to earn a fortune as investment bankers, KCs and corporate lawyers the same as arts and humanities graduates at lower ranked universities who will earn average salaries at best if that is just absurd and always has been.
The higher the graduate earnings premium of the course the higher should be the fees
The level of the fees is largely irrelevant now, because the interest charged is greater than the the amount most people are paying it back.
They pay 9% of their marginal income past £25k. If they got the average maintenance loan and the standard fees level, then they'd start with nearly £55k of loan. Unless they are earning over £70k per year, they will be paying less than the interest on the loan and the principal will continue rising.
At this point, then if fees go up to £10,000 per year, or £15,000 per year, or £20,000 per year, or £100,000 per year, the net effect on the graduate is unchanged: they have 9% of their income above £25k per year deducted from their pay slip until the age at which they are exempted from further payments. This is 30 years after the first repayment due for those who started between 2012 and 2023, and 40 years for the poor sods who started in September 2023 and onwards.
Yeah, the system is a mess.
Of course the level of fees is relevant, have a genuine market in fees and scrap interest on repayments of loans for the first 10 years post graduation entirely
Then that's an entirely different system. Without interest on loans, then, why, people might even pay it off. The entire point of it is to have it as a disguised graduate tax (I was told that the reason to have it this way rather than as an actual graduate tax was that you could avoid the tax by leaving the country, but you'd still be liable to pay it if it was a "loan" that you never paid off.
Huh. I suppose there are comparisons to be drawn with the contractor loan scheme that came about to evade taxes. Nowhere near exact, but both involved a loan that would never be paid off and both were shenanigans around tax.
lol. This hotel in the Philippines is…. £2,500 a night
However on its website it says “welcome to barefoot luxury, there is no need for a wallet here”
I SHOULD FUCKING WELL HOPE SO, IF I AM PAYING £2,500 A NIGHT
But *you* are not paying, right?
no, obvs not
looks like I am going tho, at least as things stand, so you can stare out at the London grey feeling a tiny bit happier, knowing that I’ll soon be in the 15th best hotel in the world, inshallah
Each to his own, but I've spent far too many nights in "luxury" hotels in foreign cities to be jealous. Personally, despite the often shitty weather and depressing grey skies, I prefer my own bedroom, possessions, home-prepared food, etc.
Luxury hotels are overrated. But then luxury is overrated, in my opinion, at the cost charged. It's like first class air: it's not remotely worth the value for the flight unless you take as sufficiently important not mixing with common people.
How would you fund Unis if you don't allow them to increase fees? Genuine question?
They should have a genuine market. Charging economics students at LSE and Cambridge or law students at UCL and Oxford who will go on to earn a fortune as investment bankers, KCs and corporate lawyers the same as arts and humanities graduates at lower ranked universities who will earn average salaries at best if that is just absurd and always has been.
The higher the graduate earnings premium of the course the higher should be the fees
The level of the fees is largely irrelevant now, because the interest charged is greater than the the amount most people are paying it back.
They pay 9% of their marginal income past £25k. If they got the average maintenance loan and the standard fees level, then they'd start with nearly £55k of loan. Unless they are earning over £70k per year, they will be paying less than the interest on the loan and the principal will continue rising.
At this point, then if fees go up to £10,000 per year, or £15,000 per year, or £20,000 per year, or £100,000 per year, the net effect on the graduate is unchanged: they have 9% of their income above £25k per year deducted from their pay slip until the age at which they are exempted from further payments. This is 30 years after the first repayment due for those who started between 2012 and 2023, and 40 years for the poor sods who started in September 2023 and onwards.
Yeah, the system is a mess.
It is a mess. I think it was well intentioned but has gotten out of control. The original idea was that it wouldn't be a graduate tax because you could clear the debt, whereas a graduate tax would keep on being paid. But the practice of it, plus the interest has changed it rather fundamentally.
Sadly the best advice to an 18 year old, once established that they genuinely want to go on the HE either for learning or vocational (or both) reasons, is to entirely disregard how much you borrow and max out, because what you pay back will relate to earnings, not to the size of the debt.
This is especially true for those people (they do exist - O fortunatos nimium) who love learning and education but don't regard it as a springboard to wealth untold.
I consider myself very lucky that I was born early enough to avoid fees at all, that my Dad was able to part fund my living costs (I also worked in pubs to help) and that I will probably never leave Uni in my working career.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges Again, I genuinely hope I’m wrong. Women, the Abortion issue, younger voters, seniors, a better GOTV operation. They could conceivably all combine to give Harris the win. But at the moment, looking at the fundamentals, I just can’t see anything but a Trump victory. Sorry.
How would you fund Unis if you don't allow them to increase fees? Genuine question?
They should have a genuine market. Charging economics students at LSE and Cambridge or law students at UCL and Oxford who will go on to earn a fortune as investment bankers, KCs and corporate lawyers the same as arts and humanities graduates at lower ranked universities who will earn average salaries at best if that is just absurd and always has been.
The higher the graduate earnings premium of the course the higher should be the fees
The level of the fees is largely irrelevant now, because the interest charged is greater than the the amount most people are paying it back.
They pay 9% of their marginal income past £25k. If they got the average maintenance loan and the standard fees level, then they'd start with nearly £55k of loan. Unless they are earning over £70k per year, they will be paying less than the interest on the loan and the principal will continue rising.
At this point, then if fees go up to £10,000 per year, or £15,000 per year, or £20,000 per year, or £100,000 per year, the net effect on the graduate is unchanged: they have 9% of their income above £25k per year deducted from their pay slip until the age at which they are exempted from further payments. This is 30 years after the first repayment due for those who started between 2012 and 2023, and 40 years for the poor sods who started in September 2023 and onwards.
Yeah, the system is a mess.
That's broadly the system working as intended - it's a graduate tax dressed up as a loan.
Increasing the level of the fee increases the funding to universities, and marginally increases the future expected loan repayments for the minority who do pay the loan back and escape the graduate tax early.
If they were to double the interest rate charged then it would make the system more progressive - higher earners would pay more before paying it off. But people struggle to see past the words used and can't help but think about it in conventional debt terms.
It may be working as intended but the intention is wrong. Living costs for young adults are appalling and it's no coincidence the birth rate is plummeting if people can't afford children.
The interest rate should be the lower of the BoE Base Rate or CPI, and make it a state loan on the government's books.
I'm not sure that reducing the amount the wealthiest graduates pay back, while making no difference to those lottery down the income scale, it's really going to help that much with your objections.
It's certainly not the system I would have chosen, but any radical change looks likely to be very expensive, and there are much higher priorities.
The much lesser talked about massive increase cost in going to university, cost of accommodation.
Also, again, as always, very few of those going to uni now are paying back their loan, so another £750, its just another liability for the taxpayer 30 years down the line, rather than the individual really being on the hook for it.
Are you suggesting that it's another example of the Housing Theory of Everything?
Not exactly. Universities, not being able to being able to increase fees, things like accommodation costs they have quietly rammed up more and more to bring in extra income. In conjunction, more going to university, more need spaces, so squeeze, and private operators have come into the market funded by big investors who see it as a way to make superior returns than other capital projects.
And this can be "afforded' by the fact students can take out this much bigger loan.
I'd argue also that the general standard of Uni accommodation has vastly improved in the 30 years since I was an UG. Students expect en suite rooms, decent wi-fi/internet etc. I'd suspect that off campus is vastly better too (although that may be wrong).
Uni's have been very constrained by the funding model and have responded in the ways that they have.
I think that is true, but with that increase in quality (which I think matches the demands of students e.g. wanting an en-suite), the costs have been vastly inflated. Also lots of naughty things, like having to pay for larger number of weeks, when they aren't even there.
There's a limit to how many Open Uni residential courses a Uni can host in the holidays... Bath seems to have vast hordes of overseas school children on language exchanges each summer.
At one point, a big revenue earner was not Open Uni or language courses, but corporate gatherings and events. I think some unis now do AirBnB or Booking type schemes to rent out to the public, particularly in towns with a tourist market.
Yes, we rented a room in Bath student accommodation when we went there for daughter's graduation. I did not envy the students locked up in it during Covid, and I didn't think the standard compared well with my late-90s student accommodation.
Bath Uni or Bath Spa? We have lots of varying standard places and of course show the best to the prospective students...
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges Again, I genuinely hope I’m wrong. Women, the Abortion issue, younger voters, seniors, a better GOTV operation. They could conceivably all combine to give Harris the win. But at the moment, looking at the fundamentals, I just can’t see anything but a Trump victory. Sorry.
lol. This hotel in the Philippines is…. £2,500 a night
However on its website it says “welcome to barefoot luxury, there is no need for a wallet here”
I SHOULD FUCKING WELL HOPE SO, IF I AM PAYING £2,500 A NIGHT
But *you* are not paying, right?
no, obvs not
looks like I am going tho, at least as things stand, so you can stare out at the London grey feeling a tiny bit happier, knowing that I’ll soon be in the 15th best hotel in the world, inshallah
Each to his own, but I've spent far too many nights in "luxury" hotels in foreign cities to be jealous. Personally, despite the often shitty weather and depressing grey skies, I prefer my own bedroom, possessions, home-prepared food, etc.
Luxury hotels are overrated. But then luxury is overrated, in my opinion, at the cost charged. It's like first class air: it's not remotely worth the value for the flight unless you take as sufficiently important not mixing with common people.
That's probably the luxury that you're paying for. And then Leon shows up...
In terms of luxury lifestyle - and relaxed ease in enjoying it, because I’m used to it - I find that these days I am almost always the poshest person in any hotel
Tuition fees rise probably inevitable given damage past govt did to foreign student numbers. Labour should prioritise getting the UK back to being a welcoming place to foreign students, but I fear they'll chicken out as they don't feel confident on immigration.
Charge overseas students full whack, given the UK universities are still the best rated globally after US universities (and sometimes top if you just look at Oxbridge and Imperial) foreign students will still come in large numbers and pay full whack tuition fees
We do charge them full whack (or whatever unis think they can raise). Applications are down 16% vs last year since we banned them bringing families. It's a competitive market and the opportunities look better in Canada, Aus, US.
Good, you come to study not bring all your family too.
A few may go to non US or UK colleges but even Swiss universities are higher ranked than those in Canada and Australia so those will have less demand still
How would you fund Unis if you don't allow them to increase fees? Genuine question?
They should have a genuine market. Charging economics students at LSE and Cambridge or law students at UCL and Oxford who will go on to earn a fortune as investment bankers, KCs and corporate lawyers the same as arts and humanities graduates at lower ranked universities who will earn average salaries at best if that is just absurd and always has been.
The higher the graduate earnings premium of the course the higher should be the fees
The level of the fees is largely irrelevant now, because the interest charged is greater than the the amount most people are paying it back.
They pay 9% of their marginal income past £25k. If they got the average maintenance loan and the standard fees level, then they'd start with nearly £55k of loan. Unless they are earning over £70k per year, they will be paying less than the interest on the loan and the principal will continue rising.
At this point, then if fees go up to £10,000 per year, or £15,000 per year, or £20,000 per year, or £100,000 per year, the net effect on the graduate is unchanged: they have 9% of their income above £25k per year deducted from their pay slip until the age at which they are exempted from further payments. This is 30 years after the first repayment due for those who started between 2012 and 2023, and 40 years for the poor sods who started in September 2023 and onwards.
Yeah, the system is a mess.
Of course the level of fees is relevant, have a genuine market in fees and scrap interest on repayments of loans for the first 10 years post graduation entirely
Then that's an entirely different system. Without interest on loans, then, why, people might even pay it off. The entire point of it is to have it as a disguised graduate tax (I was told that the reason to have it this way rather than as an actual graduate tax was that you could avoid the tax by leaving the country, but you'd still be liable to pay it if it was a "loan" that you never paid off.
Huh. I suppose there are comparisons to be drawn with the contractor loan scheme that came about to evade taxes. Nowhere near exact, but both involved a loan that would never be paid off and both were shenanigans around tax.
They would still be imposed if loans not repaid after 10 years but the first 10 years when starting out on a lower wage should be interest free
lol. This hotel in the Philippines is…. £2,500 a night
However on its website it says “welcome to barefoot luxury, there is no need for a wallet here”
I SHOULD FUCKING WELL HOPE SO, IF I AM PAYING £2,500 A NIGHT
But *you* are not paying, right?
no, obvs not
looks like I am going tho, at least as things stand, so you can stare out at the London grey feeling a tiny bit happier, knowing that I’ll soon be in the 15th best hotel in the world, inshallah
Each to his own, but I've spent far too many nights in "luxury" hotels in foreign cities to be jealous. Personally, despite the often shitty weather and depressing grey skies, I prefer my own bedroom, possessions, home-prepared food, etc.
Luxury hotels are overrated. But then luxury is overrated, in my opinion, at the cost charged. It's like first class air: it's not remotely worth the value for the flight unless you take as sufficiently important not mixing with common people.
That's probably the luxury that you're paying for. And then Leon shows up...
In terms of luxury lifestyle - and relaxed ease in enjoying it, because I’m used to it - I find that these days I am almost always the poshest person in any hotel
The much lesser talked about massive increase cost in going to university, cost of accommodation.
Also, again, as always, very few of those going to uni now are paying back their loan, so another £750, its just another liability for the taxpayer 30 years down the line, rather than the individual really being on the hook for it.
Are you suggesting that it's another example of the Housing Theory of Everything?
Not exactly. Universities, not being able to being able to increase fees, things like accommodation costs they have quietly rammed up more and more to bring in extra income. In conjunction, more going to university, more need spaces, so squeeze, and private operators have come into the market funded by big investors who see it as a way to make superior returns than other capital projects.
And this can be "afforded' by the fact students can take out this much bigger loan.
I'd argue also that the general standard of Uni accommodation has vastly improved in the 30 years since I was an UG. Students expect en suite rooms, decent wi-fi/internet etc. I'd suspect that off campus is vastly better too (although that may be wrong).
Uni's have been very constrained by the funding model and have responded in the ways that they have.
I think that is true, but with that increase in quality (which I think matches the demands of students e.g. wanting an en-suite), the costs have been vastly inflated. Also lots of naughty things, like having to pay for larger number of weeks, when they aren't even there.
There is a reason a number of these mega private hall operators have got into the game in the past 20 years, there is really good money to be made.
Certainly quality has consistently trended upwards.
When my family received a couple of purpose built student houses back from a longer term lease to a local University back in 2012 or so ("no longer required as not good enough eg no ensuites"), which were two from a terrace of 10 identicals, everyone refurbished. I specified that ours would have dishwashers as a "nicer-place-to-live" distinctive vs the others in the terrace, to make sure we had an extra edge and ceteris paribus would rent out first.
At that point it was quite unusual. Now my letting agent tells me that half of their student housing stock has dishwashers installed; I asked them at a meeting last month.
That's basically across the board within any segment.
A dishwasher starts at £219 on Currys.com and lasts circa 10 years. So amortised that's £21.90 a year, or £5.48 per student assuming a four person house.
Hmm.
Roughly. 10 years is a bit ambitious in a student house, and it would want a brand like a Bosch rather than low end - a single repair more than accounts for the difference. It's worth it as an extra layer of "what a nice property" to help further avoid the (admittedly small) risk of having a vacant year. The same goes for decent matched separate washer and dryer, and all the rest.
Market dynamics are that renting to a group of friends early has all the virtues of higher quality tenants who know each other, rather than potentially people who don't, which is far better for the property being looked after. A virtuous spiral.
This year there is still at least one in the terrace still empty - but they did not do a refurb after 6-7 years in 2018/19, and still have fitted bedroom furniture from 2012. They are also on rents ~20% lower.
The much lesser talked about massive increase cost in going to university, cost of accommodation.
Also, again, as always, very few of those going to uni now are paying back their loan, so another £750, its just another liability for the taxpayer 30 years down the line, rather than the individual really being on the hook for it.
Are you suggesting that it's another example of the Housing Theory of Everything?
Not exactly. Universities, not being able to being able to increase fees, things like accommodation costs they have quietly rammed up more and more to bring in extra income. In conjunction, more going to university, more need spaces, so squeeze, and private operators have come into the market funded by big investors who see it as a way to make superior returns than other capital projects.
And this can be "afforded' by the fact students can take out this much bigger loan.
I'd argue also that the general standard of Uni accommodation has vastly improved in the 30 years since I was an UG. Students expect en suite rooms, decent wi-fi/internet etc. I'd suspect that off campus is vastly better too (although that may be wrong).
Uni's have been very constrained by the funding model and have responded in the ways that they have.
I think that is true, but with that increase in quality (which I think matches the demands of students e.g. wanting an en-suite), the costs have been vastly inflated. Also lots of naughty things, like having to pay for larger number of weeks, when they aren't even there.
There is a reason a number of these mega private hall operators have got into the game in the past 20 years, there is really good money to be made.
Certainly quality has consistently trended upwards.
When my family received a couple of purpose built student houses back from a longer term lease to a local University back in 2012 or so ("no longer required as not good enough eg no ensuites"), which were two from a terrace of 10 identicals, everyone refurbished. I specified that ours would have dishwashers as a "nicer-place-to-live" distinctive vs the others in the terrace, to make sure we had an extra edge and ceteris paribus would rent out first.
At that point it was quite unusual. Now my letting agent tells me that half of their student housing stock has dishwashers installed; I asked them at a meeting last month.
That's basically across the board within any segment.
The new builds are light years ahead of halls or flats of 30-40 years ago. Almost all en-suite.
My hall in 1984 was a shared room and was more like an old fashioned youth hostel.
The HMO's of Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool etc are still slums, but probably a fair bit safer due to regulations. No annual tests, smoke detectors, fire doors, fire blanket in kitchen etc in those days. Incomprehensible that anyone would wish to roll back that kind of regulation.
Will normally have gas boilers rather than gas fires and an immersion heater. Better insulated & cheap double glazing (at least in loft) as many rents are all in with utilities.
Few will have a dishwasher. Most students would probably prefer more fridge space.
The much lesser talked about massive increase cost in going to university, cost of accommodation.
Also, again, as always, very few of those going to uni now are paying back their loan, so another £750, its just another liability for the taxpayer 30 years down the line, rather than the individual really being on the hook for it.
Are you suggesting that it's another example of the Housing Theory of Everything?
Not exactly. Universities, not being able to being able to increase fees, things like accommodation costs they have quietly rammed up more and more to bring in extra income. In conjunction, more going to university, more need spaces, so squeeze, and private operators have come into the market funded by big investors who see it as a way to make superior returns than other capital projects.
And this can be "afforded' by the fact students can take out this much bigger loan.
I'd argue also that the general standard of Uni accommodation has vastly improved in the 30 years since I was an UG. Students expect en suite rooms, decent wi-fi/internet etc. I'd suspect that off campus is vastly better too (although that may be wrong).
Uni's have been very constrained by the funding model and have responded in the ways that they have.
I'm not 100% sure about that - for Newcastle to rebuild Castle Leazes (1250 student halls of residence built in the 60s) they've had to enter a joint venture with Unite Students...
And I think the cost is looking at £250m or £125,000 per bedroom.
You then have places like Durham where rent seems to have increased to £180 per room this year (that's for rooms not managed. by the University who continue to expand even though there is little extra accommodation and it restriction on turning more houses into student lets).
Need to be carful about comparables here. A quick check on Durham with Stu Rents says average of £155 pw excl bills for a room in purpose build apartments on current adverts. The £25 is roughly the cost for bills to be included.
One slight question is whether that is leftover 24/25 or for 25/26. Anybody sensible is already advertising for next year.
The comparable I'm using is what houses were renting for in the street Eek twin A bought in last year and this year.
It's early days as the market really kicked off last Friday morning but rents do seem to be high.
It also means we need to sort out her Kitchen so she can have 2 lodgers next year rather than 1..
How would you fund Unis if you don't allow them to increase fees? Genuine question?
They should have a genuine market. Charging economics students at LSE and Cambridge or law students at UCL and Oxford who will go on to earn a fortune as investment bankers, KCs and corporate lawyers the same as arts and humanities graduates at lower ranked universities who will earn average salaries at best if that is just absurd and always has been.
The higher the graduate earnings premium of the course the higher should be the fees
The level of the fees is largely irrelevant now, because the interest charged is greater than the the amount most people are paying it back.
They pay 9% of their marginal income past £25k. If they got the average maintenance loan and the standard fees level, then they'd start with nearly £55k of loan. Unless they are earning over £70k per year, they will be paying less than the interest on the loan and the principal will continue rising.
At this point, then if fees go up to £10,000 per year, or £15,000 per year, or £20,000 per year, or £100,000 per year, the net effect on the graduate is unchanged: they have 9% of their income above £25k per year deducted from their pay slip until the age at which they are exempted from further payments. This is 30 years after the first repayment due for those who started between 2012 and 2023, and 40 years for the poor sods who started in September 2023 and onwards.
Yeah, the system is a mess.
It is a mess. I think it was well intentioned but has gotten out of control. The original idea was that it wouldn't be a graduate tax because you could clear the debt, whereas a graduate tax would keep on being paid. But the practice of it, plus the interest has changed it rather fundamentally.
Sadly the best advice to an 18 year old, once established that they genuinely want to go on the HE either for learning or vocational (or both) reasons, is to entirely disregard how much you borrow and max out, because what you pay back will relate to earnings, not to the size of the debt.
This is especially true for those people (they do exist - O fortunatos nimium) who love learning and education but don't regard it as a springboard to wealth untold.
Best advice is
1) find a degree apprenticeship within the Civil Service 2) find a degree apprenticeship outside the Civil Service 3) go to uni...
Best advice for young people is go abroad. Uni fees are cheap in Europe, you'll learn another language. In US you can probably get a scholarship if you're good academically or at sports and you'll be in a country where salaries are much higher.
Not as easy as it used to be post Brexit. Worse it's getting harder - Holland (as one example) are insisting that all teaching will now be done in Dutch rather than English).
"Holland (as one example) are insisting that all teaching will now be done in Dutch rather than English"
do you have a link for that?
last time I looked there were still plenty of undergraduate courses available in English, and postgraduate English is the norm afaik
lol. This hotel in the Philippines is…. £2,500 a night
However on its website it says “welcome to barefoot luxury, there is no need for a wallet here”
I SHOULD FUCKING WELL HOPE SO, IF I AM PAYING £2,500 A NIGHT
But *you* are not paying, right?
no, obvs not
looks like I am going tho, at least as things stand, so you can stare out at the London grey feeling a tiny bit happier, knowing that I’ll soon be in the 15th best hotel in the world, inshallah
Each to his own, but I've spent far too many nights in "luxury" hotels in foreign cities to be jealous. Personally, despite the often shitty weather and depressing grey skies, I prefer my own bedroom, possessions, home-prepared food, etc.
Luxury hotels are overrated. But then luxury is overrated, in my opinion, at the cost charged. It's like first class air: it's not remotely worth the value for the flight unless you take as sufficiently important not mixing with common people.
What an absurd statement
“Luxury hotels are overrated”
It’s like saying “small countries should be bigger” or “several colours are similar to green” or “I dislike fabrics”
lol. This hotel in the Philippines is…. £2,500 a night
However on its website it says “welcome to barefoot luxury, there is no need for a wallet here”
I SHOULD FUCKING WELL HOPE SO, IF I AM PAYING £2,500 A NIGHT
But *you* are not paying, right?
no, obvs not
looks like I am going tho, at least as things stand, so you can stare out at the London grey feeling a tiny bit happier, knowing that I’ll soon be in the 15th best hotel in the world, inshallah
Each to his own, but I've spent far too many nights in "luxury" hotels in foreign cities to be jealous. Personally, despite the often shitty weather and depressing grey skies, I prefer my own bedroom, possessions, home-prepared food, etc.
Luxury hotels are overrated. But then luxury is overrated, in my opinion, at the cost charged. It's like first class air: it's not remotely worth the value for the flight unless you take as sufficiently important not mixing with common people.
That's probably the luxury that you're paying for. And then Leon shows up...
I find that hotel room prices bear little relation to the standard of the hotel. This year:
The Lynch, is a wonderful country house hotel in Somerton. I can get a vast double bedroom for £140 a night.
Sofitel Gatwick, and Harbour Hotel Salcombe, are both soulless, bog standard hotels, at £200-£235 per night.
San Francisco al Monte is a stunningly good luxury hotel in Naples, where a junior suite with views over the Bay will cost you £240 a night.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges Again, I genuinely hope I’m wrong. Women, the Abortion issue, younger voters, seniors, a better GOTV operation. They could conceivably all combine to give Harris the win. But at the moment, looking at the fundamentals, I just can’t see anything but a Trump victory. Sorry.
If he wins, "it's the economy, stupid". If he loses, it's women, abortion, and so on.
It's a coin flip and nobody knows anything.
I personally wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be a landslide either way rather than the cursed ratio. That's how little we know.
The Selzer poll's methodology biases it towards older women (younger men being less contactable) and the market has over-reacted to it a bit, I think. But equally so, Trump's voteshare has a ceiling until proven otherwise.
I'm inclined to think the economy will win it for Trump, but my view and a fiver will buy you a half of lager and a packet of pork scratchings.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges Again, I genuinely hope I’m wrong. Women, the Abortion issue, younger voters, seniors, a better GOTV operation. They could conceivably all combine to give Harris the win. But at the moment, looking at the fundamentals, I just can’t see anything but a Trump victory. Sorry.
The much lesser talked about massive increase cost in going to university, cost of accommodation.
Also, again, as always, very few of those going to uni now are paying back their loan, so another £750, its just another liability for the taxpayer 30 years down the line, rather than the individual really being on the hook for it.
Are you suggesting that it's another example of the Housing Theory of Everything?
Not exactly. Universities, not being able to being able to increase fees, things like accommodation costs they have quietly rammed up more and more to bring in extra income. In conjunction, more going to university, more need spaces, so squeeze, and private operators have come into the market funded by big investors who see it as a way to make superior returns than other capital projects.
And this can be "afforded' by the fact students can take out this much bigger loan.
I'd argue also that the general standard of Uni accommodation has vastly improved in the 30 years since I was an UG. Students expect en suite rooms, decent wi-fi/internet etc. I'd suspect that off campus is vastly better too (although that may be wrong).
Uni's have been very constrained by the funding model and have responded in the ways that they have.
I think that is true, but with that increase in quality (which I think matches the demands of students e.g. wanting an en-suite), the costs have been vastly inflated. Also lots of naughty things, like having to pay for larger number of weeks, when they aren't even there.
There is a reason a number of these mega private hall operators have got into the game in the past 20 years, there is really good money to be made.
Certainly quality has consistently trended upwards.
When my family received a couple of purpose built student houses back from a longer term lease to a local University back in 2012 or so ("no longer required as not good enough eg no ensuites"), which were two from a terrace of 10 identicals, everyone refurbished. I specified that ours would have dishwashers as a "nicer-place-to-live" distinctive vs the others in the terrace, to make sure we had an extra edge and ceteris paribus would rent out first.
At that point it was quite unusual. Now my letting agent tells me that half of their student housing stock has dishwashers installed; I asked them at a meeting last month.
That's basically across the board within any segment.
The new builds are light years ahead of halls or flats of 30-40 years ago. Almost all en-suite.
My hall in 1984 was a shared room and was more like an old fashioned youth hostel.
The HMO's of Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool etc are still slums, but probably a fair bit safer due to regulations. No annual tests, smoke detectors, fire doors, fire blanket in kitchen etc in those days. Incomprehensible that anyone would wish to roll back that kind of regulation.
Will normally have gas boilers rather than gas fires and an immersion heater. Better insulated & cheap double glazing (at least in loft) as many rents are all in with utilities.
Few will have a dishwasher. Most students would probably prefer more fridge space.
A friend went to Uni in the later 90's and their family were able to buy a 4/5 bed house for her to live in. She lived rent free, rented out the rooms to her friends to cover the mortgage etc. A classic illustration of how the haves get richer and the have nots don't.
lol. This hotel in the Philippines is…. £2,500 a night
However on its website it says “welcome to barefoot luxury, there is no need for a wallet here”
I SHOULD FUCKING WELL HOPE SO, IF I AM PAYING £2,500 A NIGHT
But *you* are not paying, right?
no, obvs not
looks like I am going tho, at least as things stand, so you can stare out at the London grey feeling a tiny bit happier, knowing that I’ll soon be in the 15th best hotel in the world, inshallah
Each to his own, but I've spent far too many nights in "luxury" hotels in foreign cities to be jealous. Personally, despite the often shitty weather and depressing grey skies, I prefer my own bedroom, possessions, home-prepared food, etc.
Luxury hotels are overrated. But then luxury is overrated, in my opinion, at the cost charged. It's like first class air: it's not remotely worth the value for the flight unless you take as sufficiently important not mixing with common people.
What an absurd statement
“Luxury hotels are overrated”
It’s like saying “small countries should be bigger” or “several colours are similar to green” or “I dislike fabrics”
No, not really. Just law of diminishing returns. Comes a point when it is about status rather than objectively superior features or benefits.
lol. This hotel in the Philippines is…. £2,500 a night
However on its website it says “welcome to barefoot luxury, there is no need for a wallet here”
I SHOULD FUCKING WELL HOPE SO, IF I AM PAYING £2,500 A NIGHT
But *you* are not paying, right?
no, obvs not
looks like I am going tho, at least as things stand, so you can stare out at the London grey feeling a tiny bit happier, knowing that I’ll soon be in the 15th best hotel in the world, inshallah
Each to his own, but I've spent far too many nights in "luxury" hotels in foreign cities to be jealous. Personally, despite the often shitty weather and depressing grey skies, I prefer my own bedroom, possessions, home-prepared food, etc.
Luxury hotels are overrated. But then luxury is overrated, in my opinion, at the cost charged. It's like first class air: it's not remotely worth the value for the flight unless you take as sufficiently important not mixing with common people.
That's probably the luxury that you're paying for. And then Leon shows up...
I find that hotel room prices bear little relation to the standard of the hotel. This year:
The Lynch, is a wonderful country house hotel in Somerton. I can get a vast double bedroom for £140 a night.
Sofitel Gatwick, and Harbour Hotel Salcombe, are both soulless, bog standard hotels, at £200-£235 per night.
San Francisco al Monte is a stunningly good luxury hotel in Naples, where a junior suite with views over the Bay will cost you £240 a night.
Premier Inn is usually good enough, although the dining areas/bars can be icky.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges Again, I genuinely hope I’m wrong. Women, the Abortion issue, younger voters, seniors, a better GOTV operation. They could conceivably all combine to give Harris the win. But at the moment, looking at the fundamentals, I just can’t see anything but a Trump victory. Sorry.
Hmmm, Alan Lickman or Dan Hodges? Leave that with me...
I can give Dan another set of “fundamentals” which favours Harris, too. I happen to think he’s quite badly wrong.
We can all point to different factors that we think will be decisive. We can all show reasoning for our decisions. We all are just making our best guess though.
lol. This hotel in the Philippines is…. £2,500 a night
However on its website it says “welcome to barefoot luxury, there is no need for a wallet here”
I SHOULD FUCKING WELL HOPE SO, IF I AM PAYING £2,500 A NIGHT
But *you* are not paying, right?
no, obvs not
looks like I am going tho, at least as things stand, so you can stare out at the London grey feeling a tiny bit happier, knowing that I’ll soon be in the 15th best hotel in the world, inshallah
Each to his own, but I've spent far too many nights in "luxury" hotels in foreign cities to be jealous. Personally, despite the often shitty weather and depressing grey skies, I prefer my own bedroom, possessions, home-prepared food, etc.
Luxury hotels are overrated. But then luxury is overrated, in my opinion, at the cost charged. It's like first class air: it's not remotely worth the value for the flight unless you take as sufficiently important not mixing with common people.
What an absurd statement
“Luxury hotels are overrated”
It’s like saying “small countries should be bigger” or “several colours are similar to green” or “I dislike fabrics”
It's not remotely absurd. I would not want to stay in many / most luxury hotels. If I had the money to spend, I'd spend it differently.
lol. This hotel in the Philippines is…. £2,500 a night
However on its website it says “welcome to barefoot luxury, there is no need for a wallet here”
I SHOULD FUCKING WELL HOPE SO, IF I AM PAYING £2,500 A NIGHT
But *you* are not paying, right?
no, obvs not
looks like I am going tho, at least as things stand, so you can stare out at the London grey feeling a tiny bit happier, knowing that I’ll soon be in the 15th best hotel in the world, inshallah
Each to his own, but I've spent far too many nights in "luxury" hotels in foreign cities to be jealous. Personally, despite the often shitty weather and depressing grey skies, I prefer my own bedroom, possessions, home-prepared food, etc.
Luxury hotels are overrated. But then luxury is overrated, in my opinion, at the cost charged. It's like first class air: it's not remotely worth the value for the flight unless you take as sufficiently important not mixing with common people.
That's probably the luxury that you're paying for. And then Leon shows up...
In terms of luxury lifestyle - and relaxed ease in enjoying it, because I’m used to it - I find that these days I am almost always the poshest person in any hotel
That bad ? Now I really don't see the point.
I’m afraid it’s true
I hear allegedly posh people in their posh hotels braying about their recent week in Soneva Fushi and I inwardly sigh and think Yeah, I’ve been there, but also there there there there there and there
And I was droned in Odesa
So I quietly look down on them. And their timid haute bourgeois lives
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges Again, I genuinely hope I’m wrong. Women, the Abortion issue, younger voters, seniors, a better GOTV operation. They could conceivably all combine to give Harris the win. But at the moment, looking at the fundamentals, I just can’t see anything but a Trump victory. Sorry.
Dan is in the UK, he doesn't know anymore than anyone on here does which basically means he's guessing and then trying to justify his guesswork.
Personally I'm starting to think Harris will win but we really don't have any evidence to back up what is just a hunch...
He seems mildly obsessed with comparing every single number he can find with 2020 pollings and results.
That's the basis of his claim. Trump is better off now than when he went into final lap with Biden and Harris is not doing as well as Biden.
He makes a big point of arguing that pollsters will have corrected for the 2022 miss, but ignored that the changes in polling methodology make comparisons with 2020 polls somewhat suspect.
So one point he compares a 2024 opinion poll with a 2020 exit poll, which is an egregious sin.
But, still. He could be right. When I had a bit more confidence in the polling data as being the best available data I was making essentially the same argument. It's one of the main planks of the case for a comfortable Trump victory.
lol. This hotel in the Philippines is…. £2,500 a night
However on its website it says “welcome to barefoot luxury, there is no need for a wallet here”
I SHOULD FUCKING WELL HOPE SO, IF I AM PAYING £2,500 A NIGHT
But *you* are not paying, right?
no, obvs not
looks like I am going tho, at least as things stand, so you can stare out at the London grey feeling a tiny bit happier, knowing that I’ll soon be in the 15th best hotel in the world, inshallah
Each to his own, but I've spent far too many nights in "luxury" hotels in foreign cities to be jealous. Personally, despite the often shitty weather and depressing grey skies, I prefer my own bedroom, possessions, home-prepared food, etc.
Luxury hotels are overrated. But then luxury is overrated, in my opinion, at the cost charged. It's like first class air: it's not remotely worth the value for the flight unless you take as sufficiently important not mixing with common people.
What an absurd statement
“Luxury hotels are overrated”
It’s like saying “small countries should be bigger” or “several colours are similar to green” or “I dislike fabrics”
I think the star rating can mislead a bit (but I have very limited experience). Stayed in the Hilton at the NEC this year and on the face of it its pretty good, but in reality it was run down, no air-con and a bit shit. They even ran out of certain key foods at breakfast.
lol. This hotel in the Philippines is…. £2,500 a night
However on its website it says “welcome to barefoot luxury, there is no need for a wallet here”
I SHOULD FUCKING WELL HOPE SO, IF I AM PAYING £2,500 A NIGHT
But *you* are not paying, right?
no, obvs not
looks like I am going tho, at least as things stand, so you can stare out at the London grey feeling a tiny bit happier, knowing that I’ll soon be in the 15th best hotel in the world, inshallah
Each to his own, but I've spent far too many nights in "luxury" hotels in foreign cities to be jealous. Personally, despite the often shitty weather and depressing grey skies, I prefer my own bedroom, possessions, home-prepared food, etc.
Luxury hotels are overrated. But then luxury is overrated, in my opinion, at the cost charged. It's like first class air: it's not remotely worth the value for the flight unless you take as sufficiently important not mixing with common people.
What an absurd statement
“Luxury hotels are overrated”
It’s like saying “small countries should be bigger” or “several colours are similar to green” or “I dislike fabrics”
No, not really. Just law of diminishing returns. Comes a point when it is about status rather than objectively superior features or benefits.
Perhaps I set my sights low, but I agree. I could find somewhere more luxurious than San Francisco al Monte, but why bother?
How would you fund Unis if you don't allow them to increase fees? Genuine question?
They should have a genuine market. Charging economics students at LSE and Cambridge or law students at UCL and Oxford who will go on to earn a fortune as investment bankers, KCs and corporate lawyers the same as arts and humanities graduates at lower ranked universities who will earn average salaries at best if that is just absurd and always has been.
The higher the graduate earnings premium of the course the higher should be the fees
The level of the fees is largely irrelevant now, because the interest charged is greater than the the amount most people are paying it back.
They pay 9% of their marginal income past £25k. If they got the average maintenance loan and the standard fees level, then they'd start with nearly £55k of loan. Unless they are earning over £70k per year, they will be paying less than the interest on the loan and the principal will continue rising.
At this point, then if fees go up to £10,000 per year, or £15,000 per year, or £20,000 per year, or £100,000 per year, the net effect on the graduate is unchanged: they have 9% of their income above £25k per year deducted from their pay slip until the age at which they are exempted from further payments. This is 30 years after the first repayment due for those who started between 2012 and 2023, and 40 years for the poor sods who started in September 2023 and onwards.
Yeah, the system is a mess.
That's broadly the system working as intended - it's a graduate tax dressed up as a loan.
Increasing the level of the fee increases the funding to universities, and marginally increases the future expected loan repayments for the minority who do pay the loan back and escape the graduate tax early.
If they were to double the interest rate charged then it would make the system more progressive - higher earners would pay more before paying it off. But people struggle to see past the words used and can't help but think about it in conventional debt terms.
How does the loan appear in government books? An asset?
Calling it a graduate tax would presumably add more to government debt?
I'm not entirely sure, but I think there was discussion at some point about the loan book being sold off, so it might have some impact on how the debt is accounted for.
Thinking over my first response to this news, the short term impact of an increase in fees is an increase in borrowing to spend more on universities. Any extra income from graduates is some distance down the track into the future.
So its better than a freeze for the universities, but in the short-term it's more spending on current expenditure by the government.
As with last week's Budget, it buys a bit of time to work out what the hell to do next. Because whilst it's satisfying to blame the nitwits who left everything about to collapse, that by itself doesn't solve the questions.
The much lesser talked about massive increase cost in going to university, cost of accommodation.
Also, again, as always, very few of those going to uni now are paying back their loan, so another £750, its just another liability for the taxpayer 30 years down the line, rather than the individual really being on the hook for it.
Are you suggesting that it's another example of the Housing Theory of Everything?
Not exactly. Universities, not being able to being able to increase fees, things like accommodation costs they have quietly rammed up more and more to bring in extra income. In conjunction, more going to university, more need spaces, so squeeze, and private operators have come into the market funded by big investors who see it as a way to make superior returns than other capital projects.
And this can be "afforded' by the fact students can take out this much bigger loan.
I'd argue also that the general standard of Uni accommodation has vastly improved in the 30 years since I was an UG. Students expect en suite rooms, decent wi-fi/internet etc. I'd suspect that off campus is vastly better too (although that may be wrong).
Uni's have been very constrained by the funding model and have responded in the ways that they have.
I think that is true, but with that increase in quality (which I think matches the demands of students e.g. wanting an en-suite), the costs have been vastly inflated. Also lots of naughty things, like having to pay for larger number of weeks, when they aren't even there.
There is a reason a number of these mega private hall operators have got into the game in the past 20 years, there is really good money to be made.
Certainly quality has consistently trended upwards.
When my family received a couple of purpose built student houses back from a longer term lease to a local University back in 2012 or so ("no longer required as not good enough eg no ensuites"), which were two from a terrace of 10 identicals, everyone refurbished. I specified that ours would have dishwashers as a "nicer-place-to-live" distinctive vs the others in the terrace, to make sure we had an extra edge and ceteris paribus would rent out first.
At that point it was quite unusual. Now my letting agent tells me that half of their student housing stock has dishwashers installed; I asked them at a meeting last month.
That's basically across the board within any segment.
The new builds are light years ahead of halls or flats of 30-40 years ago. Almost all en-suite.
My hall in 1984 was a shared room and was more like an old fashioned youth hostel.
The HMO's of Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool etc are still slums, but probably a fair bit safer due to regulations. No annual tests, smoke detectors, fire doors, fire blanket in kitchen etc in those days. Incomprehensible that anyone would wish to roll back that kind of regulation.
Will normally have gas boilers rather than gas fires and an immersion heater. Better insulated & cheap double glazing (at least in loft) as many rents are all in with utilities.
Few will have a dishwasher. Most students would probably prefer more fridge space.
A friend went to Uni in the later 90's and their family were able to buy a 4/5 bed house for her to live in. She lived rent free, rented out the rooms to her friends to cover the mortgage etc. A classic illustration of how the haves get richer and the have nots don't.
The much lesser talked about massive increase cost in going to university, cost of accommodation.
Also, again, as always, very few of those going to uni now are paying back their loan, so another £750, its just another liability for the taxpayer 30 years down the line, rather than the individual really being on the hook for it.
Are you suggesting that it's another example of the Housing Theory of Everything?
Not exactly. Universities, not being able to being able to increase fees, things like accommodation costs they have quietly rammed up more and more to bring in extra income. In conjunction, more going to university, more need spaces, so squeeze, and private operators have come into the market funded by big investors who see it as a way to make superior returns than other capital projects.
And this can be "afforded' by the fact students can take out this much bigger loan.
I'd argue also that the general standard of Uni accommodation has vastly improved in the 30 years since I was an UG. Students expect en suite rooms, decent wi-fi/internet etc. I'd suspect that off campus is vastly better too (although that may be wrong).
Uni's have been very constrained by the funding model and have responded in the ways that they have.
I think that is true, but with that increase in quality (which I think matches the demands of students e.g. wanting an en-suite), the costs have been vastly inflated. Also lots of naughty things, like having to pay for larger number of weeks, when they aren't even there.
There's a limit to how many Open Uni residential courses a Uni can host in the holidays... Bath seems to have vast hordes of overseas school children on language exchanges each summer.
At one point, a big revenue earner was not Open Uni or language courses, but corporate gatherings and events. I think some unis now do AirBnB or Booking type schemes to rent out to the public, particularly in towns with a tourist market.
Yes, we rented a room in Bath student accommodation when we went there for daughter's graduation. I did not envy the students locked up in it during Covid, and I didn't think the standard compared well with my late-90s student accommodation.
Bath Uni or Bath Spa? We have lots of varying standard places and of course show the best to the prospective students...
lol. This hotel in the Philippines is…. £2,500 a night
However on its website it says “welcome to barefoot luxury, there is no need for a wallet here”
I SHOULD FUCKING WELL HOPE SO, IF I AM PAYING £2,500 A NIGHT
But *you* are not paying, right?
no, obvs not
looks like I am going tho, at least as things stand, so you can stare out at the London grey feeling a tiny bit happier, knowing that I’ll soon be in the 15th best hotel in the world, inshallah
Each to his own, but I've spent far too many nights in "luxury" hotels in foreign cities to be jealous. Personally, despite the often shitty weather and depressing grey skies, I prefer my own bedroom, possessions, home-prepared food, etc.
Luxury hotels are overrated. But then luxury is overrated, in my opinion, at the cost charged. It's like first class air: it's not remotely worth the value for the flight unless you take as sufficiently important not mixing with common people.
What an absurd statement
“Luxury hotels are overrated”
It’s like saying “small countries should be bigger” or “several colours are similar to green” or “I dislike fabrics”
It's not remotely absurd. I would not want to stay in many / most luxury hotels. If I had the money to spend, I'd spend it differently.
You are missing the point. If you could afford it you wouldn't be making the same kind of calculations that you are making now. Think of something you do or buy now. For plenty of people this would represent luxury beyond compare. But you think nothing of it because you can afford it, value it, and hence partake of it.
Same with fifty grand watches, luxury hotels, and the Rolls-Royce La Rose Noire Droptail*.
lol. This hotel in the Philippines is…. £2,500 a night
However on its website it says “welcome to barefoot luxury, there is no need for a wallet here”
I SHOULD FUCKING WELL HOPE SO, IF I AM PAYING £2,500 A NIGHT
But *you* are not paying, right?
no, obvs not
looks like I am going tho, at least as things stand, so you can stare out at the London grey feeling a tiny bit happier, knowing that I’ll soon be in the 15th best hotel in the world, inshallah
Each to his own, but I've spent far too many nights in "luxury" hotels in foreign cities to be jealous. Personally, despite the often shitty weather and depressing grey skies, I prefer my own bedroom, possessions, home-prepared food, etc.
Luxury hotels are overrated. But then luxury is overrated, in my opinion, at the cost charged. It's like first class air: it's not remotely worth the value for the flight unless you take as sufficiently important not mixing with common people.
That's probably the luxury that you're paying for. And then Leon shows up...
I find that hotel room prices bear little relation to the standard of the hotel. This year:
The Lynch, is a wonderful country house hotel in Somerton. I can get a vast double bedroom for £140 a night.
Sofitel Gatwick, and Harbour Hotel Salcombe, are both soulless, bog standard hotels, at £200-£235 per night.
San Francisco al Monte is a stunningly good luxury hotel in Naples, where a junior suite with views over the Bay will cost you £240 a night.
Premier Inn is usually good enough, although the dining areas/bars can be icky.
Premier Inn always seems to me a bit like a prison.
Liking that "Trump will fix it" slogan on the podium.
I don't think any of our politicians would go for a "Jim'll Fix It" riff and, given his fondness of (talking about) electoral fraud, it does raise the question: Trump will fix... what?
ETA: As for being catching - when his ear got shot a lot of his supporters seemed to suddenly get a similar affliction!
lol. This hotel in the Philippines is…. £2,500 a night
However on its website it says “welcome to barefoot luxury, there is no need for a wallet here”
I SHOULD FUCKING WELL HOPE SO, IF I AM PAYING £2,500 A NIGHT
But *you* are not paying, right?
no, obvs not
looks like I am going tho, at least as things stand, so you can stare out at the London grey feeling a tiny bit happier, knowing that I’ll soon be in the 15th best hotel in the world, inshallah
Each to his own, but I've spent far too many nights in "luxury" hotels in foreign cities to be jealous. Personally, despite the often shitty weather and depressing grey skies, I prefer my own bedroom, possessions, home-prepared food, etc.
Luxury hotels are overrated. But then luxury is overrated, in my opinion, at the cost charged. It's like first class air: it's not remotely worth the value for the flight unless you take as sufficiently important not mixing with common people.
What an absurd statement
“Luxury hotels are overrated”
It’s like saying “small countries should be bigger” or “several colours are similar to green” or “I dislike fabrics”
It's not remotely absurd. I would not want to stay in many / most luxury hotels. If I had the money to spend, I'd spend it differently.
It’s pitifully absurd
What is luxury? How much experience do you have of it? Who is rating them, or overrating them? It’s not you, so who? And does this apply to every “luxury hotel” in the world? How do you possibly know?
How would you fund Unis if you don't allow them to increase fees? Genuine question?
They should have a genuine market. Charging economics students at LSE and Cambridge or law students at UCL and Oxford who will go on to earn a fortune as investment bankers, KCs and corporate lawyers the same as arts and humanities graduates at lower ranked universities who will earn average salaries at best if that is just absurd and always has been.
The higher the graduate earnings premium of the course the higher should be the fees
The level of the fees is largely irrelevant now, because the interest charged is greater than the the amount most people are paying it back.
They pay 9% of their marginal income past £25k. If they got the average maintenance loan and the standard fees level, then they'd start with nearly £55k of loan. Unless they are earning over £70k per year, they will be paying less than the interest on the loan and the principal will continue rising.
At this point, then if fees go up to £10,000 per year, or £15,000 per year, or £20,000 per year, or £100,000 per year, the net effect on the graduate is unchanged: they have 9% of their income above £25k per year deducted from their pay slip until the age at which they are exempted from further payments. This is 30 years after the first repayment due for those who started between 2012 and 2023, and 40 years for the poor sods who started in September 2023 and onwards.
Yeah, the system is a mess.
It is a mess. I think it was well intentioned but has gotten out of control. The original idea was that it wouldn't be a graduate tax because you could clear the debt, whereas a graduate tax would keep on being paid. But the practice of it, plus the interest has changed it rather fundamentally.
Sadly the best advice to an 18 year old, once established that they genuinely want to go on the HE either for learning or vocational (or both) reasons, is to entirely disregard how much you borrow and max out, because what you pay back will relate to earnings, not to the size of the debt.
This is especially true for those people (they do exist - O fortunatos nimium) who love learning and education but don't regard it as a springboard to wealth untold.
Best advice is
1) find a degree apprenticeship within the Civil Service 2) find a degree apprenticeship outside the Civil Service 3) go to uni...
Best advice for young people is go abroad. Uni fees are cheap in Europe, you'll learn another language. In US you can probably get a scholarship if you're good academically or at sports and you'll be in a country where salaries are much higher.
Not as easy as it used to be post Brexit. Worse it's getting harder - Holland (as one example) are insisting that all teaching will now be done in Dutch rather than English).
The number of students going to the eu from the uk was tiny compared to the other way round. Much greater movement between the uk and USA. Despite all the efforts from the EU to throw money into it. Europe, we are just not that into you. We never were. It suited us both selling each others widgets, but you wanted more, kept pushing it, got yourself knocked up when you promised you wouldn’t. And now we are barely on speaking terms.
lol. This hotel in the Philippines is…. £2,500 a night
However on its website it says “welcome to barefoot luxury, there is no need for a wallet here”
I SHOULD FUCKING WELL HOPE SO, IF I AM PAYING £2,500 A NIGHT
But *you* are not paying, right?
no, obvs not
looks like I am going tho, at least as things stand, so you can stare out at the London grey feeling a tiny bit happier, knowing that I’ll soon be in the 15th best hotel in the world, inshallah
Each to his own, but I've spent far too many nights in "luxury" hotels in foreign cities to be jealous. Personally, despite the often shitty weather and depressing grey skies, I prefer my own bedroom, possessions, home-prepared food, etc.
Luxury hotels are overrated. But then luxury is overrated, in my opinion, at the cost charged. It's like first class air: it's not remotely worth the value for the flight unless you take as sufficiently important not mixing with common people.
That's probably the luxury that you're paying for. And then Leon shows up...
In terms of luxury lifestyle - and relaxed ease in enjoying it, because I’m used to it - I find that these days I am almost always the poshest person in any hotel
That bad ? Now I really don't see the point.
I’m afraid it’s true
I hear allegedly posh people in their posh hotels braying about their recent week in Soneva Fushi and I inwardly sigh and think Yeah, I’ve been there, but also there there there there there and there
And I was droned in Odesa
So I quietly look down on them. And their timid haute bourgeois lives
That's why I mean. If you're irritated by the guests, think how the rest of us would feel, transplanted into such surroundings.
Don't get me wrong - there's absolutely stuff I would pay for, if I had the money (which I don't). But this just sounds pointless, and a bit sad.
lol. This hotel in the Philippines is…. £2,500 a night
However on its website it says “welcome to barefoot luxury, there is no need for a wallet here”
I SHOULD FUCKING WELL HOPE SO, IF I AM PAYING £2,500 A NIGHT
But *you* are not paying, right?
no, obvs not
looks like I am going tho, at least as things stand, so you can stare out at the London grey feeling a tiny bit happier, knowing that I’ll soon be in the 15th best hotel in the world, inshallah
Each to his own, but I've spent far too many nights in "luxury" hotels in foreign cities to be jealous. Personally, despite the often shitty weather and depressing grey skies, I prefer my own bedroom, possessions, home-prepared food, etc.
Luxury hotels are overrated. But then luxury is overrated, in my opinion, at the cost charged. It's like first class air: it's not remotely worth the value for the flight unless you take as sufficiently important not mixing with common people.
What an absurd statement
“Luxury hotels are overrated”
It’s like saying “small countries should be bigger” or “several colours are similar to green” or “I dislike fabrics”
I think the star rating can mislead a bit (but I have very limited experience). Stayed in the Hilton at the NEC this year and on the face of it its pretty good, but in reality it was run down, no air-con and a bit shit. They even ran out of certain key foods at breakfast.
I don’t wish to pull rank but… the Hilton at the NEC…. Er, ok
lol. This hotel in the Philippines is…. £2,500 a night
However on its website it says “welcome to barefoot luxury, there is no need for a wallet here”
I SHOULD FUCKING WELL HOPE SO, IF I AM PAYING £2,500 A NIGHT
But *you* are not paying, right?
no, obvs not
looks like I am going tho, at least as things stand, so you can stare out at the London grey feeling a tiny bit happier, knowing that I’ll soon be in the 15th best hotel in the world, inshallah
Each to his own, but I've spent far too many nights in "luxury" hotels in foreign cities to be jealous. Personally, despite the often shitty weather and depressing grey skies, I prefer my own bedroom, possessions, home-prepared food, etc.
Luxury hotels are overrated. But then luxury is overrated, in my opinion, at the cost charged. It's like first class air: it's not remotely worth the value for the flight unless you take as sufficiently important not mixing with common people.
That's probably the luxury that you're paying for. And then Leon shows up...
I find that hotel room prices bear little relation to the standard of the hotel. This year:
The Lynch, is a wonderful country house hotel in Somerton. I can get a vast double bedroom for £140 a night.
Sofitel Gatwick, and Harbour Hotel Salcombe, are both soulless, bog standard hotels, at £200-£235 per night.
San Francisco al Monte is a stunningly good luxury hotel in Naples, where a junior suite with views over the Bay will cost you £240 a night.
Premier Inn is usually good enough, although the dining areas/bars can be icky.
Premier Inn always seems to me a bit like a prison.
I don't have the necessary experience to make a comparison
The much lesser talked about massive increase cost in going to university, cost of accommodation.
Also, again, as always, very few of those going to uni now are paying back their loan, so another £750, its just another liability for the taxpayer 30 years down the line, rather than the individual really being on the hook for it.
Are you suggesting that it's another example of the Housing Theory of Everything?
Not exactly. Universities, not being able to being able to increase fees, things like accommodation costs they have quietly rammed up more and more to bring in extra income. In conjunction, more going to university, more need spaces, so squeeze, and private operators have come into the market funded by big investors who see it as a way to make superior returns than other capital projects.
And this can be "afforded' by the fact students can take out this much bigger loan.
I'd argue also that the general standard of Uni accommodation has vastly improved in the 30 years since I was an UG. Students expect en suite rooms, decent wi-fi/internet etc. I'd suspect that off campus is vastly better too (although that may be wrong).
Uni's have been very constrained by the funding model and have responded in the ways that they have.
I think that is true, but with that increase in quality (which I think matches the demands of students e.g. wanting an en-suite), the costs have been vastly inflated. Also lots of naughty things, like having to pay for larger number of weeks, when they aren't even there.
There is a reason a number of these mega private hall operators have got into the game in the past 20 years, there is really good money to be made.
Certainly quality has consistently trended upwards.
When my family received a couple of purpose built student houses back from a longer term lease to a local University back in 2012 or so ("no longer required as not good enough eg no ensuites"), which were two from a terrace of 10 identicals, everyone refurbished. I specified that ours would have dishwashers as a "nicer-place-to-live" distinctive vs the others in the terrace, to make sure we had an extra edge and ceteris paribus would rent out first.
At that point it was quite unusual. Now my letting agent tells me that half of their student housing stock has dishwashers installed; I asked them at a meeting last month.
That's basically across the board within any segment.
A dishwasher starts at £219 on Currys.com and lasts circa 10 years. So amortised that's £21.90 a year, or £5.48 per student assuming a four person house.
Hmm.
Roughly. 10 years is a bit ambitious in a student house, and it would want a brand like a Bosch rather than low end - a single repair more than accounts for the difference. It's worth it as an extra layer of "what a nice property" to help further avoid the (admittedly small) risk of having a vacant year. The same goes for decent matched separate washer and dryer, and all the rest.
Market dynamics are that renting to a group of friends early has all the virtues of higher quality tenants who know each other, rather than potentially people who don't, which is far better for the property being looked after. A virtuous spiral.
OK, so the dishwasher costs £400 and lasts 5 years. That's £20 per student per year, or £1.60 a month, 40p a week. If we're looking at Durham, where the average cost per student per week is supposedly ~£150, how much has the cost per student per week risen over the last decade or so? My guess is substantially above 40p a week.
It's just classic landlordism. Look at this lovely dishwasher I have bought you out of the kindness of my heart (while putting up rents by 100% over the last decade or so).
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges Again, I genuinely hope I’m wrong. Women, the Abortion issue, younger voters, seniors, a better GOTV operation. They could conceivably all combine to give Harris the win. But at the moment, looking at the fundamentals, I just can’t see anything but a Trump victory. Sorry.
Dan is in the UK, he doesn't know anymore than anyone on here does which basically means he's guessing and then trying to justify his guesswork.
Personally I'm starting to think Harris will win but we really don't have any evidence to back up what is just a hunch...
He seems mildly obsessed with comparing every single number he can find with 2020 pollings and results.
That's the basis of his claim. Trump is better off now than when he went into final lap with Biden and Harris is not doing as well as Biden.
As far as polls go, he is absolutely right.
Trump is doing dramatically better relative to Harris, than he was relative to Biden.
In 2020, Biden was up 6-9 points in the national polling averages. This year, Harris is just up 1 to 2. If the polls are skewed in the same way as 2020, that Trump is home and dry.
Plus, from an economics fundamentals perspective, people have gotten poorer in the last four years. Incumbents are rarely reelected when people feel poorer. (Indeed, look across the world and let me know how many incumbents were reelected in 2024.)
And if almost anyone else - DeSantis, Haley, John from the checkout desk at Petco - was the Republican candidate, then I think they'd walk it. But the Republican Party is in hock to Trump, and he wouldn't support an alternative candidate, and without Trump's support (or with his active opposition) then the Republicans would be fucked.
A candidate who - candidly - is well down the Joe Biden path into mental decline. Plus you have the shadows of January 6, and the abortion issue.
Which means any outcome is possible.
I can well envisage a situation where Trump outperforms on the day and sweeps the states. But I can also envisage one where past vote weighting has led to pollsters underestimating Harris.
As a betting man, I think it's close to 50/50, but maybe with Harris having a slight edge. Polymarket is back back out to almost 60/40 to Trump. It's time to bet on Harris.
lol. This hotel in the Philippines is…. £2,500 a night
However on its website it says “welcome to barefoot luxury, there is no need for a wallet here”
I SHOULD FUCKING WELL HOPE SO, IF I AM PAYING £2,500 A NIGHT
But *you* are not paying, right?
no, obvs not
looks like I am going tho, at least as things stand, so you can stare out at the London grey feeling a tiny bit happier, knowing that I’ll soon be in the 15th best hotel in the world, inshallah
Each to his own, but I've spent far too many nights in "luxury" hotels in foreign cities to be jealous. Personally, despite the often shitty weather and depressing grey skies, I prefer my own bedroom, possessions, home-prepared food, etc.
Luxury hotels are overrated. But then luxury is overrated, in my opinion, at the cost charged. It's like first class air: it's not remotely worth the value for the flight unless you take as sufficiently important not mixing with common people.
That's probably the luxury that you're paying for. And then Leon shows up...
I find that hotel room prices bear little relation to the standard of the hotel. This year:
The Lynch, is a wonderful country house hotel in Somerton. I can get a vast double bedroom for £140 a night.
Sofitel Gatwick, and Harbour Hotel Salcombe, are both soulless, bog standard hotels, at £200-£235 per night.
San Francisco al Monte is a stunningly good luxury hotel in Naples, where a junior suite with views over the Bay will cost you £240 a night.
Premier Inn is usually good enough, although the dining areas/bars can be icky.
Premier Inn always seems to me a bit like a prison.
With a boozer next door just to make you feel at home.
How would you fund Unis if you don't allow them to increase fees? Genuine question?
They should have a genuine market. Charging economics students at LSE and Cambridge or law students at UCL and Oxford who will go on to earn a fortune as investment bankers, KCs and corporate lawyers the same as arts and humanities graduates at lower ranked universities who will earn average salaries at best if that is just absurd and always has been.
The higher the graduate earnings premium of the course the higher should be the fees
The level of the fees is largely irrelevant now, because the interest charged is greater than the the amount most people are paying it back.
They pay 9% of their marginal income past £25k. If they got the average maintenance loan and the standard fees level, then they'd start with nearly £55k of loan. Unless they are earning over £70k per year, they will be paying less than the interest on the loan and the principal will continue rising.
At this point, then if fees go up to £10,000 per year, or £15,000 per year, or £20,000 per year, or £100,000 per year, the net effect on the graduate is unchanged: they have 9% of their income above £25k per year deducted from their pay slip until the age at which they are exempted from further payments. This is 30 years after the first repayment due for those who started between 2012 and 2023, and 40 years for the poor sods who started in September 2023 and onwards.
Yeah, the system is a mess.
That's broadly the system working as intended - it's a graduate tax dressed up as a loan.
Increasing the level of the fee increases the funding to universities, and marginally increases the future expected loan repayments for the minority who do pay the loan back and escape the graduate tax early.
If they were to double the interest rate charged then it would make the system more progressive - higher earners would pay more before paying it off. But people struggle to see past the words used and can't help but think about it in conventional debt terms.
How does the loan appear in government books? An asset?
Calling it a graduate tax would presumably add more to government debt?
I'm not entirely sure, but I think there was discussion at some point about the loan book being sold off, so it might have some impact on how the debt is accounted for.
Thinking over my first response to this news, the short term impact of an increase in fees is an increase in borrowing to spend more on universities. Any extra income from graduates is some distance down the track into the future.
So its better than a freeze for the universities, but in the short-term it's more spending on current expenditure by the government.
As with last week's Budget, it buys a bit of time to work out what the hell to do next. Because whilst it's satisfying to blame the nitwits who left everything about to collapse, that by itself doesn't solve the questions.
Unless I have the maths and timetabling completely wrong, increasing the tuition fees now will involve: the state having to put up more money it hasn't got in loans the universities receiving a tiny bit more income but not enough and no discernible extra return to the lender from the increased loan for about 30 years, as payment back is based on earnings not amount borrowed.
lol. This hotel in the Philippines is…. £2,500 a night
However on its website it says “welcome to barefoot luxury, there is no need for a wallet here”
I SHOULD FUCKING WELL HOPE SO, IF I AM PAYING £2,500 A NIGHT
But *you* are not paying, right?
no, obvs not
looks like I am going tho, at least as things stand, so you can stare out at the London grey feeling a tiny bit happier, knowing that I’ll soon be in the 15th best hotel in the world, inshallah
Each to his own, but I've spent far too many nights in "luxury" hotels in foreign cities to be jealous. Personally, despite the often shitty weather and depressing grey skies, I prefer my own bedroom, possessions, home-prepared food, etc.
Luxury hotels are overrated. But then luxury is overrated, in my opinion, at the cost charged. It's like first class air: it's not remotely worth the value for the flight unless you take as sufficiently important not mixing with common people.
For the cost of eight hours sat in a borrowed seat in a plane first class, if instead you turned right you could own a world class three-piece suite that will look stylish for decades....
Tuition fees rise probably inevitable given damage past govt did to foreign student numbers. Labour should prioritise getting the UK back to being a welcoming place to foreign students, but I fear they'll chicken out as they don't feel confident on immigration.
Charge overseas students full whack, given the UK universities are still the best rated globally after US universities (and sometimes top if you just look at Oxbridge and Imperial) foreign students will still come in large numbers and pay full whack tuition fees
We do charge them full whack (or whatever unis think they can raise). Applications are down 16% vs last year since we banned them bringing families. It's a competitive market and the opportunities look better in Canada, Aus, US.
Good, you come to study not bring all your family too.
A few may go to non US or UK colleges but even Swiss universities are higher ranked than those in Canada and Australia so those will have less demand still
Remember the golden rule- that the one with the gold gets to make the rules. For the bit of the global market that UK Universities are tapping into, the immigration constraints are proving to be a deal-breaker for many.
lol. This hotel in the Philippines is…. £2,500 a night
However on its website it says “welcome to barefoot luxury, there is no need for a wallet here”
I SHOULD FUCKING WELL HOPE SO, IF I AM PAYING £2,500 A NIGHT
But *you* are not paying, right?
no, obvs not
looks like I am going tho, at least as things stand, so you can stare out at the London grey feeling a tiny bit happier, knowing that I’ll soon be in the 15th best hotel in the world, inshallah
Each to his own, but I've spent far too many nights in "luxury" hotels in foreign cities to be jealous. Personally, despite the often shitty weather and depressing grey skies, I prefer my own bedroom, possessions, home-prepared food, etc.
Luxury hotels are overrated. But then luxury is overrated, in my opinion, at the cost charged. It's like first class air: it's not remotely worth the value for the flight unless you take as sufficiently important not mixing with common people.
What an absurd statement
“Luxury hotels are overrated”
It’s like saying “small countries should be bigger” or “several colours are similar to green” or “I dislike fabrics”
It's not remotely absurd. I would not want to stay in many / most luxury hotels. If I had the money to spend, I'd spend it differently.
You are missing the point. If you could afford it you wouldn't be making the same kind of calculations that you are making now. Think of something you do or buy now. For plenty of people this would represent luxury beyond compare. But you think nothing of it because you can afford it, value it, and hence partake of it.
Same with fifty grand watches, luxury hotels, and the Rolls-Royce La Rose Noire Droptail*.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges Again, I genuinely hope I’m wrong. Women, the Abortion issue, younger voters, seniors, a better GOTV operation. They could conceivably all combine to give Harris the win. But at the moment, looking at the fundamentals, I just can’t see anything but a Trump victory. Sorry.
Dan is in the UK, he doesn't know anymore than anyone on here does which basically means he's guessing and then trying to justify his guesswork.
Personally I'm starting to think Harris will win but we really don't have any evidence to back up what is just a hunch...
He seems mildly obsessed with comparing every single number he can find with 2020 pollings and results.
That's the basis of his claim. Trump is better off now than when he went into final lap with Biden and Harris is not doing as well as Biden.
He makes a big point of arguing that pollsters will have corrected for the 2022 miss, but ignored that the changes in polling methodology make comparisons with 2020 polls somewhat suspect.
So one point he compares a 2024 opinion poll with a 2020 exit poll, which is an egregious sin.
But, still. He could be right. When I had a bit more confidence in the polling data as being the best available data I was making essentially the same argument. It's one of the main planks of the case for a comfortable Trump victory.
Well yes, but that’s exactly the issue. We can’t equate 2024 polls with 2020 polls.
To me, the significant issue with the 2024 polls is the lack of noise and variance - it is a very tightly herded cluster of +1/0/-1s. We either read two things into that: 1) the polls are right and consistent and it’ll be a coin toss or 2) the polls are wrong and they’re all off by a fair way (because none of them are really deviating from the “default” MOE tie).
lol. This hotel in the Philippines is…. £2,500 a night
However on its website it says “welcome to barefoot luxury, there is no need for a wallet here”
I SHOULD FUCKING WELL HOPE SO, IF I AM PAYING £2,500 A NIGHT
But *you* are not paying, right?
no, obvs not
looks like I am going tho, at least as things stand, so you can stare out at the London grey feeling a tiny bit happier, knowing that I’ll soon be in the 15th best hotel in the world, inshallah
Each to his own, but I've spent far too many nights in "luxury" hotels in foreign cities to be jealous. Personally, despite the often shitty weather and depressing grey skies, I prefer my own bedroom, possessions, home-prepared food, etc.
Luxury hotels are overrated. But then luxury is overrated, in my opinion, at the cost charged. It's like first class air: it's not remotely worth the value for the flight unless you take as sufficiently important not mixing with common people.
That's probably the luxury that you're paying for. And then Leon shows up...
I find that hotel room prices bear little relation to the standard of the hotel. This year:
The Lynch, is a wonderful country house hotel in Somerton. I can get a vast double bedroom for £140 a night.
Sofitel Gatwick, and Harbour Hotel Salcombe, are both soulless, bog standard hotels, at £200-£235 per night.
San Francisco al Monte is a stunningly good luxury hotel in Naples, where a junior suite with views over the Bay will cost you £240 a night.
Premier Inn is usually good enough, although the dining areas/bars can be icky.
I've never had a good night's sleep in a Premier Inn, but I've had a lot of worse nights of sleep in other hotels.
lol. This hotel in the Philippines is…. £2,500 a night
However on its website it says “welcome to barefoot luxury, there is no need for a wallet here”
I SHOULD FUCKING WELL HOPE SO, IF I AM PAYING £2,500 A NIGHT
But *you* are not paying, right?
no, obvs not
looks like I am going tho, at least as things stand, so you can stare out at the London grey feeling a tiny bit happier, knowing that I’ll soon be in the 15th best hotel in the world, inshallah
Each to his own, but I've spent far too many nights in "luxury" hotels in foreign cities to be jealous. Personally, despite the often shitty weather and depressing grey skies, I prefer my own bedroom, possessions, home-prepared food, etc.
Luxury hotels are overrated. But then luxury is overrated, in my opinion, at the cost charged. It's like first class air: it's not remotely worth the value for the flight unless you take as sufficiently important not mixing with common people.
That's probably the luxury that you're paying for. And then Leon shows up...
I find that hotel room prices bear little relation to the standard of the hotel. This year:
The Lynch, is a wonderful country house hotel in Somerton. I can get a vast double bedroom for £140 a night.
Sofitel Gatwick, and Harbour Hotel Salcombe, are both soulless, bog standard hotels, at £200-£235 per night.
San Francisco al Monte is a stunningly good luxury hotel in Naples, where a junior suite with views over the Bay will cost you £240 a night.
Premier Inn is usually good enough, although the dining areas/bars can be icky.
Premier Inn always seems to me a bit like a prison.
With a boozer next door just to make you feel at home.
As someone who stays in more hotels in a year than many people in a lifetime I have to say I LIKE Premier Inns. They are clean quiet and reliable. And they have good bathrooms
How would you fund Unis if you don't allow them to increase fees? Genuine question?
They should have a genuine market. Charging economics students at LSE and Cambridge or law students at UCL and Oxford who will go on to earn a fortune as investment bankers, KCs and corporate lawyers the same as arts and humanities graduates at lower ranked universities who will earn average salaries at best if that is just absurd and always has been.
The higher the graduate earnings premium of the course the higher should be the fees
The level of the fees is largely irrelevant now, because the interest charged is greater than the the amount most people are paying it back.
They pay 9% of their marginal income past £25k. If they got the average maintenance loan and the standard fees level, then they'd start with nearly £55k of loan. Unless they are earning over £70k per year, they will be paying less than the interest on the loan and the principal will continue rising.
At this point, then if fees go up to £10,000 per year, or £15,000 per year, or £20,000 per year, or £100,000 per year, the net effect on the graduate is unchanged: they have 9% of their income above £25k per year deducted from their pay slip until the age at which they are exempted from further payments. This is 30 years after the first repayment due for those who started between 2012 and 2023, and 40 years for the poor sods who started in September 2023 and onwards.
Yeah, the system is a mess.
That's broadly the system working as intended - it's a graduate tax dressed up as a loan.
Increasing the level of the fee increases the funding to universities, and marginally increases the future expected loan repayments for the minority who do pay the loan back and escape the graduate tax early.
If they were to double the interest rate charged then it would make the system more progressive - higher earners would pay more before paying it off. But people struggle to see past the words used and can't help but think about it in conventional debt terms.
How does the loan appear in government books? An asset?
Calling it a graduate tax would presumably add more to government debt?
I'm not entirely sure, but I think there was discussion at some point about the loan book being sold off, so it might have some impact on how the debt is accounted for.
Thinking over my first response to this news, the short term impact of an increase in fees is an increase in borrowing to spend more on universities. Any extra income from graduates is some distance down the track into the future.
So its better than a freeze for the universities, but in the short-term it's more spending on current expenditure by the government.
As with last week's Budget, it buys a bit of time to work out what the hell to do next. Because whilst it's satisfying to blame the nitwits who left everything about to collapse, that by itself doesn't solve the questions.
Unless I have the maths and timetabling completely wrong, increasing the tuition fees now will involve: the state having to put up more money it hasn't got in loans the universities receiving a tiny bit more income but not enough and no discernible extra return to the lender from the increased loan for about 30 years, as payment back is based on earnings not amount borrowed.
It's a holding operation to give them twelve months to work out a plan, I think. Which sort of shows how much serious planning they've done for government.
lol. This hotel in the Philippines is…. £2,500 a night
However on its website it says “welcome to barefoot luxury, there is no need for a wallet here”
I SHOULD FUCKING WELL HOPE SO, IF I AM PAYING £2,500 A NIGHT
But *you* are not paying, right?
no, obvs not
looks like I am going tho, at least as things stand, so you can stare out at the London grey feeling a tiny bit happier, knowing that I’ll soon be in the 15th best hotel in the world, inshallah
Each to his own, but I've spent far too many nights in "luxury" hotels in foreign cities to be jealous. Personally, despite the often shitty weather and depressing grey skies, I prefer my own bedroom, possessions, home-prepared food, etc.
Luxury hotels are overrated. But then luxury is overrated, in my opinion, at the cost charged. It's like first class air: it's not remotely worth the value for the flight unless you take as sufficiently important not mixing with common people.
That's probably the luxury that you're paying for. And then Leon shows up...
I find that hotel room prices bear little relation to the standard of the hotel. This year:
The Lynch, is a wonderful country house hotel in Somerton. I can get a vast double bedroom for £140 a night.
Sofitel Gatwick, and Harbour Hotel Salcombe, are both soulless, bog standard hotels, at £200-£235 per night.
San Francisco al Monte is a stunningly good luxury hotel in Naples, where a junior suite with views over the Bay will cost you £240 a night.
Premier Inn is usually good enough, although the dining areas/bars can be icky.
Premier Inn always seems to me a bit like a prison.
First big split between the LDs and Labour since Corbyn. The LDs are now calling Reeves' placing a 20% inheritance tax on agricultural estates worth over £1 million a 'tractor tax.'
Could be important as some of the latest polls give a hung parliament with Labour needing LD support to stay in office.
Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrats’ rural affairs spokesman, said: “This claim just doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Rachel Reeves must be living in cloud cuckoo land. It just shows this Labour Government doesn’t understand rural communities. What we cannot afford is to drive farmers out of business and undermine the country’s food security.”
Don't worry. Given and sniff of power the highly principled Lib Dems would abandon the farmers at the drop of a hat.
Not sure they would
Tim Farron is furious and Lib Dems have many rural constituencies
Tim Farron was never that good at economics - he studied Politics.
The reality is that it looks bad, isn't actually that bad and can probably be mitigated for about £500 a year maximum via some extra life assurance..
As Rishi discovered, when you are trying to win a general election being brilliant at economics but crap at politics is not much help.
Economics may help you be an effective Chancellor, knowledge of history and politics is more useful as PM and a party leader
The most important quality of course being whether people would like to go to the pub to have a drink with you.
I think Kemi passes this test.
Not always, who on earth wanted to have a cosy pub drink with Starmer or Thatcher or Heath?
Heath if the conversation was about sailing, perhaps.
Or how awful Thatcher was.
I would imagine he was quite engaging on his preferred topics. Granted some were more niche than others. Classical music, sailing and young men.
Despicable comment - why not just call him a paedo? FFS.
I didn't. I was very specific in my language. And he's dead so he can't sue. Although I doubt he would sue were he still alive.
Why post it? Have you a shred of evidence that he had an interest in 'young men"? Is PB not better than this? I thought you were? I met him once, as an old man. He came into the pub I was working in with his security people, sat and had a drink and a brief chat with the landlord.
The allegations against him come from the same nonsense as the alleged murders of kids at Dolphin Square - the dribbling pathetic fantasies of disturbed minds.
He certainly didn’t accuse Heath of being a pedo, he made remarks about his alleged homosexuality, which is hardly ground breaking (and also not illegal when Heath was PM)
Is there any evidence he was homosexual? I rather suspect he was more asexual than anything else.
There is quite a lot more if you Google . It was probably unwise to make my original comment. However if we weren't too prim to discuss these issues perhaps Greville Janner would have ended his days, where he belonged, in jail.
I apologise for the personal offence I caused you.
Its not a personal offence - its just needless. Its like posting about Trump wearing nappies.
Not sure why discussing whether Trump wears nappies or not would be distasteful or needless. The health and fitness of an aged candidate is surely a legitimate topic of discussion, particularly when he refuses to release his medical records.
Yes, it’s absolutely fair in regards to someone seeking election to the most powerful political position on the planet. A man who can literally end the world by pressing a button
It’s AVOIDING these questions that led to the Democrats screwing up with Biden and ending up with a deeply substandard untested candidate like Harris who may well lose to Trump (I don’t think she will but it is certainly possible)
Surely everyone has learned from that disastrous sequence of events? It is legitimate to question the mental and physical health of any candidate, especially men over 75 trying to be POTUS
Is it discussing his health or is it a ten year olds poo humour? I think the latter. See also the music hall song about a certain German
war time leader and his incomplete set of genitals.
Blimey, I am not the only purveyor of toilet humour on PB. Are you picking on me because I am not of the same tribe as you?
No - what tribe am I? Last time I looked I don't have a tribe. I voted Lib Dem in July if it helps?
Just wait until you hear about Jeremy Thorpe and Cyril Smith.
Jeremy Thorpe and Jimi Hendrix. Who'd have thunk it? Mind you, I suppose there have been less likely matchups between Westminster and Tin Pan Alley, like Harold Wilson and the Beatles, and Jeremy Corbyn at Glastonbury.
lol. This hotel in the Philippines is…. £2,500 a night
However on its website it says “welcome to barefoot luxury, there is no need for a wallet here”
I SHOULD FUCKING WELL HOPE SO, IF I AM PAYING £2,500 A NIGHT
But *you* are not paying, right?
no, obvs not
looks like I am going tho, at least as things stand, so you can stare out at the London grey feeling a tiny bit happier, knowing that I’ll soon be in the 15th best hotel in the world, inshallah
Each to his own, but I've spent far too many nights in "luxury" hotels in foreign cities to be jealous. Personally, despite the often shitty weather and depressing grey skies, I prefer my own bedroom, possessions, home-prepared food, etc.
Luxury hotels are overrated. But then luxury is overrated, in my opinion, at the cost charged. It's like first class air: it's not remotely worth the value for the flight unless you take as sufficiently important not mixing with common people.
For the cost of eight hours sat in a borrowed seat in a plane first class, if instead you turned right you could own a world class three-piece suite that will look stylish for decades....
Topping is right, in the limited sense that those sort of calculations don't matter at all, if you're really rich. But see my reply to Leon, above.
The only reason why these markets could be different would be if:
(a) The election was thrown to the House of Representatives, in which case Trump should be favorite or (b) Trump ceased to be the Republican nominee between now and January 6, and someone else was inaugurated.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges Again, I genuinely hope I’m wrong. Women, the Abortion issue, younger voters, seniors, a better GOTV operation. They could conceivably all combine to give Harris the win. But at the moment, looking at the fundamentals, I just can’t see anything but a Trump victory. Sorry.
Dan is in the UK, he doesn't know anymore than anyone on here does which basically means he's guessing and then trying to justify his guesswork.
Personally I'm starting to think Harris will win but we really don't have any evidence to back up what is just a hunch...
He seems mildly obsessed with comparing every single number he can find with 2020 pollings and results.
That's the basis of his claim. Trump is better off now than when he went into final lap with Biden and Harris is not doing as well as Biden.
He makes a big point of arguing that pollsters will have corrected for the 2022 miss, but ignored that the changes in polling methodology make comparisons with 2020 polls somewhat suspect.
So one point he compares a 2024 opinion poll with a 2020 exit poll, which is an egregious sin.
But, still. He could be right. When I had a bit more confidence in the polling data as being the best available data I was making essentially the same argument. It's one of the main planks of the case for a comfortable Trump victory.
Well yes, but that’s exactly the issue. We can’t equate 2024 polls with 2020 polls.
To me, the significant issue with the 2024 polls is the lack of noise and variance - it is a very tightly herded cluster of +1/0/-1s. We either read two things into that: 1) the polls are right and consistent and it’ll be a coin toss or 2) the polls are wrong and they’re all off by a fair way (because none of them are really deviating from the “default” MOE tie).
lol. This hotel in the Philippines is…. £2,500 a night
However on its website it says “welcome to barefoot luxury, there is no need for a wallet here”
I SHOULD FUCKING WELL HOPE SO, IF I AM PAYING £2,500 A NIGHT
But *you* are not paying, right?
no, obvs not
looks like I am going tho, at least as things stand, so you can stare out at the London grey feeling a tiny bit happier, knowing that I’ll soon be in the 15th best hotel in the world, inshallah
Each to his own, but I've spent far too many nights in "luxury" hotels in foreign cities to be jealous. Personally, despite the often shitty weather and depressing grey skies, I prefer my own bedroom, possessions, home-prepared food, etc.
Luxury hotels are overrated. But then luxury is overrated, in my opinion, at the cost charged. It's like first class air: it's not remotely worth the value for the flight unless you take as sufficiently important not mixing with common people.
For the cost of eight hours sat in a borrowed seat in a plane first class, if instead you turned right you could own a world class three-piece suite that will look stylish for decades....
Topping is right, in the limited sense that those sort of calculations don't matter at all, if you're really rich. But see my reply to Leon, above.
lol. This hotel in the Philippines is…. £2,500 a night
However on its website it says “welcome to barefoot luxury, there is no need for a wallet here”
I SHOULD FUCKING WELL HOPE SO, IF I AM PAYING £2,500 A NIGHT
But *you* are not paying, right?
no, obvs not
looks like I am going tho, at least as things stand, so you can stare out at the London grey feeling a tiny bit happier, knowing that I’ll soon be in the 15th best hotel in the world, inshallah
Each to his own, but I've spent far too many nights in "luxury" hotels in foreign cities to be jealous. Personally, despite the often shitty weather and depressing grey skies, I prefer my own bedroom, possessions, home-prepared food, etc.
Luxury hotels are overrated. But then luxury is overrated, in my opinion, at the cost charged. It's like first class air: it's not remotely worth the value for the flight unless you take as sufficiently important not mixing with common people.
That's probably the luxury that you're paying for. And then Leon shows up...
I find that hotel room prices bear little relation to the standard of the hotel. This year:
The Lynch, is a wonderful country house hotel in Somerton. I can get a vast double bedroom for £140 a night.
Sofitel Gatwick, and Harbour Hotel Salcombe, are both soulless, bog standard hotels, at £200-£235 per night.
San Francisco al Monte is a stunningly good luxury hotel in Naples, where a junior suite with views over the Bay will cost you £240 a night.
Premier Inn is usually good enough, although the dining areas/bars can be icky.
Premier Inn always seems to me a bit like a prison.
The much lesser talked about massive increase cost in going to university, cost of accommodation.
Also, again, as always, very few of those going to uni now are paying back their loan, so another £750, its just another liability for the taxpayer 30 years down the line, rather than the individual really being on the hook for it.
Are you suggesting that it's another example of the Housing Theory of Everything?
Not exactly. Universities, not being able to being able to increase fees, things like accommodation costs they have quietly rammed up more and more to bring in extra income. In conjunction, more going to university, more need spaces, so squeeze, and private operators have come into the market funded by big investors who see it as a way to make superior returns than other capital projects.
And this can be "afforded' by the fact students can take out this much bigger loan.
I'd argue also that the general standard of Uni accommodation has vastly improved in the 30 years since I was an UG. Students expect en suite rooms, decent wi-fi/internet etc. I'd suspect that off campus is vastly better too (although that may be wrong).
Uni's have been very constrained by the funding model and have responded in the ways that they have.
I think that is true, but with that increase in quality (which I think matches the demands of students e.g. wanting an en-suite), the costs have been vastly inflated. Also lots of naughty things, like having to pay for larger number of weeks, when they aren't even there.
There's a limit to how many Open Uni residential courses a Uni can host in the holidays... Bath seems to have vast hordes of overseas school children on language exchanges each summer.
At one point, a big revenue earner was not Open Uni or language courses, but corporate gatherings and events. I think some unis now do AirBnB or Booking type schemes to rent out to the public, particularly in towns with a tourist market.
Yes, we rented a room in Bath student accommodation when we went there for daughter's graduation. I did not envy the students locked up in it during Covid, and I didn't think the standard compared well with my late-90s student accommodation.
Bath Uni or Bath Spa? We have lots of varying standard places and of course show the best to the prospective students...
It was Green Park. Pretty sure that's Bath Uni.
Not necessarily - its quite jumbled. Both Uni's have an informal agreement with the Council over student numbers.
lol. This hotel in the Philippines is…. £2,500 a night
However on its website it says “welcome to barefoot luxury, there is no need for a wallet here”
I SHOULD FUCKING WELL HOPE SO, IF I AM PAYING £2,500 A NIGHT
But *you* are not paying, right?
no, obvs not
looks like I am going tho, at least as things stand, so you can stare out at the London grey feeling a tiny bit happier, knowing that I’ll soon be in the 15th best hotel in the world, inshallah
Each to his own, but I've spent far too many nights in "luxury" hotels in foreign cities to be jealous. Personally, despite the often shitty weather and depressing grey skies, I prefer my own bedroom, possessions, home-prepared food, etc.
Luxury hotels are overrated. But then luxury is overrated, in my opinion, at the cost charged. It's like first class air: it's not remotely worth the value for the flight unless you take as sufficiently important not mixing with common people.
That's probably the luxury that you're paying for. And then Leon shows up...
In terms of luxury lifestyle - and relaxed ease in enjoying it, because I’m used to it - I find that these days I am almost always the poshest person in any hotel
That bad ? Now I really don't see the point.
I’m afraid it’s true
I hear allegedly posh people in their posh hotels braying about their recent week in Soneva Fushi and I inwardly sigh and think Yeah, I’ve been there, but also there there there there there and there
And I was droned in Odesa
So I quietly look down on them. And their timid haute bourgeois lives
That's why I mean. If you're irritated by the guests, think how the rest of us would feel, transplanted into such surroundings.
Don't get me wrong - there's absolutely stuff I would pay for, if I had the money (which I don't). But this just sounds pointless, and a bit sad.
I've stayed at a range of hotels, from the Kulm in St Moritz (old fashioned posh) to Premier Inns (clean bed, and that's about it). I think the key is really finding affordable hotels whose atmosphere suits you. It's unlikely to be top of the range unless you really go for luxury per se. What other people like is pretty irrelevant unless your job is writing reviews.
lol. This hotel in the Philippines is…. £2,500 a night
However on its website it says “welcome to barefoot luxury, there is no need for a wallet here”
I SHOULD FUCKING WELL HOPE SO, IF I AM PAYING £2,500 A NIGHT
But *you* are not paying, right?
no, obvs not
looks like I am going tho, at least as things stand, so you can stare out at the London grey feeling a tiny bit happier, knowing that I’ll soon be in the 15th best hotel in the world, inshallah
Each to his own, but I've spent far too many nights in "luxury" hotels in foreign cities to be jealous. Personally, despite the often shitty weather and depressing grey skies, I prefer my own bedroom, possessions, home-prepared food, etc.
Luxury hotels are overrated. But then luxury is overrated, in my opinion, at the cost charged. It's like first class air: it's not remotely worth the value for the flight unless you take as sufficiently important not mixing with common people.
That's probably the luxury that you're paying for. And then Leon shows up...
I find that hotel room prices bear little relation to the standard of the hotel. This year:
The Lynch, is a wonderful country house hotel in Somerton. I can get a vast double bedroom for £140 a night.
Sofitel Gatwick, and Harbour Hotel Salcombe, are both soulless, bog standard hotels, at £200-£235 per night.
San Francisco al Monte is a stunningly good luxury hotel in Naples, where a junior suite with views over the Bay will cost you £240 a night.
Premier Inn is usually good enough, although the dining areas/bars can be icky.
Premier Inn always seems to me a bit like a prison.
With a boozer next door just to make you feel at home.
As someone who stays in more hotels in a year than many people in a lifetime I have to say I LIKE Premier Inns. They are clean quiet and reliable. And they have good bathrooms
I was a rep on the road for ten years. Pubs in the middle of nowhere. Villages. The best places I stayed in. As for any noise in the bar. I got to know the locals so I was there with them. I learnt a lot and had a laugh and joke from time to time.
Tuition fees rise probably inevitable given damage past govt did to foreign student numbers. Labour should prioritise getting the UK back to being a welcoming place to foreign students, but I fear they'll chicken out as they don't feel confident on immigration.
Charge overseas students full whack, given the UK universities are still the best rated globally after US universities (and sometimes top if you just look at Oxbridge and Imperial) foreign students will still come in large numbers and pay full whack tuition fees
We do charge them full whack (or whatever unis think they can raise). Applications are down 16% vs last year since we banned them bringing families. It's a competitive market and the opportunities look better in Canada, Aus, US.
Good, you come to study not bring all your family too.
A few may go to non US or UK colleges but even Swiss universities are higher ranked than those in Canada and Australia so those will have less demand still
Remember the golden rule- that the one with the gold gets to make the rules. For the bit of the global market that UK Universities are tapping into, the immigration constraints are proving to be a deal-breaker for many.
And universities do kind of need the money.
Universities should be allowed to charge fees at market rate based on earnings premium as I said, including for overseas students.
Not increase immigration tensions and add to demand on public services and homes in the UK yet further by allowing overseas students to bring all their family with them.
If Trump wins tomorrow he is also likely to restrict immigration options for students to the US anyway
The much lesser talked about massive increase cost in going to university, cost of accommodation.
Also, again, as always, very few of those going to uni now are paying back their loan, so another £750, its just another liability for the taxpayer 30 years down the line, rather than the individual really being on the hook for it.
Are you suggesting that it's another example of the Housing Theory of Everything?
Not exactly. Universities, not being able to being able to increase fees, things like accommodation costs they have quietly rammed up more and more to bring in extra income. In conjunction, more going to university, more need spaces, so squeeze, and private operators have come into the market funded by big investors who see it as a way to make superior returns than other capital projects.
And this can be "afforded' by the fact students can take out this much bigger loan.
I'd argue also that the general standard of Uni accommodation has vastly improved in the 30 years since I was an UG. Students expect en suite rooms, decent wi-fi/internet etc. I'd suspect that off campus is vastly better too (although that may be wrong).
Uni's have been very constrained by the funding model and have responded in the ways that they have.
I think that is true, but with that increase in quality (which I think matches the demands of students e.g. wanting an en-suite), the costs have been vastly inflated. Also lots of naughty things, like having to pay for larger number of weeks, when they aren't even there.
There is a reason a number of these mega private hall operators have got into the game in the past 20 years, there is really good money to be made.
Certainly quality has consistently trended upwards.
When my family received a couple of purpose built student houses back from a longer term lease to a local University back in 2012 or so ("no longer required as not good enough eg no ensuites"), which were two from a terrace of 10 identicals, everyone refurbished. I specified that ours would have dishwashers as a "nicer-place-to-live" distinctive vs the others in the terrace, to make sure we had an extra edge and ceteris paribus would rent out first.
At that point it was quite unusual. Now my letting agent tells me that half of their student housing stock has dishwashers installed; I asked them at a meeting last month.
That's basically across the board within any segment.
The new builds are light years ahead of halls or flats of 30-40 years ago. Almost all en-suite.
My hall in 1984 was a shared room and was more like an old fashioned youth hostel.
The HMO's of Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool etc are still slums, but probably a fair bit safer due to regulations. No annual tests, smoke detectors, fire doors, fire blanket in kitchen etc in those days. Incomprehensible that anyone would wish to roll back that kind of regulation.
Will normally have gas boilers rather than gas fires and an immersion heater. Better insulated & cheap double glazing (at least in loft) as many rents are all in with utilities.
Few will have a dishwasher. Most students would probably prefer more fridge space.
Yep - it's very much the market you are in. eg Overseas students will pay more often for a hall with a concierge.
The ones I'm discussing were purpose built in ~1993 with one shower room for 3 bedrooms on each of two floors, and the whole downstairs being a kitchen diner lounge. For fridges there have always been 2x full size fridge freezers, so each student gets a full fridge shelf and a full freezer shelf, and their own 500mm kitchen cupboard. Burglar alarms fitted, five burner gas hob, oven, microwave, toaster, breakfast bar for 3 or 4, plus a table and chairs, obvs GFCH & free internet, and double sink. Lots of sockets in the rooms - I think 4 doubles.
Back in 2012 we also put big Smart TVs in the seating area, and leatherette sofas, which were popular. We also went with walk-in 1.7m x 1.0m showers as a distinctive with shower panels not tiles, not small cubicles.
EPC grades are C.
So good, well-designed, well-equipped, well located houses. Really it is knowing the market and sweating the detail.
My agent runs with a ratio of approx one staff member to 35 houses, so also a good service.
How would you fund Unis if you don't allow them to increase fees? Genuine question?
They should have a genuine market. Charging economics students at LSE and Cambridge or law students at UCL and Oxford who will go on to earn a fortune as investment bankers, KCs and corporate lawyers the same as arts and humanities graduates at lower ranked universities who will earn average salaries at best if that is just absurd and always has been.
The higher the graduate earnings premium of the course the higher should be the fees
The level of the fees is largely irrelevant now, because the interest charged is greater than the the amount most people are paying it back.
They pay 9% of their marginal income past £25k. If they got the average maintenance loan and the standard fees level, then they'd start with nearly £55k of loan. Unless they are earning over £70k per year, they will be paying less than the interest on the loan and the principal will continue rising.
At this point, then if fees go up to £10,000 per year, or £15,000 per year, or £20,000 per year, or £100,000 per year, the net effect on the graduate is unchanged: they have 9% of their income above £25k per year deducted from their pay slip until the age at which they are exempted from further payments. This is 30 years after the first repayment due for those who started between 2012 and 2023, and 40 years for the poor sods who started in September 2023 and onwards.
Yeah, the system is a mess.
That's broadly the system working as intended - it's a graduate tax dressed up as a loan.
Increasing the level of the fee increases the funding to universities, and marginally increases the future expected loan repayments for the minority who do pay the loan back and escape the graduate tax early.
If they were to double the interest rate charged then it would make the system more progressive - higher earners would pay more before paying it off. But people struggle to see past the words used and can't help but think about it in conventional debt terms.
How does the loan appear in government books? An asset?
Calling it a graduate tax would presumably add more to government debt?
I'm not entirely sure, but I think there was discussion at some point about the loan book being sold off, so it might have some impact on how the debt is accounted for.
Thinking over my first response to this news, the short term impact of an increase in fees is an increase in borrowing to spend more on universities. Any extra income from graduates is some distance down the track into the future.
So its better than a freeze for the universities, but in the short-term it's more spending on current expenditure by the government.
As with last week's Budget, it buys a bit of time to work out what the hell to do next. Because whilst it's satisfying to blame the nitwits who left everything about to collapse, that by itself doesn't solve the questions.
Unless I have the maths and timetabling completely wrong, increasing the tuition fees now will involve: the state having to put up more money it hasn't got in loans the universities receiving a tiny bit more income but not enough and no discernible extra return to the lender from the increased loan for about 30 years, as payment back is based on earnings not amount borrowed.
It's a holding operation to give them twelve months to work out a plan, I think. Which sort of shows how much serious planning they've done for government.
And it may well still see some universities fail.
It may happen, but so far there have been lots of places under financial stress (and thus staff freezes, poor pay rounds, non replacement of staff, early exit schemes etc). Are we a bit complacent - football clubs were forever going bust but not actually disappearing until one day Bury did just that.
lol. This hotel in the Philippines is…. £2,500 a night
However on its website it says “welcome to barefoot luxury, there is no need for a wallet here”
I SHOULD FUCKING WELL HOPE SO, IF I AM PAYING £2,500 A NIGHT
But *you* are not paying, right?
no, obvs not
looks like I am going tho, at least as things stand, so you can stare out at the London grey feeling a tiny bit happier, knowing that I’ll soon be in the 15th best hotel in the world, inshallah
Each to his own, but I've spent far too many nights in "luxury" hotels in foreign cities to be jealous. Personally, despite the often shitty weather and depressing grey skies, I prefer my own bedroom, possessions, home-prepared food, etc.
Luxury hotels are overrated. But then luxury is overrated, in my opinion, at the cost charged. It's like first class air: it's not remotely worth the value for the flight unless you take as sufficiently important not mixing with common people.
That's probably the luxury that you're paying for. And then Leon shows up...
I find that hotel room prices bear little relation to the standard of the hotel. This year:
The Lynch, is a wonderful country house hotel in Somerton. I can get a vast double bedroom for £140 a night.
Sofitel Gatwick, and Harbour Hotel Salcombe, are both soulless, bog standard hotels, at £200-£235 per night.
San Francisco al Monte is a stunningly good luxury hotel in Naples, where a junior suite with views over the Bay will cost you £240 a night.
Premier Inn is usually good enough, although the dining areas/bars can be icky.
Premier Inn always seems to me a bit like a prison.
How many prisons have you stayed in?
There's the converted one in Oxford.
And I went to boarding school in the 70s.
I’ve done actual bird in HMP Wormwood Scrubs and HMP Brixton
I can report that Premier Inns are notably better. For instance during a recent stay at the Premier Inn Swindon (M4 Westbound) I didn’t have to “slop out” my own feces in the morning, and tho the breakfast buffet was a touch disappointing I was at no point threatened by Muslim gangsters promising to gut me open with a homemade shiv
lol. This hotel in the Philippines is…. £2,500 a night
However on its website it says “welcome to barefoot luxury, there is no need for a wallet here”
I SHOULD FUCKING WELL HOPE SO, IF I AM PAYING £2,500 A NIGHT
But *you* are not paying, right?
no, obvs not
looks like I am going tho, at least as things stand, so you can stare out at the London grey feeling a tiny bit happier, knowing that I’ll soon be in the 15th best hotel in the world, inshallah
Each to his own, but I've spent far too many nights in "luxury" hotels in foreign cities to be jealous. Personally, despite the often shitty weather and depressing grey skies, I prefer my own bedroom, possessions, home-prepared food, etc.
Luxury hotels are overrated. But then luxury is overrated, in my opinion, at the cost charged. It's like first class air: it's not remotely worth the value for the flight unless you take as sufficiently important not mixing with common people.
That's probably the luxury that you're paying for. And then Leon shows up...
I find that hotel room prices bear little relation to the standard of the hotel. This year:
The Lynch, is a wonderful country house hotel in Somerton. I can get a vast double bedroom for £140 a night.
Sofitel Gatwick, and Harbour Hotel Salcombe, are both soulless, bog standard hotels, at £200-£235 per night.
San Francisco al Monte is a stunningly good luxury hotel in Naples, where a junior suite with views over the Bay will cost you £240 a night.
Premier Inn is usually good enough, although the dining areas/bars can be icky.
Well as Sir Lenny of Henry used to say on the ads. Everything's premier but the price.
How would you fund Unis if you don't allow them to increase fees? Genuine question?
They should have a genuine market. Charging economics students at LSE and Cambridge or law students at UCL and Oxford who will go on to earn a fortune as investment bankers, KCs and corporate lawyers the same as arts and humanities graduates at lower ranked universities who will earn average salaries at best if that is just absurd and always has been.
The higher the graduate earnings premium of the course the higher should be the fees
The level of the fees is largely irrelevant now, because the interest charged is greater than the the amount most people are paying it back.
They pay 9% of their marginal income past £25k. If they got the average maintenance loan and the standard fees level, then they'd start with nearly £55k of loan. Unless they are earning over £70k per year, they will be paying less than the interest on the loan and the principal will continue rising.
At this point, then if fees go up to £10,000 per year, or £15,000 per year, or £20,000 per year, or £100,000 per year, the net effect on the graduate is unchanged: they have 9% of their income above £25k per year deducted from their pay slip until the age at which they are exempted from further payments. This is 30 years after the first repayment due for those who started between 2012 and 2023, and 40 years for the poor sods who started in September 2023 and onwards.
Yeah, the system is a mess.
It is a mess. I think it was well intentioned but has gotten out of control. The original idea was that it wouldn't be a graduate tax because you could clear the debt, whereas a graduate tax would keep on being paid. But the practice of it, plus the interest has changed it rather fundamentally.
Sadly the best advice to an 18 year old, once established that they genuinely want to go on the HE either for learning or vocational (or both) reasons, is to entirely disregard how much you borrow and max out, because what you pay back will relate to earnings, not to the size of the debt.
This is especially true for those people (they do exist - O fortunatos nimium) who love learning and education but don't regard it as a springboard to wealth untold.
Best advice is
1) find a degree apprenticeship within the Civil Service 2) find a degree apprenticeship outside the Civil Service 3) go to uni...
Best advice for young people is go abroad. Uni fees are cheap in Europe, you'll learn another language. In US you can probably get a scholarship if you're good academically or at sports and you'll be in a country where salaries are much higher.
Not as easy as it used to be post Brexit. Worse it's getting harder - Holland (as one example) are insisting that all teaching will now be done in Dutch rather than English).
"Holland (as one example) are insisting that all teaching will now be done in Dutch rather than English"
do you have a link for that?
last time I looked there were still plenty of undergraduate courses available in English, and postgraduate English is the norm afaik
There's been a lot of controversy about it recently.
The new rules that are supposed to ensure that English is used less often as the language of instruction at research and applied science university courses in the Netherlands could become stricter, said Education Minister Eppo Bruins on Tuesday. The minister is pressing forward with a bill first introduced by his predecessor, Robbert Dijkgraaf, but Bruins said he wants to adjust the underlying regulations to prevent too many courses from being exempted from these rules.
The law is known as the Wet internationalisering in balans, or the Balanced Internationalization Act. The Cabinet wants the law to regulate that a maximum of one-third of the courses taken for credit in bachelor’s programmes be offered in a language other than Dutch.
While the minister has said he wants the law to improve Dutch language skills while countering what he sees as the anglicisation of education, he also wants to cut down on the number of foreign students enrolled in higher education in the Netherlands. “The large influx puts pressure on student housing, causes overcrowded lecture halls and high pressure on lecturers,” he explained.
The only reason why these markets could be different would be if:
(a) The election was thrown to the House of Representatives, in which case Trump should be favorite or (b) Trump ceased to be the Republican nominee between now and January 6, and someone else was inaugurated.
Trump having a 2% chance of keeling over doesn't seem that out of line. TBH, it feels a little low.
lol. This hotel in the Philippines is…. £2,500 a night
However on its website it says “welcome to barefoot luxury, there is no need for a wallet here”
I SHOULD FUCKING WELL HOPE SO, IF I AM PAYING £2,500 A NIGHT
But *you* are not paying, right?
no, obvs not
looks like I am going tho, at least as things stand, so you can stare out at the London grey feeling a tiny bit happier, knowing that I’ll soon be in the 15th best hotel in the world, inshallah
Each to his own, but I've spent far too many nights in "luxury" hotels in foreign cities to be jealous. Personally, despite the often shitty weather and depressing grey skies, I prefer my own bedroom, possessions, home-prepared food, etc.
Luxury hotels are overrated. But then luxury is overrated, in my opinion, at the cost charged. It's like first class air: it's not remotely worth the value for the flight unless you take as sufficiently important not mixing with common people.
That's probably the luxury that you're paying for. And then Leon shows up...
I find that hotel room prices bear little relation to the standard of the hotel. This year:
The Lynch, is a wonderful country house hotel in Somerton. I can get a vast double bedroom for £140 a night.
Sofitel Gatwick, and Harbour Hotel Salcombe, are both soulless, bog standard hotels, at £200-£235 per night.
San Francisco al Monte is a stunningly good luxury hotel in Naples, where a junior suite with views over the Bay will cost you £240 a night.
Premier Inn is usually good enough, although the dining areas/bars can be icky.
Premier Inn always seems to me a bit like a prison.
How many prisons have you stayed in?
There's the converted one in Oxford.
And I went to boarding school in the 70s.
I’ve done actual bird in HMP Wormwood Scrubs and HMP Brixton
I can report that Premier Inns are notably better. For instance during a recent stay at the Premier Inn Swindon (M4 Westbound) I didn’t have to “slop out” my own feces in the morning, and tho the breakfast buffet was a touch disappointing I was at no point threatened by Muslim gangsters promising to gut me open with a homemade shiv
I'm relieved to say that you can one up me there. Though I was banged up with a few (subsequently convicted) paedophiles.
How would you fund Unis if you don't allow them to increase fees? Genuine question?
They should have a genuine market. Charging economics students at LSE and Cambridge or law students at UCL and Oxford who will go on to earn a fortune as investment bankers, KCs and corporate lawyers the same as arts and humanities graduates at lower ranked universities who will earn average salaries at best if that is just absurd and always has been.
The higher the graduate earnings premium of the course the higher should be the fees
The level of the fees is largely irrelevant now, because the interest charged is greater than the the amount most people are paying it back.
They pay 9% of their marginal income past £25k. If they got the average maintenance loan and the standard fees level, then they'd start with nearly £55k of loan. Unless they are earning over £70k per year, they will be paying less than the interest on the loan and the principal will continue rising.
At this point, then if fees go up to £10,000 per year, or £15,000 per year, or £20,000 per year, or £100,000 per year, the net effect on the graduate is unchanged: they have 9% of their income above £25k per year deducted from their pay slip until the age at which they are exempted from further payments. This is 30 years after the first repayment due for those who started between 2012 and 2023, and 40 years for the poor sods who started in September 2023 and onwards.
Yeah, the system is a mess.
It is a mess. I think it was well intentioned but has gotten out of control. The original idea was that it wouldn't be a graduate tax because you could clear the debt, whereas a graduate tax would keep on being paid. But the practice of it, plus the interest has changed it rather fundamentally.
Sadly the best advice to an 18 year old, once established that they genuinely want to go on the HE either for learning or vocational (or both) reasons, is to entirely disregard how much you borrow and max out, because what you pay back will relate to earnings, not to the size of the debt.
This is especially true for those people (they do exist - O fortunatos nimium) who love learning and education but don't regard it as a springboard to wealth untold.
Best advice is
1) find a degree apprenticeship within the Civil Service 2) find a degree apprenticeship outside the Civil Service 3) go to uni...
Best advice for young people is go abroad. Uni fees are cheap in Europe, you'll learn another language. In US you can probably get a scholarship if you're good academically or at sports and you'll be in a country where salaries are much higher.
Not as easy as it used to be post Brexit. Worse it's getting harder - Holland (as one example) are insisting that all teaching will now be done in Dutch rather than English).
"Holland (as one example) are insisting that all teaching will now be done in Dutch rather than English"
do you have a link for that?
last time I looked there were still plenty of undergraduate courses available in English, and postgraduate English is the norm afaik
There's been a lot of controversy about it recently.
The new rules that are supposed to ensure that English is used less often as the language of instruction at research and applied science university courses in the Netherlands could become stricter, said Education Minister Eppo Bruins on Tuesday. The minister is pressing forward with a bill first introduced by his predecessor, Robbert Dijkgraaf, but Bruins said he wants to adjust the underlying regulations to prevent too many courses from being exempted from these rules.
The law is known as the Wet internationalisering in balans, or the Balanced Internationalization Act. The Cabinet wants the law to regulate that a maximum of one-third of the courses taken for credit in bachelor’s programmes be offered in a language other than Dutch.
While the minister has said he wants the law to improve Dutch language skills while countering what he sees as the anglicisation of education, he also wants to cut down on the number of foreign students enrolled in higher education in the Netherlands. “The large influx puts pressure on student housing, causes overcrowded lecture halls and high pressure on lecturers,” he explained.
I have several American friends, whose kids who have gone to Dutch universities, because they are inexpensive and offer good educations, and relatively low (compared to the US) cost of living.
lol. This hotel in the Philippines is…. £2,500 a night
However on its website it says “welcome to barefoot luxury, there is no need for a wallet here”
I SHOULD FUCKING WELL HOPE SO, IF I AM PAYING £2,500 A NIGHT
But *you* are not paying, right?
no, obvs not
looks like I am going tho, at least as things stand, so you can stare out at the London grey feeling a tiny bit happier, knowing that I’ll soon be in the 15th best hotel in the world, inshallah
Each to his own, but I've spent far too many nights in "luxury" hotels in foreign cities to be jealous. Personally, despite the often shitty weather and depressing grey skies, I prefer my own bedroom, possessions, home-prepared food, etc.
"Luxury" hotels are such a poor bang for buck. And half the time they're not even relaxing. Watching out for being shafted for £10 for a bottle of water, trying to master room light switches and shower controls that didn't need reinventing, getting a migraine trying to work out what room category to select to get what upgrade based on what pathetically named elite status I have with the chain.
lol. This hotel in the Philippines is…. £2,500 a night
However on its website it says “welcome to barefoot luxury, there is no need for a wallet here”
I SHOULD FUCKING WELL HOPE SO, IF I AM PAYING £2,500 A NIGHT
But *you* are not paying, right?
no, obvs not
looks like I am going tho, at least as things stand, so you can stare out at the London grey feeling a tiny bit happier, knowing that I’ll soon be in the 15th best hotel in the world, inshallah
Each to his own, but I've spent far too many nights in "luxury" hotels in foreign cities to be jealous. Personally, despite the often shitty weather and depressing grey skies, I prefer my own bedroom, possessions, home-prepared food, etc.
Luxury hotels are overrated. But then luxury is overrated, in my opinion, at the cost charged. It's like first class air: it's not remotely worth the value for the flight unless you take as sufficiently important not mixing with common people.
That's probably the luxury that you're paying for. And then Leon shows up...
I find that hotel room prices bear little relation to the standard of the hotel. This year:
The Lynch, is a wonderful country house hotel in Somerton. I can get a vast double bedroom for £140 a night.
Sofitel Gatwick, and Harbour Hotel Salcombe, are both soulless, bog standard hotels, at £200-£235 per night.
San Francisco al Monte is a stunningly good luxury hotel in Naples, where a junior suite with views over the Bay will cost you £240 a night.
Premier Inn is usually good enough, although the dining areas/bars can be icky.
I've never had a good night's sleep in a Premier Inn, but I've had a lot of worse nights of sleep in other hotels.
Raising tuition fees? For reasons discussed at length above that’s pointless given how the payments go, but will annoy lots of young voters. Is Starmer doing this for a bet? Can we reawaken all the “Tory sleeper agent” jokes?
After the Election, California (Yes, That Hellscape) Will Keep Moving the World Forward No Matter What The state has been written off as a woke wasteland. But it’s still inventing the future on a bunch of frontiers nobody’s talking about. Even if Trump wins, it will remain a golden, global example. https://www.wired.com/story/california-will-keep-moving-the-world-forward/
The only reason why these markets could be different would be if:
(a) The election was thrown to the House of Representatives, in which case Trump should be favorite or (b) Trump ceased to be the Republican nominee between now and January 6, and someone else was inaugurated.
Simples. One market is manipulated, the other tracks the manipulated market through arbers but doesnt have the deep money skewing it.
Comments
Calling it a graduate tax would presumably add more to government debt?
I mean, I am unused to getting a bill, so I bridle - “What? You expect me to PAY???”
One day not that far off my lucky life will end & I shall have to retire, but as long as it continues it is a blast. Not gonna lie
The interest rate should be the lower of the BoE Base Rate or CPI, and make it a state loan on the government's books.
Hmm.
If it were me, I'd just have stuck £100 on Georgia. More potential profit; downside £100.
And then Leon shows up...
Extraordinary. And all cheered on by
you lotthe Great British Public.(((Dan Hodges)))
@DPJHodges
Again, I genuinely hope I’m wrong. Women, the Abortion issue, younger voters, seniors, a better GOTV operation. They could conceivably all combine to give Harris the win. But at the moment, looking at the fundamentals, I just can’t see anything but a Trump victory. Sorry.
https://x.com/DPJHodges/status/1853420630537843087
One slight question is whether that is leftover 24/25 or for 25/26. Anybody sensible is already advertising for next year.
Personally I'm starting to think Harris will win but we really don't have any evidence to back up what is just a hunch...
Thinking over my first response to this news, the short term impact of an increase in fees is an increase in borrowing to spend more on universities. Any extra income from graduates is some distance down the track into the future.
So its better than a freeze for the universities, but in the short-term it's more spending on current expenditure by the government.
Without interest on loans, then, why, people might even pay it off.
The entire point of it is to have it as a disguised graduate tax (I was told that the reason to have it this way rather than as an actual graduate tax was that you could avoid the tax by leaving the country, but you'd still be liable to pay it if it was a "loan" that you never paid off.
Huh. I suppose there are comparisons to be drawn with the contractor loan scheme that came about to evade taxes. Nowhere near exact, but both involved a loan that would never be paid off and both were shenanigans around tax.
That's the basis of his claim. Trump is better off now than when he went into final lap with Biden and Harris is not doing as well as Biden.
It's certainly not the system I would have chosen, but any radical change looks likely to be very expensive, and there are much higher priorities.
Hmmm, Alan Lickman or Dan Hodges? Leave that with me...
A few may go to non US or UK colleges but even Swiss universities are higher ranked than those in Canada and Australia so those will have less demand still
Now I really don't see the point.
Market dynamics are that renting to a group of friends early has all the virtues of higher quality tenants who know each other, rather than potentially people who don't, which is far better for the property being looked after. A virtuous spiral.
This year there is still at least one in the terrace still empty - but they did not do a refurb after 6-7 years in 2018/19, and still have fitted bedroom furniture from 2012. They are also on rents ~20% lower.
My hall in 1984 was a shared room and was more like an old fashioned youth hostel.
The HMO's of Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool etc are still slums, but probably a fair bit safer due to regulations.
No annual tests, smoke detectors, fire doors, fire blanket in kitchen etc in those days.
Incomprehensible that anyone would wish to roll back that kind of regulation.
Will normally have gas boilers rather than gas fires and an immersion heater. Better insulated & cheap double glazing (at least in loft) as many rents are all in with utilities.
Few will have a dishwasher. Most students would probably prefer more fridge space.
It's early days as the market really kicked off last Friday morning but rents do seem to be high.
It also means we need to sort out her Kitchen so she can have 2 lodgers next year rather than 1..
do you have a link for that?
last time I looked there were still plenty of undergraduate courses available in English, and postgraduate English is the norm afaik
“Luxury hotels are overrated”
It’s like saying “small countries should be bigger” or “several colours are similar to green” or “I dislike fabrics”
The Lynch, is a wonderful country house hotel in Somerton. I can get a vast double bedroom for £140 a night.
Sofitel Gatwick, and Harbour Hotel Salcombe, are both soulless, bog standard hotels, at £200-£235 per night.
San Francisco al Monte is a stunningly good luxury hotel in Naples, where a junior suite with views over the Bay will cost you £240 a night.
It's a coin flip and nobody knows anything.
I personally wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be a landslide either way rather than the cursed ratio. That's how little we know.
The Selzer poll's methodology biases it towards older women (younger men being less contactable) and the market has over-reacted to it a bit, I think. But equally so, Trump's voteshare has a ceiling until proven otherwise.
I'm inclined to think the economy will win it for Trump, but my view and a fiver will buy you a half of lager and a packet of pork scratchings.
The "fundamentals" are that Donald Trump is unfit to be president.
We can all point to different factors that we think will be decisive. We can all show reasoning for our decisions. We all are just making our best guess though.
Walker: It stops on Tuesday when we vote for my friend and your friend Donald Trump Jr… Donald Trump. Jonald J. Trump
https://x.com/Acyn/status/1853225357878362450
I hear allegedly posh people in their posh hotels braying about their recent week in Soneva Fushi and I inwardly sigh and think Yeah, I’ve been there, but also there there there there there and there
And I was droned in Odesa
So I quietly look down on them. And their timid haute bourgeois lives
So one point he compares a 2024 opinion poll with a 2020 exit poll, which is an egregious sin.
But, still. He could be right. When I had a bit more confidence in the polling data as being the best available data I was making essentially the same argument. It's one of the main planks of the case for a comfortable Trump victory.
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/policy/education/66533/british-universities-collapse-debt-crisis
As with last week's Budget, it buys a bit of time to work out what the hell to do next. Because whilst it's satisfying to blame the nitwits who left everything about to collapse, that by itself doesn't solve the questions.
Same with fifty grand watches, luxury hotels, and the Rolls-Royce La Rose Noire Droptail*.
*Edit: which, upon googling, looks like a Skoda.
I don't think any of our politicians would go for a "Jim'll Fix It" riff and, given his fondness of (talking about) electoral fraud, it does raise the question: Trump will fix... what?
ETA: As for being catching - when his ear got shot a lot of his supporters seemed to suddenly get a similar affliction!
What is luxury? How much experience do you have of it? Who is rating them, or overrating them? It’s not you, so who? And does this apply to every “luxury hotel” in the world? How do you possibly know?
It’s like saying “cushions are too soft”
Europe, we are just not that into you. We never were. It suited us both selling each others widgets, but you wanted more, kept pushing it, got yourself knocked up when you promised you wouldn’t. And now we are barely on speaking terms.
If you're irritated by the guests, think how the rest of us would feel, transplanted into such surroundings.
Don't get me wrong - there's absolutely stuff I would pay for, if I had the money (which I don't). But this just sounds pointless, and a bit sad.
Never been to a Premier Inn
It's just classic landlordism. Look at this lovely dishwasher I have bought you out of the kindness of my heart (while putting up rents by 100% over the last decade or so).
Trump is doing dramatically better relative to Harris, than he was relative to Biden.
In 2020, Biden was up 6-9 points in the national polling averages. This year, Harris is just up 1 to 2. If the polls are skewed in the same way as 2020, that Trump is home and dry.
Plus, from an economics fundamentals perspective, people have gotten poorer in the last four years. Incumbents are rarely reelected when people feel poorer. (Indeed, look across the world and let me know how many incumbents were reelected in 2024.)
And if almost anyone else - DeSantis, Haley, John from the checkout desk at Petco - was the Republican candidate, then I think they'd walk it. But the Republican Party is in hock to Trump, and he wouldn't support an alternative candidate, and without Trump's support (or with his active opposition) then the Republicans would be fucked.
So we're left with the Republicans fielding a candidate who is... flawed. A candidate who gives the most extraordinary rambling speeches about his rallies being full, while the camera pans around to show empty seats and people leaving.
A candidate who - candidly - is well down the Joe Biden path into mental decline. Plus you have the shadows of January 6, and the abortion issue.
Which means any outcome is possible.
I can well envisage a situation where Trump outperforms on the day and sweeps the states. But I can also envisage one where past vote weighting has led to pollsters underestimating Harris.
As a betting man, I think it's close to 50/50, but maybe with Harris having a slight edge. Polymarket is back back out to almost 60/40 to Trump. It's time to bet on Harris.
the state having to put up more money it hasn't got in loans
the universities receiving a tiny bit more income but not enough
and
no discernible extra return to the lender from the increased loan for about 30 years, as payment back is based on earnings not amount borrowed.
And universities do kind of need the money.
To me, the significant issue with the 2024 polls is the lack of noise and variance - it is a very tightly herded cluster of +1/0/-1s. We either read two things into that: 1) the polls are right and consistent and it’ll be a coin toss or 2) the polls are wrong and they’re all off by a fair way (because none of them are really deviating from the “default” MOE tie).
I do not have tremendous faith in the polls.
And it may well still see some universities fail.
But see my reply to Leon, above.
Who will be inaugurated as President? has Trump as a 57.7% chance.
While the market onwho will be called as Presidential winner by the major news networks? has Trump as a 59.5% chance.
The only reason why these markets could be different would be if:
(a) The election was thrown to the House of Representatives, in which case Trump should be favorite
or
(b) Trump ceased to be the Republican nominee between now and January 6, and someone else was inaugurated.
And I went to boarding school in the 70s.
Not increase immigration tensions and add to demand on public services and homes in the UK yet further by allowing overseas students to bring all their family with them.
If Trump wins tomorrow he is also likely to restrict immigration options for students to the US anyway
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2024/11/03/trumps-immigration-plans-may-upend-students-and-immigrant-applicants/
The ones I'm discussing were purpose built in ~1993 with one shower room for 3 bedrooms on each of two floors, and the whole downstairs being a kitchen diner lounge. For fridges there have always been 2x full size fridge freezers, so each student gets a full fridge shelf and a full freezer shelf, and their own 500mm kitchen cupboard. Burglar alarms fitted, five burner gas hob, oven, microwave, toaster, breakfast bar for 3 or 4, plus a table and chairs, obvs GFCH & free internet, and double sink. Lots of sockets in the rooms - I think 4 doubles.
Back in 2012 we also put big Smart TVs in the seating area, and leatherette sofas, which were popular. We also went with walk-in 1.7m x 1.0m showers as a distinctive with shower panels not tiles, not small cubicles.
EPC grades are C.
So good, well-designed, well-equipped, well located houses. Really it is knowing the market and sweating the detail.
My agent runs with a ratio of approx one staff member to 35 houses, so also a good service.
I can report that Premier Inns are notably better. For instance during a recent stay at the Premier Inn Swindon (M4 Westbound) I didn’t have to “slop out” my own feces in the morning, and tho the breakfast buffet was a touch disappointing I was at no point threatened by Muslim gangsters promising to gut me open with a homemade shiv
https://nltimes.nl/2024/10/15/rules-english-lectures-dutch-universities-soon-become-even-stricter
The new rules that are supposed to ensure that English is used less often as the language of instruction at research and applied science university courses in the Netherlands could become stricter, said Education Minister Eppo Bruins on Tuesday. The minister is pressing forward with a bill first introduced by his predecessor, Robbert Dijkgraaf, but Bruins said he wants to adjust the underlying regulations to prevent too many courses from being exempted from these rules.
The law is known as the Wet internationalisering in balans, or the Balanced Internationalization Act. The Cabinet wants the law to regulate that a maximum of one-third of the courses taken for credit in bachelor’s programmes be offered in a language other than Dutch.
While the minister has said he wants the law to improve Dutch language skills while countering what he sees as the anglicisation of education, he also wants to cut down on the number of foreign students enrolled in higher education in the Netherlands. “The large influx puts pressure on student housing, causes overcrowded lecture halls and high pressure on lecturers,” he explained.
Though I was banged up with a few (subsequently convicted) paedophiles.
The state has been written off as a woke wasteland. But it’s still inventing the future on a bunch of frontiers nobody’s talking about. Even if Trump wins, it will remain a golden, global example.
https://www.wired.com/story/california-will-keep-moving-the-world-forward/