President Trump, who has never served a day in the US military, just issued an executive order claiming that the 15,000 trans people serving in our country's armed forces lack the honor, honesty, humility, and selflessness necessary to do their duty. https://x.com/AriDrennen/status/1884124773694980467
The quote in question comes from the Executive Order "Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness", see https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/prioritizing-military-excellence-and-readiness-2/ It forbids "medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals with gender dysphoria" and "shifting pronoun usage or use of pronouns that inaccurately reflect an individual’s sex". and gives the SecDef (or Homeland Security for the Coast Guard) 30 days to do it.
It states pretty baldy..Consistent with the military mission and longstanding DoD policy, expressing a false “gender identity” divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service. .., which is demonstrably untrue.
And as others have pointed out, while appointing as Defence Sec a drunkard, alleged sex pest and likely white supremacist.
None of those qualities are traditionally rare in the upper echelons of US government. DJT just doesn't pretend to care about it.
The drunkards usually have executive experience extending beyond bankrupting a couple of small nonprofits, though.
Out of interest, as the scare stories of the death of Cardiff Uni are floating this morning, I thought I'd look at their job vacancies. 18 academic posts (quite a few as post docs), 46 professional services. Not the sign of imminent disaster there. I suspect the unions and some staff as over-reacting to the series of meetings today.
I'd also note that the 18 to 46 split is reminiscent of the discussion last night about the ballooning of admin at Unis. Not all will be that - it will include technicians and portering too, but it is striking.
It's been eloquently pointed out to you that any university teetering on the edge of bankruptcy will do its best to pretend everything is totes normal and fine, as any hint of trouble will send future students fleeing, and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy
The fact Cardiff are still advertising jobs means absolutely zero, in that light
I've worked at Universities all my life, I know what they do. I suspect that Cardiff are about to announce job freezes, voluntary severance packages and a desire to lose a certain number of jobs. I think there is a media/twitter storm being blown up partly because the Unions are doing this and because there is an information vacuum at the moment. Pretty sure more will come out today.
Let's hope you're right and it is just a few jobs
I stand by my prediction that the Unis face a systemic crisis, it is not soluble, several will go under, maybe more than several
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The universities have loaded themselves with debt and spent it on administration, it’s a pyramid scheme waiting to come down in an era where their actual product, of learning and research, has been massively democratised.
They’re now mostly selling scarcity of accreditation through the admissions process.
Talk on X of the entire Welsh university sector crumbling into dust
It will massively impact towns and constituencies where this happens. And it will happen
I remember when a teacher training college closed in my small home town. That was big and bad. These are UNIVERSITIES. Grim
The govt doesn’t have the £££ to bail them all out
Cardiff annual deficit is around 35 million. Pretty sure the Government could find that kind of money (even across ALL universities).
Oy it could actual raise the tuition fees in line with inflation, as it has done for NHS salaries.
As I understand it this would only kick the can down the road. We did this: 1) Slash government funding for universities 2) Replace this with tuition fees which the government then caps 3) Universities are short of cash and fill the hole with foreign students paying £lots 4) Cities like Sheffield fill up with expensive student apartment blocks occupied exclusively by Chinese students 5) People get the hump and so we reduce the number of foreign students which creates a funding crisis and imperils the entire institution
Lets assume that we jack tuition fees up to £15k a year. This isn't paid by the student, its private sector cash - tuition fees sit as an asset on the balance sheet of whichever company buys the debt. The default rate on these loans is already high (40%?) and increasing the size of the loan only increases the size of the money eventually written off. Which reduced the number of investors willing to stump up the cash which the universities need to operate.
Do I have that roughly right? If so its the British problem - we can't afford the cash to pay for it in the short term, we can't afford the damage to our economy in the medium to long term in not paying for it.
The Treasury has stopped selling off student loans.
Because nobody would buy them at those default levels?
OK, so lets assume that we raise tuition fees to £12k or £15k. That is cash which the government now needs to find up front, and will then need to write 40% off. The larger the tuition fees the larger the financial black hole.
A huge debt hypothecated to students. Creating a burden on the government to fund. With a large proportion never to be repaid. As universities are starved of cash.
I'm a big advocate of the blank sheet of paper approach. Nobody would design this structure because its absurd. Can we put something more sensible in place?
How about we sell university places to foreign students at five times the cost to a UK student? Sounds like good business.
Is it if they bring along a family of economically inactive dependents who then need to be housed and have access to services we provide ?
They pay for the accomodation already. Access to healthcare and primary and secondary education could be charged to the student,'s nation of origin.
The dependents were cut because of immigration figures which were politically unacceptable. The baby was thrown out with the bathwater.
President Trump, who has never served a day in the US military, just issued an executive order claiming that the 15,000 trans people serving in our country's armed forces lack the honor, honesty, humility, and selflessness necessary to do their duty. https://x.com/AriDrennen/status/1884124773694980467
The quote in question comes from the Executive Order "Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness", see https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/prioritizing-military-excellence-and-readiness-2/ It forbids "medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals with gender dysphoria" and "shifting pronoun usage or use of pronouns that inaccurately reflect an individual’s sex". and gives the SecDef (or Homeland Security for the Coast Guard) 30 days to do it.
It states pretty baldy..Consistent with the military mission and longstanding DoD policy, expressing a false “gender identity” divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service. .., which is demonstrably untrue.
Hasn't he also done an edict forbidding gender change from now on, ie it won't be possible to be trans in America?
Not to my understanding - what he's done is order that passports (and possibly other documents) reflect sex registered at birth.
On Cardiff we currently only have media speculation. Up to is doing the heavy lifting in the potential job losses. We'll see.
It is going to happen. Cardiff have no money. Neither does any other university.
Although TBF when I was at University College Cardiff in the 1980s it went bang and had to be bailed out by UWIST. The Government was involved in the rescue and one of the conditions was Principal of UWIST Aubrey Trotman-Dickinson, a personal friend of Thatcher was installed as Vice Principal of the new University of Wales College, Cardiff.
Totally wrong. Not everywhere is in debt. Bath is pretty healthy (relatively). Sadly its partly because fewer of us do a lot more than we used to.
I can assure you Cardiff are up S**t Street. All the University of Wales Colleges are also in big trouble. Trinity St David's have just closed the Lampeter campus.
This is the same across the country. You can pull out one or two examples of relative successes, but even those are unsustainable under current funding and immigration policy.
Are you just talking about Wales then? Tough times everywhere, but its incorrect to say that no other University has any money.
It is not unique to Wales, although I can speak with more authority on the trouble at universities in Wales.
And ignore people who work at Universities not in Sh@t Street?
I have inside information. I suspect either Cambridge is doing fine or you are a King of wishful thinking. I hate to admit this, but unless Government intervenes Leon is correct. The threat is existential.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The universities have loaded themselves with debt and spent it on administration, it’s a pyramid scheme waiting to come down in an era where their actual product, of learning and research, has been massively democratised.
They’re now mostly selling scarcity of accreditation through the admissions process.
Talk on X of the entire Welsh university sector crumbling into dust
It will massively impact towns and constituencies where this happens. And it will happen
I remember when a teacher training college closed in my small home town. That was big and bad. These are UNIVERSITIES. Grim
The govt doesn’t have the £££ to bail them all out
Cardiff annual deficit is around 35 million. Pretty sure the Government could find that kind of money (even across ALL universities).
Oy it could actual raise the tuition fees in line with inflation, as it has done for NHS salaries.
As I understand it this would only kick the can down the road. We did this: 1) Slash government funding for universities 2) Replace this with tuition fees which the government then caps 3) Universities are short of cash and fill the hole with foreign students paying £lots 4) Cities like Sheffield fill up with expensive student apartment blocks occupied exclusively by Chinese students 5) People get the hump and so we reduce the number of foreign students which creates a funding crisis and imperils the entire institution
Lets assume that we jack tuition fees up to £15k a year. This isn't paid by the student, its private sector cash - tuition fees sit as an asset on the balance sheet of whichever company buys the debt. The default rate on these loans is already high (40%?) and increasing the size of the loan only increases the size of the money eventually written off. Which reduced the number of investors willing to stump up the cash which the universities need to operate.
Do I have that roughly right? If so its the British problem - we can't afford the cash to pay for it in the short term, we can't afford the damage to our economy in the medium to long term in not paying for it.
The Treasury has stopped selling off student loans.
Because nobody would buy them at those default levels?
OK, so lets assume that we raise tuition fees to £12k or £15k. That is cash which the government now needs to find up front, and will then need to write 40% off. The larger the tuition fees the larger the financial black hole.
A huge debt hypothecated to students. Creating a burden on the government to fund. With a large proportion never to be repaid. As universities are starved of cash.
I'm a big advocate of the blank sheet of paper approach. Nobody would design this structure because its absurd. Can we put something more sensible in place?
How about we sell university places to foreign students at five times the cost to a UK student? Sounds like good business.
Is it if they bring along a family of economically inactive dependents who then need to be housed and have access to services we provide ?
They pay for the accomodation already. Access to healthcare and primary and secondary education could be charged to the student,'s nation of origin.
The dependents were cut because of immigration figures which were politically unacceptable. The baby was thrown out with the bathwater.
But the immigration figures were and are unacceptable, that is a hard fact. British people are unwilling to see their nation demographically transformed in a few short years, just to keep the Higher Education system going
We have difficult choices to make. See the migration stats from the ONS. Another 5m people in ten years? More than half of London again?
This is a one way road to a hard right government which will stop it, and beyond that, potentially a far right government. Alternatively, we can bite the bullet and bring immigration way down and honestly tell voters: this will hurt, but not as much as having Tommy Robinson as Prime Minister
Out of interest, as the scare stories of the death of Cardiff Uni are floating this morning, I thought I'd look at their job vacancies. 18 academic posts (quite a few as post docs), 46 professional services. Not the sign of imminent disaster there. I suspect the unions and some staff as over-reacting to the series of meetings today.
I'd also note that the 18 to 46 split is reminiscent of the discussion last night about the ballooning of admin at Unis. Not all will be that - it will include technicians and portering too, but it is striking.
It's been eloquently pointed out to you that any university teetering on the edge of bankruptcy will do its best to pretend everything is totes normal and fine, as any hint of trouble will send future students fleeing, and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy
The fact Cardiff are still advertising jobs means absolutely zero, in that light
I've worked at Universities all my life, I know what they do. I suspect that Cardiff are about to announce job freezes, voluntary severance packages and a desire to lose a certain number of jobs. I think there is a media/twitter storm being blown up partly because the Unions are doing this and because there is an information vacuum at the moment. Pretty sure more will come out today.
Let's hope you're right and it is just a few jobs
I stand by my prediction that the Unis face a systemic crisis, it is not soluble, several will go under, maybe more than several
And in the long run, eeesh
They will likely have a fair few Profs on six figures that are no longer that active. Always good to shake them out. It may be that they are looking at three figures job losses, but preferably by natural wastage, voluntary severance and retirements, job freezes etc.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The universities have loaded themselves with debt and spent it on administration, it’s a pyramid scheme waiting to come down in an era where their actual product, of learning and research, has been massively democratised.
They’re now mostly selling scarcity of accreditation through the admissions process.
Talk on X of the entire Welsh university sector crumbling into dust
It will massively impact towns and constituencies where this happens. And it will happen
I remember when a teacher training college closed in my small home town. That was big and bad. These are UNIVERSITIES. Grim
The govt doesn’t have the £££ to bail them all out
Cardiff annual deficit is around 35 million. Pretty sure the Government could find that kind of money (even across ALL universities).
Oy it could actual raise the tuition fees in line with inflation, as it has done for NHS salaries.
As I understand it this would only kick the can down the road. We did this: 1) Slash government funding for universities 2) Replace this with tuition fees which the government then caps 3) Universities are short of cash and fill the hole with foreign students paying £lots 4) Cities like Sheffield fill up with expensive student apartment blocks occupied exclusively by Chinese students 5) People get the hump and so we reduce the number of foreign students which creates a funding crisis and imperils the entire institution
Lets assume that we jack tuition fees up to £15k a year. This isn't paid by the student, its private sector cash - tuition fees sit as an asset on the balance sheet of whichever company buys the debt. The default rate on these loans is already high (40%?) and increasing the size of the loan only increases the size of the money eventually written off. Which reduced the number of investors willing to stump up the cash which the universities need to operate.
Do I have that roughly right? If so its the British problem - we can't afford the cash to pay for it in the short term, we can't afford the damage to our economy in the medium to long term in not paying for it.
The Treasury has stopped selling off student loans.
Because nobody would buy them at those default levels?
OK, so lets assume that we raise tuition fees to £12k or £15k. That is cash which the government now needs to find up front, and will then need to write 40% off. The larger the tuition fees the larger the financial black hole.
A huge debt hypothecated to students. Creating a burden on the government to fund. With a large proportion never to be repaid. As universities are starved of cash.
I'm a big advocate of the blank sheet of paper approach. Nobody would design this structure because its absurd. Can we put something more sensible in place?
How about we sell university places to foreign students at five times the cost to a UK student? Sounds like good business.
Is it if they bring along a family of economically inactive dependents who then need to be housed and have access to services we provide ?
They pay for the accomodation already. Access to healthcare and primary and secondary education could be charged to the student,'s nation of origin.
The dependents were cut because of immigration figures which were politically unacceptable. The baby was thrown out with the bathwater.
But the immigration figures were and are unacceptable, that is a hard fact. British people are unwilling to see their nation demographically transformed in a few short years, just to keep the Higher Education system going
We have difficult choices to make. See the migration stats from the ONS. Another 5m people in ten years? More than half of London again?
This is a one way road to a hard right government which will stop it, and beyond that, potentially a far right government. Alternatively, we can bite the bullet and bring immigration way down and honestly tell voters: this will hurt, but not as much as having Tommy Robinson as Prime Minister
Yup, people would rather the visa factory "universities" go under than take 5m extra immigrants. It's not that deep.
On Cardiff we currently only have media speculation. Up to is doing the heavy lifting in the potential job losses. We'll see.
It is going to happen. Cardiff have no money. Neither does any other university.
Although TBF when I was at University College Cardiff in the 1980s it went bang and had to be bailed out by UWIST. The Government was involved in the rescue and one of the conditions was Principal of UWIST Aubrey Trotman-Dickinson, a personal friend of Thatcher was installed as Vice Principal of the new University of Wales College, Cardiff.
Totally wrong. Not everywhere is in debt. Bath is pretty healthy (relatively). Sadly its partly because fewer of us do a lot more than we used to.
I can assure you Cardiff are up S**t Street. All the University of Wales Colleges are also in big trouble. Trinity St David's have just closed the Lampeter campus.
This is the same across the country. You can pull out one or two examples of relative successes, but even those are unsustainable under current funding and immigration policy.
Are you just talking about Wales then? Tough times everywhere, but its incorrect to say that no other University has any money.
It is not unique to Wales, although I can speak with more authority on the trouble at universities in Wales.
And ignore people who work at Universities not in Sh@t Street?
I have inside information. I suspect either Cambridge is doing fine or you are a King of wishful thinking. I hate to admit this, but unless Government intervenes Leon is correct. The threat is existential.
My point is that my uni and Selebians are not in the situation you are implying is every university. We have inside information because we work at Unis.
Clearly not all is rosy and I am not saying that. But I think things are being overblown right now (information vacuum allows a certain type of news story to grow - see also drones in NJ, although thats died off now, like all good flaps. I loved the people posting planes flying over and saying that they are not planes, but are disguised as planes...)
Working people and businesses are set to benefit from new rules that will give more flexibility over how occupational defined benefit pension schemes are managed, as the government continues to remove blockages that are inhibiting its growth agenda that will improve lives of working people across the UK.
Hosting a meeting with leaders of Britain’s biggest businesses in the City of London today (Tuesday 28 January), the Prime Minister and the Chancellor will set out the details of changes and tell some of the country’s leading CEOs that Britain is back and open for business.
At the roundtable, the PM and Chancellor will outline how restrictions will be lifted on how well-funded, occupational defined benefit pension funds that are performing well will be able to invest their surplus funds.
The current rules heavily tilt defined benefit pensions towards investing in the safest possible financial instruments - effectively gilts or the highest quality corporate bonds.
This makes sense on at the individual fund level, but absolutely no sense whatsoever at the national level: Pension funds have the longest possible time horizons - they’re the ones who ought to be investing in national infrastructure & reaping the long term benefits.
There’s been a weird double-think in much of the UK for the last few decades, where much talk is made of “growth” but at the same time every part of the system has been constrained to allow as little economic growth as possible. For economic growth to happen somebody, somewhere has to do the actual work: houses have to be built, roads maintained, computer programs have to be written, and so on & on. Preventing pension funds from funding that work helps nobody.
(Economics types will recognise this as an example of the fallacy of composition that Keynes railed against.)
The rules were set up primarily, I think, to force pension funds into funding government borrowing. It's been an issue for decades; it's encouraging that desperation is finally forcing them to take look at them. Desperate measures do carry a degree of extra risk though.
On Cardiff we currently only have media speculation. Up to is doing the heavy lifting in the potential job losses. We'll see.
It is going to happen. Cardiff have no money. Neither does any other university.
Although TBF when I was at University College Cardiff in the 1980s it went bang and had to be bailed out by UWIST. The Government was involved in the rescue and one of the conditions was Principal of UWIST Aubrey Trotman-Dickinson, a personal friend of Thatcher was installed as Vice Principal of the new University of Wales College, Cardiff.
Totally wrong. Not everywhere is in debt. Bath is pretty healthy (relatively). Sadly its partly because fewer of us do a lot more than we used to.
I can assure you Cardiff are up S**t Street. All the University of Wales Colleges are also in big trouble. Trinity St David's have just closed the Lampeter campus.
This is the same across the country. You can pull out one or two examples of relative successes, but even those are unsustainable under current funding and immigration policy.
Are you just talking about Wales then? Tough times everywhere, but its incorrect to say that no other University has any money.
The university sector still has fantastic parts to it, both WRT job related (law, medicine, engineering) and more general education (Elamite cuneiform, Mongolian Nestorianism). But university is not a single sector, and giving it all the same name doesn't create a new reality.
The sector of giving general education (Stuff Studies) to average performers (average IQ is 100) is not really any use to us or them. Either not at all or very locally would be the answer.
But we still need tons of job related training. The local FE sector and other local provision is where most of this should happen, and it should stop being cinderella in the picture, and not cost £50,000.
Out of interest, as the scare stories of the death of Cardiff Uni are floating this morning, I thought I'd look at their job vacancies. 18 academic posts (quite a few as post docs), 46 professional services. Not the sign of imminent disaster there. I suspect the unions and some staff as over-reacting to the series of meetings today.
I'd also note that the 18 to 46 split is reminiscent of the discussion last night about the ballooning of admin at Unis. Not all will be that - it will include technicians and portering too, but it is striking.
It's been eloquently pointed out to you that any university teetering on the edge of bankruptcy will do its best to pretend everything is totes normal and fine, as any hint of trouble will send future students fleeing, and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy
The fact Cardiff are still advertising jobs means absolutely zero, in that light
I've worked at Universities all my life, I know what they do. I suspect that Cardiff are about to announce job freezes, voluntary severance packages and a desire to lose a certain number of jobs. I think there is a media/twitter storm being blown up partly because the Unions are doing this and because there is an information vacuum at the moment. Pretty sure more will come out today.
Let's hope you're right and it is just a few jobs
I stand by my prediction that the Unis face a systemic crisis, it is not soluble, several will go under, maybe more than several
And in the long run, eeesh
They will likely have a fair few Profs on six figures that are no longer that active. Always good to shake them out. It may be that they are looking at three figures job losses, but preferably by natural wastage, voluntary severance and retirements, job freezes etc.
Lets see.
From what I hear whole departments are going including nursing.
And if nursing isn’t covering costs that a real issue given that nurses now need degrees
This could be a nice little test case for how transparent, honest and open our Labour government is. If over this period deaths will slightly exceed births, then the 5M rise is entirely migration based - an average of 500K pa.
Nearly all migration is under state control. It can't be done without state permission.
The government could tell us that this projection is great, there are reasons, it is all carefully planned for, it happens because the state wants it to happen and is good for the UK in multitudinous ways which we will now list for you.
If they do something else (and I think they will) we are being as deceived as we were under the Tories.
I'm trying to think which radical reformist party will gain on account of the continuing state obfuscation but I have forgotten their name.
It is an extrapolation of the past, not a government plan nor a forecast.
I suspect it is in the right ballpark though, as the reality is we will have net immigration in the hundreds of thousands whatever party is in power, reform included. I doubt it will be close to the million we saw under the end of the Tories somewhere in the 300-600k range is likely, so 3-6m over a decade.
We need to build more houses and associated infrastructure.
Working people and businesses are set to benefit from new rules that will give more flexibility over how occupational defined benefit pension schemes are managed, as the government continues to remove blockages that are inhibiting its growth agenda that will improve lives of working people across the UK.
Hosting a meeting with leaders of Britain’s biggest businesses in the City of London today (Tuesday 28 January), the Prime Minister and the Chancellor will set out the details of changes and tell some of the country’s leading CEOs that Britain is back and open for business.
At the roundtable, the PM and Chancellor will outline how restrictions will be lifted on how well-funded, occupational defined benefit pension funds that are performing well will be able to invest their surplus funds.
The current rules heavily tilt defined benefit pensions towards investing in the safest possible financial instruments - effectively gilts or the highest quality corporate bonds.
This makes sense on at the individual fund level, but absolutely no sense whatsoever at the national level: Pension funds have the longest possible time horizons - they’re the ones who ought to be investing in national infrastructure & reaping the long term benefits.
There’s been a weird double-think in much of the UK for the last few decades, where much talk is made of “growth” but at the same time every part of the system has been constrained to allow as little economic growth as possible. For economic growth to happen somebody, somewhere has to do the actual work: houses have to be built, roads maintained, computer programs have to be written, and so on & on. Preventing pension funds from funding that work helps nobody.
(Economics types will recognise this as an example of the fallacy of composition that Keynes railed against.)
True but the DB scheme I am in closed may years ago, is relatively small, has around 250 members (there was 1 for staff and one for works) and the age profile is skewed toward 50 plus.
That schemed really should not be investing in illiquid assets or risky assets given the age profile of its members in my view.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The universities have loaded themselves with debt and spent it on administration, it’s a pyramid scheme waiting to come down in an era where their actual product, of learning and research, has been massively democratised.
They’re now mostly selling scarcity of accreditation through the admissions process.
Talk on X of the entire Welsh university sector crumbling into dust
It will massively impact towns and constituencies where this happens. And it will happen
I remember when a teacher training college closed in my small home town. That was big and bad. These are UNIVERSITIES. Grim
The govt doesn’t have the £££ to bail them all out
Cardiff annual deficit is around 35 million. Pretty sure the Government could find that kind of money (even across ALL universities).
Oy it could actual raise the tuition fees in line with inflation, as it has done for NHS salaries.
As I understand it this would only kick the can down the road. We did this: 1) Slash government funding for universities 2) Replace this with tuition fees which the government then caps 3) Universities are short of cash and fill the hole with foreign students paying £lots 4) Cities like Sheffield fill up with expensive student apartment blocks occupied exclusively by Chinese students 5) People get the hump and so we reduce the number of foreign students which creates a funding crisis and imperils the entire institution
Lets assume that we jack tuition fees up to £15k a year. This isn't paid by the student, its private sector cash - tuition fees sit as an asset on the balance sheet of whichever company buys the debt. The default rate on these loans is already high (40%?) and increasing the size of the loan only increases the size of the money eventually written off. Which reduced the number of investors willing to stump up the cash which the universities need to operate.
Do I have that roughly right? If so its the British problem - we can't afford the cash to pay for it in the short term, we can't afford the damage to our economy in the medium to long term in not paying for it.
The Treasury has stopped selling off student loans.
Because nobody would buy them at those default levels?
OK, so lets assume that we raise tuition fees to £12k or £15k. That is cash which the government now needs to find up front, and will then need to write 40% off. The larger the tuition fees the larger the financial black hole.
A huge debt hypothecated to students. Creating a burden on the government to fund. With a large proportion never to be repaid. As universities are starved of cash.
I'm a big advocate of the blank sheet of paper approach. Nobody would design this structure because its absurd. Can we put something more sensible in place?
How about we sell university places to foreign students at five times the cost to a UK student? Sounds like good business.
Is it if they bring along a family of economically inactive dependents who then need to be housed and have access to services we provide ?
They pay for the accomodation already. Access to healthcare and primary and secondary education could be charged to the student,'s nation of origin.
The dependents were cut because of immigration figures which were politically unacceptable. The baby was thrown out with the bathwater.
So the govt is paying tuition fees up front in any case and then administering repayments, which have a large default level, and put off the able but financially cautious. They also have other sub-optimal results such as emigration to avoid loan repayments, avoiding career progression, high marginal deductions etc etc Why not scrap tuition fees and ration university places by ability?
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The universities have loaded themselves with debt and spent it on administration, it’s a pyramid scheme waiting to come down in an era where their actual product, of learning and research, has been massively democratised.
They’re now mostly selling scarcity of accreditation through the admissions process.
Talk on X of the entire Welsh university sector crumbling into dust
It will massively impact towns and constituencies where this happens. And it will happen
I remember when a teacher training college closed in my small home town. That was big and bad. These are UNIVERSITIES. Grim
The govt doesn’t have the £££ to bail them all out
Cardiff annual deficit is around 35 million. Pretty sure the Government could find that kind of money (even across ALL universities).
Oy it could actual raise the tuition fees in line with inflation, as it has done for NHS salaries.
As I understand it this would only kick the can down the road. We did this: 1) Slash government funding for universities 2) Replace this with tuition fees which the government then caps 3) Universities are short of cash and fill the hole with foreign students paying £lots 4) Cities like Sheffield fill up with expensive student apartment blocks occupied exclusively by Chinese students 5) People get the hump and so we reduce the number of foreign students which creates a funding crisis and imperils the entire institution
Lets assume that we jack tuition fees up to £15k a year. This isn't paid by the student, its private sector cash - tuition fees sit as an asset on the balance sheet of whichever company buys the debt. The default rate on these loans is already high (40%?) and increasing the size of the loan only increases the size of the money eventually written off. Which reduced the number of investors willing to stump up the cash which the universities need to operate.
Do I have that roughly right? If so its the British problem - we can't afford the cash to pay for it in the short term, we can't afford the damage to our economy in the medium to long term in not paying for it.
The Treasury has stopped selling off student loans.
Because nobody would buy them at those default levels?
OK, so lets assume that we raise tuition fees to £12k or £15k. That is cash which the government now needs to find up front, and will then need to write 40% off. The larger the tuition fees the larger the financial black hole.
A huge debt hypothecated to students. Creating a burden on the government to fund. With a large proportion never to be repaid. As universities are starved of cash.
I'm a big advocate of the blank sheet of paper approach. Nobody would design this structure because its absurd. Can we put something more sensible in place?
How about we sell university places to foreign students at five times the cost to a UK student? Sounds like good business.
Is it if they bring along a family of economically inactive dependents who then need to be housed and have access to services we provide ?
They pay for the accomodation already. Access to healthcare and primary and secondary education could be charged to the student,'s nation of origin.
The dependents were cut because of immigration figures which were politically unacceptable. The baby was thrown out with the bathwater.
But the immigration figures were and are unacceptable, that is a hard fact. British people are unwilling to see their nation demographically transformed in a few short years, just to keep the Higher Education system going
We have difficult choices to make. See the migration stats from the ONS. Another 5m people in ten years? More than half of London again?
This is a one way road to a hard right government which will stop it, and beyond that, potentially a far right government. Alternatively, we can bite the bullet and bring immigration way down and honestly tell voters: this will hurt, but not as much as having Tommy Robinson as Prime Minister
You are unusually correct and immigration in current numbers are politically unacceptable (not to me when there is an economic benefit). The offset to that is UK universities close down. It is not a choice I would make but many many would.
On Cardiff we currently only have media speculation. Up to is doing the heavy lifting in the potential job losses. We'll see.
It is going to happen. Cardiff have no money. Neither does any other university.
Although TBF when I was at University College Cardiff in the 1980s it went bang and had to be bailed out by UWIST. The Government was involved in the rescue and one of the conditions was Principal of UWIST Aubrey Trotman-Dickinson, a personal friend of Thatcher was installed as Vice Principal of the new University of Wales College, Cardiff.
Totally wrong. Not everywhere is in debt. Bath is pretty healthy (relatively). Sadly its partly because fewer of us do a lot more than we used to.
I can assure you Cardiff are up S**t Street. All the University of Wales Colleges are also in big trouble. Trinity St David's have just closed the Lampeter campus.
This is the same across the country. You can pull out one or two examples of relative successes, but even those are unsustainable under current funding and immigration policy.
Are you just talking about Wales then? Tough times everywhere, but its incorrect to say that no other University has any money.
It is not unique to Wales, although I can speak with more authority on the trouble at universities in Wales.
And ignore people who work at Universities not in Sh@t Street?
I have inside information. I suspect either Cambridge is doing fine or you are a King of wishful thinking. I hate to admit this, but unless Government intervenes Leon is correct. The threat is existential.
I went to Cardiff Uni, it will be sad to see them go bankrupt but fundamentally they've been mismanaged for decades. I remember when they spent £200k on that weird pattern on the business school building, even then people were like wtf kind of money wasting is that.
Let the market force them to downsize and cut the waste, a government bailout would be a mistake and will let wasteful universities across the country off the hook.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Looks like the paper is 99.9% bollocks with a 0.1% interesting grain of an idea to me. It's strange how academics can get away with imposing their totally slanted views onto their piblished 'academic' papers.
But, freedom of speech and all that - is it worth getting het up about?
It's an extremely rambling way of saying that AirBnB usage has grown faster than trend in predominantly black neighbourhoods, and that most renters are white.
Apart from adding "computational hermeneutics" to my bullshit dictionary, a waste of five minutes of my time.
You mean that AirBnB usage has grown faster in poorer, cheaper neighbourhoods?
There might be some real, interesting stuff in whether AirBnB is creating a more rapid gentrification at the intersections of richer and poorer neighbourhoods. Because of the rapid cycle - people comparing prices vs crimes maps vs cool coffee shops on a daily basis…..
Insofar as the 'poorer' and 'majority black' correlate, yes. There might have been a very interesting paper to be written about the central point, given further research, but this wan't it.
Given the author talks of “bodegas” - this is the US.
Where majority black correlate to “the poorer bit of town” very, very well.
It's New York, and the article makes a lot out of the striking differences between how black hosts and white hosts in those neighbourhoods advertise on Airbnb (and differences between black and white reviewers). How strongly those differences really support the conclusion is a bit open to question, but I think it's an interesting observation, and the article is not just about Airbnb and gentrification.
I've felt uncomfortable with tourism since the day in 1978 when I wandered a few blocks away from the White House and found myself in an entirely black neighbourhood. They were all getting on with their lives, one way or another, while I was obviously there to gawp at them. With my white skin I might as well have been wearing a top hat and tails, smoking a cigar, fingering a horse whip. I don't regard a poor neighbourhood as a human zoo, carefully curated for my entertainment.
But it's hard to avoid this with organised 'travel'. Countless times I've seen a row of bedraggled women standing all day behind makeshift trestle tables offering junk for sale - in a New Mexico Pueblo, in the mountains of Laos, and on Caribbean islands. Being a sociologist manqué it's what I tend to notice, more than the bog-standard G&Ts.
This could be a nice little test case for how transparent, honest and open our Labour government is. If over this period deaths will slightly exceed births, then the 5M rise is entirely migration based - an average of 500K pa.
Nearly all migration is under state control. It can't be done without state permission.
The government could tell us that this projection is great, there are reasons, it is all carefully planned for, it happens because the state wants it to happen and is good for the UK in multitudinous ways which we will now list for you.
If they do something else (and I think they will) we are being as deceived as we were under the Tories.
I'm trying to think which radical reformist party will gain on account of the continuing state obfuscation but I have forgotten their name.
I would suggest that, after 25 years of very high levels of net immigration, that it seems quite plain that high levels of immigration do not boost the economy overall (even if individual sectors benefit). That 25 year period has seen much lower levels of economic growth than the preceding 25 years, when levels of net immigration were much lower.
The economic case for high immigration seems totally unproven.
This could be a nice little test case for how transparent, honest and open our Labour government is. If over this period deaths will slightly exceed births, then the 5M rise is entirely migration based - an average of 500K pa.
Nearly all migration is under state control. It can't be done without state permission.
The government could tell us that this projection is great, there are reasons, it is all carefully planned for, it happens because the state wants it to happen and is good for the UK in multitudinous ways which we will now list for you.
If they do something else (and I think they will) we are being as deceived as we were under the Tories.
I'm trying to think which radical reformist party will gain on account of the continuing state obfuscation but I have forgotten their name.
It is an extrapolation of the past, not a government plan nor a forecast.
I suspect it is in the right ballpark though, as the reality is we will have net immigration in the hundreds of thousands whatever party is in power, reform included. I doubt it will be close to the million we saw under the end of the Tories somewhere in the 300-600k range is likely, so 3-6m over a decade.
We need to build more houses and associated infrastructure.
This is all true I should think but makes no difference to my points. Among which is that governments not projections issue visas, and then pretend that it is somehow some other power driving the policy.
On thread: I was running the line at a junior football match at the weekend. Leafy Cheshire against WWC Manchester. As linesman, I got to eavesdrop on both sets of conversations. The Cheshire conversation was about disappointment with Labour "most of us had just been hanging on until Labour got in, thinking things would improve, interest rates would come down, but it's just getting worse ... Reeves hasn't got a clue"; the Manchester conversation somewhat earthier and angrier, and focused on the Christmas party which had been cancelled because the venue had been turned into a hotel for illegal immigrants.
Obviously these were just snippets. These are normal people mainly talking about their kids and football. But it was striking to hear politics discussed at all in the real world. I still find it slightly jarring to hear peoplebeing openly critical of Labour (aside from the Corbyn era). For my whole lifetime, my experience in real life has been that only people who know you very well are openly critical of the Labour Party lest people think they are Tories.
You obviously had better weather than we did. I think all the conversations at the sideline last Sunday were on the topic of how terrible it was standing in freezing driving rain, how cold we were, whether anyone could feel their feet, and if the ref could end the game early as we were 5-0 up and the other team had stopped trying.
Out of interest, as the scare stories of the death of Cardiff Uni are floating this morning, I thought I'd look at their job vacancies. 18 academic posts (quite a few as post docs), 46 professional services. Not the sign of imminent disaster there. I suspect the unions and some staff as over-reacting to the series of meetings today.
I'd also note that the 18 to 46 split is reminiscent of the discussion last night about the ballooning of admin at Unis. Not all will be that - it will include technicians and portering too, but it is striking.
It's been eloquently pointed out to you that any university teetering on the edge of bankruptcy will do its best to pretend everything is totes normal and fine, as any hint of trouble will send future students fleeing, and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy
The fact Cardiff are still advertising jobs means absolutely zero, in that light
I've worked at Universities all my life, I know what they do. I suspect that Cardiff are about to announce job freezes, voluntary severance packages and a desire to lose a certain number of jobs. I think there is a media/twitter storm being blown up partly because the Unions are doing this and because there is an information vacuum at the moment. Pretty sure more will come out today.
Let's hope you're right and it is just a few jobs
I stand by my prediction that the Unis face a systemic crisis, it is not soluble, several will go under, maybe more than several
And in the long run, eeesh
They will likely have a fair few Profs on six figures that are no longer that active. Always good to shake them out. It may be that they are looking at three figures job losses, but preferably by natural wastage, voluntary severance and retirements, job freezes etc.
Lets see.
From what I hear whole departments are going including nursing.
And if nursing isn’t covering costs that a real issue given that nurses now need degrees
It will be because they cannot recruit students to the course. There are other big providers of nursing education nearby (UWE is huge). Is what you hear from twitter? Thats just a rumour right now, but of course Uni's do close courses. We ended teacher training at Bath a decade ago. In our case if didn't fit with the University Brand (Science and Engineering). Worryingly pharmacy does really either, but we are part of Life Sciences.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The universities have loaded themselves with debt and spent it on administration, it’s a pyramid scheme waiting to come down in an era where their actual product, of learning and research, has been massively democratised.
They’re now mostly selling scarcity of accreditation through the admissions process.
Talk on X of the entire Welsh university sector crumbling into dust
It will massively impact towns and constituencies where this happens. And it will happen
I remember when a teacher training college closed in my small home town. That was big and bad. These are UNIVERSITIES. Grim
The govt doesn’t have the £££ to bail them all out
Cardiff annual deficit is around 35 million. Pretty sure the Government could find that kind of money (even across ALL universities).
Oy it could actual raise the tuition fees in line with inflation, as it has done for NHS salaries.
As I understand it this would only kick the can down the road. We did this: 1) Slash government funding for universities 2) Replace this with tuition fees which the government then caps 3) Universities are short of cash and fill the hole with foreign students paying £lots 4) Cities like Sheffield fill up with expensive student apartment blocks occupied exclusively by Chinese students 5) People get the hump and so we reduce the number of foreign students which creates a funding crisis and imperils the entire institution
Lets assume that we jack tuition fees up to £15k a year. This isn't paid by the student, its private sector cash - tuition fees sit as an asset on the balance sheet of whichever company buys the debt. The default rate on these loans is already high (40%?) and increasing the size of the loan only increases the size of the money eventually written off. Which reduced the number of investors willing to stump up the cash which the universities need to operate.
Do I have that roughly right? If so its the British problem - we can't afford the cash to pay for it in the short term, we can't afford the damage to our economy in the medium to long term in not paying for it.
The Treasury has stopped selling off student loans.
Because nobody would buy them at those default levels?
OK, so lets assume that we raise tuition fees to £12k or £15k. That is cash which the government now needs to find up front, and will then need to write 40% off. The larger the tuition fees the larger the financial black hole.
A huge debt hypothecated to students. Creating a burden on the government to fund. With a large proportion never to be repaid. As universities are starved of cash.
I'm a big advocate of the blank sheet of paper approach. Nobody would design this structure because its absurd. Can we put something more sensible in place?
How about we sell university places to foreign students at five times the cost to a UK student? Sounds like good business.
Is it if they bring along a family of economically inactive dependents who then need to be housed and have access to services we provide ?
They pay for the accomodation already. Access to healthcare and primary and secondary education could be charged to the student,'s nation of origin.
The dependents were cut because of immigration figures which were politically unacceptable. The baby was thrown out with the bathwater.
So the govt is paying tuition fees up front in any case and then administering repayments, which have a large default level, and put off the able but financially cautious. They also have other sub-optimal results such as emigration to avoid loan repayments, avoiding career progression, high marginal deductions etc etc Why not scrap tuition fees and ration university places by ability?
Open up education properly instead, this is an area where the free market can deliver radical change.
Simply allow any student to sit any exam from any university of their choice at cost plus reasonable margin. Where they learn the facts is up to them.
Out of interest, as the scare stories of the death of Cardiff Uni are floating this morning, I thought I'd look at their job vacancies. 18 academic posts (quite a few as post docs), 46 professional services. Not the sign of imminent disaster there. I suspect the unions and some staff as over-reacting to the series of meetings today.
I'd also note that the 18 to 46 split is reminiscent of the discussion last night about the ballooning of admin at Unis. Not all will be that - it will include technicians and portering too, but it is striking.
It's been eloquently pointed out to you that any university teetering on the edge of bankruptcy will do its best to pretend everything is totes normal and fine, as any hint of trouble will send future students fleeing, and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy
The fact Cardiff are still advertising jobs means absolutely zero, in that light
I've worked at Universities all my life, I know what they do. I suspect that Cardiff are about to announce job freezes, voluntary severance packages and a desire to lose a certain number of jobs. I think there is a media/twitter storm being blown up partly because the Unions are doing this and because there is an information vacuum at the moment. Pretty sure more will come out today.
Let's hope you're right and it is just a few jobs
I stand by my prediction that the Unis face a systemic crisis, it is not soluble, several will go under, maybe more than several
And in the long run, eeesh
They will likely have a fair few Profs on six figures that are no longer that active. Always good to shake them out. It may be that they are looking at three figures job losses, but preferably by natural wastage, voluntary severance and retirements, job freezes etc.
Lets see.
From what I hear whole departments are going including nursing.
And if nursing isn’t covering costs that a real issue given that nurses now need degrees
And a second point is that a course like nursing is heavily placement dependent. They are not in a lecture theatre for 3/4 years, most of the training is in the clinic.
Working people and businesses are set to benefit from new rules that will give more flexibility over how occupational defined benefit pension schemes are managed, as the government continues to remove blockages that are inhibiting its growth agenda that will improve lives of working people across the UK.
Hosting a meeting with leaders of Britain’s biggest businesses in the City of London today (Tuesday 28 January), the Prime Minister and the Chancellor will set out the details of changes and tell some of the country’s leading CEOs that Britain is back and open for business.
At the roundtable, the PM and Chancellor will outline how restrictions will be lifted on how well-funded, occupational defined benefit pension funds that are performing well will be able to invest their surplus funds.
The current rules heavily tilt defined benefit pensions towards investing in the safest possible financial instruments - effectively gilts or the highest quality corporate bonds.
This makes sense on at the individual fund level, but absolutely no sense whatsoever at the national level: Pension funds have the longest possible time horizons - they’re the ones who ought to be investing in national infrastructure & reaping the long term benefits.
There’s been a weird double-think in much of the UK for the last few decades, where much talk is made of “growth” but at the same time every part of the system has been constrained to allow as little economic growth as possible. For economic growth to happen somebody, somewhere has to do the actual work: houses have to be built, roads maintained, computer programs have to be written, and so on & on. Preventing pension funds from funding that work helps nobody.
(Economics types will recognise this as an example of the fallacy of composition that Keynes railed against.)
True but the DB scheme I am in closed may years ago, is relatively small, has around 250 members (there was 1 for staff and one for works) and the age profile is skewed toward 50 plus.
That schemed really should not be investing in illiquid assets or risky assets given the age profile of its members in my view.
Of course not. Does anything in the proposals compel that (I don't think so) ?
The existing rules have basically forced large funds, with a horizon of many decades, to underperform the market, long term. That's good neither for the funds nor the economy.
This could be a nice little test case for how transparent, honest and open our Labour government is. If over this period deaths will slightly exceed births, then the 5M rise is entirely migration based - an average of 500K pa.
Nearly all migration is under state control. It can't be done without state permission.
The government could tell us that this projection is great, there are reasons, it is all carefully planned for, it happens because the state wants it to happen and is good for the UK in multitudinous ways which we will now list for you.
If they do something else (and I think they will) we are being as deceived as we were under the Tories.
I'm trying to think which radical reformist party will gain on account of the continuing state obfuscation but I have forgotten their name.
It is an extrapolation of the past, not a government plan nor a forecast.
I suspect it is in the right ballpark though, as the reality is we will have net immigration in the hundreds of thousands whatever party is in power, reform included. I doubt it will be close to the million we saw under the end of the Tories somewhere in the 300-600k range is likely, so 3-6m over a decade.
We need to build more houses and associated infrastructure.
This is all true I should think but makes no difference to my point.
It is the building of houses and infrastructure that will make a difference to the political popularity of the incumbants, not being either honest nor trying to deliver lower numbers.
On Cardiff we currently only have media speculation. Up to is doing the heavy lifting in the potential job losses. We'll see.
It is going to happen. Cardiff have no money. Neither does any other university.
Although TBF when I was at University College Cardiff in the 1980s it went bang and had to be bailed out by UWIST. The Government was involved in the rescue and one of the conditions was Principal of UWIST Aubrey Trotman-Dickinson, a personal friend of Thatcher was installed as Vice Principal of the new University of Wales College, Cardiff.
Totally wrong. Not everywhere is in debt. Bath is pretty healthy (relatively). Sadly its partly because fewer of us do a lot more than we used to.
I can assure you Cardiff are up S**t Street. All the University of Wales Colleges are also in big trouble. Trinity St David's have just closed the Lampeter campus.
This is the same across the country. You can pull out one or two examples of relative successes, but even those are unsustainable under current funding and immigration policy.
Are you just talking about Wales then? Tough times everywhere, but its incorrect to say that no other University has any money.
It is not unique to Wales, although I can speak with more authority on the trouble at universities in Wales.
And ignore people who work at Universities not in Sh@t Street?
I have inside information. I suspect either Cambridge is doing fine or you are a King of wishful thinking. I hate to admit this, but unless Government intervenes Leon is correct. The threat is existential.
I went to Cardiff Uni, it will be sad to see them go bankrupt but fundamentally they've been mismanaged for decades. I remember when they spent £200k on that weird pattern on the business school building, even then people were like wtf kind of money wasting is that.
Let the market force them to downsize and cut the waste, a government bailout would be a mistake and will let wasteful universities across the country off the hook.
" it will be sad to see them go bankrupt" thats an extrapolation worthy of the great seer himself. No-one is suggesting this.
246,930 academic staff were employed at UK higher education providers on 1 December 2023, a rise of 3% on the previous year. 66% of academic staff were of UK nationality compared to 67% in 2022. 15% held EU nationalities and 18% held non-EU nationalities. Source: HESA.
On Cardiff we currently only have media speculation. Up to is doing the heavy lifting in the potential job losses. We'll see.
It is going to happen. Cardiff have no money. Neither does any other university.
Although TBF when I was at University College Cardiff in the 1980s it went bang and had to be bailed out by UWIST. The Government was involved in the rescue and one of the conditions was Principal of UWIST Aubrey Trotman-Dickinson, a personal friend of Thatcher was installed as Vice Principal of the new University of Wales College, Cardiff.
Totally wrong. Not everywhere is in debt. Bath is pretty healthy (relatively). Sadly its partly because fewer of us do a lot more than we used to.
I can assure you Cardiff are up S**t Street. All the University of Wales Colleges are also in big trouble. Trinity St David's have just closed the Lampeter campus.
This is the same across the country. You can pull out one or two examples of relative successes, but even those are unsustainable under current funding and immigration policy.
Are you just talking about Wales then? Tough times everywhere, but its incorrect to say that no other University has any money.
The university sector still has fantastic parts to it, both WRT job related (law, medicine, engineering) and more general education (Elamite cuneiform, Mongolian Nestorianism). But university is not a single sector, and giving it all the same name doesn't create a new reality.
The sector of giving general education (Stuff Studies) to average performers (average IQ is 100) is not really any use to us or them. Either not at all or very locally would be the answer.
But we still need tons of job related training. The local FE sector and other local provision is where most of this should happen, and it should stop being cinderella in the picture, and not cost £50,000.
Indeed. Higher Education at university level is wasted on most people, ie anyone with an IQ under 115 minimum. It's a brutal truth
We encourage these kids to take on huge debts to get quite sketchy degrees and for what purpose? There aren't proper graduate jobs at the end, to justify the debt and the effort. On top of that the whole "student" experience is seriously degraded, with so many courses taught online, the social life lacking, and so forth
We should go back to a uni system like we had before. For the top 10-20% of kids, but maybe we pay THEM to study. In the end this will surely happen anyway, which means horribly painful times for the HE sector
Other kids can do shorter cheaper courses, apprenticeships, volunteer abroad, etc
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The universities have loaded themselves with debt and spent it on administration, it’s a pyramid scheme waiting to come down in an era where their actual product, of learning and research, has been massively democratised.
They’re now mostly selling scarcity of accreditation through the admissions process.
Talk on X of the entire Welsh university sector crumbling into dust
It will massively impact towns and constituencies where this happens. And it will happen
I remember when a teacher training college closed in my small home town. That was big and bad. These are UNIVERSITIES. Grim
The govt doesn’t have the £££ to bail them all out
Cardiff annual deficit is around 35 million. Pretty sure the Government could find that kind of money (even across ALL universities).
Oy it could actual raise the tuition fees in line with inflation, as it has done for NHS salaries.
As I understand it this would only kick the can down the road. We did this: 1) Slash government funding for universities 2) Replace this with tuition fees which the government then caps 3) Universities are short of cash and fill the hole with foreign students paying £lots 4) Cities like Sheffield fill up with expensive student apartment blocks occupied exclusively by Chinese students 5) People get the hump and so we reduce the number of foreign students which creates a funding crisis and imperils the entire institution
Lets assume that we jack tuition fees up to £15k a year. This isn't paid by the student, its private sector cash - tuition fees sit as an asset on the balance sheet of whichever company buys the debt. The default rate on these loans is already high (40%?) and increasing the size of the loan only increases the size of the money eventually written off. Which reduced the number of investors willing to stump up the cash which the universities need to operate.
Do I have that roughly right? If so its the British problem - we can't afford the cash to pay for it in the short term, we can't afford the damage to our economy in the medium to long term in not paying for it.
The Treasury has stopped selling off student loans.
Because nobody would buy them at those default levels?
OK, so lets assume that we raise tuition fees to £12k or £15k. That is cash which the government now needs to find up front, and will then need to write 40% off. The larger the tuition fees the larger the financial black hole.
A huge debt hypothecated to students. Creating a burden on the government to fund. With a large proportion never to be repaid. As universities are starved of cash.
I'm a big advocate of the blank sheet of paper approach. Nobody would design this structure because its absurd. Can we put something more sensible in place?
How about we sell university places to foreign students at five times the cost to a UK student? Sounds like good business.
Is it if they bring along a family of economically inactive dependents who then need to be housed and have access to services we provide ?
They pay for the accomodation already. Access to healthcare and primary and secondary education could be charged to the student,'s nation of origin.
The dependents were cut because of immigration figures which were politically unacceptable. The baby was thrown out with the bathwater.
So the govt is paying tuition fees up front in any case and then administering repayments, which have a large default level, and put off the able but financially cautious. They also have other sub-optimal results such as emigration to avoid loan repayments, avoiding career progression, high marginal deductions etc etc Why not scrap tuition fees and ration university places by ability?
That, I suspect was why the Conservatives followed the policies they did. Turn the clock back to universities being exclusively for the wealthiest 7%. We don't want any of this positive social engineering caper.
Starmer has managed to put out the perfect post, encapsulating his government in eight words. Vacuous, lacking in any thought or policy to achieve the end. Believing that if you can talk yourself into a recession (or close to one), you can talk yourself out of one.
I see the post-breakfast but pre-elevenses hate has begun.
We are like hobbits, a hate session for every meal.
The hobbit allusion sounds interesting but escapes me ...?
Hobbits, a species in Tolkein's "Lord of the Rings" known for being short and cheerful, eat several meals during day, including "second breakfast".
I quite like second breakfast as a concept. Hasty one at home (cereal, toast) then a bacon or sausage baguette at work to set up the day. Not good for the waistline though
Working people and businesses are set to benefit from new rules that will give more flexibility over how occupational defined benefit pension schemes are managed, as the government continues to remove blockages that are inhibiting its growth agenda that will improve lives of working people across the UK.
Hosting a meeting with leaders of Britain’s biggest businesses in the City of London today (Tuesday 28 January), the Prime Minister and the Chancellor will set out the details of changes and tell some of the country’s leading CEOs that Britain is back and open for business.
At the roundtable, the PM and Chancellor will outline how restrictions will be lifted on how well-funded, occupational defined benefit pension funds that are performing well will be able to invest their surplus funds.
The current rules heavily tilt defined benefit pensions towards investing in the safest possible financial instruments - effectively gilts or the highest quality corporate bonds.
This makes sense on at the individual fund level, but absolutely no sense whatsoever at the national level: Pension funds have the longest possible time horizons - they’re the ones who ought to be investing in national infrastructure & reaping the long term benefits.
There’s been a weird double-think in much of the UK for the last few decades, where much talk is made of “growth” but at the same time every part of the system has been constrained to allow as little economic growth as possible. For economic growth to happen somebody, somewhere has to do the actual work: houses have to be built, roads maintained, computer programs have to be written, and so on & on. Preventing pension funds from funding that work helps nobody.
(Economics types will recognise this as an example of the fallacy of composition that Keynes railed against.)
The rules were set up primarily, I think, to force pension funds into funding government borrowing. It's been an issue for decades; it's encouraging that desperation is finally forcing them to take look at them. Desperate measures do carry a degree of extra risk though.
So what happens when that risk does not pay off ?
The members of the scheme get reduced benefits presumably.
Why should private defined schemes take that risk, especially when so many are now closed to new members and their age profile is far older than DC schemes.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The universities have loaded themselves with debt and spent it on administration, it’s a pyramid scheme waiting to come down in an era where their actual product, of learning and research, has been massively democratised.
They’re now mostly selling scarcity of accreditation through the admissions process.
Talk on X of the entire Welsh university sector crumbling into dust
It will massively impact towns and constituencies where this happens. And it will happen
I remember when a teacher training college closed in my small home town. That was big and bad. These are UNIVERSITIES. Grim
The govt doesn’t have the £££ to bail them all out
Cardiff annual deficit is around 35 million. Pretty sure the Government could find that kind of money (even across ALL universities).
Oy it could actual raise the tuition fees in line with inflation, as it has done for NHS salaries.
As I understand it this would only kick the can down the road. We did this: 1) Slash government funding for universities 2) Replace this with tuition fees which the government then caps 3) Universities are short of cash and fill the hole with foreign students paying £lots 4) Cities like Sheffield fill up with expensive student apartment blocks occupied exclusively by Chinese students 5) People get the hump and so we reduce the number of foreign students which creates a funding crisis and imperils the entire institution
Lets assume that we jack tuition fees up to £15k a year. This isn't paid by the student, its private sector cash - tuition fees sit as an asset on the balance sheet of whichever company buys the debt. The default rate on these loans is already high (40%?) and increasing the size of the loan only increases the size of the money eventually written off. Which reduced the number of investors willing to stump up the cash which the universities need to operate.
Do I have that roughly right? If so its the British problem - we can't afford the cash to pay for it in the short term, we can't afford the damage to our economy in the medium to long term in not paying for it.
The Treasury has stopped selling off student loans.
Because nobody would buy them at those default levels?
OK, so lets assume that we raise tuition fees to £12k or £15k. That is cash which the government now needs to find up front, and will then need to write 40% off. The larger the tuition fees the larger the financial black hole.
A huge debt hypothecated to students. Creating a burden on the government to fund. With a large proportion never to be repaid. As universities are starved of cash.
I'm a big advocate of the blank sheet of paper approach. Nobody would design this structure because its absurd. Can we put something more sensible in place?
How about we sell university places to foreign students at five times the cost to a UK student? Sounds like good business.
Is it if they bring along a family of economically inactive dependents who then need to be housed and have access to services we provide ?
They pay for the accomodation already. Access to healthcare and primary and secondary education could be charged to the student,'s nation of origin.
The dependents were cut because of immigration figures which were politically unacceptable. The baby was thrown out with the bathwater.
So the govt is paying tuition fees up front in any case and then administering repayments, which have a large default level, and put off the able but financially cautious. They also have other sub-optimal results such as emigration to avoid loan repayments, avoiding career progression, high marginal deductions etc etc Why not scrap tuition fees and ration university places by ability?
Open up education properly instead, this is an area where the free market can deliver radical change.
Simply allow any student to sit any exam from any university of their choice at cost plus reasonable margin. Where they learn the facts is up to them.
Costs for taxpayers and students will plummet.
Though you have reduced the function of the Universities to exam boards which logically will lead to the collapse of the university sector leaving just the "premium brands" operating as enormous exam marking bureaucracies.
Starmer has managed to put out the perfect post, encapsulating his government in eight words. Vacuous, lacking in any thought or policy to achieve the end. Believing that if you can talk yourself into a recession (or close to one), you can talk yourself out of one.
On Cardiff we currently only have media speculation. Up to is doing the heavy lifting in the potential job losses. We'll see.
It is going to happen. Cardiff have no money. Neither does any other university.
Although TBF when I was at University College Cardiff in the 1980s it went bang and had to be bailed out by UWIST. The Government was involved in the rescue and one of the conditions was Principal of UWIST Aubrey Trotman-Dickinson, a personal friend of Thatcher was installed as Vice Principal of the new University of Wales College, Cardiff.
Totally wrong. Not everywhere is in debt. Bath is pretty healthy (relatively). Sadly its partly because fewer of us do a lot more than we used to.
I can assure you Cardiff are up S**t Street. All the University of Wales Colleges are also in big trouble. Trinity St David's have just closed the Lampeter campus.
This is the same across the country. You can pull out one or two examples of relative successes, but even those are unsustainable under current funding and immigration policy.
Are you just talking about Wales then? Tough times everywhere, but its incorrect to say that no other University has any money.
It is not unique to Wales, although I can speak with more authority on the trouble at universities in Wales.
And ignore people who work at Universities not in Sh@t Street?
I have inside information. I suspect either Cambridge is doing fine or you are a King of wishful thinking. I hate to admit this, but unless Government intervenes Leon is correct. The threat is existential.
I went to Cardiff Uni, it will be sad to see them go bankrupt but fundamentally they've been mismanaged for decades. I remember when they spent £200k on that weird pattern on the business school building, even then people were like wtf kind of money wasting is that.
Let the market force them to downsize and cut the waste, a government bailout would be a mistake and will let wasteful universities across the country off the hook.
I also went to Cardiff, undergraduate and Masters and also worked there for 4 years.
It has always seemed unsustainable to me that in addition to Cardiff University, which has around 30k students and staff that, Cardiff also has Cardiff Met and the university of South Wales. All in a city of about 350, 000 people.
However, as Cardiff is Wales' only Russel group uni I can't see the Welsh Assembly letting it go under. The others are more likely.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The universities have loaded themselves with debt and spent it on administration, it’s a pyramid scheme waiting to come down in an era where their actual product, of learning and research, has been massively democratised.
They’re now mostly selling scarcity of accreditation through the admissions process.
Talk on X of the entire Welsh university sector crumbling into dust
It will massively impact towns and constituencies where this happens. And it will happen
I remember when a teacher training college closed in my small home town. That was big and bad. These are UNIVERSITIES. Grim
The govt doesn’t have the £££ to bail them all out
Cardiff annual deficit is around 35 million. Pretty sure the Government could find that kind of money (even across ALL universities).
Oy it could actual raise the tuition fees in line with inflation, as it has done for NHS salaries.
As I understand it this would only kick the can down the road. We did this: 1) Slash government funding for universities 2) Replace this with tuition fees which the government then caps 3) Universities are short of cash and fill the hole with foreign students paying £lots 4) Cities like Sheffield fill up with expensive student apartment blocks occupied exclusively by Chinese students 5) People get the hump and so we reduce the number of foreign students which creates a funding crisis and imperils the entire institution
Lets assume that we jack tuition fees up to £15k a year. This isn't paid by the student, its private sector cash - tuition fees sit as an asset on the balance sheet of whichever company buys the debt. The default rate on these loans is already high (40%?) and increasing the size of the loan only increases the size of the money eventually written off. Which reduced the number of investors willing to stump up the cash which the universities need to operate.
Do I have that roughly right? If so its the British problem - we can't afford the cash to pay for it in the short term, we can't afford the damage to our economy in the medium to long term in not paying for it.
The Treasury has stopped selling off student loans.
Because nobody would buy them at those default levels?
OK, so lets assume that we raise tuition fees to £12k or £15k. That is cash which the government now needs to find up front, and will then need to write 40% off. The larger the tuition fees the larger the financial black hole.
A huge debt hypothecated to students. Creating a burden on the government to fund. With a large proportion never to be repaid. As universities are starved of cash.
I'm a big advocate of the blank sheet of paper approach. Nobody would design this structure because its absurd. Can we put something more sensible in place?
How about we sell university places to foreign students at five times the cost to a UK student? Sounds like good business.
Is it if they bring along a family of economically inactive dependents who then need to be housed and have access to services we provide ?
They pay for the accomodation already. Access to healthcare and primary and secondary education could be charged to the student,'s nation of origin.
The dependents were cut because of immigration figures which were politically unacceptable. The baby was thrown out with the bathwater.
So the govt is paying tuition fees up front in any case and then administering repayments, which have a large default level, and put off the able but financially cautious. They also have other sub-optimal results such as emigration to avoid loan repayments, avoiding career progression, high marginal deductions etc etc Why not scrap tuition fees and ration university places by ability?
That, I suspect was why the Conservatives followed the policies they did. Turn the clock back to universities being exclusively for the wealthiest 7%. We don't want any of this positive social engineering caper.
150 years ago only the top 1% went to university never mind the top 7%, as the only universities were Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, Manchester, UCL, Kings London and St Andrews, Aberdeen, Glasgow and Edinburgh and Aberystwyth.
Even most solicitors and accountants and bankers didn't have degrees let alone most nurses and middle managers like now. Degrees were only really needed if you wanted to be a barrister, doctor/surgeon or vicar/bishop or permanent secretary or academic or public school/grammar school teacher
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The universities have loaded themselves with debt and spent it on administration, it’s a pyramid scheme waiting to come down in an era where their actual product, of learning and research, has been massively democratised.
They’re now mostly selling scarcity of accreditation through the admissions process.
Talk on X of the entire Welsh university sector crumbling into dust
It will massively impact towns and constituencies where this happens. And it will happen
I remember when a teacher training college closed in my small home town. That was big and bad. These are UNIVERSITIES. Grim
The govt doesn’t have the £££ to bail them all out
Cardiff annual deficit is around 35 million. Pretty sure the Government could find that kind of money (even across ALL universities).
Oy it could actual raise the tuition fees in line with inflation, as it has done for NHS salaries.
As I understand it this would only kick the can down the road. We did this: 1) Slash government funding for universities 2) Replace this with tuition fees which the government then caps 3) Universities are short of cash and fill the hole with foreign students paying £lots 4) Cities like Sheffield fill up with expensive student apartment blocks occupied exclusively by Chinese students 5) People get the hump and so we reduce the number of foreign students which creates a funding crisis and imperils the entire institution
Lets assume that we jack tuition fees up to £15k a year. This isn't paid by the student, its private sector cash - tuition fees sit as an asset on the balance sheet of whichever company buys the debt. The default rate on these loans is already high (40%?) and increasing the size of the loan only increases the size of the money eventually written off. Which reduced the number of investors willing to stump up the cash which the universities need to operate.
Do I have that roughly right? If so its the British problem - we can't afford the cash to pay for it in the short term, we can't afford the damage to our economy in the medium to long term in not paying for it.
The Treasury has stopped selling off student loans.
Because nobody would buy them at those default levels?
OK, so lets assume that we raise tuition fees to £12k or £15k. That is cash which the government now needs to find up front, and will then need to write 40% off. The larger the tuition fees the larger the financial black hole.
A huge debt hypothecated to students. Creating a burden on the government to fund. With a large proportion never to be repaid. As universities are starved of cash.
I'm a big advocate of the blank sheet of paper approach. Nobody would design this structure because its absurd. Can we put something more sensible in place?
How about we sell university places to foreign students at five times the cost to a UK student? Sounds like good business.
Is it if they bring along a family of economically inactive dependents who then need to be housed and have access to services we provide ?
They pay for the accomodation already. Access to healthcare and primary and secondary education could be charged to the student,'s nation of origin.
The dependents were cut because of immigration figures which were politically unacceptable. The baby was thrown out with the bathwater.
So the govt is paying tuition fees up front in any case and then administering repayments, which have a large default level, and put off the able but financially cautious. They also have other sub-optimal results such as emigration to avoid loan repayments, avoiding career progression, high marginal deductions etc etc Why not scrap tuition fees and ration university places by ability?
Open up education properly instead, this is an area where the free market can deliver radical change.
Simply allow any student to sit any exam from any university of their choice at cost plus reasonable margin. Where they learn the facts is up to them.
Costs for taxpayers and students will plummet.
Though you have reduced the function of the Universities to exam boards which logically will lead to the collapse of the university sector leaving just the "premium brands" operating as enormous exam marking bureaucracies.
In the end only the most prestigious unis will survive in the UK (and elsewhere). There will always be rich kids who want the proper uni experience, and can afford it (or are so bright the state will pay)
So the top ten will be fine, Oxbridge, UCL, Imp, Edinburgh, etc
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Looks like the paper is 99.9% bollocks with a 0.1% interesting grain of an idea to me. It's strange how academics can get away with imposing their totally slanted views onto their piblished 'academic' papers.
But, freedom of speech and all that - is it worth getting het up about?
It's an extremely rambling way of saying that AirBnB usage has grown faster than trend in predominantly black neighbourhoods, and that most renters are white.
Apart from adding "computational hermeneutics" to my bullshit dictionary, a waste of five minutes of my time.
You mean that AirBnB usage has grown faster in poorer, cheaper neighbourhoods?
There might be some real, interesting stuff in whether AirBnB is creating a more rapid gentrification at the intersections of richer and poorer neighbourhoods. Because of the rapid cycle - people comparing prices vs crimes maps vs cool coffee shops on a daily basis…..
Insofar as the 'poorer' and 'majority black' correlate, yes. There might have been a very interesting paper to be written about the central point, given further research, but this wan't it.
Given the author talks of “bodegas” - this is the US.
Where majority black correlate to “the poorer bit of town” very, very well.
It's New York, and the article makes a lot out of the striking differences between how black hosts and white hosts in those neighbourhoods advertise on Airbnb (and differences between black and white reviewers). How strongly those differences really support the conclusion is a bit open to question, but I think it's an interesting observation, and the article is not just about Airbnb and gentrification.
I've felt uncomfortable with tourism since the day in 1978 when I wandered a few blocks away from the White House and found myself in an entirely black neighbourhood. They were all getting on with their lives, one way or another, while I was obviously there to gawp at them. With my white skin I might as well have been wearing a top hat and tails, smoking a cigar, fingering a horse whip. I don't regard a poor neighbourhood as a human zoo, carefully curated for my entertainment.
But it's hard to avoid this with organised 'travel'. Countless times I've seen a row of bedraggled women standing all day behind makeshift trestle tables offering junk for sale - in a New Mexico Pueblo, in the mountains of Laos, and on Caribbean islands. Being a sociologist manqué it's what I tend to notice, more than the bog-standard G&Ts.
Many years ago, on a trip to Nepal, the “with it” types were all visiting the locals houses and schools… as you say, like an exhibit.
They then got upset with me and another person on the trip, who went with the guide, in the evenings, to the local bar and got hammered on rum with the locals. While they stayed at the hostel.
Starmer has managed to put out the perfect post, encapsulating his government in eight words. Vacuous, lacking in any thought or policy to achieve the end. Believing that if you can talk yourself into a recession (or close to one), you can talk yourself out of one.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The universities have loaded themselves with debt and spent it on administration, it’s a pyramid scheme waiting to come down in an era where their actual product, of learning and research, has been massively democratised.
They’re now mostly selling scarcity of accreditation through the admissions process.
Talk on X of the entire Welsh university sector crumbling into dust
It will massively impact towns and constituencies where this happens. And it will happen
I remember when a teacher training college closed in my small home town. That was big and bad. These are UNIVERSITIES. Grim
The govt doesn’t have the £££ to bail them all out
Cardiff annual deficit is around 35 million. Pretty sure the Government could find that kind of money (even across ALL universities).
Oy it could actual raise the tuition fees in line with inflation, as it has done for NHS salaries.
As I understand it this would only kick the can down the road. We did this: 1) Slash government funding for universities 2) Replace this with tuition fees which the government then caps 3) Universities are short of cash and fill the hole with foreign students paying £lots 4) Cities like Sheffield fill up with expensive student apartment blocks occupied exclusively by Chinese students 5) People get the hump and so we reduce the number of foreign students which creates a funding crisis and imperils the entire institution
Lets assume that we jack tuition fees up to £15k a year. This isn't paid by the student, its private sector cash - tuition fees sit as an asset on the balance sheet of whichever company buys the debt. The default rate on these loans is already high (40%?) and increasing the size of the loan only increases the size of the money eventually written off. Which reduced the number of investors willing to stump up the cash which the universities need to operate.
Do I have that roughly right? If so its the British problem - we can't afford the cash to pay for it in the short term, we can't afford the damage to our economy in the medium to long term in not paying for it.
The Treasury has stopped selling off student loans.
Because nobody would buy them at those default levels?
OK, so lets assume that we raise tuition fees to £12k or £15k. That is cash which the government now needs to find up front, and will then need to write 40% off. The larger the tuition fees the larger the financial black hole.
A huge debt hypothecated to students. Creating a burden on the government to fund. With a large proportion never to be repaid. As universities are starved of cash.
I'm a big advocate of the blank sheet of paper approach. Nobody would design this structure because its absurd. Can we put something more sensible in place?
How about we sell university places to foreign students at five times the cost to a UK student? Sounds like good business.
Is it if they bring along a family of economically inactive dependents who then need to be housed and have access to services we provide ?
They pay for the accomodation already. Access to healthcare and primary and secondary education could be charged to the student,'s nation of origin.
The dependents were cut because of immigration figures which were politically unacceptable. The baby was thrown out with the bathwater.
So the govt is paying tuition fees up front in any case and then administering repayments, which have a large default level, and put off the able but financially cautious. They also have other sub-optimal results such as emigration to avoid loan repayments, avoiding career progression, high marginal deductions etc etc Why not scrap tuition fees and ration university places by ability?
That, I suspect was why the Conservatives followed the policies they did. Turn the clock back to universities being exclusively for the wealthiest 7%. We don't want any of this positive social engineering caper.
150 years ago only the top 1% went to university never mind the top 7%, as the only universities were Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, Manchester, UCL, Kings London and St Andrews, Aberdeen, Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Even most solicitors and accountants and bankers didn't have degrees let alone most nurses and middle managers like now
Ideally we should go back to a time when you have to be Anglican Protestant, and you can get sent down for Atheism, like Shelley, or not sent down despite keeping a bear in your chambers, like Byron
Working people and businesses are set to benefit from new rules that will give more flexibility over how occupational defined benefit pension schemes are managed, as the government continues to remove blockages that are inhibiting its growth agenda that will improve lives of working people across the UK.
Hosting a meeting with leaders of Britain’s biggest businesses in the City of London today (Tuesday 28 January), the Prime Minister and the Chancellor will set out the details of changes and tell some of the country’s leading CEOs that Britain is back and open for business.
At the roundtable, the PM and Chancellor will outline how restrictions will be lifted on how well-funded, occupational defined benefit pension funds that are performing well will be able to invest their surplus funds.
The current rules heavily tilt defined benefit pensions towards investing in the safest possible financial instruments - effectively gilts or the highest quality corporate bonds.
This makes sense on at the individual fund level, but absolutely no sense whatsoever at the national level: Pension funds have the longest possible time horizons - they’re the ones who ought to be investing in national infrastructure & reaping the long term benefits.
There’s been a weird double-think in much of the UK for the last few decades, where much talk is made of “growth” but at the same time every part of the system has been constrained to allow as little economic growth as possible. For economic growth to happen somebody, somewhere has to do the actual work: houses have to be built, roads maintained, computer programs have to be written, and so on & on. Preventing pension funds from funding that work helps nobody.
(Economics types will recognise this as an example of the fallacy of composition that Keynes railed against.)
True but the DB scheme I am in closed may years ago, is relatively small, has around 250 members (there was 1 for staff and one for works) and the age profile is skewed toward 50 plus.
That schemed really should not be investing in illiquid assets or risky assets given the age profile of its members in my view.
Of course not. Does anything in the proposals compel that (I don't think so) ?
The existing rules have basically forced large funds, with a horizon of many decades, to underperform the market, long term. That's good neither for the funds nor the economy.
The devil will be in the detail, as always, in the past chancellors have spoken of accessing pension funds to pay for infrastructure and the like.
A pension is a vehicle to fund someones retirement. First and foremost it must do that. If it helps the economy then all well and good but its priority should be fund growth to fund the retiree's retirement.
The govt will bring forward the details in the spring. Depends what is meant by this.
"With the right guardrails in place, the government’s proposals could help channel more funding into the economy, by enabling schemes to invest more widely and take on greater risk, while allowing for members to receive an uplift to pension benefits."
Coming back to the issue of babies and why the domestic population trying to have them in the UK is difficult, look at Household wealth statistics
Median wealth (2022) was about £300K made up of property (40%), Private Pensions (35%), Net Wealth (14%) and Physical Wealth (10%). So if you want to save for a home, or a pension and you have some student debt, the chances of you being able to afford children means hard choices.
Alternatively if you are a single mum on benefits, you are limited to 2 children (and a financial cap) if you go beyond that.
So if you don't like migration you have to have some serious discussions about the child bearing barriers in the UK.
246,930 academic staff were employed at UK higher education providers on 1 December 2023, a rise of 3% on the previous year. 66% of academic staff were of UK nationality compared to 67% in 2022. 15% held EU nationalities and 18% held non-EU nationalities. Source: HESA.
This is like saying "hardly indicative of a major threat to US tech" by pointing at the price of Nvidia stock maybe last Thursday evening
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The universities have loaded themselves with debt and spent it on administration, it’s a pyramid scheme waiting to come down in an era where their actual product, of learning and research, has been massively democratised.
They’re now mostly selling scarcity of accreditation through the admissions process.
Talk on X of the entire Welsh university sector crumbling into dust
It will massively impact towns and constituencies where this happens. And it will happen
I remember when a teacher training college closed in my small home town. That was big and bad. These are UNIVERSITIES. Grim
The govt doesn’t have the £££ to bail them all out
Cardiff annual deficit is around 35 million. Pretty sure the Government could find that kind of money (even across ALL universities).
Oy it could actual raise the tuition fees in line with inflation, as it has done for NHS salaries.
As I understand it this would only kick the can down the road. We did this: 1) Slash government funding for universities 2) Replace this with tuition fees which the government then caps 3) Universities are short of cash and fill the hole with foreign students paying £lots 4) Cities like Sheffield fill up with expensive student apartment blocks occupied exclusively by Chinese students 5) People get the hump and so we reduce the number of foreign students which creates a funding crisis and imperils the entire institution
Lets assume that we jack tuition fees up to £15k a year. This isn't paid by the student, its private sector cash - tuition fees sit as an asset on the balance sheet of whichever company buys the debt. The default rate on these loans is already high (40%?) and increasing the size of the loan only increases the size of the money eventually written off. Which reduced the number of investors willing to stump up the cash which the universities need to operate.
Do I have that roughly right? If so its the British problem - we can't afford the cash to pay for it in the short term, we can't afford the damage to our economy in the medium to long term in not paying for it.
The Treasury has stopped selling off student loans.
Because nobody would buy them at those default levels?
OK, so lets assume that we raise tuition fees to £12k or £15k. That is cash which the government now needs to find up front, and will then need to write 40% off. The larger the tuition fees the larger the financial black hole.
A huge debt hypothecated to students. Creating a burden on the government to fund. With a large proportion never to be repaid. As universities are starved of cash.
I'm a big advocate of the blank sheet of paper approach. Nobody would design this structure because its absurd. Can we put something more sensible in place?
How about we sell university places to foreign students at five times the cost to a UK student? Sounds like good business.
Is it if they bring along a family of economically inactive dependents who then need to be housed and have access to services we provide ?
They pay for the accomodation already. Access to healthcare and primary and secondary education could be charged to the student,'s nation of origin.
The dependents were cut because of immigration figures which were politically unacceptable. The baby was thrown out with the bathwater.
So the govt is paying tuition fees up front in any case and then administering repayments, which have a large default level, and put off the able but financially cautious. They also have other sub-optimal results such as emigration to avoid loan repayments, avoiding career progression, high marginal deductions etc etc Why not scrap tuition fees and ration university places by ability?
Open up education properly instead, this is an area where the free market can deliver radical change.
Simply allow any student to sit any exam from any university of their choice at cost plus reasonable margin. Where they learn the facts is up to them.
Costs for taxpayers and students will plummet.
Though you have reduced the function of the Universities to exam boards which logically will lead to the collapse of the university sector leaving just the "premium brands" operating as enormous exam marking bureaucracies.
No, I am suggesting separating out tuition, exams and research and giving students the opportunity to pick'n'mix rather than face a cartel closed shop menu.
Yes the premium brands would end up dominating the exam sector. Tuition would change with far more done online but in person tuition would still be popular in university towns and cities across the country imo, but universities would have to actively compete on cost rather than just reputation.
In most industries if we can achieve the same or better results for less money it is considered progress, it should be the same for learning. The current structure does not make economic sense for many students nor the taxpayer.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The universities have loaded themselves with debt and spent it on administration, it’s a pyramid scheme waiting to come down in an era where their actual product, of learning and research, has been massively democratised.
They’re now mostly selling scarcity of accreditation through the admissions process.
Talk on X of the entire Welsh university sector crumbling into dust
It will massively impact towns and constituencies where this happens. And it will happen
I remember when a teacher training college closed in my small home town. That was big and bad. These are UNIVERSITIES. Grim
The govt doesn’t have the £££ to bail them all out
Cardiff annual deficit is around 35 million. Pretty sure the Government could find that kind of money (even across ALL universities).
Oy it could actual raise the tuition fees in line with inflation, as it has done for NHS salaries.
As I understand it this would only kick the can down the road. We did this: 1) Slash government funding for universities 2) Replace this with tuition fees which the government then caps 3) Universities are short of cash and fill the hole with foreign students paying £lots 4) Cities like Sheffield fill up with expensive student apartment blocks occupied exclusively by Chinese students 5) People get the hump and so we reduce the number of foreign students which creates a funding crisis and imperils the entire institution
Lets assume that we jack tuition fees up to £15k a year. This isn't paid by the student, its private sector cash - tuition fees sit as an asset on the balance sheet of whichever company buys the debt. The default rate on these loans is already high (40%?) and increasing the size of the loan only increases the size of the money eventually written off. Which reduced the number of investors willing to stump up the cash which the universities need to operate.
Do I have that roughly right? If so its the British problem - we can't afford the cash to pay for it in the short term, we can't afford the damage to our economy in the medium to long term in not paying for it.
The Treasury has stopped selling off student loans.
Because nobody would buy them at those default levels?
OK, so lets assume that we raise tuition fees to £12k or £15k. That is cash which the government now needs to find up front, and will then need to write 40% off. The larger the tuition fees the larger the financial black hole.
A huge debt hypothecated to students. Creating a burden on the government to fund. With a large proportion never to be repaid. As universities are starved of cash.
I'm a big advocate of the blank sheet of paper approach. Nobody would design this structure because its absurd. Can we put something more sensible in place?
How about we sell university places to foreign students at five times the cost to a UK student? Sounds like good business.
Is it if they bring along a family of economically inactive dependents who then need to be housed and have access to services we provide ?
They pay for the accomodation already. Access to healthcare and primary and secondary education could be charged to the student,'s nation of origin.
The dependents were cut because of immigration figures which were politically unacceptable. The baby was thrown out with the bathwater.
So the govt is paying tuition fees up front in any case and then administering repayments, which have a large default level, and put off the able but financially cautious. They also have other sub-optimal results such as emigration to avoid loan repayments, avoiding career progression, high marginal deductions etc etc Why not scrap tuition fees and ration university places by ability?
That, I suspect was why the Conservatives followed the policies they did. Turn the clock back to universities being exclusively for the wealthiest 7%. We don't want any of this positive social engineering caper.
There was no shortage of clever working class teenagers going to university from the 1970s onwards.
The increase in students in recent decades has come from the thicker middle class teenagers.
I'm not sure how getting them into £50k of debt in return for three years of 'making memories' is 'positive social engineering'.
Let alone preparing them for an ever more challenging world.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Looks like the paper is 99.9% bollocks with a 0.1% interesting grain of an idea to me. It's strange how academics can get away with imposing their totally slanted views onto their piblished 'academic' papers.
But, freedom of speech and all that - is it worth getting het up about?
It's an extremely rambling way of saying that AirBnB usage has grown faster than trend in predominantly black neighbourhoods, and that most renters are white.
Apart from adding "computational hermeneutics" to my bullshit dictionary, a waste of five minutes of my time.
You mean that AirBnB usage has grown faster in poorer, cheaper neighbourhoods?
There might be some real, interesting stuff in whether AirBnB is creating a more rapid gentrification at the intersections of richer and poorer neighbourhoods. Because of the rapid cycle - people comparing prices vs crimes maps vs cool coffee shops on a daily basis…..
Insofar as the 'poorer' and 'majority black' correlate, yes. There might have been a very interesting paper to be written about the central point, given further research, but this wan't it.
Given the author talks of “bodegas” - this is the US.
Where majority black correlate to “the poorer bit of town” very, very well.
It's New York, and the article makes a lot out of the striking differences between how black hosts and white hosts in those neighbourhoods advertise on Airbnb (and differences between black and white reviewers). How strongly those differences really support the conclusion is a bit open to question, but I think it's an interesting observation, and the article is not just about Airbnb and gentrification.
I've felt uncomfortable with tourism since the day in 1978 when I wandered a few blocks away from the White House and found myself in an entirely black neighbourhood. They were all getting on with their lives, one way or another, while I was obviously there to gawp at them. With my white skin I might as well have been wearing a top hat and tails, smoking a cigar, fingering a horse whip. I don't regard a poor neighbourhood as a human zoo, carefully curated for my entertainment.
But it's hard to avoid this with organised 'travel'. Countless times I've seen a row of bedraggled women standing all day behind makeshift trestle tables offering junk for sale - in a New Mexico Pueblo, in the mountains of Laos, and on Caribbean islands. Being a sociologist manqué it's what I tend to notice, more than the bog-standard G&Ts.
I did one of those organised coach tours of the West Coast of the US many years back with my Dad, more as company for him really. In LA they did organised tours of Compton and other gang areas, with former gang members leading it. Felt odd to me. True poverty tourism. Didn't go.
Starmer has managed to put out the perfect post, encapsulating his government in eight words. Vacuous, lacking in any thought or policy to achieve the end. Believing that if you can talk yourself into a recession (or close to one), you can talk yourself out of one.
With the previous government, were we closed for business?
I am unclear on this whole open / closed thing...
Not having any meaning is the point. And the point of so much politics speak.
An exercise: instead of allowing government to set the tests and decide the headlines and keep changing the subject, set them yourself. Here are three:
How are the government getting on with London's airport capacity? When does work start on the third runway? (We are now in the 57th year since the Roskill Commission started work).
Working people and businesses are set to benefit from new rules that will give more flexibility over how occupational defined benefit pension schemes are managed, as the government continues to remove blockages that are inhibiting its growth agenda that will improve lives of working people across the UK.
Hosting a meeting with leaders of Britain’s biggest businesses in the City of London today (Tuesday 28 January), the Prime Minister and the Chancellor will set out the details of changes and tell some of the country’s leading CEOs that Britain is back and open for business.
At the roundtable, the PM and Chancellor will outline how restrictions will be lifted on how well-funded, occupational defined benefit pension funds that are performing well will be able to invest their surplus funds.
The current rules heavily tilt defined benefit pensions towards investing in the safest possible financial instruments - effectively gilts or the highest quality corporate bonds.
This makes sense on at the individual fund level, but absolutely no sense whatsoever at the national level: Pension funds have the longest possible time horizons - they’re the ones who ought to be investing in national infrastructure & reaping the long term benefits.
There’s been a weird double-think in much of the UK for the last few decades, where much talk is made of “growth” but at the same time every part of the system has been constrained to allow as little economic growth as possible. For economic growth to happen somebody, somewhere has to do the actual work: houses have to be built, roads maintained, computer programs have to be written, and so on & on. Preventing pension funds from funding that work helps nobody.
(Economics types will recognise this as an example of the fallacy of composition that Keynes railed against.)
The rules were set up primarily, I think, to force pension funds into funding government borrowing. It's been an issue for decades; it's encouraging that desperation is finally forcing them to take look at them. Desperate measures do carry a degree of extra risk though.
So what happens when that risk does not pay off ?
The members of the scheme get reduced benefits presumably.
Why should private defined schemes take that risk, especially when so many are now closed to new members and their age profile is far older than DC schemes.
They very probably shouldn't. But won't that remain entirely up to the fund's trustees ?
The point is that the existing rules effectively mandate long term underperformance.
On thread: I was running the line at a junior football match at the weekend. Leafy Cheshire against WWC Manchester. As linesman, I got to eavesdrop on both sets of conversations. The Cheshire conversation was about disappointment with Labour "most of us had just been hanging on until Labour got in, thinking things would improve, interest rates would come down, but it's just getting worse ... Reeves hasn't got a clue"; the Manchester conversation somewhat earthier and angrier, and focused on the Christmas party which had been cancelled because the venue had been turned into a hotel for illegal immigrants.
Obviously these were just snippets. These are normal people mainly talking about their kids and football. But it was striking to hear politics discussed at all in the real world. I still find it slightly jarring to hear peoplebeing openly critical of Labour (aside from the Corbyn era). For my whole lifetime, my experience in real life has been that only people who know you very well are openly critical of the Labour Party lest people think they are Tories.
You obviously had better weather than we did. I think all the conversations at the sideline last Sunday were on the topic of how terrible it was standing in freezing driving rain, how cold we were, whether anyone could feel their feet, and if the ref could end the game early as we were 5-0 up and the other team had stopped trying.
That rings true for me. Thank God those days are over. I'd almost managed to blot out the memories of endless hours stood in the freezing cold and pouring rain next to some godforsaken field on the edge of a disused industrial estate. That's if you were lucky. If unlucky, you'd be running the line having accidentally accepted the flag without thinking or having been finally shamed into the job. Then you'd be spending the next hour and a half also trying desperately to judge offsides and penalties on a pitch with barely discernable markings. Those of you with just daughters - consider yourselves blessed.
President Trump, who has never served a day in the US military, just issued an executive order claiming that the 15,000 trans people serving in our country's armed forces lack the honor, honesty, humility, and selflessness necessary to do their duty. https://x.com/AriDrennen/status/1884124773694980467
The quote in question comes from the Executive Order "Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness", see https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/prioritizing-military-excellence-and-readiness-2/ It forbids "medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals with gender dysphoria" and "shifting pronoun usage or use of pronouns that inaccurately reflect an individual’s sex". and gives the SecDef (or Homeland Security for the Coast Guard) 30 days to do it.
It states pretty baldy..Consistent with the military mission and longstanding DoD policy, expressing a false “gender identity” divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service. .., which is demonstrably untrue.
Hasn't he also done an edict forbidding gender change from now on, ie it won't be possible to be trans in America?
Not to my understanding - what he's done is order that passports (and possibly other documents) reflect sex registered at birth.
That's what I meant. Transgender no longer recognised officially.
Working people and businesses are set to benefit from new rules that will give more flexibility over how occupational defined benefit pension schemes are managed, as the government continues to remove blockages that are inhibiting its growth agenda that will improve lives of working people across the UK.
Hosting a meeting with leaders of Britain’s biggest businesses in the City of London today (Tuesday 28 January), the Prime Minister and the Chancellor will set out the details of changes and tell some of the country’s leading CEOs that Britain is back and open for business.
At the roundtable, the PM and Chancellor will outline how restrictions will be lifted on how well-funded, occupational defined benefit pension funds that are performing well will be able to invest their surplus funds.
This is nonsense. Defined benefits are 'defined'. If the fund makes a surplus either the company pays less to cover the funds shortfall (if it is still an internal one) or the outsourced fund takes the benefit of underwriting any shortfall. Pensioners rarely have DB pensions now. It's normally Defined Contributions.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Looks like the paper is 99.9% bollocks with a 0.1% interesting grain of an idea to me. It's strange how academics can get away with imposing their totally slanted views onto their piblished 'academic' papers.
But, freedom of speech and all that - is it worth getting het up about?
It's an extremely rambling way of saying that AirBnB usage has grown faster than trend in predominantly black neighbourhoods, and that most renters are white.
Apart from adding "computational hermeneutics" to my bullshit dictionary, a waste of five minutes of my time.
You mean that AirBnB usage has grown faster in poorer, cheaper neighbourhoods?
There might be some real, interesting stuff in whether AirBnB is creating a more rapid gentrification at the intersections of richer and poorer neighbourhoods. Because of the rapid cycle - people comparing prices vs crimes maps vs cool coffee shops on a daily basis…..
Insofar as the 'poorer' and 'majority black' correlate, yes. There might have been a very interesting paper to be written about the central point, given further research, but this wan't it.
Given the author talks of “bodegas” - this is the US.
Where majority black correlate to “the poorer bit of town” very, very well.
It's New York, and the article makes a lot out of the striking differences between how black hosts and white hosts in those neighbourhoods advertise on Airbnb (and differences between black and white reviewers). How strongly those differences really support the conclusion is a bit open to question, but I think it's an interesting observation, and the article is not just about Airbnb and gentrification.
I've felt uncomfortable with tourism since the day in 1978 when I wandered a few blocks away from the White House and found myself in an entirely black neighbourhood. They were all getting on with their lives, one way or another, while I was obviously there to gawp at them. With my white skin I might as well have been wearing a top hat and tails, smoking a cigar, fingering a horse whip. I don't regard a poor neighbourhood as a human zoo, carefully curated for my entertainment.
But it's hard to avoid this with organised 'travel'. Countless times I've seen a row of bedraggled women standing all day behind makeshift trestle tables offering junk for sale - in a New Mexico Pueblo, in the mountains of Laos, and on Caribbean islands. Being a sociologist manqué it's what I tend to notice, more than the bog-standard G&Ts.
I did one of those organised coach tours of the West Coast of the US many years back with my Dad, more as company for him really. In LA they did organised tours of Compton and other gang areas, with former gang members leading it. Felt odd to me. True poverty tourism. Didn't go.
The best version of this was a former UDA guy whose plan to cash in on post Troubles tourism in NI was to do tours of the former fun bits.
In a Saracen APC.
I heard that he got as far as looking at prices for the command vehicle version (the whole top opens as a series of hatches, so great for safari picture taking) before he was told NO.
This could be a nice little test case for how transparent, honest and open our Labour government is. If over this period deaths will slightly exceed births, then the 5M rise is entirely migration based - an average of 500K pa.
Nearly all migration is under state control. It can't be done without state permission.
The government could tell us that this projection is great, there are reasons, it is all carefully planned for, it happens because the state wants it to happen and is good for the UK in multitudinous ways which we will now list for you.
If they do something else (and I think they will) we are being as deceived as we were under the Tories.
I'm trying to think which radical reformist party will gain on account of the continuing state obfuscation but I have forgotten their name.
I would suggest that, after 25 years of very high levels of net immigration, that it seems quite plain that high levels of immigration do not boost the economy overall (even if individual sectors benefit). That 25 year period has seen much lower levels of economic growth than the preceding 25 years, when levels of net immigration were much lower.
The economic case for high immigration seems totally unproven.
What was the dependency ratio for the two blocks of 25 years......and what would the second block have looked like without immigration?
Starmer has managed to put out the perfect post, encapsulating his government in eight words. Vacuous, lacking in any thought or policy to achieve the end. Believing that if you can talk yourself into a recession (or close to one), you can talk yourself out of one.
But on a serious note, there are a number of structural issues around having children now. Especially housing, benefits and breakdown of relationships. If we want more babies (white or otherwise) there are a number of issues around our tax and benefits system that needs addressed.
Looks like the forecast is 5 million, in round terms, net migration over that period with births and deaths being similar.
Which makes it so easy to fix. Net Zero migration.
It's not rocket science - it just needs doing. There will be economic consequences, but not nearly as severe as those caused by 5 million more people with nowhere to live.
On Cardiff we currently only have media speculation. Up to is doing the heavy lifting in the potential job losses. We'll see.
It is going to happen. Cardiff have no money. Neither does any other university.
Although TBF when I was at University College Cardiff in the 1980s it went bang and had to be bailed out by UWIST. The Government was involved in the rescue and one of the conditions was Principal of UWIST Aubrey Trotman-Dickinson, a personal friend of Thatcher was installed as Vice Principal of the new University of Wales College, Cardiff.
Totally wrong. Not everywhere is in debt. Bath is pretty healthy (relatively). Sadly its partly because fewer of us do a lot more than we used to.
I can assure you Cardiff are up S**t Street. All the University of Wales Colleges are also in big trouble. Trinity St David's have just closed the Lampeter campus.
This is the same across the country. You can pull out one or two examples of relative successes, but even those are unsustainable under current funding and immigration policy.
Are you just talking about Wales then? Tough times everywhere, but its incorrect to say that no other University has any money.
It is not unique to Wales, although I can speak with more authority on the trouble at universities in Wales.
And ignore people who work at Universities not in Sh@t Street?
I have inside information. I suspect either Cambridge is doing fine or you are a King of wishful thinking. I hate to admit this, but unless Government intervenes Leon is correct. The threat is existential.
I went to Cardiff Uni, it will be sad to see them go bankrupt but fundamentally they've been mismanaged for decades. I remember when they spent £200k on that weird pattern on the business school building, even then people were like wtf kind of money wasting is that.
Let the market force them to downsize and cut the waste, a government bailout would be a mistake and will let wasteful universities across the country off the hook.
If Labour want to lose more of their traditional voters to Reform, they will bail out Universities whilst letting industrial companies fail. However, if they don’t bail out failing Universities, they will risk losing their academic vote.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The universities have loaded themselves with debt and spent it on administration, it’s a pyramid scheme waiting to come down in an era where their actual product, of learning and research, has been massively democratised.
They’re now mostly selling scarcity of accreditation through the admissions process.
Talk on X of the entire Welsh university sector crumbling into dust
It will massively impact towns and constituencies where this happens. And it will happen
I remember when a teacher training college closed in my small home town. That was big and bad. These are UNIVERSITIES. Grim
The govt doesn’t have the £££ to bail them all out
Cardiff annual deficit is around 35 million. Pretty sure the Government could find that kind of money (even across ALL universities).
Oy it could actual raise the tuition fees in line with inflation, as it has done for NHS salaries.
As I understand it this would only kick the can down the road. We did this: 1) Slash government funding for universities 2) Replace this with tuition fees which the government then caps 3) Universities are short of cash and fill the hole with foreign students paying £lots 4) Cities like Sheffield fill up with expensive student apartment blocks occupied exclusively by Chinese students 5) People get the hump and so we reduce the number of foreign students which creates a funding crisis and imperils the entire institution
Lets assume that we jack tuition fees up to £15k a year. This isn't paid by the student, its private sector cash - tuition fees sit as an asset on the balance sheet of whichever company buys the debt. The default rate on these loans is already high (40%?) and increasing the size of the loan only increases the size of the money eventually written off. Which reduced the number of investors willing to stump up the cash which the universities need to operate.
Do I have that roughly right? If so its the British problem - we can't afford the cash to pay for it in the short term, we can't afford the damage to our economy in the medium to long term in not paying for it.
The Treasury has stopped selling off student loans.
Because nobody would buy them at those default levels?
OK, so lets assume that we raise tuition fees to £12k or £15k. That is cash which the government now needs to find up front, and will then need to write 40% off. The larger the tuition fees the larger the financial black hole.
A huge debt hypothecated to students. Creating a burden on the government to fund. With a large proportion never to be repaid. As universities are starved of cash.
I'm a big advocate of the blank sheet of paper approach. Nobody would design this structure because its absurd. Can we put something more sensible in place?
How about we sell university places to foreign students at five times the cost to a UK student? Sounds like good business.
Is it if they bring along a family of economically inactive dependents who then need to be housed and have access to services we provide ?
They pay for the accomodation already. Access to healthcare and primary and secondary education could be charged to the student,'s nation of origin.
The dependents were cut because of immigration figures which were politically unacceptable. The baby was thrown out with the bathwater.
So the govt is paying tuition fees up front in any case and then administering repayments, which have a large default level, and put off the able but financially cautious. They also have other sub-optimal results such as emigration to avoid loan repayments, avoiding career progression, high marginal deductions etc etc Why not scrap tuition fees and ration university places by ability?
That, I suspect was why the Conservatives followed the policies they did. Turn the clock back to universities being exclusively for the wealthiest 7%. We don't want any of this positive social engineering caper.
150 years ago only the top 1% went to university never mind the top 7%, as the only universities were Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, Manchester, UCL, Kings London and St Andrews, Aberdeen, Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Even most solicitors and accountants and bankers didn't have degrees let alone most nurses and middle managers like now
Ideally we should go back to a time when you have to be Anglican Protestant, and you can get sent down for Atheism, like Shelley, or not sent down despite keeping a bear in your chambers, like Byron
That's a proper university system, right there
What if the bear is a heavy armed atheist radical?
Working people and businesses are set to benefit from new rules that will give more flexibility over how occupational defined benefit pension schemes are managed, as the government continues to remove blockages that are inhibiting its growth agenda that will improve lives of working people across the UK.
Hosting a meeting with leaders of Britain’s biggest businesses in the City of London today (Tuesday 28 January), the Prime Minister and the Chancellor will set out the details of changes and tell some of the country’s leading CEOs that Britain is back and open for business.
At the roundtable, the PM and Chancellor will outline how restrictions will be lifted on how well-funded, occupational defined benefit pension funds that are performing well will be able to invest their surplus funds.
The current rules heavily tilt defined benefit pensions towards investing in the safest possible financial instruments - effectively gilts or the highest quality corporate bonds.
This makes sense on at the individual fund level, but absolutely no sense whatsoever at the national level: Pension funds have the longest possible time horizons - they’re the ones who ought to be investing in national infrastructure & reaping the long term benefits.
There’s been a weird double-think in much of the UK for the last few decades, where much talk is made of “growth” but at the same time every part of the system has been constrained to allow as little economic growth as possible. For economic growth to happen somebody, somewhere has to do the actual work: houses have to be built, roads maintained, computer programs have to be written, and so on & on. Preventing pension funds from funding that work helps nobody.
(Economics types will recognise this as an example of the fallacy of composition that Keynes railed against.)
The rules were set up primarily, I think, to force pension funds into funding government borrowing. It's been an issue for decades; it's encouraging that desperation is finally forcing them to take look at them. Desperate measures do carry a degree of extra risk though.
So what happens when that risk does not pay off ?
The members of the scheme get reduced benefits presumably.
Why should private defined schemes take that risk, especially when so many are now closed to new members and their age profile is far older than DC schemes.
They very probably shouldn't. But won't that remain entirely up to the fund's trustees ?
The point is that the existing rules effectively mandate long term underperformance.
Problems:
We don't teach risk or investing so trustees often don't understand risk or investing. We assume investing in "safe" assets is "safe" rather than thinking of it as guaranteed underperformance. We bundle global equity trackers in the same "risky" group as we do the trustees buying shares in a start up or bubble.
Working people and businesses are set to benefit from new rules that will give more flexibility over how occupational defined benefit pension schemes are managed, as the government continues to remove blockages that are inhibiting its growth agenda that will improve lives of working people across the UK.
Hosting a meeting with leaders of Britain’s biggest businesses in the City of London today (Tuesday 28 January), the Prime Minister and the Chancellor will set out the details of changes and tell some of the country’s leading CEOs that Britain is back and open for business.
At the roundtable, the PM and Chancellor will outline how restrictions will be lifted on how well-funded, occupational defined benefit pension funds that are performing well will be able to invest their surplus funds.
This is nonsense. Defined benefits are 'defined'. If the fund makes a surplus either the company pays less to cover the funds shortfall (if it is still an internal one) or the outsourced fund takes the benefit of underwriting any shortfall. Pensioners rarely have DB pensions now. It's normally Defined Contributions.
Unless the system breaks down, of course.
But one of the reasons UK companies have been so vulnerable to private equity asset stripping (which in the past has not infrequently played fast and loose with company pension fund surpluses) is that for a very long time our investment rules effectively made it easier for them to purchase UK company stock than they did for our domestic pension funds.
Working people and businesses are set to benefit from new rules that will give more flexibility over how occupational defined benefit pension schemes are managed, as the government continues to remove blockages that are inhibiting its growth agenda that will improve lives of working people across the UK.
Hosting a meeting with leaders of Britain’s biggest businesses in the City of London today (Tuesday 28 January), the Prime Minister and the Chancellor will set out the details of changes and tell some of the country’s leading CEOs that Britain is back and open for business.
At the roundtable, the PM and Chancellor will outline how restrictions will be lifted on how well-funded, occupational defined benefit pension funds that are performing well will be able to invest their surplus funds.
The current rules heavily tilt defined benefit pensions towards investing in the safest possible financial instruments - effectively gilts or the highest quality corporate bonds.
This makes sense on at the individual fund level, but absolutely no sense whatsoever at the national level: Pension funds have the longest possible time horizons - they’re the ones who ought to be investing in national infrastructure & reaping the long term benefits.
There’s been a weird double-think in much of the UK for the last few decades, where much talk is made of “growth” but at the same time every part of the system has been constrained to allow as little economic growth as possible. For economic growth to happen somebody, somewhere has to do the actual work: houses have to be built, roads maintained, computer programs have to be written, and so on & on. Preventing pension funds from funding that work helps nobody.
(Economics types will recognise this as an example of the fallacy of composition that Keynes railed against.)
The rules were set up primarily, I think, to force pension funds into funding government borrowing. It's been an issue for decades; it's encouraging that desperation is finally forcing them to take look at them. Desperate measures do carry a degree of extra risk though.
So what happens when that risk does not pay off ?
The members of the scheme get reduced benefits presumably.
Why should private defined schemes take that risk, especially when so many are now closed to new members and their age profile is far older than DC schemes.
They very probably shouldn't. But won't that remain entirely up to the fund's trustees ?
The point is that the existing rules effectively mandate long term underperformance.
Problems:
We don't teach risk or investing so trustees often don't understand risk or investing. We assume investing in "safe" assets is "safe" rather than thinking of it as guaranteed underperformance. We bundle global equity trackers in the same "risky" group as we do the trustees buying shares in a start up or bubble.
Point 3 is quite comical. I'm 60% global trackers / 40 tech (Ho ho ). Global trackers by definition don't pick winners which is a rule for long term investing. Imo default funds for anyone under 55 should probably be 100% global trackers.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The universities have loaded themselves with debt and spent it on administration, it’s a pyramid scheme waiting to come down in an era where their actual product, of learning and research, has been massively democratised.
They’re now mostly selling scarcity of accreditation through the admissions process.
Talk on X of the entire Welsh university sector crumbling into dust
It will massively impact towns and constituencies where this happens. And it will happen
I remember when a teacher training college closed in my small home town. That was big and bad. These are UNIVERSITIES. Grim
The govt doesn’t have the £££ to bail them all out
Cardiff annual deficit is around 35 million. Pretty sure the Government could find that kind of money (even across ALL universities).
Oy it could actual raise the tuition fees in line with inflation, as it has done for NHS salaries.
As I understand it this would only kick the can down the road. We did this: 1) Slash government funding for universities 2) Replace this with tuition fees which the government then caps 3) Universities are short of cash and fill the hole with foreign students paying £lots 4) Cities like Sheffield fill up with expensive student apartment blocks occupied exclusively by Chinese students 5) People get the hump and so we reduce the number of foreign students which creates a funding crisis and imperils the entire institution
Lets assume that we jack tuition fees up to £15k a year. This isn't paid by the student, its private sector cash - tuition fees sit as an asset on the balance sheet of whichever company buys the debt. The default rate on these loans is already high (40%?) and increasing the size of the loan only increases the size of the money eventually written off. Which reduced the number of investors willing to stump up the cash which the universities need to operate.
Do I have that roughly right? If so its the British problem - we can't afford the cash to pay for it in the short term, we can't afford the damage to our economy in the medium to long term in not paying for it.
The Treasury has stopped selling off student loans.
Because nobody would buy them at those default levels?
OK, so lets assume that we raise tuition fees to £12k or £15k. That is cash which the government now needs to find up front, and will then need to write 40% off. The larger the tuition fees the larger the financial black hole.
A huge debt hypothecated to students. Creating a burden on the government to fund. With a large proportion never to be repaid. As universities are starved of cash.
I'm a big advocate of the blank sheet of paper approach. Nobody would design this structure because its absurd. Can we put something more sensible in place?
How about we sell university places to foreign students at five times the cost to a UK student? Sounds like good business.
Is it if they bring along a family of economically inactive dependents who then need to be housed and have access to services we provide ?
They pay for the accomodation already. Access to healthcare and primary and secondary education could be charged to the student,'s nation of origin.
The dependents were cut because of immigration figures which were politically unacceptable. The baby was thrown out with the bathwater.
So the govt is paying tuition fees up front in any case and then administering repayments, which have a large default level, and put off the able but financially cautious. They also have other sub-optimal results such as emigration to avoid loan repayments, avoiding career progression, high marginal deductions etc etc Why not scrap tuition fees and ration university places by ability?
That, I suspect was why the Conservatives followed the policies they did. Turn the clock back to universities being exclusively for the wealthiest 7%. We don't want any of this positive social engineering caper.
150 years ago only the top 1% went to university never mind the top 7%, as the only universities were Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, Manchester, UCL, Kings London and St Andrews, Aberdeen, Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Even most solicitors and accountants and bankers didn't have degrees let alone most nurses and middle managers like now
Ideally we should go back to a time when you have to be Anglican Protestant, and you can get sent down for Atheism, like Shelley, or not sent down despite keeping a bear in your chambers, like Byron
That's a proper university system, right there
What if the bear is a heavy armed atheist radical?
Atheist bears had to go to UCL. That's why it was created.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The universities have loaded themselves with debt and spent it on administration, it’s a pyramid scheme waiting to come down in an era where their actual product, of learning and research, has been massively democratised.
They’re now mostly selling scarcity of accreditation through the admissions process.
Talk on X of the entire Welsh university sector crumbling into dust
It will massively impact towns and constituencies where this happens. And it will happen
I remember when a teacher training college closed in my small home town. That was big and bad. These are UNIVERSITIES. Grim
The govt doesn’t have the £££ to bail them all out
Cardiff annual deficit is around 35 million. Pretty sure the Government could find that kind of money (even across ALL universities).
Oy it could actual raise the tuition fees in line with inflation, as it has done for NHS salaries.
As I understand it this would only kick the can down the road. We did this: 1) Slash government funding for universities 2) Replace this with tuition fees which the government then caps 3) Universities are short of cash and fill the hole with foreign students paying £lots 4) Cities like Sheffield fill up with expensive student apartment blocks occupied exclusively by Chinese students 5) People get the hump and so we reduce the number of foreign students which creates a funding crisis and imperils the entire institution
Lets assume that we jack tuition fees up to £15k a year. This isn't paid by the student, its private sector cash - tuition fees sit as an asset on the balance sheet of whichever company buys the debt. The default rate on these loans is already high (40%?) and increasing the size of the loan only increases the size of the money eventually written off. Which reduced the number of investors willing to stump up the cash which the universities need to operate.
Do I have that roughly right? If so its the British problem - we can't afford the cash to pay for it in the short term, we can't afford the damage to our economy in the medium to long term in not paying for it.
The Treasury has stopped selling off student loans.
Because nobody would buy them at those default levels?
OK, so lets assume that we raise tuition fees to £12k or £15k. That is cash which the government now needs to find up front, and will then need to write 40% off. The larger the tuition fees the larger the financial black hole.
A huge debt hypothecated to students. Creating a burden on the government to fund. With a large proportion never to be repaid. As universities are starved of cash.
I'm a big advocate of the blank sheet of paper approach. Nobody would design this structure because its absurd. Can we put something more sensible in place?
How about we sell university places to foreign students at five times the cost to a UK student? Sounds like good business.
Is it if they bring along a family of economically inactive dependents who then need to be housed and have access to services we provide ?
They pay for the accomodation already. Access to healthcare and primary and secondary education could be charged to the student,'s nation of origin.
The dependents were cut because of immigration figures which were politically unacceptable. The baby was thrown out with the bathwater.
So the govt is paying tuition fees up front in any case and then administering repayments, which have a large default level, and put off the able but financially cautious. They also have other sub-optimal results such as emigration to avoid loan repayments, avoiding career progression, high marginal deductions etc etc Why not scrap tuition fees and ration university places by ability?
That, I suspect was why the Conservatives followed the policies they did. Turn the clock back to universities being exclusively for the wealthiest 7%. We don't want any of this positive social engineering caper.
150 years ago only the top 1% went to university never mind the top 7%, as the only universities were Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, Manchester, UCL, Kings London and St Andrews, Aberdeen, Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Even most solicitors and accountants and bankers didn't have degrees let alone most nurses and middle managers like now
Ideally we should go back to a time when you have to be Anglican Protestant, and you can get sent down for Atheism, like Shelley, or not sent down despite keeping a bear in your chambers, like Byron
That's a proper university system, right there
You do remember that our Alma mater was set up precisely as a reaction to those requirements you recommend.
Working people and businesses are set to benefit from new rules that will give more flexibility over how occupational defined benefit pension schemes are managed, as the government continues to remove blockages that are inhibiting its growth agenda that will improve lives of working people across the UK.
Hosting a meeting with leaders of Britain’s biggest businesses in the City of London today (Tuesday 28 January), the Prime Minister and the Chancellor will set out the details of changes and tell some of the country’s leading CEOs that Britain is back and open for business.
At the roundtable, the PM and Chancellor will outline how restrictions will be lifted on how well-funded, occupational defined benefit pension funds that are performing well will be able to invest their surplus funds.
The current rules heavily tilt defined benefit pensions towards investing in the safest possible financial instruments - effectively gilts or the highest quality corporate bonds.
This makes sense on at the individual fund level, but absolutely no sense whatsoever at the national level: Pension funds have the longest possible time horizons - they’re the ones who ought to be investing in national infrastructure & reaping the long term benefits.
There’s been a weird double-think in much of the UK for the last few decades, where much talk is made of “growth” but at the same time every part of the system has been constrained to allow as little economic growth as possible. For economic growth to happen somebody, somewhere has to do the actual work: houses have to be built, roads maintained, computer programs have to be written, and so on & on. Preventing pension funds from funding that work helps nobody.
(Economics types will recognise this as an example of the fallacy of composition that Keynes railed against.)
The rules were set up primarily, I think, to force pension funds into funding government borrowing. It's been an issue for decades; it's encouraging that desperation is finally forcing them to take look at them. Desperate measures do carry a degree of extra risk though.
So what happens when that risk does not pay off ?
The members of the scheme get reduced benefits presumably.
Why should private defined schemes take that risk, especially when so many are now closed to new members and their age profile is far older than DC schemes.
As I said yesterday even by Rachel from accounts standards this is an unbelievably stupid idea. Does she really think that £160bn of surplus is sitting around doing nothing? Of course not. So where is it? Well, its invested in UK companies, foreign companies and gilts. So it is already a major source of our investment.
The real problem is that since Brown changed the rules on dividends for pension funds less and less of UK funds are invested in UK quoted companies. But that is a consequence of tax policies, not a consequence of surplus funds lying around. If this "surplus" is removed by the supporting employer they might invest it or they might pay dividends with it. Who can say, but another part of the growth problem is that pension funds have driven UK companies to be cash cows rather than investing for future growth so it is a fair bet that the latter will be the most common.
The issues are: (1) that UK pension funds are reluctant to invest in FTSE companies (roughly 10% of their holdings at present). (2) That unlike in the US UK funds seem more interested in dividends and squeezing cash out of companies than capital growth. (3) That this makes it more difficult than is ideal for startups and small companies to access capital in the UK.
None of these problems are addressed by Reeves' proposals. Indeed some of them may become worse.
On Cardiff we currently only have media speculation. Up to is doing the heavy lifting in the potential job losses. We'll see.
It is going to happen. Cardiff have no money. Neither does any other university.
Although TBF when I was at University College Cardiff in the 1980s it went bang and had to be bailed out by UWIST. The Government was involved in the rescue and one of the conditions was Principal of UWIST Aubrey Trotman-Dickinson, a personal friend of Thatcher was installed as Vice Principal of the new University of Wales College, Cardiff.
Totally wrong. Not everywhere is in debt. Bath is pretty healthy (relatively). Sadly its partly because fewer of us do a lot more than we used to.
I can assure you Cardiff are up S**t Street. All the University of Wales Colleges are also in big trouble. Trinity St David's have just closed the Lampeter campus.
This is the same across the country. You can pull out one or two examples of relative successes, but even those are unsustainable under current funding and immigration policy.
Are you just talking about Wales then? Tough times everywhere, but its incorrect to say that no other University has any money.
It is not unique to Wales, although I can speak with more authority on the trouble at universities in Wales.
And ignore people who work at Universities not in Sh@t Street?
I have inside information. I suspect either Cambridge is doing fine or you are a King of wishful thinking. I hate to admit this, but unless Government intervenes Leon is correct. The threat is existential.
My point is that my uni and Selebians are not in the situation you are implying is every university. We have inside information because we work at Unis.
Clearly not all is rosy and I am not saying that. But I think things are being overblown right now (information vacuum allows a certain type of news story to grow - see also drones in NJ, although thats died off now, like all good flaps. I loved the people posting planes flying over and saying that they are not planes, but are disguised as planes...)
Some of the more student-dependent universities will be in potentially big trouble - it's really impossible to make the sums add up there for UK students and the overseas crackdown has limited that option.
The research-heavy ones have some other options. Research funding doesn't cover full economic costs, but the problem of funding not adjusting to salaries is smaller - when applying for funding, you write the budget for the current and projected staff salaries. There's also - still - money to be made on CPD, conferences etc.
I do expect to see some of the 'new' universities close or at least lose courses. The more research-intensive ones might just drop some - or even many - courses. And there may be some surprises of universities that fall in the latter category that have cocked up/over-indebted etc that do fold.
President Trump, who has never served a day in the US military, just issued an executive order claiming that the 15,000 trans people serving in our country's armed forces lack the honor, honesty, humility, and selflessness necessary to do their duty. https://x.com/AriDrennen/status/1884124773694980467
The quote in question comes from the Executive Order "Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness", see https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/prioritizing-military-excellence-and-readiness-2/ It forbids "medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals with gender dysphoria" and "shifting pronoun usage or use of pronouns that inaccurately reflect an individual’s sex". and gives the SecDef (or Homeland Security for the Coast Guard) 30 days to do it.
It states pretty baldy..Consistent with the military mission and longstanding DoD policy, expressing a false “gender identity” divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service. .., which is demonstrably untrue.
Hasn't he also done an edict forbidding gender change from now on, ie it won't be possible to be trans in America?
Not to my understanding - what he's done is order that passports (and possibly other documents) reflect sex registered at birth.
That's what I meant. Transgender no longer recognised officially.
There's a significant difference between "being trans in America" and "have the federal government recognise a person as trans on a passport".
To take one example of a something that the federal government doesn't control, states will still be able to recognise trans on drivers licenses.
On thread: I was running the line at a junior football match at the weekend. Leafy Cheshire against WWC Manchester. As linesman, I got to eavesdrop on both sets of conversations. The Cheshire conversation was about disappointment with Labour "most of us had just been hanging on until Labour got in, thinking things would improve, interest rates would come down, but it's just getting worse ... Reeves hasn't got a clue"; the Manchester conversation somewhat earthier and angrier, and focused on the Christmas party which had been cancelled because the venue had been turned into a hotel for illegal immigrants.
Obviously these were just snippets. These are normal people mainly talking about their kids and football. But it was striking to hear politics discussed at all in the real world. I still find it slightly jarring to hear peoplebeing openly critical of Labour (aside from the Corbyn era). For my whole lifetime, my experience in real life has been that only people who know you very well are openly critical of the Labour Party lest people think they are Tories.
You obviously had better weather than we did. I think all the conversations at the sideline last Sunday were on the topic of how terrible it was standing in freezing driving rain, how cold we were, whether anyone could feel their feet, and if the ref could end the game early as we were 5-0 up and the other team had stopped trying.
That rings true for me. Thank God those days are over. I'd almost managed to blot out the memories of endless hours stood in the freezing cold and pouring rain next to some godforsaken field on the edge of a disused industrial estate. That's if you were lucky. If unlucky, you'd be running the line having accidentally accepted the flag without thinking or having been finally shamed into the job. Then you'd be spending the next hour and a half also trying desperately to judge offsides and penalties on a pitch with barely discernable markings. Those of you with just daughters - consider yourselves blessed.
I thought if you have kids then that is one of the joys of having them.
Plus are you suggesting peoples' daughters are at home playing with their dolls
Working people and businesses are set to benefit from new rules that will give more flexibility over how occupational defined benefit pension schemes are managed, as the government continues to remove blockages that are inhibiting its growth agenda that will improve lives of working people across the UK.
Hosting a meeting with leaders of Britain’s biggest businesses in the City of London today (Tuesday 28 January), the Prime Minister and the Chancellor will set out the details of changes and tell some of the country’s leading CEOs that Britain is back and open for business.
At the roundtable, the PM and Chancellor will outline how restrictions will be lifted on how well-funded, occupational defined benefit pension funds that are performing well will be able to invest their surplus funds.
The current rules heavily tilt defined benefit pensions towards investing in the safest possible financial instruments - effectively gilts or the highest quality corporate bonds.
This makes sense on at the individual fund level, but absolutely no sense whatsoever at the national level: Pension funds have the longest possible time horizons - they’re the ones who ought to be investing in national infrastructure & reaping the long term benefits.
There’s been a weird double-think in much of the UK for the last few decades, where much talk is made of “growth” but at the same time every part of the system has been constrained to allow as little economic growth as possible. For economic growth to happen somebody, somewhere has to do the actual work: houses have to be built, roads maintained, computer programs have to be written, and so on & on. Preventing pension funds from funding that work helps nobody.
(Economics types will recognise this as an example of the fallacy of composition that Keynes railed against.)
True but the DB scheme I am in closed may years ago, is relatively small, has around 250 members (there was 1 for staff and one for works) and the age profile is skewed toward 50 plus.
That schemed really should not be investing in illiquid assets or risky assets given the age profile of its members in my view.
Of course not. Does anything in the proposals compel that (I don't think so) ?
The existing rules have basically forced large funds, with a horizon of many decades, to underperform the market, long term. That's good neither for the funds nor the economy.
The devil will be in the detail, as always, in the past chancellors have spoken of accessing pension funds to pay for infrastructure and the like.
A pension is a vehicle to fund someones retirement. First and foremost it must do that. If it helps the economy then all well and good but its priority should be fund growth to fund the retiree's retirement.
The govt will bring forward the details in the spring. Depends what is meant by this.
"With the right guardrails in place, the government’s proposals could help channel more funding into the economy, by enabling schemes to invest more widely and take on greater risk, while allowing for members to receive an uplift to pension benefits."
The Government could take more risk with public sector DB schemes, but leave private sector DB schemes unchanged. If the public sector schemes fail, the Government will then have to decide whether they bail out their own employees.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The universities have loaded themselves with debt and spent it on administration, it’s a pyramid scheme waiting to come down in an era where their actual product, of learning and research, has been massively democratised.
They’re now mostly selling scarcity of accreditation through the admissions process.
Talk on X of the entire Welsh university sector crumbling into dust
It will massively impact towns and constituencies where this happens. And it will happen
I remember when a teacher training college closed in my small home town. That was big and bad. These are UNIVERSITIES. Grim
The govt doesn’t have the £££ to bail them all out
Cardiff annual deficit is around 35 million. Pretty sure the Government could find that kind of money (even across ALL universities).
Oy it could actual raise the tuition fees in line with inflation, as it has done for NHS salaries.
As I understand it this would only kick the can down the road. We did this: 1) Slash government funding for universities 2) Replace this with tuition fees which the government then caps 3) Universities are short of cash and fill the hole with foreign students paying £lots 4) Cities like Sheffield fill up with expensive student apartment blocks occupied exclusively by Chinese students 5) People get the hump and so we reduce the number of foreign students which creates a funding crisis and imperils the entire institution
Lets assume that we jack tuition fees up to £15k a year. This isn't paid by the student, its private sector cash - tuition fees sit as an asset on the balance sheet of whichever company buys the debt. The default rate on these loans is already high (40%?) and increasing the size of the loan only increases the size of the money eventually written off. Which reduced the number of investors willing to stump up the cash which the universities need to operate.
Do I have that roughly right? If so its the British problem - we can't afford the cash to pay for it in the short term, we can't afford the damage to our economy in the medium to long term in not paying for it.
The Treasury has stopped selling off student loans.
Because nobody would buy them at those default levels?
OK, so lets assume that we raise tuition fees to £12k or £15k. That is cash which the government now needs to find up front, and will then need to write 40% off. The larger the tuition fees the larger the financial black hole.
A huge debt hypothecated to students. Creating a burden on the government to fund. With a large proportion never to be repaid. As universities are starved of cash.
I'm a big advocate of the blank sheet of paper approach. Nobody would design this structure because its absurd. Can we put something more sensible in place?
How about we sell university places to foreign students at five times the cost to a UK student? Sounds like good business.
Is it if they bring along a family of economically inactive dependents who then need to be housed and have access to services we provide ?
They pay for the accomodation already. Access to healthcare and primary and secondary education could be charged to the student,'s nation of origin.
The dependents were cut because of immigration figures which were politically unacceptable. The baby was thrown out with the bathwater.
So the govt is paying tuition fees up front in any case and then administering repayments, which have a large default level, and put off the able but financially cautious. They also have other sub-optimal results such as emigration to avoid loan repayments, avoiding career progression, high marginal deductions etc etc Why not scrap tuition fees and ration university places by ability?
That, I suspect was why the Conservatives followed the policies they did. Turn the clock back to universities being exclusively for the wealthiest 7%. We don't want any of this positive social engineering caper.
150 years ago only the top 1% went to university never mind the top 7%, as the only universities were Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, Manchester, UCL, Kings London and St Andrews, Aberdeen, Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Even most solicitors and accountants and bankers didn't have degrees let alone most nurses and middle managers like now
Ideally we should go back to a time when you have to be Anglican Protestant, and you can get sent down for Atheism, like Shelley, or not sent down despite keeping a bear in your chambers, like Byron
That's a proper university system, right there
We are at that time. The natural conclusion of the protestant movement is atheism, which is, generally, where we are today.
Do away with everything that represents (but isn't actually) faith until you do away with the whole paraphernalia of the Church itself. So you just are on your own doing good things because you think you ought to.
Working people and businesses are set to benefit from new rules that will give more flexibility over how occupational defined benefit pension schemes are managed, as the government continues to remove blockages that are inhibiting its growth agenda that will improve lives of working people across the UK.
Hosting a meeting with leaders of Britain’s biggest businesses in the City of London today (Tuesday 28 January), the Prime Minister and the Chancellor will set out the details of changes and tell some of the country’s leading CEOs that Britain is back and open for business.
At the roundtable, the PM and Chancellor will outline how restrictions will be lifted on how well-funded, occupational defined benefit pension funds that are performing well will be able to invest their surplus funds.
The current rules heavily tilt defined benefit pensions towards investing in the safest possible financial instruments - effectively gilts or the highest quality corporate bonds.
This makes sense on at the individual fund level, but absolutely no sense whatsoever at the national level: Pension funds have the longest possible time horizons - they’re the ones who ought to be investing in national infrastructure & reaping the long term benefits.
There’s been a weird double-think in much of the UK for the last few decades, where much talk is made of “growth” but at the same time every part of the system has been constrained to allow as little economic growth as possible. For economic growth to happen somebody, somewhere has to do the actual work: houses have to be built, roads maintained, computer programs have to be written, and so on & on. Preventing pension funds from funding that work helps nobody.
(Economics types will recognise this as an example of the fallacy of composition that Keynes railed against.)
The rules were set up primarily, I think, to force pension funds into funding government borrowing. It's been an issue for decades; it's encouraging that desperation is finally forcing them to take look at them. Desperate measures do carry a degree of extra risk though.
So what happens when that risk does not pay off ?
The members of the scheme get reduced benefits presumably.
Why should private defined schemes take that risk, especially when so many are now closed to new members and their age profile is far older than DC schemes.
As I said yesterday even by Rachel from accounts standards this is an unbelievably stupid idea. Does she really think that £160bn of surplus is sitting around doing nothing? Of course not. So where is it? Well, its invested in UK companies, foreign companies and gilts. So it is already a major source of our investment.
The real problem is that since Brown changed the rules on dividends for pension funds less and less of UK funds are invested in UK quoted companies. But that is a consequence of tax policies, not a consequence of surplus funds lying around. If this "surplus" is removed by the supporting employer they might invest it or they might pay dividends with it. Who can say, but another part of the growth problem is that pension funds have driven UK companies to be cash cows rather than investing for future growth so it is a fair bet that the latter will be the most common.
The issues are: (1) that UK pension funds are reluctant to invest in FTSE companies (roughly 10% of their holdings at present). (2) That unlike in the US UK funds seem more interested in dividends and squeezing cash out of companies than capital growth. (3) That this makes it more difficult than is ideal for startups and small companies to access capital in the UK.
None of these problems are addressed by Reeves' proposals. Indeed some of them may become worse.
Can I please challenge you on this "Rachel from accounts" thing. It is open and petty misogyny - you would not have referred to "Kwazi from Accounts" or "Rishi from Accounts" or "Gordon from Accounts"
She is the Chancellor of the Exchequer and she's a woman. Feel free to consider that she is doing a poor job - that's fair. But "Rachel from accounts" is attacking her for her crime of being a woman. Please stop. You are better than than even if so many Tories and right wing commentators are not.
On thread: I was running the line at a junior football match at the weekend. Leafy Cheshire against WWC Manchester. As linesman, I got to eavesdrop on both sets of conversations. The Cheshire conversation was about disappointment with Labour "most of us had just been hanging on until Labour got in, thinking things would improve, interest rates would come down, but it's just getting worse ... Reeves hasn't got a clue"; the Manchester conversation somewhat earthier and angrier, and focused on the Christmas party which had been cancelled because the venue had been turned into a hotel for illegal immigrants.
Obviously these were just snippets. These are normal people mainly talking about their kids and football. But it was striking to hear politics discussed at all in the real world. I still find it slightly jarring to hear peoplebeing openly critical of Labour (aside from the Corbyn era). For my whole lifetime, my experience in real life has been that only people who know you very well are openly critical of the Labour Party lest people think they are Tories.
You obviously had better weather than we did. I think all the conversations at the sideline last Sunday were on the topic of how terrible it was standing in freezing driving rain, how cold we were, whether anyone could feel their feet, and if the ref could end the game early as we were 5-0 up and the other team had stopped trying.
That rings true for me. Thank God those days are over. I'd almost managed to blot out the memories of endless hours stood in the freezing cold and pouring rain next to some godforsaken field on the edge of a disused industrial estate. That's if you were lucky. If unlucky, you'd be running the line having accidentally accepted the flag without thinking or having been finally shamed into the job. Then you'd be spending the next hour and a half also trying desperately to judge offsides and penalties on a pitch with barely discernable markings. Those of you with just daughters - consider yourselves blessed.
I thought if you have kids then that is one of the joys of having them.
Plus are you suggesting peoples' daughters are at home playing with their dolls
It's one of the joys of having them IN RETROSPECT
When I was a parent to a young child, my experience was always: I hate parenting, I love *having parented*
Coming back to the issue of babies and why the domestic population trying to have them in the UK is difficult, look at Household wealth statistics
Median wealth (2022) was about £300K made up of property (40%), Private Pensions (35%), Net Wealth (14%) and Physical Wealth (10%). So if you want to save for a home, or a pension and you have some student debt, the chances of you being able to afford children means hard choices.
Alternatively if you are a single mum on benefits, you are limited to 2 children (and a financial cap) if you go beyond that.
So if you don't like migration you have to have some serious discussions about the child bearing barriers in the UK.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The universities have loaded themselves with debt and spent it on administration, it’s a pyramid scheme waiting to come down in an era where their actual product, of learning and research, has been massively democratised.
They’re now mostly selling scarcity of accreditation through the admissions process.
Talk on X of the entire Welsh university sector crumbling into dust
It will massively impact towns and constituencies where this happens. And it will happen
I remember when a teacher training college closed in my small home town. That was big and bad. These are UNIVERSITIES. Grim
The govt doesn’t have the £££ to bail them all out
Cardiff annual deficit is around 35 million. Pretty sure the Government could find that kind of money (even across ALL universities).
Oy it could actual raise the tuition fees in line with inflation, as it has done for NHS salaries.
As I understand it this would only kick the can down the road. We did this: 1) Slash government funding for universities 2) Replace this with tuition fees which the government then caps 3) Universities are short of cash and fill the hole with foreign students paying £lots 4) Cities like Sheffield fill up with expensive student apartment blocks occupied exclusively by Chinese students 5) People get the hump and so we reduce the number of foreign students which creates a funding crisis and imperils the entire institution
Lets assume that we jack tuition fees up to £15k a year. This isn't paid by the student, its private sector cash - tuition fees sit as an asset on the balance sheet of whichever company buys the debt. The default rate on these loans is already high (40%?) and increasing the size of the loan only increases the size of the money eventually written off. Which reduced the number of investors willing to stump up the cash which the universities need to operate.
Do I have that roughly right? If so its the British problem - we can't afford the cash to pay for it in the short term, we can't afford the damage to our economy in the medium to long term in not paying for it.
The Treasury has stopped selling off student loans.
Because nobody would buy them at those default levels?
OK, so lets assume that we raise tuition fees to £12k or £15k. That is cash which the government now needs to find up front, and will then need to write 40% off. The larger the tuition fees the larger the financial black hole.
A huge debt hypothecated to students. Creating a burden on the government to fund. With a large proportion never to be repaid. As universities are starved of cash.
I'm a big advocate of the blank sheet of paper approach. Nobody would design this structure because its absurd. Can we put something more sensible in place?
How about we sell university places to foreign students at five times the cost to a UK student? Sounds like good business.
Is it if they bring along a family of economically inactive dependents who then need to be housed and have access to services we provide ?
They pay for the accomodation already. Access to healthcare and primary and secondary education could be charged to the student,'s nation of origin.
The dependents were cut because of immigration figures which were politically unacceptable. The baby was thrown out with the bathwater.
So the govt is paying tuition fees up front in any case and then administering repayments, which have a large default level, and put off the able but financially cautious. They also have other sub-optimal results such as emigration to avoid loan repayments, avoiding career progression, high marginal deductions etc etc Why not scrap tuition fees and ration university places by ability?
That, I suspect was why the Conservatives followed the policies they did. Turn the clock back to universities being exclusively for the wealthiest 7%. We don't want any of this positive social engineering caper.
150 years ago only the top 1% went to university never mind the top 7%, as the only universities were Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, Manchester, UCL, Kings London and St Andrews, Aberdeen, Glasgow and Edinburgh and Aberystwyth.
Even most solicitors and accountants and bankers didn't have degrees let alone most nurses and middle managers like now. Degrees were only really needed if you wanted to be a barrister, doctor/surgeon or vicar/bishop or permanent secretary or academic or public school/grammar school teacher
Do you want to return to the top 1%? Of course you do, so long as your children will find themselves in that 1%.
On thread: I was running the line at a junior football match at the weekend. Leafy Cheshire against WWC Manchester. As linesman, I got to eavesdrop on both sets of conversations. The Cheshire conversation was about disappointment with Labour "most of us had just been hanging on until Labour got in, thinking things would improve, interest rates would come down, but it's just getting worse ... Reeves hasn't got a clue"; the Manchester conversation somewhat earthier and angrier, and focused on the Christmas party which had been cancelled because the venue had been turned into a hotel for illegal immigrants.
Obviously these were just snippets. These are normal people mainly talking about their kids and football. But it was striking to hear politics discussed at all in the real world. I still find it slightly jarring to hear peoplebeing openly critical of Labour (aside from the Corbyn era). For my whole lifetime, my experience in real life has been that only people who know you very well are openly critical of the Labour Party lest people think they are Tories.
You obviously had better weather than we did. I think all the conversations at the sideline last Sunday were on the topic of how terrible it was standing in freezing driving rain, how cold we were, whether anyone could feel their feet, and if the ref could end the game early as we were 5-0 up and the other team had stopped trying.
That rings true for me. Thank God those days are over. I'd almost managed to blot out the memories of endless hours stood in the freezing cold and pouring rain next to some godforsaken field on the edge of a disused industrial estate. That's if you were lucky. If unlucky, you'd be running the line having accidentally accepted the flag without thinking or having been finally shamed into the job. Then you'd be spending the next hour and a half also trying desperately to judge offsides and penalties on a pitch with barely discernable markings. Those of you with just daughters - consider yourselves blessed.
The trick is to get more involved - I did about three weeks of standing in the cold watching my lad at reception year training sessions, then asked whether they needed any help. Actually running around with the kids was much better. Being coach to my lad's team over the last couple of years has been a joy.
ETA: We have a couple of girls in the team and there's also a local girls-only football club, so passing on only your X chromosome doesn't save you!
Working people and businesses are set to benefit from new rules that will give more flexibility over how occupational defined benefit pension schemes are managed, as the government continues to remove blockages that are inhibiting its growth agenda that will improve lives of working people across the UK.
Hosting a meeting with leaders of Britain’s biggest businesses in the City of London today (Tuesday 28 January), the Prime Minister and the Chancellor will set out the details of changes and tell some of the country’s leading CEOs that Britain is back and open for business.
At the roundtable, the PM and Chancellor will outline how restrictions will be lifted on how well-funded, occupational defined benefit pension funds that are performing well will be able to invest their surplus funds.
The current rules heavily tilt defined benefit pensions towards investing in the safest possible financial instruments - effectively gilts or the highest quality corporate bonds.
This makes sense on at the individual fund level, but absolutely no sense whatsoever at the national level: Pension funds have the longest possible time horizons - they’re the ones who ought to be investing in national infrastructure & reaping the long term benefits.
There’s been a weird double-think in much of the UK for the last few decades, where much talk is made of “growth” but at the same time every part of the system has been constrained to allow as little economic growth as possible. For economic growth to happen somebody, somewhere has to do the actual work: houses have to be built, roads maintained, computer programs have to be written, and so on & on. Preventing pension funds from funding that work helps nobody.
(Economics types will recognise this as an example of the fallacy of composition that Keynes railed against.)
The rules were set up primarily, I think, to force pension funds into funding government borrowing. It's been an issue for decades; it's encouraging that desperation is finally forcing them to take look at them. Desperate measures do carry a degree of extra risk though.
So what happens when that risk does not pay off ?
The members of the scheme get reduced benefits presumably.
Why should private defined schemes take that risk, especially when so many are now closed to new members and their age profile is far older than DC schemes.
As I said yesterday even by Rachel from accounts standards this is an unbelievably stupid idea. Does she really think that £160bn of surplus is sitting around doing nothing? Of course not. So where is it? Well, its invested in UK companies, foreign companies and gilts. So it is already a major source of our investment.
The real problem is that since Brown changed the rules on dividends for pension funds less and less of UK funds are invested in UK quoted companies. But that is a consequence of tax policies, not a consequence of surplus funds lying around. If this "surplus" is removed by the supporting employer they might invest it or they might pay dividends with it. Who can say, but another part of the growth problem is that pension funds have driven UK companies to be cash cows rather than investing for future growth so it is a fair bet that the latter will be the most common.
The issues are: (1) that UK pension funds are reluctant to invest in FTSE companies (roughly 10% of their holdings at present). (2) That unlike in the US UK funds seem more interested in dividends and squeezing cash out of companies than capital growth. (3) That this makes it more difficult than is ideal for startups and small companies to access capital in the UK.
None of these problems are addressed by Reeves' proposals. Indeed some of them may become worse.
Can I please challenge you on this "Rachel from accounts" thing. It is open and petty misogyny - you would not have referred to "Kwazi from Accounts" or "Rishi from Accounts" or "Gordon from Accounts"
She is the Chancellor of the Exchequer and she's a woman. Feel free to consider that she is doing a poor job - that's fair. But "Rachel from accounts" is attacking her for her crime of being a woman. Please stop. You are better than than even if so many Tories and right wing commentators are not.
It wouldn't be so bad if Rachel had actually worked in accounts.
Her career seems to have been Bank of England economist followed by something connected to Customer Service in Halifax while campaigning to be the local MP.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The universities have loaded themselves with debt and spent it on administration, it’s a pyramid scheme waiting to come down in an era where their actual product, of learning and research, has been massively democratised.
They’re now mostly selling scarcity of accreditation through the admissions process.
Talk on X of the entire Welsh university sector crumbling into dust
It will massively impact towns and constituencies where this happens. And it will happen
I remember when a teacher training college closed in my small home town. That was big and bad. These are UNIVERSITIES. Grim
The govt doesn’t have the £££ to bail them all out
Cardiff annual deficit is around 35 million. Pretty sure the Government could find that kind of money (even across ALL universities).
Oy it could actual raise the tuition fees in line with inflation, as it has done for NHS salaries.
As I understand it this would only kick the can down the road. We did this: 1) Slash government funding for universities 2) Replace this with tuition fees which the government then caps 3) Universities are short of cash and fill the hole with foreign students paying £lots 4) Cities like Sheffield fill up with expensive student apartment blocks occupied exclusively by Chinese students 5) People get the hump and so we reduce the number of foreign students which creates a funding crisis and imperils the entire institution
Lets assume that we jack tuition fees up to £15k a year. This isn't paid by the student, its private sector cash - tuition fees sit as an asset on the balance sheet of whichever company buys the debt. The default rate on these loans is already high (40%?) and increasing the size of the loan only increases the size of the money eventually written off. Which reduced the number of investors willing to stump up the cash which the universities need to operate.
Do I have that roughly right? If so its the British problem - we can't afford the cash to pay for it in the short term, we can't afford the damage to our economy in the medium to long term in not paying for it.
The Treasury has stopped selling off student loans.
Because nobody would buy them at those default levels?
OK, so lets assume that we raise tuition fees to £12k or £15k. That is cash which the government now needs to find up front, and will then need to write 40% off. The larger the tuition fees the larger the financial black hole.
A huge debt hypothecated to students. Creating a burden on the government to fund. With a large proportion never to be repaid. As universities are starved of cash.
I'm a big advocate of the blank sheet of paper approach. Nobody would design this structure because its absurd. Can we put something more sensible in place?
How about we sell university places to foreign students at five times the cost to a UK student? Sounds like good business.
Is it if they bring along a family of economically inactive dependents who then need to be housed and have access to services we provide ?
They pay for the accomodation already. Access to healthcare and primary and secondary education could be charged to the student,'s nation of origin.
The dependents were cut because of immigration figures which were politically unacceptable. The baby was thrown out with the bathwater.
So the govt is paying tuition fees up front in any case and then administering repayments, which have a large default level, and put off the able but financially cautious. They also have other sub-optimal results such as emigration to avoid loan repayments, avoiding career progression, high marginal deductions etc etc Why not scrap tuition fees and ration university places by ability?
Open up education properly instead, this is an area where the free market can deliver radical change.
Simply allow any student to sit any exam from any university of their choice at cost plus reasonable margin. Where they learn the facts is up to them.
Costs for taxpayers and students will plummet.
Could work for some courses, but for others - many of the sciences - there are important practical assessments (and learning). Coursework is also still a major part and useful - you can get a much better feel science ability from a dissertation than from a simple exam of facts. Those could, of course, still just be submitted anywhere and marked, but cheating would become more of a problem. I've had a couple of cases where it's been obvious that the dissertation could not have been the work of the student I've been meeting with over 4 months and, having raised suspicions, it was possible to pin down the wrongdoing (most recent was an AI effort, complete with a suite of non-existent papers in the references; the earlier one was a recycled dissertation from another university).
ETA: Both of those detectable anyway, I guess, but I don't normally do things like checking references exist unless I'm suspicious. The recycled one didn't flag up strongly using our software as it had at least been partially reworded. The tell was the identical structure and findings.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Looks like the paper is 99.9% bollocks with a 0.1% interesting grain of an idea to me. It's strange how academics can get away with imposing their totally slanted views onto their piblished 'academic' papers.
But, freedom of speech and all that - is it worth getting het up about?
It's an extremely rambling way of saying that AirBnB usage has grown faster than trend in predominantly black neighbourhoods, and that most renters are white.
Apart from adding "computational hermeneutics" to my bullshit dictionary, a waste of five minutes of my time.
You mean that AirBnB usage has grown faster in poorer, cheaper neighbourhoods?
There might be some real, interesting stuff in whether AirBnB is creating a more rapid gentrification at the intersections of richer and poorer neighbourhoods. Because of the rapid cycle - people comparing prices vs crimes maps vs cool coffee shops on a daily basis…..
Insofar as the 'poorer' and 'majority black' correlate, yes. There might have been a very interesting paper to be written about the central point, given further research, but this wan't it.
Given the author talks of “bodegas” - this is the US.
Where majority black correlate to “the poorer bit of town” very, very well.
It's New York, and the article makes a lot out of the striking differences between how black hosts and white hosts in those neighbourhoods advertise on Airbnb (and differences between black and white reviewers). How strongly those differences really support the conclusion is a bit open to question, but I think it's an interesting observation, and the article is not just about Airbnb and gentrification.
I've felt uncomfortable with tourism since the day in 1978 when I wandered a few blocks away from the White House and found myself in an entirely black neighbourhood. They were all getting on with their lives, one way or another, while I was obviously there to gawp at them. With my white skin I might as well have been wearing a top hat and tails, smoking a cigar, fingering a horse whip. I don't regard a poor neighbourhood as a human zoo, carefully curated for my entertainment.
But it's hard to avoid this with organised 'travel'. Countless times I've seen a row of bedraggled women standing all day behind makeshift trestle tables offering junk for sale - in a New Mexico Pueblo, in the mountains of Laos, and on Caribbean islands. Being a sociologist manqué it's what I tend to notice, more than the bog-standard G&Ts.
I did one of those organised coach tours of the West Coast of the US many years back with my Dad, more as company for him really. In LA they did organised tours of Compton and other gang areas, with former gang members leading it. Felt odd to me. True poverty tourism. Didn't go.
The best version of this was a former UDA guy whose plan to cash in on post Troubles tourism in NI was to do tours of the former fun bits.
In a Saracen APC.
I heard that he got as far as looking at prices for the command vehicle version (the whole top opens as a series of hatches, so great for safari picture taking) before he was told NO.
On thread: I was running the line at a junior football match at the weekend. Leafy Cheshire against WWC Manchester. As linesman, I got to eavesdrop on both sets of conversations. The Cheshire conversation was about disappointment with Labour "most of us had just been hanging on until Labour got in, thinking things would improve, interest rates would come down, but it's just getting worse ... Reeves hasn't got a clue"; the Manchester conversation somewhat earthier and angrier, and focused on the Christmas party which had been cancelled because the venue had been turned into a hotel for illegal immigrants.
Obviously these were just snippets. These are normal people mainly talking about their kids and football. But it was striking to hear politics discussed at all in the real world. I still find it slightly jarring to hear peoplebeing openly critical of Labour (aside from the Corbyn era). For my whole lifetime, my experience in real life has been that only people who know you very well are openly critical of the Labour Party lest people think they are Tories.
You obviously had better weather than we did. I think all the conversations at the sideline last Sunday were on the topic of how terrible it was standing in freezing driving rain, how cold we were, whether anyone could feel their feet, and if the ref could end the game early as we were 5-0 up and the other team had stopped trying.
That rings true for me. Thank God those days are over. I'd almost managed to blot out the memories of endless hours stood in the freezing cold and pouring rain next to some godforsaken field on the edge of a disused industrial estate. That's if you were lucky. If unlucky, you'd be running the line having accidentally accepted the flag without thinking or having been finally shamed into the job. Then you'd be spending the next hour and a half also trying desperately to judge offsides and penalties on a pitch with barely discernable markings. Those of you with just daughters - consider yourselves blessed.
I thought if you have kids then that is one of the joys of having them.
Plus are you suggesting peoples' daughters are at home playing with their dolls
It's one of the joys of having them IN RETROSPECT
When I was a parent to a young child, my experience was always: I hate parenting, I love *having parented*
I loved it although there were some serious bumps along the road. I find young children in particular delightful and hilarious. I am so looking forward to my first grandchild being born next month so I get to do some of that again.
F1: working on something and just noticed Isack Hadjar (new Racing Bulls driver) was 5 when I started tipping on F1 in 2009.
Earlier, I noticed Hulkenberg's literally old enough to be his team mate's dad.
Lol, we comment at work now about we're old enough to be various new starters parents and grandparents.
A kid going for his legal first drink in the pub tonight, was born in 2007.
His parent could legally have been born in 1991, and his grandparent in 1977.
Thanks to marrying some-one quite a bit older than myself, and acquiring a step-son only ten years younger than me, I am now 63 with 2 great-granddaughters.
Working people and businesses are set to benefit from new rules that will give more flexibility over how occupational defined benefit pension schemes are managed, as the government continues to remove blockages that are inhibiting its growth agenda that will improve lives of working people across the UK.
Hosting a meeting with leaders of Britain’s biggest businesses in the City of London today (Tuesday 28 January), the Prime Minister and the Chancellor will set out the details of changes and tell some of the country’s leading CEOs that Britain is back and open for business.
At the roundtable, the PM and Chancellor will outline how restrictions will be lifted on how well-funded, occupational defined benefit pension funds that are performing well will be able to invest their surplus funds.
The current rules heavily tilt defined benefit pensions towards investing in the safest possible financial instruments - effectively gilts or the highest quality corporate bonds.
This makes sense on at the individual fund level, but absolutely no sense whatsoever at the national level: Pension funds have the longest possible time horizons - they’re the ones who ought to be investing in national infrastructure & reaping the long term benefits.
There’s been a weird double-think in much of the UK for the last few decades, where much talk is made of “growth” but at the same time every part of the system has been constrained to allow as little economic growth as possible. For economic growth to happen somebody, somewhere has to do the actual work: houses have to be built, roads maintained, computer programs have to be written, and so on & on. Preventing pension funds from funding that work helps nobody.
(Economics types will recognise this as an example of the fallacy of composition that Keynes railed against.)
The rules were set up primarily, I think, to force pension funds into funding government borrowing. It's been an issue for decades; it's encouraging that desperation is finally forcing them to take look at them. Desperate measures do carry a degree of extra risk though.
So what happens when that risk does not pay off ?
The members of the scheme get reduced benefits presumably.
Why should private defined schemes take that risk, especially when so many are now closed to new members and their age profile is far older than DC schemes.
As I said yesterday even by Rachel from accounts standards this is an unbelievably stupid idea. Does she really think that £160bn of surplus is sitting around doing nothing? Of course not. So where is it? Well, its invested in UK companies, foreign companies and gilts. So it is already a major source of our investment.
The real problem is that since Brown changed the rules on dividends for pension funds less and less of UK funds are invested in UK quoted companies. But that is a consequence of tax policies, not a consequence of surplus funds lying around. If this "surplus" is removed by the supporting employer they might invest it or they might pay dividends with it. Who can say, but another part of the growth problem is that pension funds have driven UK companies to be cash cows rather than investing for future growth so it is a fair bet that the latter will be the most common.
The issues are: (1) that UK pension funds are reluctant to invest in FTSE companies (roughly 10% of their holdings at present). (2) That unlike in the US UK funds seem more interested in dividends and squeezing cash out of companies than capital growth. (3) That this makes it more difficult than is ideal for startups and small companies to access capital in the UK.
None of these problems are addressed by Reeves' proposals. Indeed some of them may become worse.
Can I please challenge you on this "Rachel from accounts" thing. It is open and petty misogyny - you would not have referred to "Kwazi from Accounts" or "Rishi from Accounts" or "Gordon from Accounts"
She is the Chancellor of the Exchequer and she's a woman. Feel free to consider that she is doing a poor job - that's fair. But "Rachel from accounts" is attacking her for her crime of being a woman. Please stop. You are better than than even if so many Tories and right wing commentators are not.
Ok. I take the point. I did not mean it in a misogynistic way, its more a reflection on her CV as she has narrated it but I accept it could be seen that way.
On thread: I was running the line at a junior football match at the weekend. Leafy Cheshire against WWC Manchester. As linesman, I got to eavesdrop on both sets of conversations. The Cheshire conversation was about disappointment with Labour "most of us had just been hanging on until Labour got in, thinking things would improve, interest rates would come down, but it's just getting worse ... Reeves hasn't got a clue"; the Manchester conversation somewhat earthier and angrier, and focused on the Christmas party which had been cancelled because the venue had been turned into a hotel for illegal immigrants.
Obviously these were just snippets. These are normal people mainly talking about their kids and football. But it was striking to hear politics discussed at all in the real world. I still find it slightly jarring to hear peoplebeing openly critical of Labour (aside from the Corbyn era). For my whole lifetime, my experience in real life has been that only people who know you very well are openly critical of the Labour Party lest people think they are Tories.
You obviously had better weather than we did. I think all the conversations at the sideline last Sunday were on the topic of how terrible it was standing in freezing driving rain, how cold we were, whether anyone could feel their feet, and if the ref could end the game early as we were 5-0 up and the other team had stopped trying.
That rings true for me. Thank God those days are over. I'd almost managed to blot out the memories of endless hours stood in the freezing cold and pouring rain next to some godforsaken field on the edge of a disused industrial estate. That's if you were lucky. If unlucky, you'd be running the line having accidentally accepted the flag without thinking or having been finally shamed into the job. Then you'd be spending the next hour and a half also trying desperately to judge offsides and penalties on a pitch with barely discernable markings. Those of you with just daughters - consider yourselves blessed.
I thought if you have kids then that is one of the joys of having them.
Plus are you suggesting peoples' daughters are at home playing with their dolls
It's one of the joys of having them IN RETROSPECT
When I was a parent to a young child, my experience was always: I hate parenting, I love *having parented*
I loved it although there were some serious bumps along the road. I find young children in particular delightful and hilarious. I am so looking forward to my first grandchild being born next month so I get to do some of that again.
There is a sweet age around 4-9 when they can be adorably strange
Tho in truth the most rewarding bit for me has been the last couple of years, 16-18, when we've become kind of friends, discovering a shared adult sense of humour, and many shared interests. Unexpected
On thread: I was running the line at a junior football match at the weekend. Leafy Cheshire against WWC Manchester. As linesman, I got to eavesdrop on both sets of conversations. The Cheshire conversation was about disappointment with Labour "most of us had just been hanging on until Labour got in, thinking things would improve, interest rates would come down, but it's just getting worse ... Reeves hasn't got a clue"; the Manchester conversation somewhat earthier and angrier, and focused on the Christmas party which had been cancelled because the venue had been turned into a hotel for illegal immigrants.
Obviously these were just snippets. These are normal people mainly talking about their kids and football. But it was striking to hear politics discussed at all in the real world. I still find it slightly jarring to hear peoplebeing openly critical of Labour (aside from the Corbyn era). For my whole lifetime, my experience in real life has been that only people who know you very well are openly critical of the Labour Party lest people think they are Tories.
You obviously had better weather than we did. I think all the conversations at the sideline last Sunday were on the topic of how terrible it was standing in freezing driving rain, how cold we were, whether anyone could feel their feet, and if the ref could end the game early as we were 5-0 up and the other team had stopped trying.
That rings true for me. Thank God those days are over. I'd almost managed to blot out the memories of endless hours stood in the freezing cold and pouring rain next to some godforsaken field on the edge of a disused industrial estate. That's if you were lucky. If unlucky, you'd be running the line having accidentally accepted the flag without thinking or having been finally shamed into the job. Then you'd be spending the next hour and a half also trying desperately to judge offsides and penalties on a pitch with barely discernable markings. Those of you with just daughters - consider yourselves blessed.
I thought if you have kids then that is one of the joys of having them.
Plus are you suggesting peoples' daughters are at home playing with their dolls
It's one of the joys of having them IN RETROSPECT
When I was a parent to a young child, my experience was always: I hate parenting, I love *having parented*
I loved it although there were some serious bumps along the road. I find young children in particular delightful and hilarious. I am so looking forward to my first grandchild being born next month so I get to do some of that again.
This standing on cold wet football pitches as a parent - is this a modern thing?
I played cub and scout football at the local pitch most Saturdays through many winters in 1970s and there wasn't a single parent there in support.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Looks like the paper is 99.9% bollocks with a 0.1% interesting grain of an idea to me. It's strange how academics can get away with imposing their totally slanted views onto their piblished 'academic' papers.
But, freedom of speech and all that - is it worth getting het up about?
It's an extremely rambling way of saying that AirBnB usage has grown faster than trend in predominantly black neighbourhoods, and that most renters are white.
Apart from adding "computational hermeneutics" to my bullshit dictionary, a waste of five minutes of my time.
You mean that AirBnB usage has grown faster in poorer, cheaper neighbourhoods?
There might be some real, interesting stuff in whether AirBnB is creating a more rapid gentrification at the intersections of richer and poorer neighbourhoods. Because of the rapid cycle - people comparing prices vs crimes maps vs cool coffee shops on a daily basis…..
Insofar as the 'poorer' and 'majority black' correlate, yes. There might have been a very interesting paper to be written about the central point, given further research, but this wan't it.
There’s definitely no funding for anyone who might write an academic paper, especially in the US, that suggests that the real societal problem is actually income and social class, rather than race.
On thread: I was running the line at a junior football match at the weekend. Leafy Cheshire against WWC Manchester. As linesman, I got to eavesdrop on both sets of conversations. The Cheshire conversation was about disappointment with Labour "most of us had just been hanging on until Labour got in, thinking things would improve, interest rates would come down, but it's just getting worse ... Reeves hasn't got a clue"; the Manchester conversation somewhat earthier and angrier, and focused on the Christmas party which had been cancelled because the venue had been turned into a hotel for illegal immigrants.
Obviously these were just snippets. These are normal people mainly talking about their kids and football. But it was striking to hear politics discussed at all in the real world. I still find it slightly jarring to hear peoplebeing openly critical of Labour (aside from the Corbyn era). For my whole lifetime, my experience in real life has been that only people who know you very well are openly critical of the Labour Party lest people think they are Tories.
You obviously had better weather than we did. I think all the conversations at the sideline last Sunday were on the topic of how terrible it was standing in freezing driving rain, how cold we were, whether anyone could feel their feet, and if the ref could end the game early as we were 5-0 up and the other team had stopped trying.
That rings true for me. Thank God those days are over. I'd almost managed to blot out the memories of endless hours stood in the freezing cold and pouring rain next to some godforsaken field on the edge of a disused industrial estate. That's if you were lucky. If unlucky, you'd be running the line having accidentally accepted the flag without thinking or having been finally shamed into the job. Then you'd be spending the next hour and a half also trying desperately to judge offsides and penalties on a pitch with barely discernable markings. Those of you with just daughters - consider yourselves blessed.
The trick is to get more involved - I did about three weeks of standing in the cold watching my lad at reception year training sessions, then asked whether they needed any help. Actually running around with the kids was much better. Being coach to my lad's team over the last couple of years has been a joy.
ETA: We have a couple of girls in the team and there's also a local girls-only football club, so passing on only your X chromosome doesn't save you!
It didn't help that I was never particular interested in football myself, but my lad was keen to play and I thought it'd be good for him physically and socially. No, I'm more the indoors type, and I did rather enjoy running a chess club at my lad's school. It's almost magical seeing them grasp the concepts of the game and start to think strategically. I did used to help out on outings as well, making sure none of the kids got lost or fell in ponds, etc.
Working people and businesses are set to benefit from new rules that will give more flexibility over how occupational defined benefit pension schemes are managed, as the government continues to remove blockages that are inhibiting its growth agenda that will improve lives of working people across the UK.
Hosting a meeting with leaders of Britain’s biggest businesses in the City of London today (Tuesday 28 January), the Prime Minister and the Chancellor will set out the details of changes and tell some of the country’s leading CEOs that Britain is back and open for business.
At the roundtable, the PM and Chancellor will outline how restrictions will be lifted on how well-funded, occupational defined benefit pension funds that are performing well will be able to invest their surplus funds.
The current rules heavily tilt defined benefit pensions towards investing in the safest possible financial instruments - effectively gilts or the highest quality corporate bonds.
This makes sense on at the individual fund level, but absolutely no sense whatsoever at the national level: Pension funds have the longest possible time horizons - they’re the ones who ought to be investing in national infrastructure & reaping the long term benefits.
There’s been a weird double-think in much of the UK for the last few decades, where much talk is made of “growth” but at the same time every part of the system has been constrained to allow as little economic growth as possible. For economic growth to happen somebody, somewhere has to do the actual work: houses have to be built, roads maintained, computer programs have to be written, and so on & on. Preventing pension funds from funding that work helps nobody.
(Economics types will recognise this as an example of the fallacy of composition that Keynes railed against.)
The rules were set up primarily, I think, to force pension funds into funding government borrowing. It's been an issue for decades; it's encouraging that desperation is finally forcing them to take look at them. Desperate measures do carry a degree of extra risk though.
So what happens when that risk does not pay off ?
The members of the scheme get reduced benefits presumably.
Why should private defined schemes take that risk, especially when so many are now closed to new members and their age profile is far older than DC schemes.
As I said yesterday even by Rachel from accounts standards this is an unbelievably stupid idea. Does she really think that £160bn of surplus is sitting around doing nothing? Of course not. So where is it? Well, its invested in UK companies, foreign companies and gilts. So it is already a major source of our investment.
The real problem is that since Brown changed the rules on dividends for pension funds less and less of UK funds are invested in UK quoted companies. But that is a consequence of tax policies, not a consequence of surplus funds lying around. If this "surplus" is removed by the supporting employer they might invest it or they might pay dividends with it. Who can say, but another part of the growth problem is that pension funds have driven UK companies to be cash cows rather than investing for future growth so it is a fair bet that the latter will be the most common.
The issues are: (1) that UK pension funds are reluctant to invest in FTSE companies (roughly 10% of their holdings at present). (2) That unlike in the US UK funds seem more interested in dividends and squeezing cash out of companies than capital growth. (3) That this makes it more difficult than is ideal for startups and small companies to access capital in the UK.
None of these problems are addressed by Reeves' proposals. Indeed some of them may become worse.
Can I please challenge you on this "Rachel from accounts" thing. It is open and petty misogyny - you would not have referred to "Kwazi from Accounts" or "Rishi from Accounts" or "Gordon from Accounts"
She is the Chancellor of the Exchequer and she's a woman. Feel free to consider that she is doing a poor job - that's fair. But "Rachel from accounts" is attacking her for her crime of being a woman. Please stop. You are better than than even if so many Tories and right wing commentators are not.
It’s not remotely misogynistic- it’s a critique (rightly or wrongly) of a position within a company as a means to mock.
For most people the image of. “Colin from accounts” or a “Rachel from accounts” is of a mid level back office functionary with very little or no influence on corporate matters and no wider business skills.
There is a reason why the fast show had “Colin from accounts” as people can recognise a mid/low level character with little imagination and skill but a professional qualification.
I have worked with many of these in companies I’ve worked for and there is a reason why they are mocked - whether it’s fair or unfair is a different matter.
I would absolutely have lambasted EmRishi as “Rishi from accounts” if there was a perception he had only reached a low level finance role however, as he had a pretty high level financial career it would be a silly barb to level.
Kwazi got loads of grief - called Kami-Kwasi - was that because he was one of those foreigners so we can apply a funny negative name or because he was holding the baby went it went tits up?
John Major was mocked with his underpants - is that misandrist as men wear Y-fronts so we can mock him.
Using the misogyny defence of RR is ridiculous and taking offence for someone else where that offence is unfounded.
Defend her abilities and say people are wrong about them but don’t pull a sexism card to shut down a line of mockery.
On topic, I can't see the WFA cut being much of an issue at the next election for two reasons - firstly rises in pensions under the triple lock will wipe out any losses or 'hardship' incurred. This is the toughest bit for the government - when people feel they've 'lost' something they were long told they deserved, even if it had become a bit of an absurdity, without the subsequent gains they get elsewhere. Each year it becomes less of a pressing issue and slips into "Oh, I didn't like it but the sky hasn't fallen in" territory.
Secondly, are the Tories really going to go into the next election promising to restore a payment to wealthier pensioners that was a Brown accountancy trick to alleviate pensioner poverty without uprating? One that hasn't changed since 2001 - when it really was sizeable enough to make a big difference.
No, thought not.
Reform might well, but that may depend on whether they want to be seen as a credible government and have limited money for more important pet policies, or whether repeat their 2024 manifesto and its attempt to make Jeremy Corbyn look like a fiscal conservative.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The universities have loaded themselves with debt and spent it on administration, it’s a pyramid scheme waiting to come down in an era where their actual product, of learning and research, has been massively democratised.
They’re now mostly selling scarcity of accreditation through the admissions process.
Talk on X of the entire Welsh university sector crumbling into dust
It will massively impact towns and constituencies where this happens. And it will happen
I remember when a teacher training college closed in my small home town. That was big and bad. These are UNIVERSITIES. Grim
The govt doesn’t have the £££ to bail them all out
Cardiff annual deficit is around 35 million. Pretty sure the Government could find that kind of money (even across ALL universities).
Oy it could actual raise the tuition fees in line with inflation, as it has done for NHS salaries.
As I understand it this would only kick the can down the road. We did this: 1) Slash government funding for universities 2) Replace this with tuition fees which the government then caps 3) Universities are short of cash and fill the hole with foreign students paying £lots 4) Cities like Sheffield fill up with expensive student apartment blocks occupied exclusively by Chinese students 5) People get the hump and so we reduce the number of foreign students which creates a funding crisis and imperils the entire institution
Lets assume that we jack tuition fees up to £15k a year. This isn't paid by the student, its private sector cash - tuition fees sit as an asset on the balance sheet of whichever company buys the debt. The default rate on these loans is already high (40%?) and increasing the size of the loan only increases the size of the money eventually written off. Which reduced the number of investors willing to stump up the cash which the universities need to operate.
Do I have that roughly right? If so its the British problem - we can't afford the cash to pay for it in the short term, we can't afford the damage to our economy in the medium to long term in not paying for it.
The Treasury has stopped selling off student loans.
Because nobody would buy them at those default levels?
OK, so lets assume that we raise tuition fees to £12k or £15k. That is cash which the government now needs to find up front, and will then need to write 40% off. The larger the tuition fees the larger the financial black hole.
A huge debt hypothecated to students. Creating a burden on the government to fund. With a large proportion never to be repaid. As universities are starved of cash.
I'm a big advocate of the blank sheet of paper approach. Nobody would design this structure because its absurd. Can we put something more sensible in place?
How about we sell university places to foreign students at five times the cost to a UK student? Sounds like good business.
Is it if they bring along a family of economically inactive dependents who then need to be housed and have access to services we provide ?
They pay for the accomodation already. Access to healthcare and primary and secondary education could be charged to the student,'s nation of origin.
The dependents were cut because of immigration figures which were politically unacceptable. The baby was thrown out with the bathwater.
So the govt is paying tuition fees up front in any case and then administering repayments, which have a large default level, and put off the able but financially cautious. They also have other sub-optimal results such as emigration to avoid loan repayments, avoiding career progression, high marginal deductions etc etc Why not scrap tuition fees and ration university places by ability?
That, I suspect was why the Conservatives followed the policies they did. Turn the clock back to universities being exclusively for the wealthiest 7%. We don't want any of this positive social engineering caper.
There was no shortage of clever working class teenagers going to university from the 1970s onwards.
The increase in students in recent decades has come from the thicker middle class teenagers.
I'm not sure how getting them into £50k of debt in return for three years of 'making memories' is 'positive social engineering'.
Let alone preparing them for an ever more challenging world.
You Conservatives of a certain shade (don't forget it was the enlightened John Major who amalgamated universities and polytechnics) are desperate for the majority to do modern apprenticeships and Boris Johnson to read Classics at Oxford.
On thread: I was running the line at a junior football match at the weekend. Leafy Cheshire against WWC Manchester. As linesman, I got to eavesdrop on both sets of conversations. The Cheshire conversation was about disappointment with Labour "most of us had just been hanging on until Labour got in, thinking things would improve, interest rates would come down, but it's just getting worse ... Reeves hasn't got a clue"; the Manchester conversation somewhat earthier and angrier, and focused on the Christmas party which had been cancelled because the venue had been turned into a hotel for illegal immigrants.
Obviously these were just snippets. These are normal people mainly talking about their kids and football. But it was striking to hear politics discussed at all in the real world. I still find it slightly jarring to hear peoplebeing openly critical of Labour (aside from the Corbyn era). For my whole lifetime, my experience in real life has been that only people who know you very well are openly critical of the Labour Party lest people think they are Tories.
You obviously had better weather than we did. I think all the conversations at the sideline last Sunday were on the topic of how terrible it was standing in freezing driving rain, how cold we were, whether anyone could feel their feet, and if the ref could end the game early as we were 5-0 up and the other team had stopped trying.
That rings true for me. Thank God those days are over. I'd almost managed to blot out the memories of endless hours stood in the freezing cold and pouring rain next to some godforsaken field on the edge of a disused industrial estate. That's if you were lucky. If unlucky, you'd be running the line having accidentally accepted the flag without thinking or having been finally shamed into the job. Then you'd be spending the next hour and a half also trying desperately to judge offsides and penalties on a pitch with barely discernable markings. Those of you with just daughters - consider yourselves blessed.
I thought if you have kids then that is one of the joys of having them.
Plus are you suggesting peoples' daughters are at home playing with their dolls
It's one of the joys of having them IN RETROSPECT
When I was a parent to a young child, my experience was always: I hate parenting, I love *having parented*
I loved it although there were some serious bumps along the road. I find young children in particular delightful and hilarious. I am so looking forward to my first grandchild being born next month so I get to do some of that again.
This standing on cold wet football pitches as a parent - is this a modern thing?
I played cub and scout football at the local pitch most Saturdays through many winters in 1970s and there wasn't a single parent there in support.
Yes. A massive culture change; a mixture of helicoptering, safeguarding, anxiously wanting to be part of your child's life, etc. As a child of the 1950s/60s, it would never have crossed my father's mind to have the smallest interest in whether, where and with whom I was doing any sport of any sort. That would seen really odd now, but it was fine and I still thinks it was fine.
Comments
I stand by my prediction that the Unis face a systemic crisis, it is not soluble, several will go under, maybe more than several
And in the long run, eeesh
The dependents were cut because of immigration figures which were politically unacceptable. The baby was thrown out with the bathwater.
My photo quota for the day is our Editor's next staycation.
Fishing on Ladybower Reservoir:
We have difficult choices to make. See the migration stats from the ONS. Another 5m people in ten years? More than half of London again?
This is a one way road to a hard right government which will stop it, and beyond that, potentially a far right government. Alternatively, we can bite the bullet and bring immigration way down and honestly tell voters: this will hurt, but not as much as having Tommy Robinson as Prime Minister
Lets see.
Clearly not all is rosy and I am not saying that. But I think things are being overblown right now (information vacuum allows a certain type of news story to grow - see also drones in NJ, although thats died off now, like all good flaps. I loved the people posting planes flying over and saying that they are not planes, but are disguised as planes...)
Desperate measures do carry a degree of extra risk though.
The sector of giving general education (Stuff Studies) to average performers (average IQ is 100) is not really any use to us or them. Either not at all or very locally would be the answer.
But we still need tons of job related training. The local FE sector and other local provision is where most of this should happen, and it should stop being cinderella in the picture, and not cost £50,000.
And if nursing isn’t covering costs that a real issue given that nurses now need degrees
I suspect it is in the right ballpark though, as the reality is we will have net immigration in the hundreds of thousands whatever party is in power, reform included. I doubt it will be close to the million we saw under the end of the Tories somewhere in the 300-600k range is likely, so 3-6m over a decade.
We need to build more houses and associated infrastructure.
That schemed really should not be investing in illiquid assets or risky assets given the age profile of its members in my view.
Why not scrap tuition fees and ration university places by ability?
Let the market force them to downsize and cut the waste, a government bailout would be a mistake and will let wasteful universities across the country off the hook.
But it's hard to avoid this with organised 'travel'. Countless times I've seen a row of bedraggled women standing all day behind makeshift trestle tables offering junk for sale - in a New Mexico Pueblo, in the mountains of Laos, and on Caribbean islands. Being a sociologist manqué it's what I tend to notice, more than the bog-standard G&Ts.
The economic case for high immigration seems totally unproven.
Simply allow any student to sit any exam from any university of their choice at cost plus reasonable margin. Where they learn the facts is up to them.
Costs for taxpayers and students will plummet.
Does anything in the proposals compel that (I don't think so) ?
The existing rules have basically forced large funds, with a horizon of many decades, to underperform the market, long term. That's good neither for the funds nor the economy.
246,930 academic staff were employed at UK higher education providers on 1 December 2023, a rise of 3% on the previous year. 66% of academic staff were of UK nationality compared to 67% in 2022. 15% held EU nationalities and 18% held non-EU nationalities. Source: HESA.
We encourage these kids to take on huge debts to get quite sketchy degrees and for what purpose? There aren't proper graduate jobs at the end, to justify the debt and the effort. On top of that the whole "student" experience is seriously degraded, with so many courses taught online, the social life lacking, and so forth
We should go back to a uni system like we had before. For the top 10-20% of kids, but maybe we pay THEM to study. In the end this will surely happen anyway, which means horribly painful times for the HE sector
Other kids can do shorter cheaper courses, apprenticeships, volunteer abroad, etc
Keir Starmer @Keir_Starmer
With my government, Britain is open for business.
8:01 am · 28 Jan 2025
·
318.9K Views
The members of the scheme get reduced benefits presumably.
Why should private defined schemes take that risk, especially when so many are now closed to new members and their age profile is far older than DC schemes.
I am unclear on this whole open / closed thing...
It has always seemed unsustainable to me that in addition to Cardiff University, which has around 30k students and staff that, Cardiff also has Cardiff Met and the university of South Wales. All in a city of about 350, 000 people.
However, as Cardiff is Wales' only Russel group uni I can't see the Welsh Assembly letting it go under. The others are more likely.
Even most solicitors and accountants and bankers didn't have degrees let alone most nurses and middle managers like now. Degrees were only really needed if you wanted to be a barrister, doctor/surgeon or vicar/bishop or permanent secretary or academic or public school/grammar school teacher
So the top ten will be fine, Oxbridge, UCL, Imp, Edinburgh, etc
After that I do not know
They then got upset with me and another person on the trip, who went with the guide, in the evenings, to the local bar and got hammered on rum with the locals. While they stayed at the hostel.
(IIRC, the EdStone scored 0.5/6)
That's a proper university system, right there
A pension is a vehicle to fund someones retirement. First and foremost it must do that. If it helps the economy then all well and good but its priority should be fund growth to fund the retiree's retirement.
The govt will bring forward the details in the spring. Depends what is meant by this.
"With the right guardrails in place, the government’s proposals could help channel more funding into the economy, by enabling schemes to invest more widely and take on greater risk, while allowing for members to receive an uplift to pension benefits."
Median wealth (2022) was about £300K made up of property (40%), Private Pensions (35%), Net Wealth (14%) and Physical Wealth (10%). So if you want to save for a home, or a pension and you have some student debt, the chances of you being able to afford children means hard choices.
Alternatively if you are a single mum on benefits, you are limited to 2 children (and a financial cap) if you go beyond that.
So if you don't like migration you have to have some serious discussions about the child bearing barriers in the UK.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/incomeandwealth/bulletins/totalwealthingreatbritain/april2020tomarch2022
Yes the premium brands would end up dominating the exam sector. Tuition would change with far more done online but in person tuition would still be popular in university towns and cities across the country imo, but universities would have to actively compete on cost rather than just reputation.
In most industries if we can achieve the same or better results for less money it is considered progress, it should be the same for learning. The current structure does not make economic sense for many students nor the taxpayer.
The increase in students in recent decades has come from the thicker middle class teenagers.
I'm not sure how getting them into £50k of debt in return for three years of 'making memories' is 'positive social engineering'.
Let alone preparing them for an ever more challenging world.
An exercise: instead of allowing government to set the tests and decide the headlines and keep changing the subject, set them yourself. Here are three:
How are the government getting on with London's airport capacity? When does work start on the third runway? (We are now in the 57th year since the Roskill Commission started work).
How is the plan for small boats going? Numbers?
How has the planning process been speeded up?
But won't that remain entirely up to the fund's trustees ?
The point is that the existing rules effectively mandate long term underperformance.
In a Saracen APC.
I heard that he got as far as looking at prices for the command vehicle version (the whole top opens as a series of hatches, so great for safari picture taking) before he was told NO.
It's not rocket science - it just needs doing. There will be economic consequences, but not nearly as severe as those caused by 5 million more people with nowhere to live.
We don't teach risk or investing so trustees often don't understand risk or investing.
We assume investing in "safe" assets is "safe" rather than thinking of it as guaranteed underperformance.
We bundle global equity trackers in the same "risky" group as we do the trustees buying shares in a start up or bubble.
But one of the reasons UK companies have been so vulnerable to private equity asset stripping (which in the past has not infrequently played fast and loose with company pension fund surpluses) is that for a very long time our investment rules effectively made it easier for them to purchase UK company stock than they did for our domestic pension funds.
Signed,
A godless heathen of Gower Street.
The real problem is that since Brown changed the rules on dividends for pension funds less and less of UK funds are invested in UK quoted companies. But that is a consequence of tax policies, not a consequence of surplus funds lying around. If this "surplus" is removed by the supporting employer they might invest it or they might pay dividends with it. Who can say, but another part of the growth problem is that pension funds have driven UK companies to be cash cows rather than investing for future growth so it is a fair bet that the latter will be the most common.
The issues are:
(1) that UK pension funds are reluctant to invest in FTSE companies (roughly 10% of their holdings at present).
(2) That unlike in the US UK funds seem more interested in dividends and squeezing cash out of companies than capital growth.
(3) That this makes it more difficult than is ideal for startups and small companies to access capital in the UK.
None of these problems are addressed by Reeves' proposals. Indeed some of them may become worse.
The research-heavy ones have some other options. Research funding doesn't cover full economic costs, but the problem of funding not adjusting to salaries is smaller - when applying for funding, you write the budget for the current and projected staff salaries. There's also - still - money to be made on CPD, conferences etc.
I do expect to see some of the 'new' universities close or at least lose courses. The more research-intensive ones might just drop some - or even many - courses. And there may be some surprises of universities that fall in the latter category that have cocked up/over-indebted etc that do fold.
To take one example of a something that the federal government doesn't control, states will still be able to recognise trans on drivers licenses.
Plus are you suggesting peoples' daughters are at home playing with their dolls
Do away with everything that represents (but isn't actually) faith until you do away with the whole paraphernalia of the Church itself. So you just are on your own doing good things because you think you ought to.
Religion has lost, by and large.
She is the Chancellor of the Exchequer and she's a woman. Feel free to consider that she is doing a poor job - that's fair. But "Rachel from accounts" is attacking her for her crime of being a woman. Please stop. You are better than than even if so many Tories and right wing commentators are not.
When I was a parent to a young child, my experience was always: I hate parenting, I love *having parented*
Though at the moment we have immigration increasing our population not even stabilising it despite below replacement level birthrates
ETA: We have a couple of girls in the team and there's also a local girls-only football club, so passing on only your X chromosome doesn't save you!
Her career seems to have been Bank of England economist followed by something connected to Customer Service in Halifax while campaigning to be the local MP.
ETA: Both of those detectable anyway, I guess, but I don't normally do things like checking references exist unless I'm suspicious. The recycled one didn't flag up strongly using our software as it had at least been partially reworded. The tell was the identical structure and findings.
His parent could legally have been born in 1991, and his grandparent in 1977.
Tho in truth the most rewarding bit for me has been the last couple of years, 16-18, when we've become kind of friends, discovering a shared adult sense of humour, and many shared interests. Unexpected
Lab: 27% (+1 from 20-21 Jan)
Ref: 23% (-1)
Con: 22% (=)
Lib Dem: 14% (=)
Green: 9% (=)
SNP: 3% (=)
https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/51477-voting-intention-lab-27-ref-23-con-22-26-27-jan-2025
I played cub and scout football at the local pitch most Saturdays through many winters in 1970s and there wasn't a single parent there in support.
It didn't help that I was never particular interested in football myself, but my lad was keen to play and I thought it'd be good for him physically and socially. No, I'm more the indoors type, and I did rather enjoy running a chess club at my lad's school. It's almost magical seeing them grasp the concepts of the game and start to think strategically. I did used to help out on outings as well, making sure none of the kids got lost or fell in ponds, etc.
For most people the image of. “Colin from accounts” or a “Rachel from accounts” is of a mid level back office functionary with very little or no influence on corporate matters and no wider business skills.
There is a reason why the fast show had “Colin from accounts” as people can recognise a mid/low level character with little imagination and skill but a professional qualification.
I have worked with many of these in companies I’ve worked for and there is a reason why they are mocked - whether it’s fair or unfair is a different matter.
I would absolutely have lambasted EmRishi as “Rishi from accounts” if there was a perception he had only reached a low level finance role however, as he had a pretty high level financial career it would be a silly barb to level.
Kwazi got loads of grief - called Kami-Kwasi - was that because he was one of those foreigners so we can apply a funny negative name or because he was holding the baby went it went tits up?
John Major was mocked with his underpants - is that misandrist as men wear Y-fronts so we can mock him.
Using the misogyny defence of RR is ridiculous and taking offence for someone else where that offence is unfounded.
Defend her abilities and say people are wrong about them but don’t pull a sexism card to shut down a line of mockery.
YouGov
@YouGov
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49m
Latest YouGov Westminster voting intention (26-27 Jan)
Lab: 27% (+1 from 20-21 Jan)
Ref: 23% (-1)
Con: 22% (=)
Lib Dem: 14% (=)
Green: 9% (=)
SNP: 3% (=)
Immigration to push UK population above France
Number of people living in Britain is projected to hit 72.5m by 2032, entirely fuelled by a 4.9m increase in net migration
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/01/28/immigration-to-push-uk-population-above-france/
Labour 328, Conservatives 136, LDs 77 Reform 61,
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/fcgi-bin/usercode.py?scotcontrol=N&CON=22&LAB=27&LIB=14&Reform=23&Green=9&UKIP=&TVCON=&TVLAB=&TVLIB=&TVReform=&TVGreen=&TVUKIP=&SCOTCON=&SCOTLAB=&SCOTLIB=&SCOTReform=&SCOTGreen=&SCOTUKIP=&SCOTNAT=&display=AllChanged&regorseat=(none)&boundary=2024
Secondly, are the Tories really going to go into the next election promising to restore a payment to wealthier pensioners that was a Brown accountancy trick to alleviate pensioner poverty without uprating? One that hasn't changed since 2001 - when it really was sizeable enough to make a big difference.
No, thought not.
Reform might well, but that may depend on whether they want to be seen as a credible government and have limited money for more important pet policies, or whether repeat their 2024 manifesto and its attempt to make Jeremy Corbyn look like a fiscal conservative.