Labour may look utterly unelectable now, but what if some of the doom-sayers at Davos are right and another gigantic, asset-bubble fuelled crash is about to hit us?
You've been reading AEP again. Really, its not a good idea.
Spotted :-) But he's only reporting what a central banker said at Davos.
@JGForsyth: Now the DUP's Dodds joins in the attacks on Corbyn, all of which have flowed from the Labour leader's Marr i/view. Talk about self-inflicted
@JohnRentoul: Roar of approval from Tory benches for Nigel Dodds (DUP) on Falklands. "Why didn't we think of that question?"
Basically the same question 6 times getting the same answer. Loans means more students can be funded so more opportunity.
The cost of loans is exactly the same as the cost of fees and grants to a government in any financial year. To provide £1 of loan costs the treasury the same as providing £1 of fees or £1 of grants. You've failed basic economics.
No its not. A loan generates a future income flow that that can be sold or used to help fund the resources being spent now.
If members of the SNP think there is no difference between a grant and a loan then much of the Scottish education policy makes a little more sense but still, unfortunately, no sense at all.
Hmm, that's just double counting though. The government (SLC) has taken on a liability, the sale of loan stock would not be anywhere near their original value. I remember reading that the student loan delinquency rate was around 35%, which is expected to go up with the higher fees and thresholds to 45%. That deficit is effectively being covered by the state and we are subsidising poor choices by students who aren't able to fund their repayments in full because they can't get decent jobs after graduating.
Well, it might be double counting compared to some, but compared to Dair's proposition it isn't.
£1 of grants means no change in the asset/liability book.
£1 of loans means £0.xx in the asset book, devalued to reflect the cost of delinquency, add in the future income stream, the net present value, etc.
Thus the two are not the same for the government books.
@IsabelHardman: Every Commons session I've sat in on this week has seen MPs across House uniting to knock stuffing out of Labour. Including Labour MPs.
Basically the same question 6 times getting the same answer. Loans means more students can be funded so more opportunity.
The cost of loans is exactly the same as the cost of fees and grants to a government in any financial year. To provide £1 of loan costs the treasury the same as providing £1 of fees or £1 of grants. You've failed basic economics.
did the course include the difference between cash flow and revenue/cost accounting?
The cost of a £1 grant is errm £1, whereas the loan probably costs about 55p in the £1 at a rough guess
It depends how you view the loan, as it is not ringfenced and not used for future FE funding then it is only a future revenue stream. In other words it is an investment and no different to a grant or a paid fee, which are also expected to provide a return in higher taxes or research outcomes.
Intuitively, you might argue that the loan creates an additional future revenue stream but even this is not guaranteed, there will (and indeed today there almost certainly are) people who have not particularly benefitted from their degree and choose to earn just below the repayment threshold thereby depriving not just the loan repayment revenue stream to government but throttling the tax paid as well.
The whole argument (because in the scheme of things FE funding is not a particularly huge chunk of government spending) is based on the Causation/Correlation canard. Student numbers are higher in every country in the world regardless of how that country funds their FE courses.
Ukip paid £10,000 to Biteback publishing to buy 2,000 copies of Nigel Farage's book The Purple Revolution. https://t.co/GZcYJOZWQC
Quite a common occurrence, I think in small printruns; it's an efficient way for the author to pay the publisher a fee and ensure that the book is recorded as having got x sales.
@IsabelHardman: ...which is interesting, but does mean Cameron could announce he'll spend entire NHS budget on building a Death Star without opprobrium.
Basically the same question 6 times getting the same answer. Loans means more students can be funded so more opportunity.
The cost of loans is exactly the same as the cost of fees and grants to a government in any financial year. To provide £1 of loan costs the treasury the same as providing £1 of fees or £1 of grants. You've failed basic economics.
Basically the same question 6 times getting the same answer. Loans means more students can be funded so more opportunity.
The cost of loans is exactly the same as the cost of fees and grants to a government in any financial year. To provide £1 of loan costs the treasury the same as providing £1 of fees or £1 of grants. You've failed basic economics.
Don't loans get paid back in some years then?
Potentially they do.
But the point being addressed was DavidL's ridiculous assertion that you can provide more FE places TODAY by providing Loans instead of Grants.
This is simply not true in basic economic terms. Government does not budget on the basis of NPV.
@rosschawkins: Cons decided now best attack is not Labour splits, but Labour & Corbyn are as one: "it's not just the leader, it's the whole Labour party"
I noticed that the recent YouGov question on party splits was couched in terms of "David Cameron's Conservative Party" and "Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party"...
Basically the same question 6 times getting the same answer. Loans means more students can be funded so more opportunity.
The cost of loans is exactly the same as the cost of fees and grants to a government in any financial year. To provide £1 of loan costs the treasury the same as providing £1 of fees or £1 of grants. You've failed basic economics.
did the course include the difference between cash flow and revenue/cost accounting?
The cost of a £1 grant is errm £1, whereas the loan probably costs about 55p in the £1 at a rough guess
It depends how you view the loan, as it is not ringfenced and not used for future FE funding then it is only a future revenue stream. In other words it is an investment and no different to a grant or a paid fee, which are also expected to provide a return in higher taxes or research outcomes.
Intuitively, you might argue that the loan creates an additional future revenue stream but even this is not guaranteed, there will (and indeed today there almost certainly are) people who have not particularly benefitted from their degree and choose to earn just below the repayment threshold thereby depriving not just the loan repayment revenue stream to government but throttling the tax paid as well.
The whole argument (because in the scheme of things FE funding is not a particularly huge chunk of government spending) is based on the Causation/Correlation canard. Student numbers are higher in every country in the world regardless of how that country funds their FE courses.
Bollocks.
The loan is used for education purposes and hence will provide the same return as the grant/paid fee in terms of taxes/research outcomes.
*In addition* a percentage of the total loan book will be repaid with interest.
They are not the same. You've failed basic economics.
Basically the same question 6 times getting the same answer. Loans means more students can be funded so more opportunity.
The cost of loans is exactly the same as the cost of fees and grants to a government in any financial year. To provide £1 of loan costs the treasury the same as providing £1 of fees or £1 of grants. You've failed basic economics.
No its not. A loan generates a future income flow that that can be sold or used to help fund the resources being spent now.
If members of the SNP think there is no difference between a grant and a loan then much of the Scottish education policy makes a little more sense but still, unfortunately, no sense at all.
Hmm, that's just double counting though. The government (SLC) has taken on a liability, the sale of loan stock would not be anywhere near their original value. I remember reading that the student loan delinquency rate was around 35%, which is expected to go up with the higher fees and thresholds to 45%. That deficit is effectively being covered by the state and we are subsidising poor choices by students who aren't able to fund their repayments in full because they can't get decent jobs after graduating.
Well, it might be double counting compared to some, but compared to Dair's proposition it isn't.
£1 of grants means no change in the asset/liability book.
£1 of loans means £0.xx in the asset book, devalued to reflect the cost of delinquency, add in the future income stream, the net present value, etc.
Thus the two are not the same for the government books.
I'm not making any judgement on whether loans or grants are better, just pointing out that saying a loan is an asset without taking into account the contingent liability is double counting.
What is happening is that the highest achieving graduates who do the toughest courses and get the best jobs subsidise those who make the poor choices. It does seem like we need to uncap the fees for non-traditional courses and lower the cap for traditional courses. People can scream social engineering as much as they like, but at the moment people who study hard doing engineering and get a good job are subsidising the people who choose to do "whatever the kids are into these days" studies or some such and can't get jobs once they graduate from the second rate universities.
Cameron is speaking only to the converted. He and the Tory back benches will not appeal to the unconverted. They will repel them.
Corbyn is speaking for everyone else. Don't judge this contest by the volume of noise from the Tory back benches.
Corbyn doesn't speak for the 55% of the population who currently say they'd vote for centre-right parties. And, a lot of the other 45% aren't very impressed with him, either.
Basically the same question 6 times getting the same answer. Loans means more students can be funded so more opportunity.
The cost of loans is exactly the same as the cost of fees and grants to a government in any financial year. To provide £1 of loan costs the treasury the same as providing £1 of fees or £1 of grants. You've failed basic economics.
Basically the same question 6 times getting the same answer. Loans means more students can be funded so more opportunity.
The cost of loans is exactly the same as the cost of fees and grants to a government in any financial year. To provide £1 of loan costs the treasury the same as providing £1 of fees or £1 of grants. You've failed basic economics.
Don't loans get paid back in some years then?
Potentially they do.
But the point being addressed was DavidL's ridiculous assertion that you can provide more FE places TODAY by providing Loans instead of Grants.
This is simply not true in basic economic terms. Government does not budget on the basis of NPV.
Rubbish. Of course you can. Even taking into account a higher than expected loan delinquency rate of 50% the government can still expect at least 50% of their money back indexed to CPI. With a grant the money is never coming back and the only way to fund more places is to increase funding through the budget either by cutting elsewhere or raising taxes. Whatever the deficiencies of the current student loans system in England and Wales, there is no doubt that the government have been able to increase the number of places available to students. The increase in student numbers are there for everyone to see.
Uber is claiming a major victory after Transport for London (TfL) ditched a number of proposals that would have imposed restrictions on the taxi hailing app’s business.
Tfl has decided against implementing proposals that would have hit Uber’s service including forcing operators to provide booking confirmation details to the passenger at least five minutes before a journey starts.
It will give Zac something to talk about besides Heathrow, so there's that. Oh wait, cabs to Heathrow. Scrapping the congestion charge exemption might prove controversial as well.
Some reality that Carlotta won't like about Scottish Higher Education.
Last year a higher proportion (65 per cent) of full time further education college students completing their course successfully compared to 2011/12 (64 per cent)
The average student learning hours at college have increased by 53 per cent since 2006/07 and are now at a record level.
Scotland is the best educated country in Europe, according to a report released by the UK Office for National Statistics in June 2014. It says that nearly 45 per cent of people in Scotland aged between 25 and 64 have had some kind of tertiary education – including university degrees and further education — ahead of Ireland, Luxembourg and Finland, which were the only other countries to get more than 40 per cent.
At least three questionable assumptions in the claim to be 'best educated'; 1. Not sure duration of education = quality of education. 2. not all degrees are equal 3. participation in tertiary education may correlate with paucity of other economic opportunities. People do not stop being educated once in the workforce though - its just a different, less formal education.
I am not arguing that Scotland is not the best educated - I simply don't know. But all I could say from the statistics quoted is that Scotland has a higher proportion of the population that have some tertiary education.
Doing a better job on DP than a lifetime of PMQs from Jezza.
Yes indeed. Neil is a class act.
It wasn't just Corbyn though, the Labour questions were mostly filled with rhetoric and trying to play politics rather than hold the govt to account. It didn't help either that most of the Tories' questions were aimed squarely at the Opposition benches.
@britainelects · 35s36 seconds ago 2015 General Election campaign expenditure by party: CON: £15.6m LAB: £12.1m LDEM: £3.5m UKIP: £2.9m SNP: £1.5m GRN: £1.1m
Conservatives operating a two power standard, it seems.
Hmm. Beckett Report page 6:
The certainty of timetable, along with very large pledges from rich donors, meant that, not only were the Tories able to massively outspend us - perhaps threefold - but, with a defined and certain time frame, they could deploy these assured funds to maximum effect.
Cameron is speaking only to the converted. He and the Tory back benches will not appeal to the unconverted. They will repel them.
Corbyn is speaking for everyone else. Don't judge this contest by the volume of noise from the Tory back benches.
Corbyn doesn't speak for the 55% of the population who currently say they'd vote for centre-right parties. And, a lot of the other 45% aren't very impressed with him, either.
It would be interesting to take a poll on voters' attitude to the Tories abolishing maintenance grants for students including nurses in contradiction to their manifesto.
I suspect you would find a substantial majority are opposed to this change in policy and find Cameron's defence unconvincing. Let's look out for poll on this and then compare notes.
But the point being addressed was DavidL's ridiculous assertion that you can provide more FE places TODAY by providing Loans instead of Grants.
This is simply not true in basic economic terms. Government does not budget on the basis of NPV.
Rubbish. Of course you can. Even taking into account a higher than expected loan delinquency rate of 50% the government can still expect at least 50% of their money back indexed to CPI. With a grant the money is never coming back and the only way to fund more places is to increase funding through the budget either by cutting elsewhere or raising taxes. Whatever the deficiencies of the current student loans system in England and Wales, there is no doubt that the government have been able to increase the number of places available to students. The increase in student numbers are there for everyone to see.
That's not how government budgets work. They don't have more money to invest based on a higher rate of return, they have a fixed amount and the opportunity cost (spending it on something else or reducing tax/borrowing) is the ONLY thing that matters.
For provision of a loan vs a grant they are equivalent on a one for one basis.
As for the student numbers, the growth in FE participation has occured EVERYWHERE, in every country. This includes countries with grants, countries with paid fees and loans and countries with loans. The growth in the UK is not unique, nor even particularly high compared to other countries around the world.
The question is how do you get the biggest bang for your limited buck? In Scotland the SNP subsidise people like my daughter going to Edinburgh University to study law. She is paying no fees for that and will come out of University with a commercially attractive degree which will hopefully allow her to earn a good income.
If she had gone to Durham she would have had the debt of those fees but the loan would have enabled the government to fund another place increasing opportunity.
What is happening in Scotland is that the number of places is being restricted by the number of fees the Government can afford to pay. The amount they pay makes our higher institutions ever more dependent on non EU and English students who both pay a more commercial rate. This impacts negatively on Scottish children's chances, particularly in clearing which has almost stopped working for Scottish students. In England the cap on university applications is being abolished. In Scotland that cap is sealed ever tighter.
Cameron is speaking only to the converted. He and the Tory back benches will not appeal to the unconverted. They will repel them.
Corbyn is speaking for everyone else. Don't judge this contest by the volume of noise from the Tory back benches.
Corbyn doesn't speak for the 55% of the population who currently say they'd vote for centre-right parties. And, a lot of the other 45% aren't very impressed with him, either.
It would be interesting to take a poll on voters' attitude to the Tories abolishing maintenance grants for students including nurses in contradiction to their manifesto.
I suspect you would find a substantial majority are opposed to this change in policy and find Cameron's defence unconvincing. Let's look out for poll on this and then compare notes.
How about rephrasing that as "we will seek to increase the number of places for student nurses by at least 50%" without spelling out how it will be achieved. I expect that would have been pretty popular.
You can't only focus on the negative side of a policy because there are always winners and losers.
Cameron is speaking only to the converted. He and the Tory back benches will not appeal to the unconverted. They will repel them.
Corbyn is speaking for everyone else. Don't judge this contest by the volume of noise from the Tory back benches.
Corbyn doesn't speak for the 55% of the population who currently say they'd vote for centre-right parties. And, a lot of the other 45% aren't very impressed with him, either.
It would be interesting to take a poll on voters' attitude to the Tories abolishing maintenance grants for students including nurses in contradiction to their manifesto.
I suspect you would find a substantial majority are opposed to this change in policy and find Cameron's defence unconvincing. Let's look out for poll on this and then compare notes.
It all depends on how you explain the Government position and how you explain the Corbyn opposition position. Polling on specific issues like this is all down to how to ask the question.
But the fact is that single issues like this do not determine GE results. It is about the overall package and the perception of the leaders.
Look at the polling on that and there won't be much need to compare notes. There is such a clear picture.
Cameron is speaking only to the converted. He and the Tory back benches will not appeal to the unconverted. They will repel them.
Corbyn is speaking for everyone else. Don't judge this contest by the volume of noise from the Tory back benches.
Corbyn doesn't speak for the 55% of the population who currently say they'd vote for centre-right parties. And, a lot of the other 45% aren't very impressed with him, either.
Ditch three quarters of the Lib Dems as well - about 6%. Also ditch a good chunk of Labour's traditional WWC base - at least another 10%.
He speaks for the young urban Labourites, ultra-multicultural idealists and the Greens.
That's probably (at most) 25%-30% of the population. And i'm being generous.
Also, he seems to think that Apple make their own phones, which they don't. They farm out manufacturing of the phones and components to a whole bunch of companies, just like every company out there. The most recent product I know the details about is the PS4, about 5% of global PS4s out there were assembled by EMCS (Sony's manufacturing company) and that was basically the first run because they didn't want the design and specifications to leak by farming it out to Hon Hai. Out of the 340 separate components that make up the PS4, only about 20 are sourced from one of Sony's own subsidiaries, the rest are purchased from other companies.
Apple is nothing more than a research and design group with a massive sales and marketing department. It's a great business model as other companies take on the risk of manufacturing.
Very true. Foxconn, I think, does almost all Apple's manufacturing.
But the whole thing is ridiculous. Donald Trump - whose companies all manufacture in China - has no intention of keeping his campaign promises.
If he is elected, he will - I suspect - turn out to be a socially liberal centrist.
And there will be a lot of very disappointed people.
Foxconn do the assembly. Sony does the camera and lens, Samsung and TSMC do the processors, Samsung does the RAM, Toshiba does the flash and integrated circuitry, Qualcomm do the modems via TSMC, JDC and Sharp do the screen+digitizer units. Their new fangled "force touch" is a Japan Display innovation which they sold to Huawei first but it is poorly integrated on Android.
That's the basis of the iPhone. Apple design just one part of that, the processor. Everything else is other companies and then they proved the software, which for the user is more important than hardware.
Don't forget ARM.
Don't forget Imagination (GPU) or Qualcomm (modems via TSMC, at least for the moment).
Imagination Technologies are a cool company. Their new ray-tracing GPU is interesting, even if it's in its early days.
But the point being addressed was DavidL's ridiculous assertion that you can provide more FE places TODAY by providing Loans instead of Grants.
This is simply not true in basic economic terms. Government does not budget on the basis of NPV.
Rubbish. Of course you can. Even taking into account a higher than expected loan delinquency rate of 50% the government can still expect at least 50% of their money back indexed to CPI. With a grant the money is never coming back and the only way to fund more places is to increase funding through the budget either by cutting elsewhere or raising taxes. Whatever the deficiencies of the current student loans system in England and Wales, there is no doubt that the government have been able to increase the number of places available to students. The increase in student numbers are there for everyone to see.
That's not how government budgets work. They don't have more money to invest based on a higher rate of return, they have a fixed amount and the opportunity cost (spending it on something else or reducing tax/borrowing) is the ONLY thing that matters.
For provision of a loan vs a grant they are equivalent on a one for one basis.
As for the student numbers, the growth in FE participation has occured EVERYWHERE, in every country. This includes countries with grants, countries with paid fees and loans and countries with loans. The growth in the UK is not unique, nor even particularly high compared to other countries around the world.
I've said this before, but debating with you is pointless. Have you noticed how none of the other SNP supporters on here are backing your assertions. They know its stupid to suggest that the creation of an asset (even if its real value is only 50% of the liability) means there is more money to go around that just giving money away.
It is economics 101. If you can't see that then you are ignorant or being purposefully obtuse.
@britainelects · 35s36 seconds ago 2015 General Election campaign expenditure by party: CON: £15.6m LAB: £12.1m LDEM: £3.5m UKIP: £2.9m SNP: £1.5m GRN: £1.1m
Conservatives operating a two power standard, it seems.
Hmm. Beckett Report page 6:
The certainty of timetable, along with very large pledges from rich donors, meant that, not only were the Tories able to massively outspend us - perhaps threefold - but, with a defined and certain time frame, they could deploy these assured funds to maximum effect.
Someone is delusional.
Beckett is intelligent. I suspect she knows that it was because Ed is Crap and Labour hadn't learnt anything on welfare and immigration, and were all over the place on the economy.
Either she found those conclusions as uncomfortable as she knew the rest of the party would, so she made it all out to be quite unfair, or she felt they'd never even begin to listen to a stark message so needed to sugarcoat it first.
The question is how do you get the biggest bang for your limited buck? In Scotland the SNP subsidise people like my daughter going to Edinburgh University to study law. She is paying no fees for that and will come out of University with a commercially attractive degree which will hopefully allow her to earn a good income.
If she had gone to Durham she would have had the debt of those fees but the loan would have enabled the government to fund another place increasing opportunity.
What is happening in Scotland is that the number of places is being restricted by the number of fees the Government can afford to pay. The amount they pay makes our higher institutions ever more dependent on non EU and English students who both pay a more commercial rate. This impacts negatively on Scottish children's chances, particularly in clearing which has almost stopped working for Scottish students. In England the cap on university applications is being abolished. In Scotland that cap is sealed ever tighter.
Beckett is intelligent. I suspect she knows that it was because Ed is Crap and Labour hadn't learnt anything on welfare and immigration, and were all over the place on the economy.
Either she found those conclusions as uncomfortable as she knew the rest of the party would, so she made it all out to be quite unfair, or she felt they'd never even begin to listen to a stark message so needed to sugarcoat it first.
The question is how do you get the biggest bang for your limited buck? In Scotland the SNP subsidise people like my daughter going to Edinburgh University to study law. She is paying no fees for that and will come out of University with a commercially attractive degree which will hopefully allow her to earn a good income.
If she had gone to Durham she would have had the debt of those fees but the loan would have enabled the government to fund another place increasing opportunity.
What is happening in Scotland is that the number of places is being restricted by the number of fees the Government can afford to pay. The amount they pay makes our higher institutions ever more dependent on non EU and English students who both pay a more commercial rate. This impacts negatively on Scottish children's chances, particularly in clearing which has almost stopped working for Scottish students. In England the cap on university applications is being abolished. In Scotland that cap is sealed ever tighter.
My loan is in that book !
Mine too! I remember when I got my first job the repayment was £19 per month or something ridiculous. It barely covered the interest.
The question is how do you get the biggest bang for your limited buck? In Scotland the SNP subsidise people like my daughter going to Edinburgh University to study law. She is paying no fees for that and will come out of University with a commercially attractive degree which will hopefully allow her to earn a good income.
If she had gone to Durham she would have had the debt of those fees but the loan would have enabled the government to fund another place increasing opportunity.
What is happening in Scotland is that the number of places is being restricted by the number of fees the Government can afford to pay. The amount they pay makes our higher institutions ever more dependent on non EU and English students who both pay a more commercial rate. This impacts negatively on Scottish children's chances, particularly in clearing which has almost stopped working for Scottish students. In England the cap on university applications is being abolished. In Scotland that cap is sealed ever tighter.
Again, the potential for future revenue does not change the governments available choice TODAY.
You could argue that there will be a bigger pot for governments to spend in FUTURE but that doesn't change the decision or the availability of places today.
Look at the numbers for yourself. The government's previous loan sell off raised 18p in the pound. It is now planning to sell £12bn of loans from a 15 year period. At the same discount, that will raise £2.16bn.
Now that money is not guaranteed for education. But let's imagine that it was.
£2.16bn at a cost of £27000 per degree provides an additional loan funding for 80000 stutends. That works out that each year of loans from 1998 to 2012 has provided just over 5000 places per annum. In terms of an FE sector education of 1 MILLION students this is utterly meaningless.
Loans don't do what they say, don't increase places in the year they are awarded and almost certainly have very bad Behavioural consequences on the economy.
Cameron is speaking only to the converted. He and the Tory back benches will not appeal to the unconverted. They will repel them.
Corbyn is speaking for everyone else. Don't judge this contest by the volume of noise from the Tory back benches.
Corbyn doesn't speak for the 55% of the population who currently say they'd vote for centre-right parties. And, a lot of the other 45% aren't very impressed with him, either.
It would be interesting to take a poll on voters' attitude to the Tories abolishing maintenance grants for students including nurses in contradiction to their manifesto.
I suspect you would find a substantial majority are opposed to this change in policy and find Cameron's defence unconvincing. Let's look out for poll on this and then compare notes.
Cameron is speaking only to the converted. He and the Tory back benches will not appeal to the unconverted. They will repel them.
Corbyn is speaking for everyone else. Don't judge this contest by the volume of noise from the Tory back benches.
Corbyn doesn't speak for the 55% of the population who currently say they'd vote for centre-right parties. And, a lot of the other 45% aren't very impressed with him, either.
It would be interesting to take a poll on voters' attitude to the Tories abolishing maintenance grants for students including nurses in contradiction to their manifesto.
I suspect you would find a substantial majority are opposed to this change in policy and find Cameron's defence unconvincing. Let's look out for poll on this and then compare notes.
It's quite possible that on a single issue, a majority of people will side with Corbyn. But, it's clear that overall the voters rate him very poorly.
If the terms were retrospectively changed to above my mortgage interest I'd just straight pay it all off. The terms are very soft, but on the plus side the debts in that book are low(ish) so the Gov't should probably be looking to get 90ish I'd guess % of the value of the book if it was to be sold.
Beckett is intelligent. I suspect she knows that it was because Ed is Crap and Labour hadn't learnt anything on welfare and immigration, and were all over the place on the economy.
Either she found those conclusions as uncomfortable as she knew the rest of the party would, so she made it all out to be quite unfair, or she felt they'd never even begin to listen to a stark message so needed to sugarcoat it first.
The question is how do you get the biggest bang for your limited buck? In Scotland the SNP subsidise people like my daughter going to Edinburgh University to study law. She is paying no fees for that and will come out of University with a commercially attractive degree which will hopefully allow her to earn a good income.
If she had gone to Durham she would have had the debt of those fees but the loan would have enabled the government to fund another place increasing opportunity.
What is happening in Scotland is that the number of places is being restricted by the number of fees the Government can afford to pay. The amount they pay makes our higher institutions ever more dependent on non EU and English students who both pay a more commercial rate. This impacts negatively on Scottish children's chances, particularly in clearing which has almost stopped working for Scottish students. In England the cap on university applications is being abolished. In Scotland that cap is sealed ever tighter.
My loan is in that book !
I am quite grateful that when I went to University I not only paid no fees but also got what was, in retrospect, quite a generous grant. I left University with no debt at all although I have paid plenty of tax since.
That was a great system when 10-15% of the population went to University. It is simply not a sustainable model against current expectations. If we want to give this number of people their opportunity (and the need not to waste talent from poor homes is great) we need to find a different way. I worry about the implications for home ownership, consumption and future demand by what is, in effect, a graduate tax. But I don't see any sensible alternatives.
I've just noticed that Megyn Kelly will be one of the moderators for the GOP debate a couple of days before the Iowa caucus. Trump will need to avoid a repeat of the spat which followed the last time they clashed.
I think Uni when I went had it about right, fees of ~ £3000 a year, ~£12k of debt on graduation. High recovery rate.
You are making me feel old. Only paid the ~£1k a year, although had ~£12k of debt at the end because of a four year course. The loans were not just for the fees, but also living expenses (beer).
@britainelects · 35s36 seconds ago 2015 General Election campaign expenditure by party: CON: £15.6m LAB: £12.1m LDEM: £3.5m UKIP: £2.9m SNP: £1.5m GRN: £1.1m
Conservatives operating a two power standard, it seems.
Hmm. Beckett Report page 6:
The certainty of timetable, along with very large pledges from rich donors, meant that, not only were the Tories able to massively outspend us - perhaps threefold - but, with a defined and certain time frame, they could deploy these assured funds to maximum effect.
Someone is delusional.
Tories spent £12.1 x 3 perhaps - £36.3m says Labour
Or £15.6m, says a Bloke Who Really Knows.
Labour's failure to grasp basic arithmetic is a big reason that numerate voters just point and laugh at them.
I think Uni when I went had it about right, fees of ~ £3000 a year, ~£12k of debt on graduation. High recovery rate.
You are making me feel old. Only paid the ~£1k a year, although had ~£12k of debt at the end because of a four year course. The loans were not just for the fees, but also living expenses (beer).
@britainelects · 35s36 seconds ago 2015 General Election campaign expenditure by party: CON: £15.6m LAB: £12.1m LDEM: £3.5m UKIP: £2.9m SNP: £1.5m GRN: £1.1m
Conservatives operating a two power standard, it seems.
Hmm. Beckett Report page 6:
The certainty of timetable, along with very large pledges from rich donors, meant that, not only were the Tories able to massively outspend us - perhaps threefold - but, with a defined and certain time frame, they could deploy these assured funds to maximum effect.
Someone is delusional.
Tories spent £12.1 x 3 perhaps - £36.3m says Labour
Or £15.6m, says a Bloke Who Really Knows.
Labour's failure to grasp basic arithmetic is a big reason that numerate voters just point and laugh at them.
And, presumably, spending £36.3m would be illegal.
@britainelects · 35s36 seconds ago 2015 General Election campaign expenditure by party: CON: £15.6m LAB: £12.1m LDEM: £3.5m UKIP: £2.9m SNP: £1.5m GRN: £1.1m
Conservatives operating a two power standard, it seems.
Hmm. Beckett Report page 6:
The certainty of timetable, along with very large pledges from rich donors, meant that, not only were the Tories able to massively outspend us - perhaps threefold - but, with a defined and certain time frame, they could deploy these assured funds to maximum effect.
Someone is delusional.
Beckett is intelligent. I suspect she knows that it was because Ed is Crap and Labour hadn't learnt anything on welfare and immigration, and were all over the place on the economy.
Either she found those conclusions as uncomfortable as she knew the rest of the party would, so she made it all out to be quite unfair, or she felt they'd never even begin to listen to a stark message so needed to sugarcoat it first. Given that the party went on to elect Corbyn, her assumption was probably that her report would quickly find itself in the round filing cabinet under his desk.
It's a shame they whitewashed it though, I really wanted to read the story that finishes with Ed unveiling his own political tombstone the weekend before polling day!
I think Uni when I went had it about right, fees of ~ £3000 a year, ~£12k of debt on graduation. High recovery rate.
You are making me feel old. Only paid the ~£1k a year, although had ~£12k of debt at the end because of a four year course. The loans were not just for the fees, but also living expenses (beer).
I know me too!
I was pre-fees... but it was ludicrous that the taxpayer paid up for me to spend 3 years educating myself.
I think Uni when I went had it about right, fees of ~ £3000 a year, ~£12k of debt on graduation. High recovery rate.
You are making me feel old. Only paid the ~£1k a year, although had ~£12k of debt at the end because of a four year course. The loans were not just for the fees, but also living expenses (beer).
I know me too!
I was pre-fees... but it was ludicrous that the taxpayer paid up for me to spend 3 years educating myself.
I think Uni when I went had it about right, fees of ~ £3000 a year, ~£12k of debt on graduation. High recovery rate.
You are making me feel old. Only paid the ~£1k a year, although had ~£12k of debt at the end because of a four year course. The loans were not just for the fees, but also living expenses (beer).
Actually my fees might have been £1k, or possibly waived (My Dad might have technically had low income in the year I went to Uni iirc). My debt ended up at £12k though. I think that's about average for 99-02 cohort, or it seems so from this.
It's a shame they whitewashed it though, I really wanted to read the story that finishes with Ed unveiling his own political tombstone the weekend before polling day!
That;s starting to look like a stroke of political genius. At least the words on it were not entirely bat-shit crazy
Imagine the Jezza version
1. Unilateral disarmament 2. Jobs for the Boys 3. Hand back Falklands 4. Welcome ISIS 5. Flying Pickets 6. 98% income tax
Labour may look utterly unelectable now, but what if some of the doom-sayers at Davos are right and another gigantic, asset-bubble fuelled crash is about to hit us?
You've been reading AEP again. Really, its not a good idea.
Is AEP actually rubbish? He writes *terribly* (consistently using overcomplex phrasing, obscure references, non-English tags) but I find if you sit down and work you what he's actually saying it's quite interesting. But I am a bear of very little brain and I have no idea whether his wideranging worldview and sweeping conclusions are actually gibberish or not. I know he's been wrong on the collapse of the Euro, but that was a common mistake of the Anglophone commentariat. Has he been wrong on other things as well?
I think Uni when I went had it about right, fees of ~ £3000 a year, ~£12k of debt on graduation. High recovery rate.
You are making me feel old. Only paid the ~£1k a year, although had ~£12k of debt at the end because of a four year course. The loans were not just for the fees, but also living expenses (beer).
I know me too!
I was pre-fees... but it was ludicrous that the taxpayer paid up for me to spend 3 years educating myself.
Why ?
Don't you believe in a knowledge economy ?
Is it equally ludicrous that the taxpayer paid for primary education ?
The taxpayer makes his money back from more of us educated folk paying higher rate taxes.
I think Uni when I went had it about right, fees of ~ £3000 a year, ~£12k of debt on graduation. High recovery rate.
You are making me feel old. Only paid the ~£1k a year, although had ~£12k of debt at the end because of a four year course. The loans were not just for the fees, but also living expenses (beer).
I know me too!
I was pre-fees... but it was ludicrous that the taxpayer paid up for me to spend 3 years educating myself.
It was for the greater good.
Well I've certainly paid back the cost (and more) in taxes since then...
@britainelects · 35s36 seconds ago 2015 General Election campaign expenditure by party: CON: £15.6m LAB: £12.1m LDEM: £3.5m UKIP: £2.9m SNP: £1.5m GRN: £1.1m
Conservatives operating a two power standard, it seems.
Hmm. Beckett Report page 6:
The certainty of timetable, along with very large pledges from rich donors, meant that, not only were the Tories able to massively outspend us - perhaps threefold - but, with a defined and certain time frame, they could deploy these assured funds to maximum effect.
Someone is delusional.
Tories spent £12.1 x 3 perhaps - £36.3m says Labour
Or £15.6m, says a Bloke Who Really Knows.
Labour's failure to grasp basic arithmetic is a big reason that numerate voters just point and laugh at them.
Might it be that they're comparing different timescales? AIUI the exact figures would be for the period where spending is limited in the run-up to the election. The FTPA allowed the Conservatives to know the exact date of the election, and they could have front-loaded the spending before that.
That might well be wrong though, and I doubt it would be anywhere near as much as Beckett's report claimed.
I think Uni when I went had it about right, fees of ~ £3000 a year, ~£12k of debt on graduation. High recovery rate.
You are making me feel old. Only paid the ~£1k a year, although had ~£12k of debt at the end because of a four year course. The loans were not just for the fees, but also living expenses (beer).
Actually my fees might have been £1k, or possibly waived (My Dad might have technically had low income in the year I went to Uni iirc). My debt ended up at £12k though. I think that's about average for 99-02 cohort, or it seems so from this.
Sounds like a university conned you out of an extra two grand a year . A great introduction to the real world
Also, he seems to think that Apple make their own phones, which they don't. They farm out manufacturing of the phones and components to a whole bunch of companies, just like every company out there. The most recent product I know the details about is the PS4, about 5% of global PS4s out there were assembled by EMCS (Sony's manufacturing company) and that was basically the first run because they didn't want the design and specifications to leak by farming it out to Hon Hai. Out of the 340 separate components that make up the PS4, only about 20 are sourced from one of Sony's own subsidiaries, the rest are purchased from other companies.
Apple is nothing more than a research and design group with a massive sales and marketing department. It's a great business model as other companies take on the risk of manufacturing.
Very true. Foxconn, I think, does almost all Apple's manufacturing.
But the whole thing is ridiculous. Donald Trump - whose companies all manufacture in China - has no intention of keeping his campaign promises.
If he is elected, he will - I suspect - turn out to be a socially liberal centrist.
And there will be a lot of very disappointed people.
Foxconn do the assembly. Sony does the camera and lens, Samsung and TSMC do the processors, Samsung does the RAM, Toshiba does the flash and integrated circuitry, Qualcomm do the modems via TSMC, JDC and Sharp do the screen+digitizer units. Their new fangled "force touch" is a Japan Display innovation which they sold to Huawei first but it is poorly integrated on Android.
That's the basis of the iPhone. Apple design just one part of that, the processor. Everything else is other companies and then they proved the software, which for the user is more important than hardware.
Don't forget ARM.
Don't forget Imagination (GPU) or Qualcomm (modems via TSMC, at least for the moment).
Imagination Technologies are a cool company. Their new ray-tracing GPU is interesting, even if it's in its early days.
I've a few quid invested in ARM and fewer in Imagination. ARM is well in profit, Imagination down a fair bit since I bought them.
It's a shame they whitewashed it though, I really wanted to read the story that finishes with Ed unveiling his own political tombstone the weekend before polling day!
That;s starting to look like a stroke of political genius. At least the words on it were not entirely bat-shit crazy
Imagine the Jezza version
1. Unilateral disarmament 2. Jobs for the Boys 3. Hand back Falklands 4. Welcome ISIS 5. Flying Pickets 6. 98% income tax
98% pah!
There was a period of time when my grandfather paid 106% income tax.
@rowenamason: Labour leadership position is that party no longer has a pro-Trident policy because it is under review - made clear in post-pmqs briefing
I think Uni when I went had it about right, fees of ~ £3000 a year, ~£12k of debt on graduation. High recovery rate.
You are making me feel old. Only paid the ~£1k a year, although had ~£12k of debt at the end because of a four year course. The loans were not just for the fees, but also living expenses (beer).
I know me too!
I was pre-fees... but it was ludicrous that the taxpayer paid up for me to spend 3 years educating myself.
It was for the greater good.
Well I've certainly paid back the cost (and more) in taxes since then...
I think Uni when I went had it about right, fees of ~ £3000 a year, ~£12k of debt on graduation. High recovery rate.
You are making me feel old. Only paid the ~£1k a year, although had ~£12k of debt at the end because of a four year course. The loans were not just for the fees, but also living expenses (beer).
I know me too!
I was pre-fees... but it was ludicrous that the taxpayer paid up for me to spend 3 years educating myself.
Why ?
Don't you believe in a knowledge economy ?
Is it equally ludicrous that the taxpayer paid for primary education ?
The taxpayer makes his money back from more of us educated folk paying higher rate taxes.
Sure. But my parents would have paid for me to go to university anyway so effectively I was a free rider. I'm all in favour of subsidising value added courses as a way of encouraging people to study things that are useful for the economy.
I think Uni when I went had it about right, fees of ~ £3000 a year, ~£12k of debt on graduation. High recovery rate.
You are making me feel old. Only paid the ~£1k a year, although had ~£12k of debt at the end because of a four year course. The loans were not just for the fees, but also living expenses (beer).
I know me too!
I was pre-fees... but it was ludicrous that the taxpayer paid up for me to spend 3 years educating myself.
Labour may look utterly unelectable now, but what if some of the doom-sayers at Davos are right and another gigantic, asset-bubble fuelled crash is about to hit us?
You've been reading AEP again. Really, its not a good idea.
Is AEP actually rubbish? He writes *terribly* (consistently using overcomplex phrasing, obscure references, non-English tags) but I find if you sit down and work you what he's actually saying it's quite interesting. But I am a bear of very little brain and I have no idea whether his wideranging worldview and sweeping conclusions are actually gibberish or not. I know he's been wrong on the collapse of the Euro, but that was a common mistake of the Anglophone commentariat. Has he been wrong on other things as well?
The better question is perhaps, what has he been correct about? From memory, it's not much better than stopped-clock.
@rowenamason: Labour leadership position is that party no longer has a pro-Trident policy because it is under review - made clear in post-pmqs briefing
Also, he seems to think that Apple make their own phones, which they don't. They farm out manufacturing of the phones and components to a whole bunch of companies, just like every company out there. The most recent product I know the details about is the PS4, about 5% of global PS4s out there were assembled by EMCS (Sony's manufacturing company) and that was basically the first run because they didn't want the design and specifications to leak by farming it out to Hon Hai. Out of the 340 separate components that make up the PS4, only about 20 are sourced from one of Sony's own subsidiaries, the rest are purchased from other companies.
Apple is nothing more than a research and design group with a massive sales and marketing department. It's a great business model as other companies take on the risk of manufacturing.
Very true. Foxconn, I think, does almost all Apple's manufacturing.
But the whole thing is ridiculous. Donald Trump - whose companies all manufacture in China - has no intention of keeping his campaign promises.
If he is elected, he will - I suspect - turn out to be a socially liberal centrist.
And there will be a lot of very disappointed people.
Foxconn do the assembly. Sony does the camera and lens, Samsung and TSMC do the processors, Samsung does the RAM, Toshiba does the flash and integrated circuitry, Qualcomm do the modems via TSMC, JDC and Sharp do the screen+digitizer units. Their new fangled "force touch" is a Japan Display innovation which they sold to Huawei first but it is poorly integrated on Android.
That's the basis of the iPhone. Apple design just one part of that, the processor. Everything else is other companies and then they proved the software, which for the user is more important than hardware.
Don't forget ARM.
Don't forget Imagination (GPU) or Qualcomm (modems via TSMC, at least for the moment).
Imagination Technologies are a cool company. Their new ray-tracing GPU is interesting, even if it's in its early days.
I've a few quid invested in ARM and fewer in Imagination. ARM is well in profit, Imagination down a fair bit since I bought them.
I haven't been following their financials closely (or as closely as I should), but I think IMG suffers slightly from relying so heavily on Apple. And their purchase of MIPS never made much sense to me, particularly as their Meta processor was cool.
Missed PMQ's...I presume Margaret from Manchester, Brain the ex-BNPer and Karl the Communist all asked probing question that destroyed Cameron and left him all red faced.
I think Uni when I went had it about right, fees of ~ £3000 a year, ~£12k of debt on graduation. High recovery rate.
You are making me feel old. Only paid the ~£1k a year, although had ~£12k of debt at the end because of a four year course. The loans were not just for the fees, but also living expenses (beer).
I know me too!
I was pre-fees... but it was ludicrous that the taxpayer paid up for me to spend 3 years educating myself.
The back benchers may swallow his dogsh!t 'tax the middle classes' budget for now, but when it comes to the leadership election......
That speculation is of course completely different from (and incompatible with) the other speculation we have heard about going to a Pension-ISA type of approach. I think it's a much more likely change, as it would be much easier to implement and it's very easy to defend on fairness grounds.
The bottom line is: if you're a higher-rate taxpayer, make whatever pension contributions you can before April. It ain't gonna get more generous, that's for sure.
An Iraqi lawyer is being paid £150 an hour by the Government to help build war crimes cases against British troops, it has emerged.
British-trained Zainab Al Qurnawi is representing the families of Iraqi civilians who were allegedly wrongfully killed during the Western invasion of the country.
She is claiming money from the State as part of the investigation into UK soldiers - even though all of the troops involved have been cleared of any wrongdoing.
Labour may look utterly unelectable now, but what if some of the doom-sayers at Davos are right and another gigantic, asset-bubble fuelled crash is about to hit us?
You've been reading AEP again. Really, its not a good idea.
Is AEP actually rubbish? He writes *terribly* (consistently using overcomplex phrasing, obscure references, non-English tags) but I find if you sit down and work you what he's actually saying it's quite interesting. But I am a bear of very little brain and I have no idea whether his wideranging worldview and sweeping conclusions are actually gibberish or not. I know he's been wrong on the collapse of the Euro, but that was a common mistake of the Anglophone commentariat. Has he been wrong on other things as well?
He was, and continues to be wrong about deflation, inflation, sovereign solvency, the German Constitutional Court and the Euro and many other matters (Robert will no doubt give the details if he is around, some of them are quite bizarre). But to be honest it is his writing style that bugs me the most. Prices never fall, they "crash". Every movement or even non movement is hyperbolically described.
Today's effort is pretty typical. He has found a kindred spirit who thinks we now have a worse debt bubble than we had in 2008. This is rubbish but it is not enough for it to be a concern; it has to be the end of the world as we know it. All counter-measures are "exhausted". Presumably that means that no more QE, for example is possible?
Sometimes, I will admit, it is possible to extract some interesting statistical information from his pieces. But he really needs to calm down.
Corbyn aide on Falklands "There shd be a dialogue (with Argentina ) about sovereignty with no preconditions "
Who bar STW die hards and idiots favour this? I know Corbyn wants to live in Bolivia, but the Falklands don't, they've said they want to remain British.
I think Uni when I went had it about right, fees of ~ £3000 a year, ~£12k of debt on graduation. High recovery rate.
You are making me feel old. Only paid the ~£1k a year, although had ~£12k of debt at the end because of a four year course. The loans were not just for the fees, but also living expenses (beer).
I know me too!
I was pre-fees... but it was ludicrous that the taxpayer paid up for me to spend 3 years educating myself.
Why ?
Don't you believe in a knowledge economy ?
Is it equally ludicrous that the taxpayer paid for primary education ?
The taxpayer makes his money back from more of us educated folk paying higher rate taxes.
It doesn't make sense with 50% of all people ending up at university. When attendance was 25% or below then grants made sense as the courses held a much higher value, therefore the graduate would go one to earn a higher amount of money and repay it. I can't say the same for London Met students doing marketing studies though.
@BBCNormanS: Corbyn aide on Falklands "There shd be a dialogue (with Argentina ) about sovereignty with no preconditions "
@alexmassie: Labour, already heading for victory, seek to seal the deal with this election-clinching policy proposal. https://t.co/LpvjHsxsYH
I think they are just trying to mimic the Trump approach. Say something so stupid e.g. getting Mexico to build a massive wall to keep Mexicans in Mexico, that it boosts you in the polls.
An Iraqi lawyer is being paid £150 an hour by the Government to help build war crimes cases against British troops, it has emerged.
British-trained Zainab Al Qurnawi is representing the families of Iraqi civilians who were allegedly wrongfully killed during the Western invasion of the country.
She is claiming money from the State as part of the investigation into UK soldiers - even though all of the troops involved have been cleared of any wrongdoing.
Labour may look utterly unelectable now, but what if some of the doom-sayers at Davos are right and another gigantic, asset-bubble fuelled crash is about to hit us?
You've been reading AEP again. Really, its not a good idea.
Is AEP actually rubbish? He writes *terribly* (consistently using overcomplex phrasing, obscure references, non-English tags) but I find if you sit down and work you what he's actually saying it's quite interesting. But I am a bear of very little brain and I have no idea whether his wideranging worldview and sweeping conclusions are actually gibberish or not. I know he's been wrong on the collapse of the Euro, but that was a common mistake of the Anglophone commentariat. Has he been wrong on other things as well?
The better question is perhaps, what has he been correct about? From memory, it's not much better than stopped-clock.
OK, but I was thinking more of something specific. For example, Dan Hodges has recently opinined that the pollsters deliberately lied. It's a point of view but I think most people here are aware that the pollageddon was a structural thing and not deliberate malice, so this is something I can confidently say Hodges was wrong on.
I think Uni when I went had it about right, fees of ~ £3000 a year, ~£12k of debt on graduation. High recovery rate.
You are making me feel old. Only paid the ~£1k a year, although had ~£12k of debt at the end because of a four year course. The loans were not just for the fees, but also living expenses (beer).
I know me too!
I was pre-fees... but it was ludicrous that the taxpayer paid up for me to spend 3 years educating myself.
Why ?
Don't you believe in a knowledge economy ?
Is it equally ludicrous that the taxpayer paid for primary education ?
The taxpayer makes his money back from more of us educated folk paying higher rate taxes.
Sure. But my parents would have paid for me to go to university anyway so effectively I was a free rider. I'm all in favour of subsidising value added courses as a way of encouraging people to study things that are useful for the economy.
I'm afraid Charles the issue for you is your background, you had options which werent open to most people. My view remains we should fund tertiry education and that the loans system is a huge screw up which impoverishes the young and the bill for which will still come back to the taxpayer.
I think Uni when I went had it about right, fees of ~ £3000 a year, ~£12k of debt on graduation. High recovery rate.
You are making me feel old. Only paid the ~£1k a year, although had ~£12k of debt at the end because of a four year course. The loans were not just for the fees, but also living expenses (beer).
I know me too!
I was pre-fees... but it was ludicrous that the taxpayer paid up for me to spend 3 years educating myself.
Why ?
Don't you believe in a knowledge economy ?
Is it equally ludicrous that the taxpayer paid for primary education ?
The taxpayer makes his money back from more of us educated folk paying higher rate taxes.
Sure. But my parents would have paid for me to go to university anyway so effectively I was a free rider. I'm all in favour of subsidising value added courses as a way of encouraging people to study things that are useful for the economy.
I'm afraid Charles the issue for you is your background, you had options which werent open to most people. My view remains we should fund tertiry education and that the loans system is a huge screw up which impoverishes the young and the bill for which will still come back to the taxpayer.
Would you have it paid for solely out of general taxation?
@britainelects · 35s36 seconds ago 2015 General Election campaign expenditure by party: CON: £15.6m LAB: £12.1m LDEM: £3.5m UKIP: £2.9m SNP: £1.5m GRN: £1.1m
Conservatives operating a two power standard, it seems.
Hmm. Beckett Report page 6:
The certainty of timetable, along with very large pledges from rich donors, meant that, not only were the Tories able to massively outspend us - perhaps threefold - but, with a defined and certain time frame, they could deploy these assured funds to maximum effect.
Someone is delusional.
Tories spent £12.1 x 3 perhaps - £36.3m says Labour
Or £15.6m, says a Bloke Who Really Knows.
Labour's failure to grasp basic arithmetic is a big reason that numerate voters just point and laugh at them.
And, presumably, spending £36.3m would be illegal.
Well quite. But don't let a bit of law get in the way of Labour making feeble excuses for their own inadequacies.
More likely, even if Labour had spent three times what the Tories spent, it would not have been enough to convince the voters that Ed Miliband should be their Prime Minister. Putting forward lots more posters and pumping literature into all letter boxes - all with the purpose to promote the idea of Prime Minister Ed Miliband - would probably have led Labour to an even worse defeat...
An Iraqi lawyer is being paid £150 an hour by the Government to help build war crimes cases against British troops, it has emerged.
British-trained Zainab Al Qurnawi is representing the families of Iraqi civilians who were allegedly wrongfully killed during the Western invasion of the country.
She is claiming money from the State as part of the investigation into UK soldiers - even though all of the troops involved have been cleared of any wrongdoing.
Comments
@JohnRentoul: Roar of approval from Tory benches for Nigel Dodds (DUP) on Falklands. "Why didn't we think of that question?"
Ukip paid £10,000 to Biteback publishing to buy 2,000 copies of Nigel Farage's book The Purple Revolution. https://t.co/GZcYJOZWQC
£1 of grants means no change in the asset/liability book.
£1 of loans means £0.xx in the asset book, devalued to reflect the cost of delinquency, add in the future income stream, the net present value, etc.
Thus the two are not the same for the government books.
Intuitively, you might argue that the loan creates an additional future revenue stream but even this is not guaranteed, there will (and indeed today there almost certainly are) people who have not particularly benefitted from their degree and choose to earn just below the repayment threshold thereby depriving not just the loan repayment revenue stream to government but throttling the tax paid as well.
The whole argument (because in the scheme of things FE funding is not a particularly huge chunk of government spending) is based on the Causation/Correlation canard. Student numbers are higher in every country in the world regardless of how that country funds their FE courses.
@PolhomeEditor: Jeremy Corbyn's Andrew Marr interview last Sunday is going to keep Cameron in PMQs material for months, isn't it?
His positions on the key issues of concern do not attract widespread support.
He can't lead the parliamentary Labour party - he will never lead our nation.
But the point being addressed was DavidL's ridiculous assertion that you can provide more FE places TODAY by providing Loans instead of Grants.
This is simply not true in basic economic terms. Government does not budget on the basis of NPV.
http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/i-am-a/journalist/electoral-commission-media-centre/news-releases-donations/electoral-commission-releases-uk-parliamentary-general-election-campaign-expenditure-returns-of-less-than-250,000?
The loan is used for education purposes and hence will provide the same return as the grant/paid fee in terms of taxes/research outcomes.
*In addition* a percentage of the total loan book will be repaid with interest.
They are not the same. You've failed basic economics.
What is happening is that the highest achieving graduates who do the toughest courses and get the best jobs subsidise those who make the poor choices. It does seem like we need to uncap the fees for non-traditional courses and lower the cap for traditional courses. People can scream social engineering as much as they like, but at the moment people who study hard doing engineering and get a good job are subsidising the people who choose to do "whatever the kids are into these days" studies or some such and can't get jobs once they graduate from the second rate universities.
Doing a better job on DP than a lifetime of PMQs from Jezza.
Coming back to you on the 10-yr old living in a terrorist house.
In which of the following cases should SWAT have been deployed?
boredpanda.com/funny-childrens-spelling-mistakes/
1. Not sure duration of education = quality of education.
2. not all degrees are equal
3. participation in tertiary education may correlate with paucity of other economic opportunities. People do not stop being educated once in the workforce though - its just a different, less formal education.
I am not arguing that Scotland is not the best educated - I simply don't know. But all I could say from the statistics quoted is that Scotland has a higher proportion of the population that have some tertiary education.
It wasn't just Corbyn though, the Labour questions were mostly filled with rhetoric and trying to play politics rather than hold the govt to account. It didn't help either that most of the Tories' questions were aimed squarely at the Opposition benches.
Different take on Donald Trump & Sarah Palin.
I find it quite ironic.
I suspect you would find a substantial majority are opposed to this change in policy and find Cameron's defence unconvincing. Let's look out for poll on this and then compare notes.
For provision of a loan vs a grant they are equivalent on a one for one basis.
As for the student numbers, the growth in FE participation has occured EVERYWHERE, in every country. This includes countries with grants, countries with paid fees and loans and countries with loans. The growth in the UK is not unique, nor even particularly high compared to other countries around the world.
The question is how do you get the biggest bang for your limited buck? In Scotland the SNP subsidise people like my daughter going to Edinburgh University to study law. She is paying no fees for that and will come out of University with a commercially attractive degree which will hopefully allow her to earn a good income.
If she had gone to Durham she would have had the debt of those fees but the loan would have enabled the government to fund another place increasing opportunity.
What is happening in Scotland is that the number of places is being restricted by the number of fees the Government can afford to pay. The amount they pay makes our higher institutions ever more dependent on non EU and English students who both pay a more commercial rate. This impacts negatively on Scottish children's chances, particularly in clearing which has almost stopped working for Scottish students. In England the cap on university applications is being abolished. In Scotland that cap is sealed ever tighter.
You can't only focus on the negative side of a policy because there are always winners and losers.
But the fact is that single issues like this do not determine GE results. It is about the overall package and the perception of the leaders.
Look at the polling on that and there won't be much need to compare notes. There is such a clear picture.
He speaks for the young urban Labourites, ultra-multicultural idealists and the Greens.
That's probably (at most) 25%-30% of the population. And i'm being generous.
The other 70% will vote to block him.
Imagination Technologies are a cool company. Their new ray-tracing GPU is interesting, even if it's in its early days.
It is economics 101. If you can't see that then you are ignorant or being purposefully obtuse.
Beckett is intelligent. I suspect she knows that it was because Ed is Crap and Labour hadn't learnt anything on welfare and immigration, and were all over the place on the economy.
Either she found those conclusions as uncomfortable as she knew the rest of the party would, so she made it all out to be quite unfair, or she felt they'd never even begin to listen to a stark message so needed to sugarcoat it first.
You could argue that there will be a bigger pot for governments to spend in FUTURE but that doesn't change the decision or the availability of places today.
Look at the numbers for yourself. The government's previous loan sell off raised 18p in the pound. It is now planning to sell £12bn of loans from a 15 year period. At the same discount, that will raise £2.16bn.
Now that money is not guaranteed for education. But let's imagine that it was.
£2.16bn at a cost of £27000 per degree provides an additional loan funding for 80000 stutends. That works out that each year of loans from 1998 to 2012 has provided just over 5000 places per annum. In terms of an FE sector education of 1 MILLION students this is utterly meaningless.
Loans don't do what they say, don't increase places in the year they are awarded and almost certainly have very bad Behavioural consequences on the economy.
Tip off received. Probably nothing, but might be something. Couple of police wander over to check it out. Turns out to be nothing.
Cost: embarrassed teacher, plus a couple of hours of time for a PC and a social worker.
And, btw, the complaint came from a "cousin" who has some sort of agenda, not from the family themselves
The terms are very soft, but on the plus side the debts in that book are low(ish) so the Gov't should probably be looking to get 90ish I'd guess % of the value of the book if it was to be sold.
That was a great system when 10-15% of the population went to University. It is simply not a sustainable model against current expectations. If we want to give this number of people their opportunity (and the need not to waste talent from poor homes is great) we need to find a different way. I worry about the implications for home ownership, consumption and future demand by what is, in effect, a graduate tax. But I don't see any sensible alternatives.
Tories spent £12.1 x 3 perhaps - £36.3m says Labour
Or £15.6m, says a Bloke Who Really Knows.
Labour's failure to grasp basic arithmetic is a big reason that numerate voters just point and laugh at them.
Or £15.6m, says a Bloke Who Really Knows.
Labour's failure to grasp basic arithmetic is a big reason that numerate voters just point and laugh at them.
And, presumably, spending £36.3m would be illegal.
Either she found those conclusions as uncomfortable as she knew the rest of the party would, so she made it all out to be quite unfair, or she felt they'd never even begin to listen to a stark message so needed to sugarcoat it first.
Given that the party went on to elect Corbyn, her assumption was probably that her report would quickly find itself in the round filing cabinet under his desk.
It's a shame they whitewashed it though, I really wanted to read the story that finishes with Ed unveiling his own political tombstone the weekend before polling day!
Another for all those Osborneheads
The skinny on why he is in big trouble.
The back benchers may swallow his dogsh!t 'tax the middle classes' budget for now, but when it comes to the leadership election......
Imagine the Jezza version
1. Unilateral disarmament
2. Jobs for the Boys
3. Hand back Falklands
4. Welcome ISIS
5. Flying Pickets
6. 98% income tax
Don't you believe in a knowledge economy ?
Is it equally ludicrous that the taxpayer paid for primary education ?
The taxpayer makes his money back from more of us educated folk paying higher rate taxes.
Or £15.6m, says a Bloke Who Really Knows.
Labour's failure to grasp basic arithmetic is a big reason that numerate voters just point and laugh at them.
Might it be that they're comparing different timescales? AIUI the exact figures would be for the period where spending is limited in the run-up to the election. The FTPA allowed the Conservatives to know the exact date of the election, and they could have front-loaded the spending before that.
That might well be wrong though, and I doubt it would be anywhere near as much as Beckett's report claimed.
@BBCNormanS: Aides to Jeremy Corbyn say decision on Trident vote will be made when tabled but sounds like likely free vote for Labour MPs
There was a period of time when my grandfather paid 106% income tax.
Forced him to sell his home and move to Putney...
Okay, enough Hot Fuzz quotes
The bottom line is: if you're a higher-rate taxpayer, make whatever pension contributions you can before April. It ain't gonna get more generous, that's for sure.
You're free to vote either way and I'm free to sack you if you disagree with me.
@alexmassie: Labour, already heading for victory, seek to seal the deal with this election-clinching policy proposal. https://t.co/LpvjHsxsYH
British-trained Zainab Al Qurnawi is representing the families of Iraqi civilians who were allegedly wrongfully killed during the Western invasion of the country.
She is claiming money from the State as part of the investigation into UK soldiers - even though all of the troops involved have been cleared of any wrongdoing.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3408249/Iraqi-lawyer-paid-150-hour-build-cases-against-British-troops.html
Mrs Bucket will be pleased...
Today's effort is pretty typical. He has found a kindred spirit who thinks we now have a worse debt bubble than we had in 2008. This is rubbish but it is not enough for it to be a concern; it has to be the end of the world as we know it. All counter-measures are "exhausted". Presumably that means that no more QE, for example is possible?
Sometimes, I will admit, it is possible to extract some interesting statistical information from his pieces. But he really needs to calm down.
Corbyn aide on Falklands "There shd be a dialogue (with Argentina ) about sovereignty with no preconditions "
Who bar STW die hards and idiots favour this? I know Corbyn wants to live in Bolivia, but the Falklands don't, they've said they want to remain British.
Well quite. But don't let a bit of law get in the way of Labour making feeble excuses for their own inadequacies.
More likely, even if Labour had spent three times what the Tories spent, it would not have been enough to convince the voters that Ed Miliband should be their Prime Minister. Putting forward lots more posters and pumping literature into all letter boxes - all with the purpose to promote the idea of Prime Minister Ed Miliband - would probably have led Labour to an even worse defeat...