The outrage about this is really quite something, coming from a Scottish government which charges £9k a year to English students, and zero to Scots
You halfwit England charges Scottish students £9K
To be fair I don't really have a problem with that situation. If Scotland is funding the universities out of its own budget it would be mad to subsidise English students. However if UK government wants to reform the student 'loan' system it can hardly just apply to English institutions.
But Scotland is subsidised by England via Barnett. Essentially English taxpayers are giving money to Scotland, so Scottish students can have free tuition. Scotland says thankyou by charging English students, but not any other students in the EU.
The only reason England hasn't burned down Scotland in anger is because the English are too apathetic, and barely realise Scotland exists most of the time
Well Barnett may well be a subsidy but that's not its intention. And Scotland had no choice but to offer free tuition to EU students.
Do remember that England did quite well out of the oil money at the time.
If only the Tories had been as sensible as the Norwegians and used the oil money to create a perpetual sovereign wealth fund, rather than frittering it away for short term political gain.
The outrage about this is really quite something, coming from a Scottish government which charges £9k a year to English students, and zero to Scots
You halfwit England charges Scottish students £9K
To be fair I don't really have a problem with that situation. If Scotland is funding the universities out of its own budget it would be mad to subsidise English students. However if UK government wants to reform the student 'loan' system it can hardly just apply to English institutions.
But Scotland is subsidised by England via Barnett. Essentially English taxpayers are giving money to Scotland, so Scottish students can have free tuition. Scotland says thankyou by charging English students, but not any other students in the EU.
The only reason England hasn't burned down Scotland in anger is because the English are too apathetic, and barely realise Scotland exists most of the time
Well Barnett may well be a subsidy but that's not its intention. And Scotland had no choice but to offer free tuition to EU students.
Do remember that England did quite well out of the oil money at the time.
The simple fact is that Scotland does not "charge" "English" students.
It simply does not pay the tuition fees for UK students who are not resident in Scotland, even if they are Scots by birth and recent habitation.
That's exactly what England, Wales and NI used to do in their own bailiwicks. They changed their mind. The Scots didn't.
No problem if you are English but moved up there not too recently. The exception of course is if you have an Irish passport - there was soneone on PB who was quite proud her nieces had got Irish passports just for that purpose.
The outrage about this is really quite something, coming from a Scottish government which charges £9k a year to English students, and zero to Scots
You halfwit England charges Scottish students £9K
Fuck off, you dismal tartan gargoyle.
England charges everyone £9k or more.
Scotland singles out English students, and makes them pay, but all other EU students get Scottish education free. It's the most outrageous discrimination, and it is now ending.
I'm quite liking the idea of another nail in the coffin of the 'UK internal single market' (albeit cultural in this case).
Especially when it's all based on chimpanzee bollocks anyway. Manufactured grievances my purple primate backside.
The outrage about this is really quite something, coming from a Scottish government which charges £9k a year to English students, and zero to Scots
You halfwit England charges Scottish students £9K
To be fair I don't really have a problem with that situation. If Scotland is funding the universities out of its own budget it would be mad to subsidise English students. However if UK government wants to reform the student 'loan' system it can hardly just apply to English institutions.
But Scotland is subsidised by England via Barnett. Essentially English taxpayers are giving money to Scotland, so Scottish students can have free tuition. Scotland says thankyou by charging English students, but not any other students in the EU.
The only reason England hasn't burned down Scotland in anger is because the English are too apathetic, and barely realise Scotland exists most of the time
Well Barnett may well be a subsidy but that's not its intention. And Scotland had no choice but to offer free tuition to EU students.
Do remember that England did quite well out of the oil money at the time.
The simple fact is that Scotland does not "charge" "English" students.
It simply does not pay the tuition fees for UK students who are not resident in Scotland, even if they are Scots by birth and recent habitation.
That's exactly what England, Wales and NI used to do in their own bailiwicks. They changed their mind. The Scots didn't.
No problem if you are English but moved up there not too recently. The exception of course is if you have an Irish passport - there was soneone on PB who was quite proud her nieces had got Irish passports just for that purpose.
Ah, the freeloading possibilities of dual nationality
The 1997 election coverage is slightly misleading in the sense that the share of the vote, 44% to 31%, wasn't enormously different to the 1992 election, which was 43% to 35%. Also they didn't really mention the fact that turnout was down quite a lot from 77% to 71%. Labour received less total votes in 1997 than the Tories in 1992.
As OGH tells us ad infinitum it's not about votes but seats - bums on benches if you prefer. 1997 was remarkable because the change in votes (not insignificant in and of itself) led to a massive change in seats with the Conservatives losing at least half their total. What is also interesting is 1997 showed the Conservatives can poll badly and lose a lot more seats than Labour who have yet to go sub 200 in any election since 1945 (the Conservatives have done it three times).
Wasn´t 1997 the year when Blair and Ashdown came to a wink and nod understanding over which seats to concentrate on , and Labour, for once in its life, stopped behaving completely tribally.
Of course, once Labour came into office with a whopping majority, they forgot all about electoral reform etc...
That's the political impact but I agree with Andy that vote share should not be ignored. Did anyone point out that Blair got fewer votes than Major in '92?
I'm sure David Dimbleby told a story where he said he mentioned on the broadcast that the people waving union jacks in Downing St were Labour party workers but he was admonished the editor for 'spoiling the moment.'
Are we talking vote shares or numbers of votes?
32 million people voted in 2019 but only 31.2 million in 1997. The former represented 67% of the electorate, the latter 71% so turnout and vote numbers have to be viewed in the context of an increasing electorate.
1992 stands out - 33 million people but that was nearly 78% of the electorate. Had that turnout been reflected in 2019, an extra five million people would have voted.
The outrage about this is really quite something, coming from a Scottish government which charges £9k a year to English students, and zero to Scots
You halfwit England charges Scottish students £9K
To be fair I don't really have a problem with that situation. If Scotland is funding the universities out of its own budget it would be mad to subsidise English students. However if UK government wants to reform the student 'loan' system it can hardly just apply to English institutions.
But Scotland is subsidised by England via Barnett. Essentially English taxpayers are giving money to Scotland, so Scottish students can have free tuition. Scotland says thankyou by charging English students, but not any other students in the EU.
The only reason England hasn't burned down Scotland in anger is because the English are too apathetic, and barely realise Scotland exists most of the time
Well Barnett may well be a subsidy but that's not its intention. And Scotland had no choice but to offer free tuition to EU students.
Do remember that England did quite well out of the oil money at the time.
The simple fact is that Scotland does not "charge" "English" students.
It simply does not pay the tuition fees for UK students who are not resident in Scotland, even if they are Scots by birth and recent habitation.
That's exactly what England, Wales and NI used to do in their own bailiwicks. They changed their mind. The Scots didn't.
No problem if you are English but moved up there not too recently. The exception of course is if you have an Irish passport - there was soneone on PB who was quite proud her nieces had got Irish passports just for that purpose.
Ah, the freeloading possibilities of dual nationality
There was a whiff of that in the situation [edit] - it was a long time ago and memory is unreliable, - but basically the lasses did have Irish nationality and basically it's great to help young people get educated. The dual nationality thing has of course developed a much greater significance - and who would blame them now or then?
As LatAm (and maybe now India) come to the corona party, the growing global tally of cases is starting to look exponential, again, after a period of plateau
I do not see how we avoid a second wave. Countries opening up now will get infected by their neighbours (see California suffering from its proximity to Mexico).
Absent a vaccine, countries will have to choose between death or poverty
Africa is coming next, I think.
Achieving any form of social distancing in most of India is a fantasy.
"5th February .................................................................... Sage agrees that shutting down public transport or restricting public gatherings would “probably be ineffective” in delaying the spread of the virus."
The outrage about this is really quite something, coming from a Scottish government which charges £9k a year to English students, and zero to Scots
You halfwit England charges Scottish students £9K
To be fair I don't really have a problem with that situation. If Scotland is funding the universities out of its own budget it would be mad to subsidise English students. However if UK government wants to reform the student 'loan' system it can hardly just apply to English institutions.
But Scotland is subsidised by England via Barnett. Essentially English taxpayers are giving money to Scotland, so Scottish students can have free tuition. Scotland says thankyou by charging English students, but not any other students in the EU.
The only reason England hasn't burned down Scotland in anger is because the English are too apathetic, and barely realise Scotland exists most of the time
Well Barnett may well be a subsidy but that's not its intention. And Scotland had no choice but to offer free tuition to EU students.
Do remember that England did quite well out of the oil money at the time.
If only the Tories had been as sensible as the Norwegians and used the oil money to create a perpetual sovereign wealth fund, rather than frittering it away for short term political gain.
One of Mrs Thatcher's two magic money trees; the other being privatisation proceeds.
The outrage about this is really quite something, coming from a Scottish government which charges £9k a year to English students, and zero to Scots
You halfwit England charges Scottish students £9K
Fuck off, you dismal tartan gargoyle.
England charges everyone £9k or more.
Scotland singles out English students, and makes them pay, but all other EU students get Scottish education free. It's the most outrageous discrimination, and it is now ending.
I'm quite liking the idea of another nail in the coffin of the 'UK internal single market' (albeit cultural in this case).
Especially when it's all based on chimpanzee bollocks anyway. Manufactured grievances my purple primate backside.
Careful, Eadric will shortly be telling you that his primate backside is even more empurpled than yours. He may even have pictures.
[London is] shit compared to late seventies and early eighties, it was brilliant in London then, I spent lots and lots of time there , stayed in Tara hotel in Kengsington and life was great.
I moved to London in the 1980s when you could still find bomb sites. The areas of Lambeth and Southwark close to the Thames were very rough.
If you watch the Professionals or the Sweeney you get a feel of the place then.
Somers Town/Kings Cross is utterly unrecognizable from those days.
There's an incredibly grim scene in the film Mona Lisa which was supposed to have been filmed in the Kings Cross area, although whether it was actually filmed there or they used a studio is difficult to say.
Battlebridge Road?
Been used in many movies, the Ladykillers, and Shirley Valentine
Page down for some really bleak shots of 70s London, inc King's Cross
Ah Battlebridge Road. Remember getting fearfully lost and disoriented having scored some hash and supped mushroom tea at a squat in Camden Town c.1985. I couldn't seem to find a way around Kings Cross as November rain lashed down, sirens wailed and it went dark. Nobody around at all. All derelict land behind there then. Course it was probably only a few minutes. Happy Days!
Incidentally, Battlebridge was the name of the village in Georgian times.
1985!? Camden Town?? Squats? Mushrooms??
There is a high chance we were in the same pub, bar, party, squat, concert, in that era. How strange!
I moved to London in 1993.
Rents of yesterday + London of today = ideal world.
John Major's declaration from Huntingdon in which David Bellamy was the Referendum Party candidate.
Major holds the seat for the Tories with 31,000 votes
I admire your fortitude in sticking with what must be hours of fairly painful viewing.
Though I've watched it since on You Tube, I missed 1997 election night because I was shattered after a long day telling and knocking-up in St Ives and surrounding villages and of course the St Ives constituency doesn't count until the morning.
After catching up on the results and a glorious "Full Cornish" (don't ask), I took the bus to Penzance and joined the crowd at the St John's Hall where the counting was taking place.
It was also County Council elections and the LDs were trying to hold on to majority control of Cornwall CC (as it then was). That was the main reason I went down to work there in the final couple of days.
Indeed, one can argue the local election results were the start of the Conservative comeback. The LDs lost 177 seats, mainly those won in 1993 on a much lower turnout and the Conservatives gained 180 nationally.
In Cornwall, the LDs narrowly lost overall control losing two seats to go from 41 to 39 on the 79-seat authority. The Independents picked up two to 23.
As far as St Ives was concerned, I remember trying to listen to the Declaration. I recall former MP David Harris got a warm round of applause - he was genuinely liked across the board but had stood down and the new Conservative candidate was a local estate agent.
The Conservatives lost 8,000 votes from 1992 which represented about a 12% drop in vote share. The Referendum candidate got just under 4000 votes and I reckon the rest stayed at home. Andrew George got barely a thousand votes more than in 1992 and coincidentally Labour's vote was down by about the same number.
Interesting info about 1997. Incidentally St Ives counted on the night in 1992 and 1987. They must have flown the ballot boxes from the Isles of Scilly to the mainland on those occasions.
The outrage about this is really quite something, coming from a Scottish government which charges £9k a year to English students, and zero to Scots
You halfwit England charges Scottish students £9K
Fuck off, you dismal tartan gargoyle.
England charges everyone £9k or more.
Scotland singles out English students, and makes them pay, but all other EU students get Scottish education free. It's the most outrageous discrimination, and it is now ending.
I'm quite liking the idea of another nail in the coffin of the 'UK internal single market' (albeit cultural in this case).
Especially when it's all based on chimpanzee bollocks anyway. Manufactured grievances my purple primate backside.
Careful, Eadric will shortly be telling you that his primate backside is even more empurpled than yours. He may even have pictures.
If they show him in Cardinal's Cap Alley as it used to be, I'd forgive him anything!
As someone born in 1992, I have no concept of London before its complete and entire gentrification.
When I moved to the Smoke in 1983 large parts were very gritty indeed, and some like Kings Cross quite threatening. Docklands was a mess then. I was there for the Eighties boom, but even then it still could be pretty rough, and can still be in some of the less salubrious suburbs.
Provincial cities were worse of course, Wolverhampton and Brum were pretty awful when I lived there, and much of Leicester too. All three are better now, with the derelict mills converted to Student flats etc.
Now its the left behind towns, with their boarded up shops, chicken shops etc that are run down.
It was updated to 30k as well, and that's not even the scary thing. They're barely testing at all, so we can guesstimate the daily infection count at 500k+.
The right wing populists are coming out of this so well. It's almost as though they don't have a clue but surely that can't be right
Wasn´t 1997 the year when Blair and Ashdown came to a wink and nod understanding over which seats to concentrate on , and Labour, for once in its life, stopped behaving completely tribally.
Of course, once Labour came into office with a whopping majority, they forgot all about electoral reform etc...
This old chestnut - up there with "all the Conservative voters stayed at home" and "they just wanted a change" which can be filed under "why the Tories lost".
Both Labour and the LDs fought Falmouth & Camborne really hard and there were seats which Labour won from third such as Shrewsbury.
Oddly enough the scale and strength of the Labour vote held the LDs back and allowed Conservatives such as Michael Howard to survive. Had there been a true and explicit electoral pact, the LDs could have won 60 seats or more and pushed the Conservatives to 150 or lower - a kind of 1906 in reverse.
The outrage about this is really quite something, coming from a Scottish government which charges £9k a year to English students, and zero to Scots
You halfwit England charges Scottish students £9K
To be fair I don't really have a problem with that situation. If Scotland is funding the universities out of its own budget it would be mad to subsidise English students. However if UK government wants to reform the student 'loan' system it can hardly just apply to English institutions.
But Scotland is subsidised by England via Barnett. Essentially English taxpayers are giving money to Scotland, so Scottish students can have free tuition. Scotland says thankyou by charging English students, but not any other students in the EU.
The only reason England hasn't burned down Scotland in anger is because the English are too apathetic, and barely realise Scotland exists most of the time
Well Barnett may well be a subsidy but that's not its intention. And Scotland had no choice but to offer free tuition to EU students.
Do remember that England did quite well out of the oil money at the time.
The simple fact is that Scotland does not "charge" "English" students.
It simply does not pay the tuition fees for UK students who are not resident in Scotland, even if they are Scots by birth and recent habitation.
That's exactly what England, Wales and NI used to do in their own bailiwicks. They changed their mind. The Scots didn't.
No problem if you are English but moved up there not too recently. The exception of course is if you have an Irish passport - there was soneone on PB who was quite proud her nieces had got Irish passports just for that purpose.
Indirect discrimination happens when there is a policy that applies in the same way for everybody but disproportionately disadvantages one group of people who share a protected characteristic, such as national origin, which English/Scots/Welsh & N Irish have been held to be. However, such a policy can be justified if it is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.
I leave it to the board to discuss the applicability of this test to the Scottish Govt’s Uni Fees policy to English students. I see arguments pro and anti both parts of the test.
The outrage about this is really quite something, coming from a Scottish government which charges £9k a year to English students, and zero to Scots
You halfwit England charges Scottish students £9K
To be fair I don't really have a problem with that situation. If Scotland is funding the universities out of its own budget it would be mad to subsidise English students. However if UK government wants to reform the student 'loan' system it can hardly just apply to English institutions.
But Scotland is subsidised by England via Barnett. Essentially English taxpayers are giving money to Scotland, so Scottish students can have free tuition. Scotland says thankyou by charging English students, but not any other students in the EU.
The only reason England hasn't burned down Scotland in anger is because the English are too apathetic, and barely realise Scotland exists most of the time
Well Barnett may well be a subsidy but that's not its intention. And Scotland had no choice but to offer free tuition to EU students.
Do remember that England did quite well out of the oil money at the time.
The simple fact is that Scotland does not "charge" "English" students.
It simply does not pay the tuition fees for UK students who are not resident in Scotland, even if they are Scots by birth and recent habitation.
That's exactly what England, Wales and NI used to do in their own bailiwicks. They changed their mind. The Scots didn't.
No problem if you are English but moved up there not too recently. The exception of course is if you have an Irish passport - there was soneone on PB who was quite proud her nieces had got Irish passports just for that purpose.
Indirect discrimination happens when there is a policy that applies in the same way for everybody but disproportionately disadvantages one group of people who share a protected characteristic, such as national origin, which English/Scots/Welsh & N Irish have been held to be. However, such a policy can be justified if it is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.
I leave it to the board to discuss the applicability of this test to the Scottish Govt’s Uni Fees policy to English students. I see arguments pro and anti both parts of the test.
One point: we're not dealing with national origin but residence (as officially defined).
The 1997 election coverage is slightly misleading in the sense that the share of the vote, 44% to 31%, wasn't enormously different to the 1992 election, which was 43% to 35%. Also they didn't really mention the fact that turnout was down quite a lot from 77% to 71%. Labour received less total votes in 1997 than the Tories in 1992.
As OGH tells us ad infinitum it's not about votes but seats - bums on benches if you prefer. 1997 was remarkable because the change in votes (not insignificant in and of itself) led to a massive change in seats with the Conservatives losing at least half their total. What is also interesting is 1997 showed the Conservatives can poll badly and lose a lot more seats than Labour who have yet to go sub 200 in any election since 1945 (the Conservatives have done it three times).
Wasn´t 1997 the year when Blair and Ashdown came to a wink and nod understanding over which seats to concentrate on , and Labour, for once in its life, stopped behaving completely tribally.
Of course, once Labour came into office with a whopping majority, they forgot all about electoral reform etc...
I watched 1997 a few days ago and I was struck at just how naive Ashdown was about the result. Shirley Poppins even proclaimed that it would be the last or last but one election under first past the post.
Interesting info about 1997. Incidentally St Ives counted on the night in 1992 and 1987. They must have flown the ballot boxes from the Isles of Scilly to the mainland on those occasions.
This was due to the need to split and verify the County Council ballots (not applicable for the Isles of Scilly) so it was decided that would be done on the Thursday evening and the actual counting on the Friday morning to prevent a very late declaration.
It was publicised in advance by the Returning Officer and to be honest I think it was appreciated by all parties. It was helped by the glorious weather on the Friday morning which gave the whole event an almost party-like atmosphere (to be fair and I appreciate it was tough for them, even the Tories got into the spirit of it and as I said the former MP, David Harris, got a warm round of applause from the crowd).
Well, exams done! Yesterday was by far the worst one, took me over 15 hours of non-stop work! Hopefully I’ve done okay...
Is this a law conversion course for non-law graduates? You give the impression that the examinations have been extended openbook assessments , unless I have misunderstood.
Yup. Open-book “e-examinations” in which we had 24 hours to complete them.
I did such a course at UEA back in 1996/97. Very intense - basically two years of a law degree in one academic year. We sat six 3-hour closed book exams plus a 5000 word dissertation on European Law. There was also one piece of 3000 word coursework for each subject.
That’s how I learnt law. One intense year doing the 6 main subjects as part of @ 2-year course to become a barrister. The second year was evidence and procedural stuff.
One of the most disturbing things I've read from the Sage minutes is that on 23 April it was estimated that the daily number of new cases would have dropped to 1000 by mid-May. So it seems the reopening plans were predicated on an underestimate of the infection rate by about a factor of ten. But here we go regardless.
Well, exams done! Yesterday was by far the worst one, took me over 15 hours of non-stop work! Hopefully I’ve done okay...
Is this a law conversion course for non-law graduates? You give the impression that the examinations have been extended openbook assessments , unless I have misunderstood.
Yup. Open-book “e-examinations” in which we had 24 hours to complete them.
I did such a course at UEA back in 1996/97. Very intense - basically two years of a law degree in one academic year. We sat six 3-hour closed book exams plus a 5000 word dissertation on European Law. There was also one piece of 3000 word coursework for each subject.
That’s how I learnt law. One intense year doing the 6 main subjects as part of @ 2-year course to become a barrister. The second year was evidence and procedural stuff.
This is basically me, although my second year (from September, assuming I’ve passed everything) is learning the procedural stuff of being a solicitor.
The outrage about this is really quite something, coming from a Scottish government which charges £9k a year to English students, and zero to Scots
You halfwit England charges Scottish students £9K
To be fair I don't really have a problem with that situation. If Scotland is funding the universities out of its own budget it would be mad to subsidise English students. However if UK government wants to reform the student 'loan' system it can hardly just apply to English institutions.
But Scotland is subsidised by England via Barnett. Essentially English taxpayers are giving money to Scotland, so Scottish students can have free tuition. Scotland says thankyou by charging English students, but not any other students in the EU.
The only reason England hasn't burned down Scotland in anger is because the English are too apathetic, and barely realise Scotland exists most of the time
Well Barnett may well be a subsidy but that's not its intention. And Scotland had no choice but to offer free tuition to EU students.
Do remember that England did quite well out of the oil money at the time.
The simple fact is that Scotland does not "charge" "English" students.
It simply does not pay the tuition fees for UK students who are not resident in Scotland, even if they are Scots by birth and recent habitation.
That's exactly what England, Wales and NI used to do in their own bailiwicks. They changed their mind. The Scots didn't.
No problem if you are English but moved up there not too recently. The exception of course is if you have an Irish passport - there was soneone on PB who was quite proud her nieces had got Irish passports just for that purpose.
Indirect discrimination happens when there is a policy that applies in the same way for everybody but disproportionately disadvantages one group of people who share a protected characteristic, such as national origin, which English/Scots/Welsh & N Irish have been held to be. However, such a policy can be justified if it is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.
I leave it to the board to discuss the applicability of this test to the Scottish Govt’s Uni Fees policy to English students. I see arguments pro and anti both parts of the test.
I'd imagine a pragmatic aim is to avoid a flood of applications for 'free' Scottish degrees, I daresay even the English government wouldn't be all that keen on that (and they themselves now seem intent on legislating to further reduce cross border studentry).
The outrage about this is really quite something, coming from a Scottish government which charges £9k a year to English students, and zero to Scots
You halfwit England charges Scottish students £9K
To be fair I don't really have a problem with that situation. If Scotland is funding the universities out of its own budget it would be mad to subsidise English students. However if UK government wants to reform the student 'loan' system it can hardly just apply to English institutions.
But Scotland is subsidised by England via Barnett. Essentially English taxpayers are giving money to Scotland, so Scottish students can have free tuition. Scotland says thankyou by charging English students, but not any other students in the EU.
The only reason England hasn't burned down Scotland in anger is because the English are too apathetic, and barely realise Scotland exists most of the time
Well Barnett may well be a subsidy but that's not its intention. And Scotland had no choice but to offer free tuition to EU students.
Do remember that England did quite well out of the oil money at the time.
The simple fact is that Scotland does not "charge" "English" students.
It simply does not pay the tuition fees for UK students who are not resident in Scotland, even if they are Scots by birth and recent habitation.
That's exactly what England, Wales and NI used to do in their own bailiwicks. They changed their mind. The Scots didn't.
No problem if you are English but moved up there not too recently. The exception of course is if you have an Irish passport - there was soneone on PB who was quite proud her nieces had got Irish passports just for that purpose.
Indirect discrimination happens when there is a policy that applies in the same way for everybody but disproportionately disadvantages one group of people who share a protected characteristic, such as national origin, which English/Scots/Welsh & N Irish have been held to be. However, such a policy can be justified if it is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.
I leave it to the board to discuss the applicability of this test to the Scottish Govt’s Uni Fees policy to English students. I see arguments pro and anti both parts of the test.
I'd imagine a pragmatic aim is to avoid a flood of applications for 'free' Scottish degrees, I daresay even the English government wouldn't be all that keen on that (and they themselves now seem intent on legislating to further reduce cross border studentry).
Also because of the asymmetry caused by the shorter Scottish VI form/Highers or modern equivalent and longer degree (4 years) vs the shorter English Uni degree (3 years). If you have Scottish school quals it's harder at least in principle to go to an English degree - so in justice there is some need to keep some Scottish places for people who have been schooled in Scotland.
The outrage about this is really quite something, coming from a Scottish government which charges £9k a year to English students, and zero to Scots
You halfwit England charges Scottish students £9K
To be fair I don't really have a problem with that situation. If Scotland is funding the universities out of its own budget it would be mad to subsidise English students. However if UK government wants to reform the student 'loan' system it can hardly just apply to English institutions.
But Scotland is subsidised by England via Barnett. Essentially English taxpayers are giving money to Scotland, so Scottish students can have free tuition. Scotland says thankyou by charging English students, but not any other students in the EU.
The only reason England hasn't burned down Scotland in anger is because the English are too apathetic, and barely realise Scotland exists most of the time
Well Barnett may well be a subsidy but that's not its intention. And Scotland had no choice but to offer free tuition to EU students.
Do remember that England did quite well out of the oil money at the time.
The simple fact is that Scotland does not "charge" "English" students.
It simply does not pay the tuition fees for UK students who are not resident in Scotland, even if they are Scots by birth and recent habitation.
That's exactly what England, Wales and NI used to do in their own bailiwicks. They changed their mind. The Scots didn't.
No problem if you are English but moved up there not too recently. The exception of course is if you have an Irish passport - there was soneone on PB who was quite proud her nieces had got Irish passports just for that purpose.
Indirect discrimination happens when there is a policy that applies in the same way for everybody but disproportionately disadvantages one group of people who share a protected characteristic, such as national origin, which English/Scots/Welsh & N Irish have been held to be. However, such a policy can be justified if it is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.
I leave it to the board to discuss the applicability of this test to the Scottish Govt’s Uni Fees policy to English students. I see arguments pro and anti both parts of the test.
I'd imagine a pragmatic aim is to avoid a flood of applications for 'free' Scottish degrees, I daresay even the English government wouldn't be all that keen on that (and they themselves now seem intent on legislating to further reduce cross border studentry).
PS Why wouldn't the "English" gmt be keen on that?
The outrage about this is really quite something, coming from a Scottish government which charges £9k a year to English students, and zero to Scots
You halfwit England charges Scottish students £9K
To be fair I don't really have a problem with that situation. If Scotland is funding the universities out of its own budget it would be mad to subsidise English students. However if UK government wants to reform the student 'loan' system it can hardly just apply to English institutions.
But Scotland is subsidised by England via Barnett. Essentially English taxpayers are giving money to Scotland, so Scottish students can have free tuition. Scotland says thankyou by charging English students, but not any other students in the EU.
The only reason England hasn't burned down Scotland in anger is because the English are too apathetic, and barely realise Scotland exists most of the time
Well Barnett may well be a subsidy but that's not its intention. And Scotland had no choice but to offer free tuition to EU students.
Do remember that England did quite well out of the oil money at the time.
The simple fact is that Scotland does not "charge" "English" students.
It simply does not pay the tuition fees for UK students who are not resident in Scotland, even if they are Scots by birth and recent habitation.
That's exactly what England, Wales and NI used to do in their own bailiwicks. They changed their mind. The Scots didn't.
No problem if you are English but moved up there not too recently. The exception of course is if you have an Irish passport - there was soneone on PB who was quite proud her nieces had got Irish passports just for that purpose.
Indirect discrimination happens when there is a policy that applies in the same way for everybody but disproportionately disadvantages one group of people who share a protected characteristic, such as national origin, which English/Scots/Welsh & N Irish have been held to be. However, such a policy can be justified if it is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.
I leave it to the board to discuss the applicability of this test to the Scottish Govt’s Uni Fees policy to English students. I see arguments pro and anti both parts of the test.
One point: we're not dealing with national origin but residence (as officially defined).
Yes - but English students are disproportionately disadvantaged as they are a group more likely to live in England. That’s why it’s indirectly, rather than directly (which it would be if English students were directly targeted) discriminatory. An example of the same concept in sex discrimination would, hypothetically, be a height requirement of 5’ 10” imposed by BA on all its pilots.. Doesn’t mention women but clearly far fewer women than men are that height or over - so you would have to objectively justify that limit by, I dunno, being a bit facetious here, for example needing to reach the pedals in the plane you were supposed to fly. It’s very unlikely but possible.
FWIW I think the Scottish Govt can justify the indirect discrimination due to the population imbalance, geographical proximity and risk of us overwhelming the system due to the fees charged here.
Well, exams done! Yesterday was by far the worst one, took me over 15 hours of non-stop work! Hopefully I’ve done okay...
Is this a law conversion course for non-law graduates? You give the impression that the examinations have been extended openbook assessments , unless I have misunderstood.
Yup. Open-book “e-examinations” in which we had 24 hours to complete them.
I did such a course at UEA back in 1996/97. Very intense - basically two years of a law degree in one academic year. We sat six 3-hour closed book exams plus a 5000 word dissertation on European Law. There was also one piece of 3000 word coursework for each subject.
That’s how I learnt law. One intense year doing the 6 main subjects as part of @ 2-year course to become a barrister. The second year was evidence and procedural stuff.
This is basically me, although my second year (from September, assuming I’ve passed everything) is learning the procedural stuff of being a solicitor.
Yup I did that too later but fortunately could do the study in my own time. Wills, conveyancing and learning not to steal your clients’ money. A doddle. 😉
The 1997 election coverage is slightly misleading in the sense that the share of the vote, 44% to 31%, wasn't enormously different to the 1992 election, which was 43% to 35%. Also they didn't really mention the fact that turnout was down quite a lot from 77% to 71%. Labour received less total votes in 1997 than the Tories in 1992.
As OGH tells us ad infinitum it's not about votes but seats - bums on benches if you prefer. 1997 was remarkable because the change in votes (not insignificant in and of itself) led to a massive change in seats with the Conservatives losing at least half their total.
What is also interesting is 1997 showed the Conservatives can poll badly and lose a lot more seats than Labour who have yet to go sub 200 in any election since 1945 (the Conservatives have done it three times).
That's the political impact but I agree with Andy that vote share should not be ignored. Did anyone point out that Blair got fewer votes than Major in '92?
I'm sure David Dimbleby told a story where he said he mentioned on the broadcast that the people waving union jacks in Downing St were Labour party workers but he was admonished the editor for 'spoiling the moment.'
'Things can only get better' starting at the Festival Hall now on BBC Parliament after the Messiah has just finished his speech, Prescott now joined him and Kinnock and Mandelson tapping their fingers on the sidelines
The outrage about this is really quite something, coming from a Scottish government which charges £9k a year to English students, and zero to Scots
You halfwit England charges Scottish students £9K
To be fair I don't really have a problem with that situation. If Scotland is funding the universities out of its own budget it would be mad to subsidise English students. However if UK government wants to reform the student 'loan' system it can hardly just apply to English institutions.
But Scotland is subsidised by England via Barnett. Essentially English taxpayers are giving money to Scotland, so Scottish students can have free tuition. Scotland says thankyou by charging English students, but not any other students in the EU.
The only reason England hasn't burned down Scotland in anger is because the English are too apathetic, and barely realise Scotland exists most of the time
Well Barnett may well be a subsidy but that's not its intention. And Scotland had no choice but to offer free tuition to EU students.
Do remember that England did quite well out of the oil money at the time.
The simple fact is that Scotland does not "charge" "English" students.
It simply does not pay the tuition fees for UK students who are not resident in Scotland, even if they are Scots by birth and recent habitation.
That's exactly what England, Wales and NI used to do in their own bailiwicks. They changed their mind. The Scots didn't.
No problem if you are English but moved up there not too recently. The exception of course is if you have an Irish passport - there was soneone on PB who was quite proud her nieces had got Irish passports just for that purpose.
Indirect discrimination happens when there is a policy that applies in the same way for everybody but disproportionately disadvantages one group of people who share a protected characteristic, such as national origin, which English/Scots/Welsh & N Irish have been held to be. However, such a policy can be justified if it is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.
I leave it to the board to discuss the applicability of this test to the Scottish Govt’s Uni Fees policy to English students. I see arguments pro and anti both parts of the test.
Absolute bollox, there is no discrimination , if you are resident in Scotland it is free and if your country reciprocates it is the same. England chooses to charge Scottish students £9K a year and so the same applies for resident English students in Scotland. Only bigoted Little Englanders could find any fault with this extremely fair system
[London is] shit compared to late seventies and early eighties, it was brilliant in London then, I spent lots and lots of time there , stayed in Tara hotel in Kengsington and life was great.
I moved to London in the 1980s when you could still find bomb sites. The areas of Lambeth and Southwark close to the Thames were very rough.
If you watch the Professionals or the Sweeney you get a feel of the place then.
Somers Town/Kings Cross is utterly unrecognizable from those days.
There's an incredibly grim scene in the film Mona Lisa which was supposed to have been filmed in the Kings Cross area, although whether it was actually filmed there or they used a studio is difficult to say.
Battlebridge Road?
Been used in many movies, the Ladykillers, and Shirley Valentine
Page down for some really bleak shots of 70s London, inc King's Cross
Ah Battlebridge Road. Remember getting fearfully lost and disoriented having scored some hash and supped mushroom tea at a squat in Camden Town c.1985. I couldn't seem to find a way around Kings Cross as November rain lashed down, sirens wailed and it went dark. Nobody around at all. All derelict land behind there then. Course it was probably only a few minutes. Happy Days!
Incidentally, Battlebridge was the name of the village in Georgian times.
1985!? Camden Town?? Squats? Mushrooms??
There is a high chance we were in the same pub, bar, party, squat, concert, in that era. How strange!
I moved to London in 1980. I have no lost love for that London. It was grimy, poor, depressed and generally pretty miserable. The London of today is way more vibrant.
London was clearly an inferior city to New York back then only in the 1990s and 2000s did it begin to rival it
The outrage about this is really quite something, coming from a Scottish government which charges £9k a year to English students, and zero to Scots
You halfwit England charges Scottish students £9K
To be fair I don't really have a problem with that situation. If Scotland is funding the universities out of its own budget it would be mad to subsidise English students. However if UK government wants to reform the student 'loan' system it can hardly just apply to English institutions.
But Scotland is subsidised by England via Barnett. Essentially English taxpayers are giving money to Scotland, so Scottish students can have free tuition. Scotland says thankyou by charging English students, but not any other students in the EU.
The only reason England hasn't burned down Scotland in anger is because the English are too apathetic, and barely realise Scotland exists most of the time
Well Barnett may well be a subsidy but that's not its intention. And Scotland had no choice but to offer free tuition to EU students.
Do remember that England did quite well out of the oil money at the time.
The simple fact is that Scotland does not "charge" "English" students.
It simply does not pay the tuition fees for UK students who are not resident in Scotland, even if they are Scots by birth and recent habitation.
That's exactly what England, Wales and NI used to do in their own bailiwicks. They changed their mind. The Scots didn't.
No problem if you are English but moved up there not too recently. The exception of course is if you have an Irish passport - there was soneone on PB who was quite proud her nieces had got Irish passports just for that purpose.
Indirect discrimination happens when there is a policy that applies in the same way for everybody but disproportionately disadvantages one group of people who share a protected characteristic, such as national origin, which English/Scots/Welsh & N Irish have been held to be. However, such a policy can be justified if it is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.
I leave it to the board to discuss the applicability of this test to the Scottish Govt’s Uni Fees policy to English students. I see arguments pro and anti both parts of the test.
I'd imagine a pragmatic aim is to avoid a flood of applications for 'free' Scottish degrees, I daresay even the English government wouldn't be all that keen on that (and they themselves now seem intent on legislating to further reduce cross border studentry).
PS Why wouldn't the "English" gmt be keen on that?
Perhaps I'm giving them undue credit, but I'd have thought a flood of talented applicants from poorer backgrounds going for Scottish degrees because of fear of debt wouldn't be a great look.
John Major's declaration from Huntingdon in which David Bellamy was the Referendum Party candidate.
Major holds the seat for the Tories with 31,000 votes
I admire your fortitude in sticking with what must be hours of fairly painful viewing.
Though I've watched it since on You Tube, I missed 1997 election night because I was shattered after a long day telling and knocking-up in St Ives and surrounding villages and of course the St Ives constituency doesn't count until the morning.
After catching up on the results and a glorious "Full Cornish" (don't ask), I took the bus to Penzance and joined the crowd at the St John's Hall where the counting was taking place.
It was also County Council elections and the LDs were trying to hold on to majority control of Cornwall CC (as it then was). That was the main reason I went down to work there in the final couple of days.
Indeed, one can argue the local election results were the start of the Conservative comeback. The LDs lost 177 seats, mainly those won in 1993 on a much lower turnout and the Conservatives gained 180 nationally.
In Cornwall, the LDs narrowly lost overall control losing two seats to go from 41 to 39 on the 79-seat authority. The Independents picked up two to 23.
As far as St Ives was concerned, I remember trying to listen to the Declaration. I recall former MP David Harris got a warm round of applause - he was genuinely liked across the board but had stood down and the new Conservative candidate was a local estate agent.
The Conservatives lost 8,000 votes from 1992 which represented about a 12% drop in vote share. The Referendum candidate got just under 4000 votes and I reckon the rest stayed at home. Andrew George got barely a thousand votes more than in 1992 and coincidentally Labour's vote was down by about the same number.
Indeed, I remember the Tories retook Kent County council despite the hammering at parliamentary level
[London is] shit compared to late seventies and early eighties, it was brilliant in London then, I spent lots and lots of time there , stayed in Tara hotel in Kengsington and life was great.
I moved to London in the 1980s when you could still find bomb sites. The areas of Lambeth and Southwark close to the Thames were very rough.
If you watch the Professionals or the Sweeney you get a feel of the place then.
Somers Town/Kings Cross is utterly unrecognizable from those days.
There's an incredibly grim scene in the film Mona Lisa which was supposed to have been filmed in the Kings Cross area, although whether it was actually filmed there or they used a studio is difficult to say.
Battlebridge Road?
Been used in many movies, the Ladykillers, and Shirley Valentine
Page down for some really bleak shots of 70s London, inc King's Cross
Ah Battlebridge Road. Remember getting fearfully lost and disoriented having scored some hash and supped mushroom tea at a squat in Camden Town c.1985. I couldn't seem to find a way around Kings Cross as November rain lashed down, sirens wailed and it went dark. Nobody around at all. All derelict land behind there then. Course it was probably only a few minutes. Happy Days!
Incidentally, Battlebridge was the name of the village in Georgian times.
1985!? Camden Town?? Squats? Mushrooms??
There is a high chance we were in the same pub, bar, party, squat, concert, in that era. How strange!
I moved to London in 1980. I have no lost love for that London. It was grimy, poor, depressed and generally pretty miserable. The London of today is way more vibrant.
London was clearly an inferior city to New York back then only in the 1990s and 2000s did it begin to rival it
New York was in a pretty bad state in the 1970s and early 80s as well. It almost went bankrupt in 1975.
As LatAm (and maybe now India) come to the corona party, the growing global tally of cases is starting to look exponential, again, after a period of plateau
I do not see how we avoid a second wave. Countries opening up now will get infected by their neighbours (see California suffering from its proximity to Mexico).
Absent a vaccine, countries will have to choose between death or poverty
Africa is coming next, I think.
Wait till it gets in the refugee camps. The poor bloody Rohinga, Sudanese, Syrians et al ...
Interesting info about 1997. Incidentally St Ives counted on the night in 1992 and 1987. They must have flown the ballot boxes from the Isles of Scilly to the mainland on those occasions.
This was due to the need to split and verify the County Council ballots (not applicable for the Isles of Scilly) so it was decided that would be done on the Thursday evening and the actual counting on the Friday morning to prevent a very late declaration.
It was publicised in advance by the Returning Officer and to be honest I think it was appreciated by all parties. It was helped by the glorious weather on the Friday morning which gave the whole event an almost party-like atmosphere (to be fair and I appreciate it was tough for them, even the Tories got into the spirit of it and as I said the former MP, David Harris, got a warm round of applause from the crowd).
In the last few elections Cornwall has adopted the bizarre practice of counting on the night but doing it so slowly that the results aren't declared until about 7 or 8 in the morning, (not caused by close results and recounts as sometimes happens, because it happened in the seats with big majorities as well). That seems like the worst of all worlds to me. Either do it fairly quickly on the night, by employing enough counters/tellers, or leave it to the next day.
The outrage about this is really quite something, coming from a Scottish government which charges £9k a year to English students, and zero to Scots
You halfwit England charges Scottish students £9K
To be fair I don't really have a problem with that situation. If Scotland is funding the universities out of its own budget it would be mad to subsidise English students. However if UK government wants to reform the student 'loan' system it can hardly just apply to English institutions.
But Scotland is subsidised by England via Barnett. Essentially English taxpayers are giving money to Scotland, so Scottish students can have free tuition. Scotland says thankyou by charging English students, but not any other students in the EU.
The only reason England hasn't burned down Scotland in anger is because the English are too apathetic, and barely realise Scotland exists most of the time
Well Barnett may well be a subsidy but that's not its intention. And Scotland had no choice but to offer free tuition to EU students.
Do remember that England did quite well out of the oil money at the time.
The simple fact is that Scotland does not "charge" "English" students.
It simply does not pay the tuition fees for UK students who are not resident in Scotland, even if they are Scots by birth and recent habitation.
That's exactly what England, Wales and NI used to do in their own bailiwicks. They changed their mind. The Scots didn't.
No problem if you are English but moved up there not too recently. The exception of course is if you have an Irish passport - there was soneone on PB who was quite proud her nieces had got Irish passports just for that purpose.
Indirect discrimination happens when there is a policy that applies in the same way for everybody but disproportionately disadvantages one group of people who share a protected characteristic, such as national origin, which English/Scots/Welsh & N Irish have been held to be. However, such a policy can be justified if it is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.
I leave it to the board to discuss the applicability of this test to the Scottish Govt’s Uni Fees policy to English students. I see arguments pro and anti both parts of the test.
Absolute bollox, there is no discrimination , if you are resident in Scotland it is free and if your country reciprocates it is the same. England chooses to charge Scottish students £9K a year and so the same applies for resident English students in Scotland. Only bigoted Little Englanders could find any fault with this extremely fair system
FFS read the post and calm down you angry little troll. I’m not saying there is discrimination, indeed down thread I say there isn’t, but there is a point to be answered beyond your usual hyperbolic “Little Englander” bullshit.
I’m throwing it out as a discussion point. “Bollox” is not an answer. Neither is “well, it can’t be discriminatory if YOU’RE doing it too.” In any event “we’re” not - the argument stems from the fact that English Unis charge the same wherever you reside on these islands. That the Scots don’t is probably justified a justified policy but there is an argument both ways that can’t be shut down by your direly repetitive, and frankly increasingly hysterical, insults.
[London is] shit compared to late seventies and early eighties, it was brilliant in London then, I spent lots and lots of time there , stayed in Tara hotel in Kengsington and life was great.
I moved to London in the 1980s when you could still find bomb sites. The areas of Lambeth and Southwark close to the Thames were very rough.
If you watch the Professionals or the Sweeney you get a feel of the place then.
Somers Town/Kings Cross is utterly unrecognizable from those days.
There's an incredibly grim scene in the film Mona Lisa which was supposed to have been filmed in the Kings Cross area, although whether it was actually filmed there or they used a studio is difficult to say.
Battlebridge Road?
Been used in many movies, the Ladykillers, and Shirley Valentine
Page down for some really bleak shots of 70s London, inc King's Cross
Ah Battlebridge Road. Remember getting fearfully lost and disoriented having scored some hash and supped mushroom tea at a squat in Camden Town c.1985. I couldn't seem to find a way around Kings Cross as November rain lashed down, sirens wailed and it went dark. Nobody around at all. All derelict land behind there then. Course it was probably only a few minutes. Happy Days!
Incidentally, Battlebridge was the name of the village in Georgian times.
1985!? Camden Town?? Squats? Mushrooms??
There is a high chance we were in the same pub, bar, party, squat, concert, in that era. How strange!
I moved to London in 1980. I have no lost love for that London. It was grimy, poor, depressed and generally pretty miserable. The London of today is way more vibrant.
London was clearly an inferior city to New York back then only in the 1990s and 2000s did it begin to rival it
New York was in a pretty bad state in the 1970s and early 80s as well. It almost went bankrupt in 1975.
Well both New York and London were pretty grimy and poorly run in the 1970s, it was the Thatcher and Reagan booms which started to bring them back.
Plus of course Giuliani turned around New York's crime rate in the early 1990s
The outrage about this is really quite something, coming from a Scottish government which charges £9k a year to English students, and zero to Scots
You halfwit England charges Scottish students £9K
To be fair I don't really have a problem with that situation. If Scotland is funding the universities out of its own budget it would be mad to subsidise English students. However if UK government wants to reform the student 'loan' system it can hardly just apply to English institutions.
But Scotland is subsidised by England via Barnett. Essentially English taxpayers are giving money to Scotland, so Scottish students can have free tuition. Scotland says thankyou by charging English students, but not any other students in the EU.
The only reason England hasn't burned down Scotland in anger is because the English are too apathetic, and barely realise Scotland exists most of the time
Well Barnett may well be a subsidy but that's not its intention. And Scotland had no choice but to offer free tuition to EU students.
Do remember that England did quite well out of the oil money at the time.
The simple fact is that Scotland does not "charge" "English" students.
It simply does not pay the tuition fees for UK students who are not resident in Scotland, even if they are Scots by birth and recent habitation.
That's exactly what England, Wales and NI used to do in their own bailiwicks. They changed their mind. The Scots didn't.
No problem if you are English but moved up there not too recently. The exception of course is if you have an Irish passport - there was soneone on PB who was quite proud her nieces had got Irish passports just for that purpose.
Indirect discrimination happens when there is a policy that applies in the same way for everybody but disproportionately disadvantages one group of people who share a protected characteristic, such as national origin, which English/Scots/Welsh & N Irish have been held to be. However, such a policy can be justified if it is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.
I leave it to the board to discuss the applicability of this test to the Scottish Govt’s Uni Fees policy to English students. I see arguments pro and anti both parts of the test.
One point: we're not dealing with national origin but residence (as officially defined).
Yes - but English students are disproportionately disadvantaged as they are a group more likely to live in England. That’s why it’s indirectly, rather than directly (which it would be if English students were directly targeted) discriminatory. An example of the same concept in sex discrimination would, hypothetically, be a height requirement of 5’ 10” imposed by BA on all its pilots.. Doesn’t mention women but clearly far fewer women than men are that height or over - so you would have to objectively justify that limit by, I dunno, being a bit facetious here, for example needing to reach the pedals in the plane you were supposed to fly. It’s very unlikely but possible.
FWIW I think the Scottish Govt can justify the indirect discrimination due to the population imbalance, geographical proximity and risk of us overwhelming the system due to the fees charged here.
though it does create an incentive for scottish universities to prioritize taking students from the rest of the UK over scottish students, After all a UK non scottish student is worth 9250 quid a year whilst a scottish one will only generate 1820 or so.
So the Scottish universities wont be happy about this as it'll cut into their funding (and Scot gov will have to increase funding to compensate).
That is very strange, as the number of daily confirmed cases in London has been below 40 for the last six days. Extremely low in relation to the national number.
That is very strange, as the number of daily confirmed cases in London has been below 40 for the last six days. Extremely low in relation to the national number.
As someone born in 1992, I have no concept of London before its complete and entire gentrification.
When I moved to the Smoke in 1983 large parts were very gritty indeed, and some like Kings Cross quite threatening. Docklands was a mess then. I was there for the Eighties boom, but even then it still could be pretty rough, and can still be in some of the less salubrious suburbs.
Provincial cities were worse of course, Wolverhampton and Brum were pretty awful when I lived there, and much of Leicester too. All three are better now, with the derelict mills converted to Student flats etc.
Now its the left behind towns, with their boarded up shops, chicken shops etc that are run down.
I tend to only ever see the poorer side of good old Lestoh. We don't get many council flat fires in Stoughton Drive South... But you're right, Leicester is a very different city to the one where my family came from, although Netherhall gasnt changed all the much from what I remember. The county's towns are in trouble though. I saw 3 shops in Loughborough being emptied in the week on one row, where the occupiers have decided they can't open ever again. One hairdresser, an expensive lingerie boutique and a designer dress retailer. That street has a few takeaways left and that's about it.
The outrage about this is really quite something, coming from a Scottish government which charges £9k a year to English students, and zero to Scots
You halfwit England charges Scottish students £9K
To be fair I don't really have a problem with that situation. If Scotland is funding the universities out of its own budget it would be mad to subsidise English students. However if UK government wants to reform the student 'loan' system it can hardly just apply to English institutions.
But Scotland is subsidised by England via Barnett. Essentially English taxpayers are giving money to Scotland, so Scottish students can have free tuition. Scotland says thankyou by charging English students, but not any other students in the EU.
The only reason England hasn't burned down Scotland in anger is because the English are too apathetic, and barely realise Scotland exists most of the time
Well Barnett may well be a subsidy but that's not its intention. And Scotland had no choice but to offer free tuition to EU students.
Do remember that England did quite well out of the oil money at the time.
The simple fact is that Scotland does not "charge" "English" students.
It simply does not pay the tuition fees for UK students who are not resident in Scotland, even if they are Scots by birth and recent habitation.
That's exactly what England, Wales and NI used to do in their own bailiwicks. They changed their mind. The Scots didn't.
No problem if you are English but moved up there not too recently. The exception of course is if you have an Irish passport - there was soneone on PB who was quite proud her nieces had got Irish passports just for that purpose.
Indirect discrimination happens when there is a policy that applies in the same way for everybody but disproportionately disadvantages one group of people who share a protected characteristic, such as national origin, which English/Scots/Welsh & N Irish have been held to be. However, such a policy can be justified if it is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.
I leave it to the board to discuss the applicability of this test to the Scottish Govt’s Uni Fees policy to English students. I see arguments pro and anti both parts of the test.
Absolute bollox, there is no discrimination , if you are resident in Scotland it is free and if your country reciprocates it is the same. England chooses to charge Scottish students £9K a year and so the same applies for resident English students in Scotland. Only bigoted Little Englanders could find any fault with this extremely fair system
FFS read the post and calm down you angry little troll. I’m not saying there is discrimination, indeed down thread I say there isn’t, but there is a point to be answered beyond your usual hyperbolic “Little Englander” bullshit.
I’m throwing it out as a discussion point. “Bollox” is not an answer. Neither is “well, it can’t be discriminatory if YOU’RE doing it too.” In any event “we’re” not - the argument stems from the fact that English Unis charge the same wherever you reside on these islands. That the Scots don’t is probably justified a justified policy but there is an argument both ways that can’t be shut down by your direly repetitive, and frankly increasingly hysterical, insults.
Wah Wah Wah , you really are a big jessie, I am perfectly calm thank you very much , despite the rubbish I read on here about Scotland.. Bollox describes it perfectly. It is 100% fair, there can eb NO argument whatsoever that it is in any way discrimatory.
The amount of people in hospital is in effect looking back a few weeks . It’s new daily admissions that will give a better idea of what’s happening as restrictions are eased .
John Major's declaration from Huntingdon in which David Bellamy was the Referendum Party candidate.
Major holds the seat for the Tories with 31,000 votes
I admire your fortitude in sticking with what must be hours of fairly painful viewing.
Though I've watched it since on You Tube, I missed 1997 election night because I was shattered after a long day telling and knocking-up in St Ives and surrounding villages and of course the St Ives constituency doesn't count until the morning.
After catching up on the results and a glorious "Full Cornish" (don't ask), I took the bus to Penzance and joined the crowd at the St John's Hall where the counting was taking place.
It was also County Council elections and the LDs were trying to hold on to majority control of Cornwall CC (as it then was). That was the main reason I went down to work there in the final couple of days.
Indeed, one can argue the local election results were the start of the Conservative comeback. The LDs lost 177 seats, mainly those won in 1993 on a much lower turnout and the Conservatives gained 180 nationally.
In Cornwall, the LDs narrowly lost overall control losing two seats to go from 41 to 39 on the 79-seat authority. The Independents picked up two to 23.
As far as St Ives was concerned, I remember trying to listen to the Declaration. I recall former MP David Harris got a warm round of applause - he was genuinely liked across the board but had stood down and the new Conservative candidate was a local estate agent.
The Conservatives lost 8,000 votes from 1992 which represented about a 12% drop in vote share. The Referendum candidate got just under 4000 votes and I reckon the rest stayed at home. Andrew George got barely a thousand votes more than in 1992 and coincidentally Labour's vote was down by about the same number.
Lib Dems always losevcouncil seats when held on GE day because you can’t rely on differential turnout.
[London is] shit compared to late seventies and early eighties, it was brilliant in London then, I spent lots and lots of time there , stayed in Tara hotel in Kengsington and life was great.
I moved to London in the 1980s when you could still find bomb sites. The areas of Lambeth and Southwark close to the Thames were very rough.
If you watch the Professionals or the Sweeney you get a feel of the place then.
Somers Town/Kings Cross is utterly unrecognizable from those days.
There's an incredibly grim scene in the film Mona Lisa which was supposed to have been filmed in the Kings Cross area, although whether it was actually filmed there or they used a studio is difficult to say.
Battlebridge Road?
Been used in many movies, the Ladykillers, and Shirley Valentine
Page down for some really bleak shots of 70s London, inc King's Cross
Ah Battlebridge Road. Remember getting fearfully lost and disoriented having scored some hash and supped mushroom tea at a squat in Camden Town c.1985. I couldn't seem to find a way around Kings Cross as November rain lashed down, sirens wailed and it went dark. Nobody around at all. All derelict land behind there then. Course it was probably only a few minutes. Happy Days!
Incidentally, Battlebridge was the name of the village in Georgian times.
1985!? Camden Town?? Squats? Mushrooms??
There is a high chance we were in the same pub, bar, party, squat, concert, in that era. How strange!
I moved to London in 1980. I have no lost love for that London. It was grimy, poor, depressed and generally pretty miserable. The London of today is way more vibrant.
London was clearly an inferior city to New York back then only in the 1990s and 2000s did it begin to rival it
New York was in a pretty bad state in the 1970s and early 80s as well. It almost went bankrupt in 1975.
Well both New York and London were pretty grimy and poorly run in the 1970s, it was the Thatcher and Reagan booms which started to bring them back.
Plus of course Giuliani turned around New York's crime rate in the early 1990s
And there was that property developer off the telly had a bit to do with reviving New York.
Well, exams done! Yesterday was by far the worst one, took me over 15 hours of non-stop work! Hopefully I’ve done okay...
Is this a law conversion course for non-law graduates? You give the impression that the examinations have been extended openbook assessments , unless I have misunderstood.
Yup. Open-book “e-examinations” in which we had 24 hours to complete them.
I did such a course at UEA back in 1996/97. Very intense - basically two years of a law degree in one academic year. We sat six 3-hour closed book exams plus a 5000 word dissertation on European Law. There was also one piece of 3000 word coursework for each subject.
That’s how I learnt law. One intense year doing the 6 main subjects as part of @ 2-year course to become a barrister. The second year was evidence and procedural stuff.
This is basically me, although my second year (from September, assuming I’ve passed everything) is learning the procedural stuff of being a solicitor.
Yup I did that too later but fortunately could do the study in my own time. Wills, conveyancing and learning not to steal your clients’ money. A doddle. 😉
You had to learn not to steal your clue to money??!
I was a vague Tory supporter (as a kid) in 1997, but I remember a sneaking optimism that actually New Labour would sort some things out that needed it. Swept along in the general optimism of the time. When they didn't, and what they actually did was piss a golden economic legacy up the wall, it became a defining moment for me politically, and I was a firm right-winger, though not always a Tory, ever since.
Sounds like your ideal would be a Major/Clarke/Heseltine government. Why are you a Brexiteer?
I am not actually a Brexiteer in the sense that I've never seen leaving as being essential to the UK's success. My problem has always been the supine, welcoming even, attitude of UK politicians, civil servants and the judiciary to the encroachment of the EU on our national sovereignty. I saw this leading to the dissolution and impoverishment of our country. Unlike many I don't blame the EU for this. With a friendly and cooperative but doggedly UK-first attitude, I think we could have thrived in the EU, and probably been granted some form of associate membership that would have been vaguely satisfactory.
However, since that was never on the cards, the entire ball had to be taken home. I cannot tell you what a wonderful relief it is to have a Government, for all its perceived warts, that is negotiating with the EU with real firmness, not just grandstanding in The Sun about 'we won't be paying this bill' and then surreptitiously paying it.
In the last few elections Cornwall has adopted the bizarre practice of counting on the night but doing it so slowly that the results aren't declared until about 7 or 8 in the morning, (not caused by close results and recounts as sometimes happens, because it happened in the seats with big majorities as well). That seems like the worst of all worlds to me. Either do it fairly quickly on the night, by employing enough counters/tellers, or leave it to the next day.
It doesn't often happen that General Elections and County Council elections happen on the same day - the last time was 2005.
This meant the cities counted quickly so Labour piled up the seats and the shires counted much more slowly because of the process of verifying the ballot boxes. Constituencies in areas with Unitary authorities also counted quickly.
The other issue is numbers of boxes - if you have a small densely-packed urban constituency you don't have a lot of boxes and they don't need to travel far to get to the counting centre.
St Ives, in common with other rural constituencies, is rather different with large numbers of boxes (a box might cover a village or a couple of villages so not so many voters and votes but more boxes). I ended my GE day at Zennor Village hall which from memory had an electorate of about 400 so assuming 300 voted over a 15-hour period is 20 per hour but that excludes postal votes and secondly people arriving together in groups meant you could go long periods without a voter turning up.
That box had to be collected, sent to Penzance, opened and verified along with all the other constituency boxes including those from the Scillies and when you add on the boxes for the County Council elections...
Comments
https://twitter.com/Frances_Coppola/status/1266547725685964801?s=20
It simply does not pay the tuition fees for UK students who are not resident in Scotland, even if they are Scots by birth and recent habitation.
That's exactly what England, Wales and NI used to do in their own bailiwicks. They changed their mind. The Scots didn't.
No problem if you are English but moved up there not too recently. The exception of course is if you have an Irish passport - there was soneone on PB who was quite proud her nieces had got Irish passports just for that purpose.
Of course, once Labour came into office with a whopping majority, they forgot all about electoral reform etc...
32 million people voted in 2019 but only 31.2 million in 1997. The former represented 67% of the electorate, the latter 71% so turnout and vote numbers have to be viewed in the context of an increasing electorate.
1992 stands out - 33 million people but that was nearly 78% of the electorate. Had that turnout been reflected in 2019, an extra five million people would have voted.
....................................................................
Sage agrees that shutting down public transport or restricting public gatherings would “probably be ineffective” in delaying the spread of the virus."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/29/sage-minutes-reveal-how-uk-advisers-reacted-to-coronavirus-crisis
Provincial cities were worse of course, Wolverhampton and Brum were pretty awful when I lived there, and much of Leicester too. All three are better now, with the derelict mills converted to Student flats etc.
Now its the left behind towns, with their boarded up shops, chicken shops etc that are run down.
Both Labour and the LDs fought Falmouth & Camborne really hard and there were seats which Labour won from third such as Shrewsbury.
Oddly enough the scale and strength of the Labour vote held the LDs back and allowed Conservatives such as Michael Howard to survive. Had there been a true and explicit electoral pact, the LDs could have won 60 seats or more and pushed the Conservatives to 150 or lower - a kind of 1906 in reverse.
I leave it to the board to discuss the applicability of this test to the Scottish Govt’s Uni Fees policy to English students. I see arguments pro and anti both parts of the test.
It was publicised in advance by the Returning Officer and to be honest I think it was appreciated by all parties. It was helped by the glorious weather on the Friday morning which gave the whole event an almost party-like atmosphere (to be fair and I appreciate it was tough for them, even the Tories got into the spirit of it and as I said the former MP, David Harris, got a warm round of applause from the crowd).
FWIW I think the Scottish Govt can justify the indirect discrimination due to the population imbalance, geographical proximity and risk of us overwhelming the system due to the fees charged here.
So Modi has done relatively well
I’m throwing it out as a discussion point. “Bollox” is not an answer. Neither is “well, it can’t be discriminatory if YOU’RE doing it too.” In any event “we’re” not - the argument stems from the fact that English Unis charge the same wherever you reside on these islands. That the Scots don’t is probably justified a justified policy but there is an argument both ways that can’t be shut down by your direly repetitive, and frankly increasingly hysterical, insults.
Plus of course Giuliani turned around New York's crime rate in the early 1990s
So the Scottish universities wont be happy about this as it'll cut into their funding (and Scot gov will have to increase funding to compensate).
Lockdown is officially over.
😳
However, since that was never on the cards, the entire ball had to be taken home. I cannot tell you what a wonderful relief it is to have a Government, for all its perceived warts, that is negotiating with the EU with real firmness, not just grandstanding in The Sun about 'we won't be paying this bill' and then surreptitiously paying it.
This meant the cities counted quickly so Labour piled up the seats and the shires counted much more slowly because of the process of verifying the ballot boxes. Constituencies in areas with Unitary authorities also counted quickly.
The other issue is numbers of boxes - if you have a small densely-packed urban constituency you don't have a lot of boxes and they don't need to travel far to get to the counting centre.
St Ives, in common with other rural constituencies, is rather different with large numbers of boxes (a box might cover a village or a couple of villages so not so many voters and votes but more boxes). I ended my GE day at Zennor Village hall which from memory had an electorate of about 400 so assuming 300 voted over a 15-hour period is 20 per hour but that excludes postal votes and secondly people arriving together in groups meant you could go long periods without a voter turning up.
That box had to be collected, sent to Penzance, opened and verified along with all the other constituency boxes including those from the Scillies and when you add on the boxes for the County Council elections...