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Will the panickers stop panicking when their tanks are full? – politicalbetting.com

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  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    AlistairM said:

    Petrol anecdote. My Bucks village has a small petrol station with 4 pumps. It is located on a main route through it with an infant school at one end and the juniors at the other. This route has cars parked along it for people who live on the road making it often 1-way only at a time which normally is no problem as traffic is quite light. At the end by the junior school is a mini-roundabout which has had a water leak for the last week and traffic lights were put in whilst they fixed it.

    This morning at school drop-off time we had:

    1. Torrential rain causing more people to drive who would otherwise walk to do the school run
    2. Bin collection day as the rubbish lorry slowly makes its way along the streets
    3. Drivers coming from outside of our village to get fuel as they had heard it still had supplies
    4. Temporary traffic lights on the roundabout not working
    5. Queues forming outside the petrol station going in both directions, blocking traffic trying to get from one school to the other (due to cars parked on the road)
    It was absolute mayhem. Traffic snarled up everywhere. Even though I was getting drenched in the downpour on my walking school run I felt quietly smug. Then I remembered that both our cars have tanks only 1/4 full of petrol and we will at some point need to drive. I refuse to become someone who panic buys when I have no immediate need. I will need some petrol in the next few days. I am still expecting in 2 days time that everyone will have filled up and the panic will cease.
    Just like how fusion power is always 10 years away, the end of the distribution crisis is always 2 days hence.

    NOTE TO MORRIS DANCER: I AM NOT SAYING THE INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE IS THE SAME AS A FUSION REACTOR.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Stocky said:

    Passed three petrol station on way to the gym - all out of fuel. I hear that the closest motorway (M1) service station is out too.

    My in-laws have their 50th Anniversary Party this Saturday, with people travelling by car 100 miles each way from London, similar from Bath and 50 miles from Cambridge.

    PB brains trust: What are the chances of the Party having to be cancelled?

    Seems to me that the tankers will be in demand everywhere - who knows when the petrol stations will be replenished with fuel? I think there are many like me who haven't panic-bought fuel but will be quick off the mark should fuel become available so I can see this dragging on for weeks.

    Many in the countryside live 15 miles + from nearest petrol station - do they risk a journey on spec for fuel? I think not. Quasi-lockdown I guess.

    The problem is that the wrong kind of people are buying petrol.
    The wrong kind of people will soon have nowhere left to store it.

    In the bath, maybe.....
    The govt says that if everyone just bought £20 of petrol every week as per usual we'd be fine.

    Does anyone do that?
    I heard a petrol station manager a couple of years ago saying the distinctive ways he could spot a recession were, fuel sales in exact multiples of £5 or £10, and sales of scratch cards went up.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835
    Stocky said:

    Passed three petrol station on way to the gym - all out of fuel. I hear that the closest motorway (M1) service station is out too.

    My in-laws have their 50th Anniversary Party this Saturday, with people travelling by car 100 miles each way from London, similar from Bath and 50 miles from Cambridge.

    PB brains trust: What are the chances of the Party having to be cancelled?

    Seems to me that the tankers will be in demand everywhere - who knows when the petrol stations will be replenished with fuel? I think there are many like me who haven't panic-bought fuel but will be quick off the mark should fuel become available so I can see this dragging on for weeks.

    Many in the countryside live 15 miles + from nearest petrol station - do they risk a journey on spec for fuel? I think not. Quasi-lockdown I guess.

    Perhaps it's just a cunning plan to get everyone back on public transport?
    That Boris! He's a 3-D chess genius!
  • felix said:

    Andy_JS said:

    O/T

    Still got this really bad cold after about a week. It might be because people didn't get the usual immunity to colds last year because they were not mixing with others in the usual way.

    One very useful side-effect of mask wearing is you reduce the potential to catch colds and flu quite considerably.
    Maybe, but I think those viruses are more effectively spread by fomites than Covid is. So I've managed to catch a cold, despite still having to wear a mask when inside supermarkets, restaurant toilets, etc. My guess is I picked it up via my hands.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,183

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Stocky said:

    Passed three petrol station on way to the gym - all out of fuel. I hear that the closest motorway (M1) service station is out too.

    My in-laws have their 50th Anniversary Party this Saturday, with people travelling by car 100 miles each way from London, similar from Bath and 50 miles from Cambridge.

    PB brains trust: What are the chances of the Party having to be cancelled?

    Seems to me that the tankers will be in demand everywhere - who knows when the petrol stations will be replenished with fuel? I think there are many like me who haven't panic-bought fuel but will be quick off the mark should fuel become available so I can see this dragging on for weeks.

    Many in the countryside live 15 miles + from nearest petrol station - do they risk a journey on spec for fuel? I think not. Quasi-lockdown I guess.

    The problem is that the wrong kind of people are buying petrol.
    The wrong kind of people will soon have nowhere left to store it.

    In the bath, maybe.....
    The govt says that if everyone just bought £20 of petrol every week as per usual we'd be fine.

    Does anyone do that?
    Yes. Last time I saw figures on this, most people do.

    I've always filled my tank in full from empty, but most people get £10 or £20 at a time. Though I don't know if cards wiping out cash has changed things.

    Its worth noting how often when you go to the pump, that the person before you at the pump stopped it at £20 or so. Its how most people normally use the pumps.
    When I started driving I did this. £5 at a time, usually. (In the early 90s petrol was less than 50p a litre). Nowadays, on the rare occasions that I try it, I can never stop the dial on a whole number.

    I've never seen anyone do this, though.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,138
    edited September 2021

    Carnyx said:

    MaxPB said:

    I didn't realise that student loan interest rates were 6%. That's actually daylight robbery.

    Someone said earlier that early repayment was penalised - I forget whom. Is this literally true, or just the nature of the thing whereby debts are written off after n years of time or age?
    It's the latter. For most graduates, if they pay back a small proportion early, that repayment will get swallowed up in the 6% interest on the remainder and they'll have wasted it. Conversely, if you're a young lawyer earning £120K+ a year, you can pay the whole thing off early and save yourself loads in the longer term. But you need to pay it all, or substantially all, off.

    It is a tax/loan (a bit of both, really) with the most perverse attributes, and very few graduates understand it. For example, changing the interest rate would make very little difference for the vast majority of graduates, who will never pay it off anyway; for them, the interest rate only affects the notional remaining value which gets written off at the end. Reducing the interest rate would only benefit the small number of very high earners who have a sporting chance of eventually paying it off.
    Thanks. So you need a sum of the order of £10K+ to make a decent bite in the loan? - and yet most young professional persons would have much better use for that money right now. Nasty thing. Did the LDs really think that up??

    I hadn't paid much attention to it till the subject of a friend's daughter and her windfall of a (somewhat smaller) lump sum from a legacy came up in conversation. I was very surprised when my friend said he'd strongly advise her to put the money aside for a house rather than repay some of the student loan - so contrary to normal good financial advice.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,735
    Halfords reveal the sale of jerry cans went up 1,656 per cent this weekend.
  • AlistairMAlistairM Posts: 2,004
    Farooq said:

    AlistairM said:

    Petrol anecdote. My Bucks village has a small petrol station with 4 pumps. It is located on a main route through it with an infant school at one end and the juniors at the other. This route has cars parked along it for people who live on the road making it often 1-way only at a time which normally is no problem as traffic is quite light. At the end by the junior school is a mini-roundabout which has had a water leak for the last week and traffic lights were put in whilst they fixed it.

    This morning at school drop-off time we had:

    1. Torrential rain causing more people to drive who would otherwise walk to do the school run
    2. Bin collection day as the rubbish lorry slowly makes its way along the streets
    3. Drivers coming from outside of our village to get fuel as they had heard it still had supplies
    4. Temporary traffic lights on the roundabout not working
    5. Queues forming outside the petrol station going in both directions, blocking traffic trying to get from one school to the other (due to cars parked on the road)
    It was absolute mayhem. Traffic snarled up everywhere. Even though I was getting drenched in the downpour on my walking school run I felt quietly smug. Then I remembered that both our cars have tanks only 1/4 full of petrol and we will at some point need to drive. I refuse to become someone who panic buys when I have no immediate need. I will need some petrol in the next few days. I am still expecting in 2 days time that everyone will have filled up and the panic will cease.
    Just like how fusion power is always 10 years away, the end of the distribution crisis is always 2 days hence.

    NOTE TO MORRIS DANCER: I AM NOT SAYING THE INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE IS THE SAME AS A FUSION REACTOR.
    This will come to an end at some point in not too long unless one of these happens:
    1. Everyone starts driving more than normal and consuming more fuel. I imagine right now people are not making unnecessary journeys just in case
    2. Everyone gets on Amazon and buys jerry cans to fill their garages and sheds with petrol. Is everyone that desperate? Does Amazon have enough? It would also be illegal
    Then the only reason for queues will be if everyone decides to fill up with fuel with they are 3/4 full rather than just with 1/4 left. In which case there won't be a shortage of fuel (not that there is now if people bought normally) but instead a shortage of pumps to dispense it.
  • TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Stocky said:

    Passed three petrol station on way to the gym - all out of fuel. I hear that the closest motorway (M1) service station is out too.

    My in-laws have their 50th Anniversary Party this Saturday, with people travelling by car 100 miles each way from London, similar from Bath and 50 miles from Cambridge.

    PB brains trust: What are the chances of the Party having to be cancelled?

    Seems to me that the tankers will be in demand everywhere - who knows when the petrol stations will be replenished with fuel? I think there are many like me who haven't panic-bought fuel but will be quick off the mark should fuel become available so I can see this dragging on for weeks.

    Many in the countryside live 15 miles + from nearest petrol station - do they risk a journey on spec for fuel? I think not. Quasi-lockdown I guess.

    The problem is that the wrong kind of people are buying petrol.
    The wrong kind of people will soon have nowhere left to store it.

    In the bath, maybe.....
    The govt says that if everyone just bought £20 of petrol every week as per usual we'd be fine.

    Does anyone do that?
    Our piano teacher does, so it looks like she will be going back to online lessons next week, if she can't get her car filled up in the meantime.
  • MaxPB said:

    Pulpstar said:

    RobD said:

    eek said:

    Phil said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Charles said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    Why should eg a successful middle aged lawyer or businessman who owns their own home be on a lower real marginal tax rate than that Film Studies graduate who has a lower income and rent to pay?
    Ooo goodie!

    Why should a middle aged supermarket check out lady subsidise the teenage son of a QC to spend 3 years drinking his way through a film studies degree?
    The middle aged supermarket checkout lady shouldn't have much tax to pay but the QC should so its the QC paying for it not the check out lady ultimately.

    I answered your question, now can you answer mine?
    I'm sure she'd notice when taxes went up to pay for the £8bn or so needed to fund it.
    If my proposal that all income were taxed at the same rate regardless of how it was taxed (so merging NI, Income Tax and graduate tax etc together) then her taxes as a worker ought to be able to go down not up. It would be those living on unearned incomes that see their taxes rise to match those of earned incomes.
    Regardless of your tax proposals, she would be paying more tax if the taxpayer had to fund the £8bn a year needed to cover tuition fees.
    The taxpayer does have to fund tuition fees as it stands.

    However as it stands even relatively low-earning but young graduates have to pay higher taxes, while even high earning older graduates don't have to pay higher taxes.

    Its pure age discrimination.
    No it doesn't, that's the whole point of tuition fees. We are talking about the difference between the current situation, and one where tuition fees are abolished. In the latter, the checkout lady would certainly notice it in her pay packet.
    No she wouldn't. Not with my proposal, indeed her taxes could go down.

    The people who benefit from the current system aren't checkout ladies, they're landlords and elderly lawyers and pensioners etc who can earn lots of income without seeing that income taxed at the same rates that others get taxed at.
    We're talking about two separate things. Regardless of whether we are using the current tax system, or your tax system, abolishing tuition fees would result in a net cost to the taxpayer of around £8bn a year.
    Which is absolutely a rounding error compared to the cost to the exchequer of ensuring the retired, landlords, inheritees etc don't pay the same rate of income tax as those actually working for their income pay.
    Just to give a sense of scale, that "rounding error" is about the same as the revenue from the new NI tax hike.
    Which again wouldn't have been needed if everyone paid the same share.

    Tax everyone on the same income the same rate, regardless of how its earned. Don't punish people for being workers, or punish them even more for being young workers.
    Yes, but regardless of what tax system you use, abolishing tuition fees will result in a net cost of £8bn, which will be a noticeable tax increase, at least based on the reaction to the NI one.
    It will only be a tax increase for those who aren't paying their share. For those who are paying their share it will be a tax cut.

    If you're going to charge for education then charge for education, but if you're going to charge based on earnings then that's income tax. Charging some different rates of income tax than others is not equitable.
    Again you are conflating your proposed tax reforms with the narrow point regarding whether or not taxpayers should pay for tuition. If taxpayers are paying for it, regardless of the system, you will be in the situation Charles described right back at the start of this thread.
    Taxpayers are already paying for it.

    Its just the taxpayers are simply only some of the taxpayers paying a tax surcharge.
    Come off it. Only graduates are paying for it, not all taxpayers.
    Come off it. Via PAYE some taxpayers are paying for it, not all graduates.
    Not all taxpayers are repaying student loans, maybe something like 20-25%? Many more taxpayers would have to foot the bill if tuition fees were abolished, including the checkout lady mentioned at the start.
    Not all graduates are paying the graduate tax.

    Taxpayers would have a fairer bill if all taxpayers were taxed the same rather than being taxed differently based upon age etc.
    Its not a tax. Its repayment of a loan.
    It is a tax.

    If I am making a loan repayment then I have a fixed amount I repay each month. If I increase my earnings, I don't suddenly start having to pay more out of PAYE as a result.

    This is a PAYE tax levied on certain people but not others. If it walks like a tax, and quacks like a tax ...
    No. Its a variable loan repayment. Its not a tax, it never was a tax.
    The student loan system is a graduate tax that is structured legally as a loan for political reasons.

    But if it walks like a tax, talks like a tax & quacks like a tax then we should call it what it is - a tax on graduates.
    It's not a tax on graduates because people like @MaxPB have earnt enough to pay it off. That wouldn't be the case were it a tax, they would need to continue paying it until they were 55 (or whatever the current end date is).

    It's also collected via tax code and PAYE because that is the easiest way to ensure it's collected.
    An alternative way of doing it (that would probably be an administrative nightmare) would be to give graduates their own tax code, with an additional tax rate to pay for their tuition. You'd raise more from high earners because they couldn't repay it, so you could probably get away with a lower rate overall.
    Balanced by the fact high earners abroad have to pay it these days ? That wouldn't be the case with a tax code.
    Considering this country has much more immigration than emigration that strikes me as a really weird reason it needs to be done this way. If it were a 1% tax paid by everyone, instead of a 9% tax paid by a few, then graduates who go abroad wouldn't pay true - but surely many more graduates who come from abroad would pay which more than makes up for it?
    Hypothecated taxes are a poor idea. They might sound good to voters but in general they are inefficient and we saw that with the idiotic 0.7% aid target. All that happened is aid money got pissed away because they had to spend it.

    I'm all for funding tertiary education properly and funding high value degrees out of general taxation, a hypothecated fund will just result in university fat cats getting rich.
    Completely agreed.

    There shouldn't be any hypothecated taxes, I was just trying to address the issue of there 'having to be a tax rise' if the graduate tax were to be abolished. That tax rise could just be set at the current threshold, if so.

    The current graduate tax system has completely screwed young graduates and warped the university sector. Its a failure, like everything else Gordon Brown ever touched it seems.
    I would add that there should be a sliding scale of state funding based on the *quality* of the degree - and find some way to assess that independent of the rest of the University sector.

    Flog crap degrees if you want. If you want me to pay for them, they better be fucking awesome.
    Lord save us from those brilliant but narrow minds who think that the only degrees that have value are the ones that are similar to their own.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,604
    Is anyone still wearing a mask in England? They are a rarity in London now.
  • Scott_xP said:

    Halfords reveal the sale of jerry cans went up 1,656 per cent this weekend.

    Is Jerry Cann another BBC reporter?
  • Richard_NabaviRichard_Nabavi Posts: 30,820
    edited September 2021
    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    MaxPB said:

    I didn't realise that student loan interest rates were 6%. That's actually daylight robbery.

    Someone said earlier that early repayment was penalised - I forget whom. Is this literally true, or just the nature of the thing whereby debts are written off after n years of time or age?
    It's the latter. For most graduates, if they pay back a small proportion early, that repayment will get swallowed up in the 6% interest on the remainder and they'll have wasted it. Conversely, if you're a young lawyer earning £120K+ a year, you can pay the whole thing off early and save yourself loads in the longer term. But you need to pay it all, or substantially all, off.

    It is a tax/loan (a bit of both, really) with the most perverse attributes, and very few graduates understand it. For example, changing the interest rate would make very little difference for the vast majority of graduates, who will never pay it off anyway; for them, the interest rate only affects the notional remaining value which gets written off at the end. Reducing the interest rate would only benefit the small number of very high earners who have a sporting chance of eventually paying it off.
    Thanks. So you need a sum of the order of £10K+ to make a decent bite in the loan? - and yet most young professional persons would have much better use for that money right now. Nasty thing. Did the LDs really think that up??

    I hadn't paid much attention to it till the subject of a friend's daughter and her windfall of a (somewhat smaller) lump sum from a legacy came up in conversation. I was very surprised when my friend said he'd strongly advise her to put the money aside for a house rather than repay some of the student loan - so contrary to normal good financial advice.
    Yes, that was almost certainly good advice.

    By far the best source for information on Student Loans is Martin Lewis. He writes very clearly on it and the various wrinkles, for example:

    https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/students/student-loans-tuition-fees-changes/

    and

    https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/students/repay-post-2012-student-loan/
  • Mortimer said:

    Andy_JS said:

    O/T

    Still got this really bad cold after about a week. It might be because people didn't get the usual immunity to colds last year because they were not mixing with others in the usual way.

    Yeah, same for me. The strange thing is that I can't imagine where I caught it. We were on holiday in the Lake District at the time I caught it, walking the fells during the day without meeting anyone at all other than a brief greeting to the small number of other walkers we met. The only indoor contact we had was at breakfast and dinner in the small hotel where we were staying, where everything was well socially-distanced, staff all wearing masks, and no-one coughing, sneezing or even sniffling.
    Makes me think all the performative covid theatre is in fact pretty useless at stopping transmission of respiratory viruses, and has been all along...
    The whole 2m distance thing in indoor settings is pointless. Good ventilation is what matters. Enter an empty room and you can catch a dose from the person who coughed in there 10 minutes earlier.
  • AlistairMAlistairM Posts: 2,004
    Petrol voting effect anecdote.

    In a previous job role I used to manage a team based in a distribution centre north of Manchester. Probably what you would classify as Red Wall territory. They were a great bunch, very friendly and down-to-earth but with quite a different background to myself. All except one was female and I considered them great for getting a perspective different from my own. I'm still connected to them on Facebook. In the last few days I have seen them complaining about all the panic buying. Not one word said against Boris or the Tories, they are all blaming the media.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Stocky said:

    Passed three petrol station on way to the gym - all out of fuel. I hear that the closest motorway (M1) service station is out too.

    My in-laws have their 50th Anniversary Party this Saturday, with people travelling by car 100 miles each way from London, similar from Bath and 50 miles from Cambridge.

    PB brains trust: What are the chances of the Party having to be cancelled?

    Seems to me that the tankers will be in demand everywhere - who knows when the petrol stations will be replenished with fuel? I think there are many like me who haven't panic-bought fuel but will be quick off the mark should fuel become available so I can see this dragging on for weeks.

    Many in the countryside live 15 miles + from nearest petrol station - do they risk a journey on spec for fuel? I think not. Quasi-lockdown I guess.

    The problem is that the wrong kind of people are buying petrol.
    The wrong kind of people will soon have nowhere left to store it.

    In the bath, maybe.....
    The govt says that if everyone just bought £20 of petrol every week as per usual we'd be fine.

    Does anyone do that?
    Yes. Last time I saw figures on this, most people do.

    I've always filled my tank in full from empty, but most people get £10 or £20 at a time. Though I don't know if cards wiping out cash has changed things.

    Its worth noting how often when you go to the pump, that the person before you at the pump stopped it at £20 or so. Its how most people normally use the pumps.
    Blimey that's interesting. How do we know this btw?
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    MaxPB said:

    I didn't realise that student loan interest rates were 6%. That's actually daylight robbery.

    Someone said earlier that early repayment was penalised - I forget whom. Is this literally true, or just the nature of the thing whereby debts are written off after n years of time or age?
    It's the latter. For most graduates, if they pay back a small proportion early, that repayment will get swallowed up in the 6% interest on the remainder and they'll have wasted it. Conversely, if you're a young lawyer earning £120K+ a year, you can pay the whole thing off early and save yourself loads in the longer term. But you need to pay it all, or substantially all, off.

    It is a tax/loan (a bit of both, really) with the most perverse attributes, and very few graduates understand it. For example, changing the interest rate would make very little difference for the vast majority of graduates, who will never pay it off anyway; for them, the interest rate only affects the notional remaining value which gets written off at the end. Reducing the interest rate would only benefit the small number of very high earners who have a sporting chance of eventually paying it off.
    Thanks. So you need a sum of the order of £10K+ to make a decent bite in the loan? - and yet most young professional persons would have much better use for that money right now. Nasty thing. Did the LDs really think that up??

    I hadn't paid much attention to it till the subject of a friend's daughter and her windfall of a (somewhat smaller) lump sum from a legacy came up in conversation. I was very surprised when my friend said he'd strongly advise her to put the money aside for a house rather than repay some of the student loan - so contrary to normal good financial advice.
    Yes, they'd be better off using the money as a deposit for a flat because any reduction in the capital amount will just get eaten up by the ridiculous 6% interest rate for no real gain. In fact the amount of money repaid may actually not go down by as much as £10k if a student were to repay a lump sum given how large loan amounts are and that 6% interest is rolled up and repayments are 9% of earnings above £27k.
  • gealbhangealbhan Posts: 2,362

    Carnyx said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    HYUFD said:

    Macron hit by an egg while campaigning but it did not smash

    https://twitter.com/PoliticsForAlI/status/1442474169355096064?s=20

    Probably caused un oeuf of a sensation, even so.
    One hopes the egg was élevé en plein air. (Or not, if one is a PBTory.)
    Otherwise the assailant will be charged with battery.
    Why is Le Pen tanking in the polls?
  • TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Stocky said:

    Passed three petrol station on way to the gym - all out of fuel. I hear that the closest motorway (M1) service station is out too.

    My in-laws have their 50th Anniversary Party this Saturday, with people travelling by car 100 miles each way from London, similar from Bath and 50 miles from Cambridge.

    PB brains trust: What are the chances of the Party having to be cancelled?

    Seems to me that the tankers will be in demand everywhere - who knows when the petrol stations will be replenished with fuel? I think there are many like me who haven't panic-bought fuel but will be quick off the mark should fuel become available so I can see this dragging on for weeks.

    Many in the countryside live 15 miles + from nearest petrol station - do they risk a journey on spec for fuel? I think not. Quasi-lockdown I guess.

    The problem is that the wrong kind of people are buying petrol.
    The wrong kind of people will soon have nowhere left to store it.

    In the bath, maybe.....
    The govt says that if everyone just bought £20 of petrol every week as per usual we'd be fine.

    Does anyone do that?
    Our piano teacher does, so it looks like she will be going back to online lessons next week, if she can't get her car filled up in the meantime.
    It'll probably be a relief not to have to put the piano in the back of her mini for a while though eh?
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    IshmaelZ said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Stocky said:

    Passed three petrol station on way to the gym - all out of fuel. I hear that the closest motorway (M1) service station is out too.

    My in-laws have their 50th Anniversary Party this Saturday, with people travelling by car 100 miles each way from London, similar from Bath and 50 miles from Cambridge.

    PB brains trust: What are the chances of the Party having to be cancelled?

    Seems to me that the tankers will be in demand everywhere - who knows when the petrol stations will be replenished with fuel? I think there are many like me who haven't panic-bought fuel but will be quick off the mark should fuel become available so I can see this dragging on for weeks.

    Many in the countryside live 15 miles + from nearest petrol station - do they risk a journey on spec for fuel? I think not. Quasi-lockdown I guess.

    The problem is that the wrong kind of people are buying petrol.
    The wrong kind of people will soon have nowhere left to store it.

    In the bath, maybe.....
    The govt says that if everyone just bought £20 of petrol every week as per usual we'd be fine.

    Does anyone do that?
    I heard a petrol station manager a couple of years ago saying the distinctive ways he could spot a recession were, fuel sales in exact multiples of £5 or £10, and sales of scratch cards went up.
    I was about to respond to PT when he said yes that is how people buy petrol that this is more a comment on the UK's economic circumstances than any fuel shortage.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835

    MaxPB said:

    Pulpstar said:

    RobD said:

    eek said:

    Phil said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Charles said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    Why should eg a successful middle aged lawyer or businessman who owns their own home be on a lower real marginal tax rate than that Film Studies graduate who has a lower income and rent to pay?
    Ooo goodie!

    Why should a middle aged supermarket check out lady subsidise the teenage son of a QC to spend 3 years drinking his way through a film studies degree?
    The middle aged supermarket checkout lady shouldn't have much tax to pay but the QC should so its the QC paying for it not the check out lady ultimately.

    I answered your question, now can you answer mine?
    I'm sure she'd notice when taxes went up to pay for the £8bn or so needed to fund it.
    If my proposal that all income were taxed at the same rate regardless of how it was taxed (so merging NI, Income Tax and graduate tax etc together) then her taxes as a worker ought to be able to go down not up. It would be those living on unearned incomes that see their taxes rise to match those of earned incomes.
    Regardless of your tax proposals, she would be paying more tax if the taxpayer had to fund the £8bn a year needed to cover tuition fees.
    The taxpayer does have to fund tuition fees as it stands.

    However as it stands even relatively low-earning but young graduates have to pay higher taxes, while even high earning older graduates don't have to pay higher taxes.

    Its pure age discrimination.
    No it doesn't, that's the whole point of tuition fees. We are talking about the difference between the current situation, and one where tuition fees are abolished. In the latter, the checkout lady would certainly notice it in her pay packet.
    No she wouldn't. Not with my proposal, indeed her taxes could go down.

    The people who benefit from the current system aren't checkout ladies, they're landlords and elderly lawyers and pensioners etc who can earn lots of income without seeing that income taxed at the same rates that others get taxed at.
    We're talking about two separate things. Regardless of whether we are using the current tax system, or your tax system, abolishing tuition fees would result in a net cost to the taxpayer of around £8bn a year.
    Which is absolutely a rounding error compared to the cost to the exchequer of ensuring the retired, landlords, inheritees etc don't pay the same rate of income tax as those actually working for their income pay.
    Just to give a sense of scale, that "rounding error" is about the same as the revenue from the new NI tax hike.
    Which again wouldn't have been needed if everyone paid the same share.

    Tax everyone on the same income the same rate, regardless of how its earned. Don't punish people for being workers, or punish them even more for being young workers.
    Yes, but regardless of what tax system you use, abolishing tuition fees will result in a net cost of £8bn, which will be a noticeable tax increase, at least based on the reaction to the NI one.
    It will only be a tax increase for those who aren't paying their share. For those who are paying their share it will be a tax cut.

    If you're going to charge for education then charge for education, but if you're going to charge based on earnings then that's income tax. Charging some different rates of income tax than others is not equitable.
    Again you are conflating your proposed tax reforms with the narrow point regarding whether or not taxpayers should pay for tuition. If taxpayers are paying for it, regardless of the system, you will be in the situation Charles described right back at the start of this thread.
    Taxpayers are already paying for it.

    Its just the taxpayers are simply only some of the taxpayers paying a tax surcharge.
    Come off it. Only graduates are paying for it, not all taxpayers.
    Come off it. Via PAYE some taxpayers are paying for it, not all graduates.
    Not all taxpayers are repaying student loans, maybe something like 20-25%? Many more taxpayers would have to foot the bill if tuition fees were abolished, including the checkout lady mentioned at the start.
    Not all graduates are paying the graduate tax.

    Taxpayers would have a fairer bill if all taxpayers were taxed the same rather than being taxed differently based upon age etc.
    Its not a tax. Its repayment of a loan.
    It is a tax.

    If I am making a loan repayment then I have a fixed amount I repay each month. If I increase my earnings, I don't suddenly start having to pay more out of PAYE as a result.

    This is a PAYE tax levied on certain people but not others. If it walks like a tax, and quacks like a tax ...
    No. Its a variable loan repayment. Its not a tax, it never was a tax.
    The student loan system is a graduate tax that is structured legally as a loan for political reasons.

    But if it walks like a tax, talks like a tax & quacks like a tax then we should call it what it is - a tax on graduates.
    It's not a tax on graduates because people like @MaxPB have earnt enough to pay it off. That wouldn't be the case were it a tax, they would need to continue paying it until they were 55 (or whatever the current end date is).

    It's also collected via tax code and PAYE because that is the easiest way to ensure it's collected.
    An alternative way of doing it (that would probably be an administrative nightmare) would be to give graduates their own tax code, with an additional tax rate to pay for their tuition. You'd raise more from high earners because they couldn't repay it, so you could probably get away with a lower rate overall.
    Balanced by the fact high earners abroad have to pay it these days ? That wouldn't be the case with a tax code.
    Considering this country has much more immigration than emigration that strikes me as a really weird reason it needs to be done this way. If it were a 1% tax paid by everyone, instead of a 9% tax paid by a few, then graduates who go abroad wouldn't pay true - but surely many more graduates who come from abroad would pay which more than makes up for it?
    Hypothecated taxes are a poor idea. They might sound good to voters but in general they are inefficient and we saw that with the idiotic 0.7% aid target. All that happened is aid money got pissed away because they had to spend it.

    I'm all for funding tertiary education properly and funding high value degrees out of general taxation, a hypothecated fund will just result in university fat cats getting rich.
    Completely agreed.

    There shouldn't be any hypothecated taxes, I was just trying to address the issue of there 'having to be a tax rise' if the graduate tax were to be abolished. That tax rise could just be set at the current threshold, if so.

    The current graduate tax system has completely screwed young graduates and warped the university sector. Its a failure, like everything else Gordon Brown ever touched it seems.
    I would add that there should be a sliding scale of state funding based on the *quality* of the degree - and find some way to assess that independent of the rest of the University sector.

    Flog crap degrees if you want. If you want me to pay for them, they better be fucking awesome.
    Lord save us from those brilliant but narrow minds who think that the only degrees that have value are the ones that are similar to their own.
    Or indeed that highly paid ones now will be in 30 years.
    I recall Geography and Computer Science being the absolute joke degree of the mid 80's. For the not bright geek.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,279
    "Brexit to blame for Britain's truck driver crisis, lectures favourite to succeed Merkel
    Olaf Scholz takes aim at UK over HGV shortfall despite Germany facing its own shortages of up to 60,000 drivers"

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/09/27/brexit-blame-britains-truck-driver-crisis-lectures-favourite/
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,279

    Is anyone still wearing a mask in England? They are a rarity in London now.

    Mostly only on crowded trains.
  • dixiedean said:

    MaxPB said:

    Pulpstar said:

    RobD said:

    eek said:

    Phil said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Charles said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    Why should eg a successful middle aged lawyer or businessman who owns their own home be on a lower real marginal tax rate than that Film Studies graduate who has a lower income and rent to pay?
    Ooo goodie!

    Why should a middle aged supermarket check out lady subsidise the teenage son of a QC to spend 3 years drinking his way through a film studies degree?
    The middle aged supermarket checkout lady shouldn't have much tax to pay but the QC should so its the QC paying for it not the check out lady ultimately.

    I answered your question, now can you answer mine?
    I'm sure she'd notice when taxes went up to pay for the £8bn or so needed to fund it.
    If my proposal that all income were taxed at the same rate regardless of how it was taxed (so merging NI, Income Tax and graduate tax etc together) then her taxes as a worker ought to be able to go down not up. It would be those living on unearned incomes that see their taxes rise to match those of earned incomes.
    Regardless of your tax proposals, she would be paying more tax if the taxpayer had to fund the £8bn a year needed to cover tuition fees.
    The taxpayer does have to fund tuition fees as it stands.

    However as it stands even relatively low-earning but young graduates have to pay higher taxes, while even high earning older graduates don't have to pay higher taxes.

    Its pure age discrimination.
    No it doesn't, that's the whole point of tuition fees. We are talking about the difference between the current situation, and one where tuition fees are abolished. In the latter, the checkout lady would certainly notice it in her pay packet.
    No she wouldn't. Not with my proposal, indeed her taxes could go down.

    The people who benefit from the current system aren't checkout ladies, they're landlords and elderly lawyers and pensioners etc who can earn lots of income without seeing that income taxed at the same rates that others get taxed at.
    We're talking about two separate things. Regardless of whether we are using the current tax system, or your tax system, abolishing tuition fees would result in a net cost to the taxpayer of around £8bn a year.
    Which is absolutely a rounding error compared to the cost to the exchequer of ensuring the retired, landlords, inheritees etc don't pay the same rate of income tax as those actually working for their income pay.
    Just to give a sense of scale, that "rounding error" is about the same as the revenue from the new NI tax hike.
    Which again wouldn't have been needed if everyone paid the same share.

    Tax everyone on the same income the same rate, regardless of how its earned. Don't punish people for being workers, or punish them even more for being young workers.
    Yes, but regardless of what tax system you use, abolishing tuition fees will result in a net cost of £8bn, which will be a noticeable tax increase, at least based on the reaction to the NI one.
    It will only be a tax increase for those who aren't paying their share. For those who are paying their share it will be a tax cut.

    If you're going to charge for education then charge for education, but if you're going to charge based on earnings then that's income tax. Charging some different rates of income tax than others is not equitable.
    Again you are conflating your proposed tax reforms with the narrow point regarding whether or not taxpayers should pay for tuition. If taxpayers are paying for it, regardless of the system, you will be in the situation Charles described right back at the start of this thread.
    Taxpayers are already paying for it.

    Its just the taxpayers are simply only some of the taxpayers paying a tax surcharge.
    Come off it. Only graduates are paying for it, not all taxpayers.
    Come off it. Via PAYE some taxpayers are paying for it, not all graduates.
    Not all taxpayers are repaying student loans, maybe something like 20-25%? Many more taxpayers would have to foot the bill if tuition fees were abolished, including the checkout lady mentioned at the start.
    Not all graduates are paying the graduate tax.

    Taxpayers would have a fairer bill if all taxpayers were taxed the same rather than being taxed differently based upon age etc.
    Its not a tax. Its repayment of a loan.
    It is a tax.

    If I am making a loan repayment then I have a fixed amount I repay each month. If I increase my earnings, I don't suddenly start having to pay more out of PAYE as a result.

    This is a PAYE tax levied on certain people but not others. If it walks like a tax, and quacks like a tax ...
    No. Its a variable loan repayment. Its not a tax, it never was a tax.
    The student loan system is a graduate tax that is structured legally as a loan for political reasons.

    But if it walks like a tax, talks like a tax & quacks like a tax then we should call it what it is - a tax on graduates.
    It's not a tax on graduates because people like @MaxPB have earnt enough to pay it off. That wouldn't be the case were it a tax, they would need to continue paying it until they were 55 (or whatever the current end date is).

    It's also collected via tax code and PAYE because that is the easiest way to ensure it's collected.
    An alternative way of doing it (that would probably be an administrative nightmare) would be to give graduates their own tax code, with an additional tax rate to pay for their tuition. You'd raise more from high earners because they couldn't repay it, so you could probably get away with a lower rate overall.
    Balanced by the fact high earners abroad have to pay it these days ? That wouldn't be the case with a tax code.
    Considering this country has much more immigration than emigration that strikes me as a really weird reason it needs to be done this way. If it were a 1% tax paid by everyone, instead of a 9% tax paid by a few, then graduates who go abroad wouldn't pay true - but surely many more graduates who come from abroad would pay which more than makes up for it?
    Hypothecated taxes are a poor idea. They might sound good to voters but in general they are inefficient and we saw that with the idiotic 0.7% aid target. All that happened is aid money got pissed away because they had to spend it.

    I'm all for funding tertiary education properly and funding high value degrees out of general taxation, a hypothecated fund will just result in university fat cats getting rich.
    Completely agreed.

    There shouldn't be any hypothecated taxes, I was just trying to address the issue of there 'having to be a tax rise' if the graduate tax were to be abolished. That tax rise could just be set at the current threshold, if so.

    The current graduate tax system has completely screwed young graduates and warped the university sector. Its a failure, like everything else Gordon Brown ever touched it seems.
    I would add that there should be a sliding scale of state funding based on the *quality* of the degree - and find some way to assess that independent of the rest of the University sector.

    Flog crap degrees if you want. If you want me to pay for them, they better be fucking awesome.
    Lord save us from those brilliant but narrow minds who think that the only degrees that have value are the ones that are similar to their own.
    Or indeed that highly paid ones now will be in 30 years.
    I recall Geography and Computer Science being the absolute joke degree of the mid 80's. For the not bright geek.
    I always thought that it was a bit absurd that the tax payer should pay for some featherbedded ex-public school boy to study Classics at Oxford........
  • pingping Posts: 3,724
    RobD said:

    Pulpstar said:

    eek said:

    MaxPB said:

    eek said:

    Phil said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Charles said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    Why should eg a successful middle aged lawyer or businessman who owns their own home be on a lower real marginal tax rate than that Film Studies graduate who has a lower income and rent to pay?
    Ooo goodie!

    Why should a middle aged supermarket check out lady subsidise the teenage son of a QC to spend 3 years drinking his way through a film studies degree?
    The middle aged supermarket checkout lady shouldn't have much tax to pay but the QC should so its the QC paying for it not the check out lady ultimately.

    I answered your question, now can you answer mine?
    I'm sure she'd notice when taxes went up to pay for the £8bn or so needed to fund it.
    If my proposal that all income were taxed at the same rate regardless of how it was taxed (so merging NI, Income Tax and graduate tax etc together) then her taxes as a worker ought to be able to go down not up. It would be those living on unearned incomes that see their taxes rise to match those of earned incomes.
    Regardless of your tax proposals, she would be paying more tax if the taxpayer had to fund the £8bn a year needed to cover tuition fees.
    The taxpayer does have to fund tuition fees as it stands.

    However as it stands even relatively low-earning but young graduates have to pay higher taxes, while even high earning older graduates don't have to pay higher taxes.

    Its pure age discrimination.
    No it doesn't, that's the whole point of tuition fees. We are talking about the difference between the current situation, and one where tuition fees are abolished. In the latter, the checkout lady would certainly notice it in her pay packet.
    No she wouldn't. Not with my proposal, indeed her taxes could go down.

    The people who benefit from the current system aren't checkout ladies, they're landlords and elderly lawyers and pensioners etc who can earn lots of income without seeing that income taxed at the same rates that others get taxed at.
    We're talking about two separate things. Regardless of whether we are using the current tax system, or your tax system, abolishing tuition fees would result in a net cost to the taxpayer of around £8bn a year.
    Which is absolutely a rounding error compared to the cost to the exchequer of ensuring the retired, landlords, inheritees etc don't pay the same rate of income tax as those actually working for their income pay.
    Just to give a sense of scale, that "rounding error" is about the same as the revenue from the new NI tax hike.
    Which again wouldn't have been needed if everyone paid the same share.

    Tax everyone on the same income the same rate, regardless of how its earned. Don't punish people for being workers, or punish them even more for being young workers.
    Yes, but regardless of what tax system you use, abolishing tuition fees will result in a net cost of £8bn, which will be a noticeable tax increase, at least based on the reaction to the NI one.
    It will only be a tax increase for those who aren't paying their share. For those who are paying their share it will be a tax cut.

    If you're going to charge for education then charge for education, but if you're going to charge based on earnings then that's income tax. Charging some different rates of income tax than others is not equitable.
    Again you are conflating your proposed tax reforms with the narrow point regarding whether or not taxpayers should pay for tuition. If taxpayers are paying for it, regardless of the system, you will be in the situation Charles described right back at the start of this thread.
    Taxpayers are already paying for it.

    Its just the taxpayers are simply only some of the taxpayers paying a tax surcharge.
    Come off it. Only graduates are paying for it, not all taxpayers.
    Come off it. Via PAYE some taxpayers are paying for it, not all graduates.
    Not all taxpayers are repaying student loans, maybe something like 20-25%? Many more taxpayers would have to foot the bill if tuition fees were abolished, including the checkout lady mentioned at the start.
    Not all graduates are paying the graduate tax.

    Taxpayers would have a fairer bill if all taxpayers were taxed the same rather than being taxed differently based upon age etc.
    Its not a tax. Its repayment of a loan.
    It is a tax.

    If I am making a loan repayment then I have a fixed amount I repay each month. If I increase my earnings, I don't suddenly start having to pay more out of PAYE as a result.

    This is a PAYE tax levied on certain people but not others. If it walks like a tax, and quacks like a tax ...
    No. Its a variable loan repayment. Its not a tax, it never was a tax.
    The student loan system is a graduate tax that is structured legally as a loan for political reasons.

    But if it walks like a tax, talks like a tax & quacks like a tax then we should call it what it is - a tax on graduates.
    It's not a tax on graduates because people like @MaxPB have earnt enough to pay it off. That wouldn't be the case were it a tax, they would need to continue paying it until they were 55 (or whatever the current end date is).
    Tbf, I went when fees were just £1k per year so my repayment was tiny compared to what we have today. I think the earnings for net repayment is something stupid like £60k for three year course and £70k for four year courses like mine.
    Which is why Boris and co are talking about bring the repayment point lower because it seems the financial tricks that were used to justify loans have finally fallen apart in ways that are too obvious to ignore.

    If it needs £60k a year to repay your loan, who really is paying the university fees of those who don't earn £60k a year. It can only be the tiller assistant who never went to Uni.
    If you have a Plan 1 student loan
    You’ll only repay when your income is over £382 a week, £1,657 a month or £19,895 a year (before tax and other deductions).

    If you have a Plan 2 student loan
    You’ll only repay when your income is over £524 a week, £2,274 a month or £27,295 a year (before tax and other deductions).

    Plan 2 was always a bit high at £27,295 I thought...
    But it was sold as such, with the higher repayment threshold - and unlike Plan 1 far more likely to have continuing payments in your late 30s onward.
    Changes should be for new loans, if the Gov't wants to move the threshold back to plan 1 levels.
    The trouble is the government has precendent on their side. The threshold was raised in 2018 from £21k without anyone complaining.

    https://www.gov.uk/guidance/previous-annual-repayment-thresholds
    The precedent was set in, iirc, 2015 by Osborne, when he froze the repayment thresholds. They were originally set to rise, again, iirc, every year with inflation.

    Osborne shoulda left things well alone. He stirred a hornets nest to pinch a few extra pennies.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,138

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    MaxPB said:

    I didn't realise that student loan interest rates were 6%. That's actually daylight robbery.

    Someone said earlier that early repayment was penalised - I forget whom. Is this literally true, or just the nature of the thing whereby debts are written off after n years of time or age?
    It's the latter. For most graduates, if they pay back a small proportion early, that repayment will get swallowed up in the 6% interest on the remainder and they'll have wasted it. Conversely, if you're a young lawyer earning £120K+ a year, you can pay the whole thing off early and save yourself loads in the longer term. But you need to pay it all, or substantially all, off.

    It is a tax/loan (a bit of both, really) with the most perverse attributes, and very few graduates understand it. For example, changing the interest rate would make very little difference for the vast majority of graduates, who will never pay it off anyway; for them, the interest rate only affects the notional remaining value which gets written off at the end. Reducing the interest rate would only benefit the small number of very high earners who have a sporting chance of eventually paying it off.
    Thanks. So you need a sum of the order of £10K+ to make a decent bite in the loan? - and yet most young professional persons would have much better use for that money right now. Nasty thing. Did the LDs really think that up??

    I hadn't paid much attention to it till the subject of a friend's daughter and her windfall of a (somewhat smaller) lump sum from a legacy came up in conversation. I was very surprised when my friend said he'd strongly advise her to put the money aside for a house rather than repay some of the student loan - so contrary to normal good financial advice.
    Yes, that was almost certainly good advice.

    By far the best source for information on Student Loans is Martin Lewis. He writes very clearly on it and the various wrinkles, for example:

    https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/students/student-loans-tuition-fees-changes/

    and

    https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/students/repay-post-2012-student-loan/
    Oh, that is absolutely excellent. Including pointing out what is specifically England and what is different in the other nations. And spotting the regressive and marginal rates of tax.

    As my friend's daughter is an arts administrator that does seem good advice from my friend indeed.
  • Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    MaxPB said:

    I didn't realise that student loan interest rates were 6%. That's actually daylight robbery.

    Someone said earlier that early repayment was penalised - I forget whom. Is this literally true, or just the nature of the thing whereby debts are written off after n years of time or age?
    It's the latter. For most graduates, if they pay back a small proportion early, that repayment will get swallowed up in the 6% interest on the remainder and they'll have wasted it. Conversely, if you're a young lawyer earning £120K+ a year, you can pay the whole thing off early and save yourself loads in the longer term. But you need to pay it all, or substantially all, off.

    It is a tax/loan (a bit of both, really) with the most perverse attributes, and very few graduates understand it. For example, changing the interest rate would make very little difference for the vast majority of graduates, who will never pay it off anyway; for them, the interest rate only affects the notional remaining value which gets written off at the end. Reducing the interest rate would only benefit the small number of very high earners who have a sporting chance of eventually paying it off.
    Thanks. So you need a sum of the order of £10K+ to make a decent bite in the loan? - and yet most young professional persons would have much better use for that money right now. Nasty thing. Did the LDs really think that up??

    I hadn't paid much attention to it till the subject of a friend's daughter and her windfall of a (somewhat smaller) lump sum from a legacy came up in conversation. I was very surprised when my friend said he'd strongly advise her to put the money aside for a house rather than repay some of the student loan - so contrary to normal good financial advice.
    Yes. It is a graduate tax in all but name, with one practical advantage and a few political advantages.

    The practical advantage is that you can't escape the tax by emigrating. The political advantages are that it isn't called a tax, and there's no pressure to charge it to graduates of earlier generations.

    It means that for most students all the normal rules of borrowing don't apply. There's no penalty to borrowing more than you need, using a lump sum to pay off a chunk of the debt is money thrown away/donated to the government, and the interest rate is irrelevant - it's set high enough to try to ensure that you can never repay all the debt and escape the tax. I shudder to think what effect this might have on that generation's attitude to normal debt.

    It's the cherry on top that a small portion of the most successful graduates will manage to repay their debt and then enjoy a lower tax rate on their income. How gloriously regressive is that?
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,614

    MaxPB said:

    Pulpstar said:

    RobD said:

    eek said:

    Phil said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Charles said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    Why should eg a successful middle aged lawyer or businessman who owns their own home be on a lower real marginal tax rate than that Film Studies graduate who has a lower income and rent to pay?
    Ooo goodie!

    Why should a middle aged supermarket check out lady subsidise the teenage son of a QC to spend 3 years drinking his way through a film studies degree?
    The middle aged supermarket checkout lady shouldn't have much tax to pay but the QC should so its the QC paying for it not the check out lady ultimately.

    I answered your question, now can you answer mine?
    I'm sure she'd notice when taxes went up to pay for the £8bn or so needed to fund it.
    If my proposal that all income were taxed at the same rate regardless of how it was taxed (so merging NI, Income Tax and graduate tax etc together) then her taxes as a worker ought to be able to go down not up. It would be those living on unearned incomes that see their taxes rise to match those of earned incomes.
    Regardless of your tax proposals, she would be paying more tax if the taxpayer had to fund the £8bn a year needed to cover tuition fees.
    The taxpayer does have to fund tuition fees as it stands.

    However as it stands even relatively low-earning but young graduates have to pay higher taxes, while even high earning older graduates don't have to pay higher taxes.

    Its pure age discrimination.
    No it doesn't, that's the whole point of tuition fees. We are talking about the difference between the current situation, and one where tuition fees are abolished. In the latter, the checkout lady would certainly notice it in her pay packet.
    No she wouldn't. Not with my proposal, indeed her taxes could go down.

    The people who benefit from the current system aren't checkout ladies, they're landlords and elderly lawyers and pensioners etc who can earn lots of income without seeing that income taxed at the same rates that others get taxed at.
    We're talking about two separate things. Regardless of whether we are using the current tax system, or your tax system, abolishing tuition fees would result in a net cost to the taxpayer of around £8bn a year.
    Which is absolutely a rounding error compared to the cost to the exchequer of ensuring the retired, landlords, inheritees etc don't pay the same rate of income tax as those actually working for their income pay.
    Just to give a sense of scale, that "rounding error" is about the same as the revenue from the new NI tax hike.
    Which again wouldn't have been needed if everyone paid the same share.

    Tax everyone on the same income the same rate, regardless of how its earned. Don't punish people for being workers, or punish them even more for being young workers.
    Yes, but regardless of what tax system you use, abolishing tuition fees will result in a net cost of £8bn, which will be a noticeable tax increase, at least based on the reaction to the NI one.
    It will only be a tax increase for those who aren't paying their share. For those who are paying their share it will be a tax cut.

    If you're going to charge for education then charge for education, but if you're going to charge based on earnings then that's income tax. Charging some different rates of income tax than others is not equitable.
    Again you are conflating your proposed tax reforms with the narrow point regarding whether or not taxpayers should pay for tuition. If taxpayers are paying for it, regardless of the system, you will be in the situation Charles described right back at the start of this thread.
    Taxpayers are already paying for it.

    Its just the taxpayers are simply only some of the taxpayers paying a tax surcharge.
    Come off it. Only graduates are paying for it, not all taxpayers.
    Come off it. Via PAYE some taxpayers are paying for it, not all graduates.
    Not all taxpayers are repaying student loans, maybe something like 20-25%? Many more taxpayers would have to foot the bill if tuition fees were abolished, including the checkout lady mentioned at the start.
    Not all graduates are paying the graduate tax.

    Taxpayers would have a fairer bill if all taxpayers were taxed the same rather than being taxed differently based upon age etc.
    Its not a tax. Its repayment of a loan.
    It is a tax.

    If I am making a loan repayment then I have a fixed amount I repay each month. If I increase my earnings, I don't suddenly start having to pay more out of PAYE as a result.

    This is a PAYE tax levied on certain people but not others. If it walks like a tax, and quacks like a tax ...
    No. Its a variable loan repayment. Its not a tax, it never was a tax.
    The student loan system is a graduate tax that is structured legally as a loan for political reasons.

    But if it walks like a tax, talks like a tax & quacks like a tax then we should call it what it is - a tax on graduates.
    It's not a tax on graduates because people like @MaxPB have earnt enough to pay it off. That wouldn't be the case were it a tax, they would need to continue paying it until they were 55 (or whatever the current end date is).

    It's also collected via tax code and PAYE because that is the easiest way to ensure it's collected.
    An alternative way of doing it (that would probably be an administrative nightmare) would be to give graduates their own tax code, with an additional tax rate to pay for their tuition. You'd raise more from high earners because they couldn't repay it, so you could probably get away with a lower rate overall.
    Balanced by the fact high earners abroad have to pay it these days ? That wouldn't be the case with a tax code.
    Considering this country has much more immigration than emigration that strikes me as a really weird reason it needs to be done this way. If it were a 1% tax paid by everyone, instead of a 9% tax paid by a few, then graduates who go abroad wouldn't pay true - but surely many more graduates who come from abroad would pay which more than makes up for it?
    Hypothecated taxes are a poor idea. They might sound good to voters but in general they are inefficient and we saw that with the idiotic 0.7% aid target. All that happened is aid money got pissed away because they had to spend it.

    I'm all for funding tertiary education properly and funding high value degrees out of general taxation, a hypothecated fund will just result in university fat cats getting rich.
    Completely agreed.

    There shouldn't be any hypothecated taxes, I was just trying to address the issue of there 'having to be a tax rise' if the graduate tax were to be abolished. That tax rise could just be set at the current threshold, if so.

    The current graduate tax system has completely screwed young graduates and warped the university sector. Its a failure, like everything else Gordon Brown ever touched it seems.
    I would add that there should be a sliding scale of state funding based on the *quality* of the degree - and find some way to assess that independent of the rest of the University sector.

    Flog crap degrees if you want. If you want me to pay for them, they better be fucking awesome.
    Lord save us from those brilliant but narrow minds who think that the only degrees that have value are the ones that are similar to their own.
    No - but they need to actually be rigorous and teach something.

    I interviewed a chap who was in his finally year of an IT degree. Predicted first. His final year project was something that my teenage daughter could have done for a hobby project in the holidays. The code he's "written" for it was broken, since he'd copied it from the Internet. And he didn't understand it.

    He'd wasted his money.

    The university in question should be burnt to the ground.
  • jonny83jonny83 Posts: 1,261

    Is anyone still wearing a mask in England? They are a rarity in London now.

    Yep, and I was the only person on a bus full (30 plus individuals)the other day.
  • MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    Pulpstar said:

    RobD said:

    eek said:

    Phil said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Charles said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    Why should eg a successful middle aged lawyer or businessman who owns their own home be on a lower real marginal tax rate than that Film Studies graduate who has a lower income and rent to pay?
    Ooo goodie!

    Why should a middle aged supermarket check out lady subsidise the teenage son of a QC to spend 3 years drinking his way through a film studies degree?
    The middle aged supermarket checkout lady shouldn't have much tax to pay but the QC should so its the QC paying for it not the check out lady ultimately.

    I answered your question, now can you answer mine?
    I'm sure she'd notice when taxes went up to pay for the £8bn or so needed to fund it.
    If my proposal that all income were taxed at the same rate regardless of how it was taxed (so merging NI, Income Tax and graduate tax etc together) then her taxes as a worker ought to be able to go down not up. It would be those living on unearned incomes that see their taxes rise to match those of earned incomes.
    Regardless of your tax proposals, she would be paying more tax if the taxpayer had to fund the £8bn a year needed to cover tuition fees.
    The taxpayer does have to fund tuition fees as it stands.

    However as it stands even relatively low-earning but young graduates have to pay higher taxes, while even high earning older graduates don't have to pay higher taxes.

    Its pure age discrimination.
    No it doesn't, that's the whole point of tuition fees. We are talking about the difference between the current situation, and one where tuition fees are abolished. In the latter, the checkout lady would certainly notice it in her pay packet.
    No she wouldn't. Not with my proposal, indeed her taxes could go down.

    The people who benefit from the current system aren't checkout ladies, they're landlords and elderly lawyers and pensioners etc who can earn lots of income without seeing that income taxed at the same rates that others get taxed at.
    We're talking about two separate things. Regardless of whether we are using the current tax system, or your tax system, abolishing tuition fees would result in a net cost to the taxpayer of around £8bn a year.
    Which is absolutely a rounding error compared to the cost to the exchequer of ensuring the retired, landlords, inheritees etc don't pay the same rate of income tax as those actually working for their income pay.
    Just to give a sense of scale, that "rounding error" is about the same as the revenue from the new NI tax hike.
    Which again wouldn't have been needed if everyone paid the same share.

    Tax everyone on the same income the same rate, regardless of how its earned. Don't punish people for being workers, or punish them even more for being young workers.
    Yes, but regardless of what tax system you use, abolishing tuition fees will result in a net cost of £8bn, which will be a noticeable tax increase, at least based on the reaction to the NI one.
    It will only be a tax increase for those who aren't paying their share. For those who are paying their share it will be a tax cut.

    If you're going to charge for education then charge for education, but if you're going to charge based on earnings then that's income tax. Charging some different rates of income tax than others is not equitable.
    Again you are conflating your proposed tax reforms with the narrow point regarding whether or not taxpayers should pay for tuition. If taxpayers are paying for it, regardless of the system, you will be in the situation Charles described right back at the start of this thread.
    Taxpayers are already paying for it.

    Its just the taxpayers are simply only some of the taxpayers paying a tax surcharge.
    Come off it. Only graduates are paying for it, not all taxpayers.
    Come off it. Via PAYE some taxpayers are paying for it, not all graduates.
    Not all taxpayers are repaying student loans, maybe something like 20-25%? Many more taxpayers would have to foot the bill if tuition fees were abolished, including the checkout lady mentioned at the start.
    Not all graduates are paying the graduate tax.

    Taxpayers would have a fairer bill if all taxpayers were taxed the same rather than being taxed differently based upon age etc.
    Its not a tax. Its repayment of a loan.
    It is a tax.

    If I am making a loan repayment then I have a fixed amount I repay each month. If I increase my earnings, I don't suddenly start having to pay more out of PAYE as a result.

    This is a PAYE tax levied on certain people but not others. If it walks like a tax, and quacks like a tax ...
    No. Its a variable loan repayment. Its not a tax, it never was a tax.
    The student loan system is a graduate tax that is structured legally as a loan for political reasons.

    But if it walks like a tax, talks like a tax & quacks like a tax then we should call it what it is - a tax on graduates.
    It's not a tax on graduates because people like @MaxPB have earnt enough to pay it off. That wouldn't be the case were it a tax, they would need to continue paying it until they were 55 (or whatever the current end date is).

    It's also collected via tax code and PAYE because that is the easiest way to ensure it's collected.
    An alternative way of doing it (that would probably be an administrative nightmare) would be to give graduates their own tax code, with an additional tax rate to pay for their tuition. You'd raise more from high earners because they couldn't repay it, so you could probably get away with a lower rate overall.
    Balanced by the fact high earners abroad have to pay it these days ? That wouldn't be the case with a tax code.
    Considering this country has much more immigration than emigration that strikes me as a really weird reason it needs to be done this way. If it were a 1% tax paid by everyone, instead of a 9% tax paid by a few, then graduates who go abroad wouldn't pay true - but surely many more graduates who come from abroad would pay which more than makes up for it?
    Hypothecated taxes are a poor idea. They might sound good to voters but in general they are inefficient and we saw that with the idiotic 0.7% aid target. All that happened is aid money got pissed away because they had to spend it.

    I'm all for funding tertiary education properly and funding high value degrees out of general taxation, a hypothecated fund will just result in university fat cats getting rich.
    Completely agreed.

    There shouldn't be any hypothecated taxes, I was just trying to address the issue of there 'having to be a tax rise' if the graduate tax were to be abolished. That tax rise could just be set at the current threshold, if so.

    The current graduate tax system has completely screwed young graduates and warped the university sector. Its a failure, like everything else Gordon Brown ever touched it seems.
    I would add that there should be a sliding scale of state funding based on the *quality* of the degree - and find some way to assess that independent of the rest of the University sector.

    Flog crap degrees if you want. If you want me to pay for them, they better be fucking awesome.
    Which is fine to a point because eventually you have some state/public advisory body picking winners. Would anyone have picked AI as a funded degree 20 years ago? Yet here we are, a nation at the forefront of AI because loads of students studied AI 20 years ago for £1k per year under the old system at UMIST and Imperial who offered courses.
    AI? Applied Inebriation? Wasn't that available at every university?
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,138
    dixiedean said:

    MaxPB said:

    Pulpstar said:

    RobD said:

    eek said:

    Phil said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Charles said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    Why should eg a successful middle aged lawyer or businessman who owns their own home be on a lower real marginal tax rate than that Film Studies graduate who has a lower income and rent to pay?
    Ooo goodie!

    Why should a middle aged supermarket check out lady subsidise the teenage son of a QC to spend 3 years drinking his way through a film studies degree?
    The middle aged supermarket checkout lady shouldn't have much tax to pay but the QC should so its the QC paying for it not the check out lady ultimately.

    I answered your question, now can you answer mine?
    I'm sure she'd notice when taxes went up to pay for the £8bn or so needed to fund it.
    If my proposal that all income were taxed at the same rate regardless of how it was taxed (so merging NI, Income Tax and graduate tax etc together) then her taxes as a worker ought to be able to go down not up. It would be those living on unearned incomes that see their taxes rise to match those of earned incomes.
    Regardless of your tax proposals, she would be paying more tax if the taxpayer had to fund the £8bn a year needed to cover tuition fees.
    The taxpayer does have to fund tuition fees as it stands.

    However as it stands even relatively low-earning but young graduates have to pay higher taxes, while even high earning older graduates don't have to pay higher taxes.

    Its pure age discrimination.
    No it doesn't, that's the whole point of tuition fees. We are talking about the difference between the current situation, and one where tuition fees are abolished. In the latter, the checkout lady would certainly notice it in her pay packet.
    No she wouldn't. Not with my proposal, indeed her taxes could go down.

    The people who benefit from the current system aren't checkout ladies, they're landlords and elderly lawyers and pensioners etc who can earn lots of income without seeing that income taxed at the same rates that others get taxed at.
    We're talking about two separate things. Regardless of whether we are using the current tax system, or your tax system, abolishing tuition fees would result in a net cost to the taxpayer of around £8bn a year.
    Which is absolutely a rounding error compared to the cost to the exchequer of ensuring the retired, landlords, inheritees etc don't pay the same rate of income tax as those actually working for their income pay.
    Just to give a sense of scale, that "rounding error" is about the same as the revenue from the new NI tax hike.
    Which again wouldn't have been needed if everyone paid the same share.

    Tax everyone on the same income the same rate, regardless of how its earned. Don't punish people for being workers, or punish them even more for being young workers.
    Yes, but regardless of what tax system you use, abolishing tuition fees will result in a net cost of £8bn, which will be a noticeable tax increase, at least based on the reaction to the NI one.
    It will only be a tax increase for those who aren't paying their share. For those who are paying their share it will be a tax cut.

    If you're going to charge for education then charge for education, but if you're going to charge based on earnings then that's income tax. Charging some different rates of income tax than others is not equitable.
    Again you are conflating your proposed tax reforms with the narrow point regarding whether or not taxpayers should pay for tuition. If taxpayers are paying for it, regardless of the system, you will be in the situation Charles described right back at the start of this thread.
    Taxpayers are already paying for it.

    Its just the taxpayers are simply only some of the taxpayers paying a tax surcharge.
    Come off it. Only graduates are paying for it, not all taxpayers.
    Come off it. Via PAYE some taxpayers are paying for it, not all graduates.
    Not all taxpayers are repaying student loans, maybe something like 20-25%? Many more taxpayers would have to foot the bill if tuition fees were abolished, including the checkout lady mentioned at the start.
    Not all graduates are paying the graduate tax.

    Taxpayers would have a fairer bill if all taxpayers were taxed the same rather than being taxed differently based upon age etc.
    Its not a tax. Its repayment of a loan.
    It is a tax.

    If I am making a loan repayment then I have a fixed amount I repay each month. If I increase my earnings, I don't suddenly start having to pay more out of PAYE as a result.

    This is a PAYE tax levied on certain people but not others. If it walks like a tax, and quacks like a tax ...
    No. Its a variable loan repayment. Its not a tax, it never was a tax.
    The student loan system is a graduate tax that is structured legally as a loan for political reasons.

    But if it walks like a tax, talks like a tax & quacks like a tax then we should call it what it is - a tax on graduates.
    It's not a tax on graduates because people like @MaxPB have earnt enough to pay it off. That wouldn't be the case were it a tax, they would need to continue paying it until they were 55 (or whatever the current end date is).

    It's also collected via tax code and PAYE because that is the easiest way to ensure it's collected.
    An alternative way of doing it (that would probably be an administrative nightmare) would be to give graduates their own tax code, with an additional tax rate to pay for their tuition. You'd raise more from high earners because they couldn't repay it, so you could probably get away with a lower rate overall.
    Balanced by the fact high earners abroad have to pay it these days ? That wouldn't be the case with a tax code.
    Considering this country has much more immigration than emigration that strikes me as a really weird reason it needs to be done this way. If it were a 1% tax paid by everyone, instead of a 9% tax paid by a few, then graduates who go abroad wouldn't pay true - but surely many more graduates who come from abroad would pay which more than makes up for it?
    Hypothecated taxes are a poor idea. They might sound good to voters but in general they are inefficient and we saw that with the idiotic 0.7% aid target. All that happened is aid money got pissed away because they had to spend it.

    I'm all for funding tertiary education properly and funding high value degrees out of general taxation, a hypothecated fund will just result in university fat cats getting rich.
    Completely agreed.

    There shouldn't be any hypothecated taxes, I was just trying to address the issue of there 'having to be a tax rise' if the graduate tax were to be abolished. That tax rise could just be set at the current threshold, if so.

    The current graduate tax system has completely screwed young graduates and warped the university sector. Its a failure, like everything else Gordon Brown ever touched it seems.
    I would add that there should be a sliding scale of state funding based on the *quality* of the degree - and find some way to assess that independent of the rest of the University sector.

    Flog crap degrees if you want. If you want me to pay for them, they better be fucking awesome.
    Lord save us from those brilliant but narrow minds who think that the only degrees that have value are the ones that are similar to their own.
    Or indeed that highly paid ones now will be in 30 years.
    I recall Geography and Computer Science being the absolute joke degree of the mid 80's. For the not bright geek.
    Someone who knows his or her IT and not only where Dover and the Straits of Hormuz are, but why they are important ...
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,735
    NEW: Nursing union @theRCN the latest to call for key workers to be prioritised for fuel.

    "We already know some nursing staff are warning their employers they may not be able to attend tomorrow...health and care workers need to be a priority or patient care will be compromised."

    https://twitter.com/PaulBrandITV/status/1442488380730662918
  • kjhkjh Posts: 10,458
    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    MaxPB said:

    I didn't realise that student loan interest rates were 6%. That's actually daylight robbery.

    Someone said earlier that early repayment was penalised - I forget whom. Is this literally true, or just the nature of the thing whereby debts are written off after n years of time or age?
    It's the latter. For most graduates, if they pay back a small proportion early, that repayment will get swallowed up in the 6% interest on the remainder and they'll have wasted it. Conversely, if you're a young lawyer earning £120K+ a year, you can pay the whole thing off early and save yourself loads in the longer term. But you need to pay it all, or substantially all, off.

    It is a tax/loan (a bit of both, really) with the most perverse attributes, and very few graduates understand it. For example, changing the interest rate would make very little difference for the vast majority of graduates, who will never pay it off anyway; for them, the interest rate only affects the notional remaining value which gets written off at the end. Reducing the interest rate would only benefit the small number of very high earners who have a sporting chance of eventually paying it off.
    Thanks. So you need a sum of the order of £10K+ to make a decent bite in the loan? - and yet most young professional persons would have much better use for that money right now. Nasty thing. Did the LDs really think that up??

    I hadn't paid much attention to it till the subject of a friend's daughter and her windfall of a (somewhat smaller) lump sum from a legacy came up in conversation. I was very surprised when my friend said he'd strongly advise her to put the money aside for a house rather than repay some of the student loan - so contrary to normal good financial advice.
    The worse thing is most new graduates are unable to have the foresight (without contacting mystic meg) to be able to make an educated guess of what they should do. If you have the money to pay it (or some of it) off you may well be paying something you didn't have to pay. If you don't pay it off you will be paying exorbitant interest. Fine if you never have to pay it all off, but a real rip off if you do.

    My son was lucky. He is capable of high earnings (although currently he is doing a PhD so isn't). He worked for a year, earned a packet and paid it off. My daughter however is in her 3rd year and wants to go into HR so I am guessing the advise will be not to pay it off, but she does have the savings to put a small dent into it, which you feel should be the right think to do, but probably isn't. It seems wrong to put youngsters into this position.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    Andy_JS said:

    Is anyone still wearing a mask in England? They are a rarity in London now.

    Mostly only on crowded trains.
    Tube wearing down to around 60% from previously 85%+ according to observation yday.

    Elsewhere, around 1-5% in London.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,138

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    MaxPB said:

    I didn't realise that student loan interest rates were 6%. That's actually daylight robbery.

    Someone said earlier that early repayment was penalised - I forget whom. Is this literally true, or just the nature of the thing whereby debts are written off after n years of time or age?
    It's the latter. For most graduates, if they pay back a small proportion early, that repayment will get swallowed up in the 6% interest on the remainder and they'll have wasted it. Conversely, if you're a young lawyer earning £120K+ a year, you can pay the whole thing off early and save yourself loads in the longer term. But you need to pay it all, or substantially all, off.

    It is a tax/loan (a bit of both, really) with the most perverse attributes, and very few graduates understand it. For example, changing the interest rate would make very little difference for the vast majority of graduates, who will never pay it off anyway; for them, the interest rate only affects the notional remaining value which gets written off at the end. Reducing the interest rate would only benefit the small number of very high earners who have a sporting chance of eventually paying it off.
    Thanks. So you need a sum of the order of £10K+ to make a decent bite in the loan? - and yet most young professional persons would have much better use for that money right now. Nasty thing. Did the LDs really think that up??

    I hadn't paid much attention to it till the subject of a friend's daughter and her windfall of a (somewhat smaller) lump sum from a legacy came up in conversation. I was very surprised when my friend said he'd strongly advise her to put the money aside for a house rather than repay some of the student loan - so contrary to normal good financial advice.
    Yes. It is a graduate tax in all but name, with one practical advantage and a few political advantages.

    The practical advantage is that you can't escape the tax by emigrating. The political advantages are that it isn't called a tax, and there's no pressure to charge it to graduates of earlier generations.

    It means that for most students all the normal rules of borrowing don't apply. There's no penalty to borrowing more than you need, using a lump sum to pay off a chunk of the debt is money thrown away/donated to the government, and the interest rate is irrelevant - it's set high enough to try to ensure that you can never repay all the debt and escape the tax. I shudder to think what effect this might have on that generation's attitude to normal debt.

    It's the cherry on top that a small portion of the most successful graduates will manage to repay their debt and then enjoy a lower tax rate on their income. How gloriously regressive is that?
    Insane. And (as I queried earlier) the LDs came up with it? Like privatising the GPO?
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 39,748
    edited September 2021
    Andy_JS said:

    "Brexit to blame for Britain's truck driver crisis, lectures favourite to succeed Merkel
    Olaf Scholz takes aim at UK over HGV shortfall despite Germany facing its own shortages of up to 60,000 drivers"

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/09/27/brexit-blame-britains-truck-driver-crisis-lectures-favourite/

    Wasn't he asked directly about this by a UK reporter, in the usual solipsistic way of UK reporters? He could have just told him (politely) to foxtrot oscar I guess.

    'Scholz insults UK by refusing to comment on the most important situation of the moment!'
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,878
    Scott_xP said:

    Halfords reveal the sale of jerry cans went up 1,656 per cent this weekend.

    In the words of She Who Must Not Be Named - people are selfish scum. I'd guess a high correlation with those who are still wiping their arses on toilet paper bought in March 2020...
  • BalrogBalrog Posts: 207
    Stocky said:

    Phil said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Charles said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    Why should eg a successful middle aged lawyer or businessman who owns their own home be on a lower real marginal tax rate than that Film Studies graduate who has a lower income and rent to pay?
    Ooo goodie!

    Why should a middle aged supermarket check out lady subsidise the teenage son of a QC to spend 3 years drinking his way through a film studies degree?
    The middle aged supermarket checkout lady shouldn't have much tax to pay but the QC should so its the QC paying for it not the check out lady ultimately.

    I answered your question, now can you answer mine?
    I'm sure she'd notice when taxes went up to pay for the £8bn or so needed to fund it.
    If my proposal that all income were taxed at the same rate regardless of how it was taxed (so merging NI, Income Tax and graduate tax etc together) then her taxes as a worker ought to be able to go down not up. It would be those living on unearned incomes that see their taxes rise to match those of earned incomes.
    Regardless of your tax proposals, she would be paying more tax if the taxpayer had to fund the £8bn a year needed to cover tuition fees.
    The taxpayer does have to fund tuition fees as it stands.

    However as it stands even relatively low-earning but young graduates have to pay higher taxes, while even high earning older graduates don't have to pay higher taxes.

    Its pure age discrimination.
    No it doesn't, that's the whole point of tuition fees. We are talking about the difference between the current situation, and one where tuition fees are abolished. In the latter, the checkout lady would certainly notice it in her pay packet.
    No she wouldn't. Not with my proposal, indeed her taxes could go down.

    The people who benefit from the current system aren't checkout ladies, they're landlords and elderly lawyers and pensioners etc who can earn lots of income without seeing that income taxed at the same rates that others get taxed at.
    We're talking about two separate things. Regardless of whether we are using the current tax system, or your tax system, abolishing tuition fees would result in a net cost to the taxpayer of around £8bn a year.
    Which is absolutely a rounding error compared to the cost to the exchequer of ensuring the retired, landlords, inheritees etc don't pay the same rate of income tax as those actually working for their income pay.
    Just to give a sense of scale, that "rounding error" is about the same as the revenue from the new NI tax hike.
    Which again wouldn't have been needed if everyone paid the same share.

    Tax everyone on the same income the same rate, regardless of how its earned. Don't punish people for being workers, or punish them even more for being young workers.
    Yes, but regardless of what tax system you use, abolishing tuition fees will result in a net cost of £8bn, which will be a noticeable tax increase, at least based on the reaction to the NI one.
    It will only be a tax increase for those who aren't paying their share. For those who are paying their share it will be a tax cut.

    If you're going to charge for education then charge for education, but if you're going to charge based on earnings then that's income tax. Charging some different rates of income tax than others is not equitable.
    Again you are conflating your proposed tax reforms with the narrow point regarding whether or not taxpayers should pay for tuition. If taxpayers are paying for it, regardless of the system, you will be in the situation Charles described right back at the start of this thread.
    Taxpayers are already paying for it.

    Its just the taxpayers are simply only some of the taxpayers paying a tax surcharge.
    Come off it. Only graduates are paying for it, not all taxpayers.
    Come off it. Via PAYE some taxpayers are paying for it, not all graduates.
    Not all taxpayers are repaying student loans, maybe something like 20-25%? Many more taxpayers would have to foot the bill if tuition fees were abolished, including the checkout lady mentioned at the start.
    Not all graduates are paying the graduate tax.

    Taxpayers would have a fairer bill if all taxpayers were taxed the same rather than being taxed differently based upon age etc.
    Its not a tax. Its repayment of a loan.
    It is a tax.

    If I am making a loan repayment then I have a fixed amount I repay each month. If I increase my earnings, I don't suddenly start having to pay more out of PAYE as a result.

    This is a PAYE tax levied on certain people but not others. If it walks like a tax, and quacks like a tax ...
    No. Its a variable loan repayment. Its not a tax, it never was a tax.
    The student loan system is a graduate tax that is structured legally as a loan for political reasons.

    But if it walks like a tax, talks like a tax & quacks like a tax then we should call it what it is - a tax on graduates.
    Correct, unfortunately named a loan but is it a much more a graduate tax (in effect a higher rate of income tax) - with a novel features.

    1) you are not put on to the higher tax rate until your income* is above a certain figure; 2) the liability to incur the higher tax rate ends at 30 years (or earlier death) and 3) you have the opportunity to buy yourself out of the punitive tax rate early by paying a lump sum (you would be mad to do so).

    * note that it is taxable income that counts not earnings. So, for mature student, pensions can be liable and for everyone investment income too.

    What appals me about the Chancellor's musing is the retrospective nature of the changes he contemplates. Any changes should apply to new students only, or it is retrospective taxation.
    Why would you be mad to buy yourself out? I give my kids the money rather them taking out a student loan as an extra 9% tax for half their lives seems unfair when I got a grant.

    If they made it into a real graduate tax and applied it to everyone that has a degree, including those that went through universities before the loan scheme, I wonder what the rate would be...
  • Pulpstar said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Stocky said:

    Passed three petrol station on way to the gym - all out of fuel. I hear that the closest motorway (M1) service station is out too.

    My in-laws have their 50th Anniversary Party this Saturday, with people travelling by car 100 miles each way from London, similar from Bath and 50 miles from Cambridge.

    PB brains trust: What are the chances of the Party having to be cancelled?

    Seems to me that the tankers will be in demand everywhere - who knows when the petrol stations will be replenished with fuel? I think there are many like me who haven't panic-bought fuel but will be quick off the mark should fuel become available so I can see this dragging on for weeks.

    Many in the countryside live 15 miles + from nearest petrol station - do they risk a journey on spec for fuel? I think not. Quasi-lockdown I guess.

    The problem is that the wrong kind of people are buying petrol.
    The wrong kind of people will soon have nowhere left to store it.

    In the bath, maybe.....
    The govt says that if everyone just bought £20 of petrol every week as per usual we'd be fine.

    Does anyone do that?
    No. Always run to 1/4 of tank to yellow light then fill.
    My dad always said never let it get to the yellow light - if you let it go too low, you can start pulling in some of the sludge and contaminants that settle over time to the bottom of the tank. Don't know if that's still the case for modern cars and petrol supplies, though.

    At uni I was surprised a friend always let his car get down to the red light, and would then put a fiver's worth in (this was early 1990s). That was all he could afford at any one time. I guess many people don't want to have fifty or sixty pounds lying in their petrol tank for weeks, when it could be feeding their family...

    (I remember seeing a JCB's diesel tank that needed welding. We drained it and then steam-cleaned the interior. There was a thick sludge at the bottom, which probably would not have helped the rust.)
  • MortimerMortimer Posts: 13,921
    edited September 2021

    Is anyone still wearing a mask in England? They are a rarity in London now.

    Really interesting contrast in the last week.

    I visited

    Scotland (enforced in supermarkets, largely adhered to in shops, ignored by 50% in 'public places' like hotels, restaurants etc).
    Ireland (didn't see any enforcement, largely adhered to everywhere, ignored by 50% in public places).
    Wales (no enforcement, no compliance at all on the Chester race train I was on from Holyhead).
    England (about 10% voluntary on public transport, else none).

    My current bug bear is clearly some restaurants etc are forcing their staff to wear. It has become almost a sign of being in the service industry now. Very concerning IMO.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,878

    Mortimer said:

    Andy_JS said:

    O/T

    Still got this really bad cold after about a week. It might be because people didn't get the usual immunity to colds last year because they were not mixing with others in the usual way.

    Yeah, same for me. The strange thing is that I can't imagine where I caught it. We were on holiday in the Lake District at the time I caught it, walking the fells during the day without meeting anyone at all other than a brief greeting to the small number of other walkers we met. The only indoor contact we had was at breakfast and dinner in the small hotel where we were staying, where everything was well socially-distanced, staff all wearing masks, and no-one coughing, sneezing or even sniffling.
    Makes me think all the performative covid theatre is in fact pretty useless at stopping transmission of respiratory viruses, and has been all along...
    The whole 2m distance thing in indoor settings is pointless. Good ventilation is what matters. Enter an empty room and you can catch a dose from the person who coughed in there 10 minutes earlier.
    Our Uni approach is exactly this - there is no distancing any more, ventilation is king. Although it will be more challenging getting the ones who feel the cold more* to keep the windows open in December...

    *Wanted to say women, but then thought it would open a vast can of worms...
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,080

    IanB2 said:

    Cookie said:

    Selebian said:

    Cookie said:

    From my observations, any panic that there was in GM is already over. I filled up on Saturday - there was a queue of five minutes or so, but only for cars with pumps on their right. The left hand pumps were all free. Which made me think the problem was more a case of an imbalance of left- and right-handed pump cars turning up at the same time.

    How does the left vs right thing work? Do manufacturers do a 50:50 split across each model, or do they make all cars within the same model either left or right to reduce costs? Presumably there is some goal to even the numbers out?
    We have the same car as our previous car (but 8 years newer) and the fuel inlet has switched from right to left - the source of much confusion the first few times I filled up the new car.
    My wife pointed out to me (after I asked her for the nth time which side the filler was on the family car) that the fuel gauge has a little arrow telling you which side. That's a Ford, was also the case in another Ford we used to have, but I'm not sure whether all cars have that.

    In most fuel stations the hoses are long enough to fill up on either side, particularly if you pull forwards a bit (never as comfortable on the far side, but normally very doable). You do have to accept everyone else looks at you as the idiot who forgot which side the filler cap was, but you don't have to queue so long.
    Yes, all cars have them. I had been driving for over 20 years before I realised that.

    In the garage I was in on Saturday, some did break ranks and fill up from the 'wrong' side - but I think most of us thought the extra wait was worth the not-looking-a-bit-awkward.


    There’s a video somewhere on YouTube full of handy tips that many people don’t know about their cars - which includes the petrol pump arrow. Another was that if you get trapped in your car and can’t open the electric windows, you can smash the glass using the seat head rest, pulled out if its socket so that you hold the soft bit and smash the glass with the two metal rods.

    Anyhow I was just passing the petrol station and of course the panic buyers were queuing back to the roundabout, snarling up the traffic. As I have to return to North Island midweek for my mother’s 90th and ferry various relatives about, I thought I should prudently pre-purchase my fuel by filling up today. So I joined the back of the queue. As we neared the entrance to the filling station there was a big notice “no diesel pumps 1,2,3,4,5 & 6” with the entire queue stretching back from pumps 7-8. The lower numbered pumps were all vacant.

    Since I wanted petrol I pulled out of the queue and drove round to pump 1 and started filling up. Of course it turned out that half the numpties waiting in line for 7 & 8 also had petrol cars who then all pulled out to pumps 2-6 - so I managed to dissolve much of the queue through being the only driver apparently able to understand the notice….
    What's the difference between a prudent pre-purchaser and a panic buyer?
    One of them is me.
  • TimSTimS Posts: 9,153
    I've got that cold too. The payback for a year and a half of my immune system getting out of practice.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,183
    Minor irritation of the afternoon:
    Middle daughter (year 5) has covid. She is fine - a bit of a headache, which goes away with calpol. At least six of her classmates also have it. So she's at home. We've lateral flowed everyone else in the house - all negative. However, Trafford public health have now changed the rules to say that siblings of children with positive tests now can't come into school until they get a negative PCR, which has to be at least three days after the test of the first child to test positive. The reason given was that Trafford apparently has one of the highest rates of covid among school age children. (I don't know if this is true - it may be, but I have seen councils blatantly lie about this in the past.)
    Now I accept that this is a much better situation than a year ago. But my beef is that covid safetyism still rules. There is still no attempt by the agencies of the state to balance the costs and benefits from actions of this sort. It's still do-everything-we-can-to-stop-it-spreading. More school will be missed, parents will need to take time off or work from home, and the overton window will be gradually shifted back towards normalisation of lockdowns. And the worse you make the consequences of testing positive (three children at home rather than one, in this case), the less likely people are to test at all.
  • Andy_JS said:

    "Brexit to blame for Britain's truck driver crisis, lectures favourite to succeed Merkel
    Olaf Scholz takes aim at UK over HGV shortfall despite Germany facing its own shortages of up to 60,000 drivers"

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/09/27/brexit-blame-britains-truck-driver-crisis-lectures-favourite/

    Wasn't he asked directly about this by a UK reporter, in the usual solipsistic way of UK reporters? He could have just told him (politely) to foxtrot oscar I guess.

    'Scholz insults UK by refusing to comment on the most important situation of the moment!'
    https://twitter.com/GermanAmbUK/status/1442485166446837761

    He was asked if he was going to "send" truck drivers to the UK.

    What does that even mean?

    He answered it the only way he could, by a couple of comments about whether they would want to go, plus a comment about the visa point post-Brexit.
  • MaxPB said:

    Pulpstar said:

    RobD said:

    eek said:

    Phil said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Charles said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    Why should eg a successful middle aged lawyer or businessman who owns their own home be on a lower real marginal tax rate than that Film Studies graduate who has a lower income and rent to pay?
    Ooo goodie!

    Why should a middle aged supermarket check out lady subsidise the teenage son of a QC to spend 3 years drinking his way through a film studies degree?
    The middle aged supermarket checkout lady shouldn't have much tax to pay but the QC should so its the QC paying for it not the check out lady ultimately.

    I answered your question, now can you answer mine?
    I'm sure she'd notice when taxes went up to pay for the £8bn or so needed to fund it.
    If my proposal that all income were taxed at the same rate regardless of how it was taxed (so merging NI, Income Tax and graduate tax etc together) then her taxes as a worker ought to be able to go down not up. It would be those living on unearned incomes that see their taxes rise to match those of earned incomes.
    Regardless of your tax proposals, she would be paying more tax if the taxpayer had to fund the £8bn a year needed to cover tuition fees.
    The taxpayer does have to fund tuition fees as it stands.

    However as it stands even relatively low-earning but young graduates have to pay higher taxes, while even high earning older graduates don't have to pay higher taxes.

    Its pure age discrimination.
    No it doesn't, that's the whole point of tuition fees. We are talking about the difference between the current situation, and one where tuition fees are abolished. In the latter, the checkout lady would certainly notice it in her pay packet.
    No she wouldn't. Not with my proposal, indeed her taxes could go down.

    The people who benefit from the current system aren't checkout ladies, they're landlords and elderly lawyers and pensioners etc who can earn lots of income without seeing that income taxed at the same rates that others get taxed at.
    We're talking about two separate things. Regardless of whether we are using the current tax system, or your tax system, abolishing tuition fees would result in a net cost to the taxpayer of around £8bn a year.
    Which is absolutely a rounding error compared to the cost to the exchequer of ensuring the retired, landlords, inheritees etc don't pay the same rate of income tax as those actually working for their income pay.
    Just to give a sense of scale, that "rounding error" is about the same as the revenue from the new NI tax hike.
    Which again wouldn't have been needed if everyone paid the same share.

    Tax everyone on the same income the same rate, regardless of how its earned. Don't punish people for being workers, or punish them even more for being young workers.
    Yes, but regardless of what tax system you use, abolishing tuition fees will result in a net cost of £8bn, which will be a noticeable tax increase, at least based on the reaction to the NI one.
    It will only be a tax increase for those who aren't paying their share. For those who are paying their share it will be a tax cut.

    If you're going to charge for education then charge for education, but if you're going to charge based on earnings then that's income tax. Charging some different rates of income tax than others is not equitable.
    Again you are conflating your proposed tax reforms with the narrow point regarding whether or not taxpayers should pay for tuition. If taxpayers are paying for it, regardless of the system, you will be in the situation Charles described right back at the start of this thread.
    Taxpayers are already paying for it.

    Its just the taxpayers are simply only some of the taxpayers paying a tax surcharge.
    Come off it. Only graduates are paying for it, not all taxpayers.
    Come off it. Via PAYE some taxpayers are paying for it, not all graduates.
    Not all taxpayers are repaying student loans, maybe something like 20-25%? Many more taxpayers would have to foot the bill if tuition fees were abolished, including the checkout lady mentioned at the start.
    Not all graduates are paying the graduate tax.

    Taxpayers would have a fairer bill if all taxpayers were taxed the same rather than being taxed differently based upon age etc.
    Its not a tax. Its repayment of a loan.
    It is a tax.

    If I am making a loan repayment then I have a fixed amount I repay each month. If I increase my earnings, I don't suddenly start having to pay more out of PAYE as a result.

    This is a PAYE tax levied on certain people but not others. If it walks like a tax, and quacks like a tax ...
    No. Its a variable loan repayment. Its not a tax, it never was a tax.
    The student loan system is a graduate tax that is structured legally as a loan for political reasons.

    But if it walks like a tax, talks like a tax & quacks like a tax then we should call it what it is - a tax on graduates.
    It's not a tax on graduates because people like @MaxPB have earnt enough to pay it off. That wouldn't be the case were it a tax, they would need to continue paying it until they were 55 (or whatever the current end date is).

    It's also collected via tax code and PAYE because that is the easiest way to ensure it's collected.
    An alternative way of doing it (that would probably be an administrative nightmare) would be to give graduates their own tax code, with an additional tax rate to pay for their tuition. You'd raise more from high earners because they couldn't repay it, so you could probably get away with a lower rate overall.
    Balanced by the fact high earners abroad have to pay it these days ? That wouldn't be the case with a tax code.
    Considering this country has much more immigration than emigration that strikes me as a really weird reason it needs to be done this way. If it were a 1% tax paid by everyone, instead of a 9% tax paid by a few, then graduates who go abroad wouldn't pay true - but surely many more graduates who come from abroad would pay which more than makes up for it?
    Hypothecated taxes are a poor idea. They might sound good to voters but in general they are inefficient and we saw that with the idiotic 0.7% aid target. All that happened is aid money got pissed away because they had to spend it.

    I'm all for funding tertiary education properly and funding high value degrees out of general taxation, a hypothecated fund will just result in university fat cats getting rich.
    Completely agreed.

    There shouldn't be any hypothecated taxes, I was just trying to address the issue of there 'having to be a tax rise' if the graduate tax were to be abolished. That tax rise could just be set at the current threshold, if so.

    The current graduate tax system has completely screwed young graduates and warped the university sector. Its a failure, like everything else Gordon Brown ever touched it seems.
    I would add that there should be a sliding scale of state funding based on the *quality* of the degree - and find some way to assess that independent of the rest of the University sector.

    Flog crap degrees if you want. If you want me to pay for them, they better be fucking awesome.
    Lord save us from those brilliant but narrow minds who think that the only degrees that have value are the ones that are similar to their own.
    No - but they need to actually be rigorous and teach something.

    I interviewed a chap who was in his finally year of an IT degree. Predicted first. His final year project was something that my teenage daughter could have done for a hobby project in the holidays. The code he's "written" for it was broken, since he'd copied it from the Internet. And he didn't understand it.

    He'd wasted his money.

    The university in question should be burnt to the ground.
    One of my interesting interviews was of a Cambridge grad who had recently graduated in the subject I had studied many years earlier at a rather less prestigious institution. To say his level of understanding was superficial was an understatement. Perhaps his college should have been razed? Is this evidence of anecdote? Discuss!

    There is a very large amount of prejudice from people who have been to certain institutions who have confirmation bias. They wish to hire in their own image. It is a big mistake.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,138
    kjh said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    MaxPB said:

    I didn't realise that student loan interest rates were 6%. That's actually daylight robbery.

    Someone said earlier that early repayment was penalised - I forget whom. Is this literally true, or just the nature of the thing whereby debts are written off after n years of time or age?
    It's the latter. For most graduates, if they pay back a small proportion early, that repayment will get swallowed up in the 6% interest on the remainder and they'll have wasted it. Conversely, if you're a young lawyer earning £120K+ a year, you can pay the whole thing off early and save yourself loads in the longer term. But you need to pay it all, or substantially all, off.

    It is a tax/loan (a bit of both, really) with the most perverse attributes, and very few graduates understand it. For example, changing the interest rate would make very little difference for the vast majority of graduates, who will never pay it off anyway; for them, the interest rate only affects the notional remaining value which gets written off at the end. Reducing the interest rate would only benefit the small number of very high earners who have a sporting chance of eventually paying it off.
    Thanks. So you need a sum of the order of £10K+ to make a decent bite in the loan? - and yet most young professional persons would have much better use for that money right now. Nasty thing. Did the LDs really think that up??

    I hadn't paid much attention to it till the subject of a friend's daughter and her windfall of a (somewhat smaller) lump sum from a legacy came up in conversation. I was very surprised when my friend said he'd strongly advise her to put the money aside for a house rather than repay some of the student loan - so contrary to normal good financial advice.
    The worse thing is most new graduates are unable to have the foresight (without contacting mystic meg) to be able to make an educated guess of what they should do. If you have the money to pay it (or some of it) off you may well be paying something you didn't have to pay. If you don't pay it off you will be paying exorbitant interest. Fine if you never have to pay it all off, but a real rip off if you do.

    My son was lucky. He is capable of high earnings (although currently he is doing a PhD so isn't). He worked for a year, earned a packet and paid it off. My daughter however is in her 3rd year and wants to go into HR so I am guessing the advise will be not to pay it off, but she does have the savings to put a small dent into it, which you feel should be the right think to do, but probably isn't. It seems wrong to put youngsters into this position.
    Indeed. The reason for my interest is that I'd been considering giving some spare cash to a young relative to pay off some of his student debt (rather than e.g. get pished or buy a house), specifically to 'reward' him for investing his time in some decent education. But what the hell sort of motivation is that!?

    On the same sort of logic, why should I respond to the alumnus/alumna letters from my various almaa matres asking for support for current students? I'd be better buying a few bricks for the student bar with my name on them (appropriate enough as it is).
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603

    Andy_JS said:

    "Brexit to blame for Britain's truck driver crisis, lectures favourite to succeed Merkel
    Olaf Scholz takes aim at UK over HGV shortfall despite Germany facing its own shortages of up to 60,000 drivers"

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/09/27/brexit-blame-britains-truck-driver-crisis-lectures-favourite/

    Wasn't he asked directly about this by a UK reporter, in the usual solipsistic way of UK reporters? He could have just told him (politely) to foxtrot oscar I guess.

    'Scholz insults UK by refusing to comment on the most important situation of the moment!'
    https://twitter.com/GermanAmbUK/status/1442485166446837761

    He was asked if he was going to "send" truck drivers to the UK.

    What does that even mean?

    He answered it the only way he could, by a couple of comments about whether they would want to go, plus a comment about the visa point post-Brexit.
    How could he even do that? Round them up and ship them off?
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,769
    Fishing said:

    rcs1000 said:

    eek said:

    I wouldn't call it persuasive....
    This video is an ad. Watch it and guess what it’s for. I’ll wait.
    https://twitter.com/gruber/status/1441457685644279819?s=20

    Spoiler - its actually 10 years old....but the attitude hasn't evolved...

    And there is an obvious get out clause that apple will use, they will just remove all sockets from the iPhone and insist on wireless charging.
    Yep -they will not put a USB-C in a phone - too big.
    If you spend any time on Hackaday, you'll find people have managed to frankengraft USB C connectors into iPhones.

    What it would mean is that there's no way iPhones could get any thinner.
    Apple have fitted USB-C onto other devices without the "crisis" of users having to use the universal standard. They won't with iPhone because they make a fortune selling licensed propriety adaptors and dongles. It has nothing to do with protecting their users and everything to do with protecting their profits.

    Anyway, however psychotic this corporate behaviour is, they aren't unique. A generation ago it was Sony making various leading edge devices. Who made you but an endless rolling line of propriety crap like Memory Stick Pro Duo.
    The psychotic corporate behaviour is enabled by much too generous patent protection. Patent life should be reduced, and limited to inventions, not just innovations.
    (Very belatedly.) I think this is spot on.

    We've forgotten that the principle of government is to help consumers. Suppliers, by and large, will take care of themselves. #
  • Andy_JS said:

    Is anyone still wearing a mask in England? They are a rarity in London now.

    Mostly only on crowded trains.
    Or in operating theatres
  • Scott_xP said:

    Halfords reveal the sale of jerry cans went up 1,656 per cent this weekend.

    Somebody is having a good crisis.
  • MaxPB said:

    Pulpstar said:

    RobD said:

    eek said:

    Phil said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Charles said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    Why should eg a successful middle aged lawyer or businessman who owns their own home be on a lower real marginal tax rate than that Film Studies graduate who has a lower income and rent to pay?
    Ooo goodie!

    Why should a middle aged supermarket check out lady subsidise the teenage son of a QC to spend 3 years drinking his way through a film studies degree?
    The middle aged supermarket checkout lady shouldn't have much tax to pay but the QC should so its the QC paying for it not the check out lady ultimately.

    I answered your question, now can you answer mine?
    I'm sure she'd notice when taxes went up to pay for the £8bn or so needed to fund it.
    If my proposal that all income were taxed at the same rate regardless of how it was taxed (so merging NI, Income Tax and graduate tax etc together) then her taxes as a worker ought to be able to go down not up. It would be those living on unearned incomes that see their taxes rise to match those of earned incomes.
    Regardless of your tax proposals, she would be paying more tax if the taxpayer had to fund the £8bn a year needed to cover tuition fees.
    The taxpayer does have to fund tuition fees as it stands.

    However as it stands even relatively low-earning but young graduates have to pay higher taxes, while even high earning older graduates don't have to pay higher taxes.

    Its pure age discrimination.
    No it doesn't, that's the whole point of tuition fees. We are talking about the difference between the current situation, and one where tuition fees are abolished. In the latter, the checkout lady would certainly notice it in her pay packet.
    No she wouldn't. Not with my proposal, indeed her taxes could go down.

    The people who benefit from the current system aren't checkout ladies, they're landlords and elderly lawyers and pensioners etc who can earn lots of income without seeing that income taxed at the same rates that others get taxed at.
    We're talking about two separate things. Regardless of whether we are using the current tax system, or your tax system, abolishing tuition fees would result in a net cost to the taxpayer of around £8bn a year.
    Which is absolutely a rounding error compared to the cost to the exchequer of ensuring the retired, landlords, inheritees etc don't pay the same rate of income tax as those actually working for their income pay.
    Just to give a sense of scale, that "rounding error" is about the same as the revenue from the new NI tax hike.
    Which again wouldn't have been needed if everyone paid the same share.

    Tax everyone on the same income the same rate, regardless of how its earned. Don't punish people for being workers, or punish them even more for being young workers.
    Yes, but regardless of what tax system you use, abolishing tuition fees will result in a net cost of £8bn, which will be a noticeable tax increase, at least based on the reaction to the NI one.
    It will only be a tax increase for those who aren't paying their share. For those who are paying their share it will be a tax cut.

    If you're going to charge for education then charge for education, but if you're going to charge based on earnings then that's income tax. Charging some different rates of income tax than others is not equitable.
    Again you are conflating your proposed tax reforms with the narrow point regarding whether or not taxpayers should pay for tuition. If taxpayers are paying for it, regardless of the system, you will be in the situation Charles described right back at the start of this thread.
    Taxpayers are already paying for it.

    Its just the taxpayers are simply only some of the taxpayers paying a tax surcharge.
    Come off it. Only graduates are paying for it, not all taxpayers.
    Come off it. Via PAYE some taxpayers are paying for it, not all graduates.
    Not all taxpayers are repaying student loans, maybe something like 20-25%? Many more taxpayers would have to foot the bill if tuition fees were abolished, including the checkout lady mentioned at the start.
    Not all graduates are paying the graduate tax.

    Taxpayers would have a fairer bill if all taxpayers were taxed the same rather than being taxed differently based upon age etc.
    Its not a tax. Its repayment of a loan.
    It is a tax.

    If I am making a loan repayment then I have a fixed amount I repay each month. If I increase my earnings, I don't suddenly start having to pay more out of PAYE as a result.

    This is a PAYE tax levied on certain people but not others. If it walks like a tax, and quacks like a tax ...
    No. Its a variable loan repayment. Its not a tax, it never was a tax.
    The student loan system is a graduate tax that is structured legally as a loan for political reasons.

    But if it walks like a tax, talks like a tax & quacks like a tax then we should call it what it is - a tax on graduates.
    It's not a tax on graduates because people like @MaxPB have earnt enough to pay it off. That wouldn't be the case were it a tax, they would need to continue paying it until they were 55 (or whatever the current end date is).

    It's also collected via tax code and PAYE because that is the easiest way to ensure it's collected.
    An alternative way of doing it (that would probably be an administrative nightmare) would be to give graduates their own tax code, with an additional tax rate to pay for their tuition. You'd raise more from high earners because they couldn't repay it, so you could probably get away with a lower rate overall.
    Balanced by the fact high earners abroad have to pay it these days ? That wouldn't be the case with a tax code.
    Considering this country has much more immigration than emigration that strikes me as a really weird reason it needs to be done this way. If it were a 1% tax paid by everyone, instead of a 9% tax paid by a few, then graduates who go abroad wouldn't pay true - but surely many more graduates who come from abroad would pay which more than makes up for it?
    Hypothecated taxes are a poor idea. They might sound good to voters but in general they are inefficient and we saw that with the idiotic 0.7% aid target. All that happened is aid money got pissed away because they had to spend it.

    I'm all for funding tertiary education properly and funding high value degrees out of general taxation, a hypothecated fund will just result in university fat cats getting rich.
    Completely agreed.

    There shouldn't be any hypothecated taxes, I was just trying to address the issue of there 'having to be a tax rise' if the graduate tax were to be abolished. That tax rise could just be set at the current threshold, if so.

    The current graduate tax system has completely screwed young graduates and warped the university sector. Its a failure, like everything else Gordon Brown ever touched it seems.
    I would add that there should be a sliding scale of state funding based on the *quality* of the degree - and find some way to assess that independent of the rest of the University sector.

    Flog crap degrees if you want. If you want me to pay for them, they better be fucking awesome.
    Lord save us from those brilliant but narrow minds who think that the only degrees that have value are the ones that are similar to their own.
    No - but they need to actually be rigorous and teach something.

    I interviewed a chap who was in his finally year of an IT degree. Predicted first. His final year project was something that my teenage daughter could have done for a hobby project in the holidays. The code he's "written" for it was broken, since he'd copied it from the Internet. And he didn't understand it.

    He'd wasted his money.

    The university in question should be burnt to the ground.
    One of my interesting interviews was of a Cambridge grad who had recently graduated in the subject I had studied many years earlier at a rather less prestigious institution. To say his level of understanding was superficial was an understatement. Perhaps his college should have been razed? Is this evidence of anecdote? Discuss!

    There is a very large amount of prejudice from people who have been to certain institutions who have confirmation bias. They wish to hire in their own image. It is a big mistake.
    Don't you think that if you had met your 21-year-old self, you would have regarded your level of understanding as superficial too?
  • Andy_JS said:

    "Brexit to blame for Britain's truck driver crisis, lectures favourite to succeed Merkel
    Olaf Scholz takes aim at UK over HGV shortfall despite Germany facing its own shortages of up to 60,000 drivers"

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/09/27/brexit-blame-britains-truck-driver-crisis-lectures-favourite/

    Wasn't he asked directly about this by a UK reporter, in the usual solipsistic way of UK reporters? He could have just told him (politely) to foxtrot oscar I guess.

    'Scholz insults UK by refusing to comment on the most important situation of the moment!'
    https://twitter.com/GermanAmbUK/status/1442485166446837761

    He was asked if he was going to "send" truck drivers to the UK.

    What does that even mean?

    He answered it the only way he could, by a couple of comments about whether they would want to go, plus a comment about the visa point post-Brexit.
    Ah, it was Matt Frei. Would have expected better of him.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,138

    Mortimer said:

    Andy_JS said:

    O/T

    Still got this really bad cold after about a week. It might be because people didn't get the usual immunity to colds last year because they were not mixing with others in the usual way.

    Yeah, same for me. The strange thing is that I can't imagine where I caught it. We were on holiday in the Lake District at the time I caught it, walking the fells during the day without meeting anyone at all other than a brief greeting to the small number of other walkers we met. The only indoor contact we had was at breakfast and dinner in the small hotel where we were staying, where everything was well socially-distanced, staff all wearing masks, and no-one coughing, sneezing or even sniffling.
    Makes me think all the performative covid theatre is in fact pretty useless at stopping transmission of respiratory viruses, and has been all along...
    The whole 2m distance thing in indoor settings is pointless. Good ventilation is what matters. Enter an empty room and you can catch a dose from the person who coughed in there 10 minutes earlier.
    Our Uni approach is exactly this - there is no distancing any more, ventilation is king. Although it will be more challenging getting the ones who feel the cold more* to keep the windows open in December...

    *Wanted to say women, but then thought it would open a vast can of worms...
    Your phrasing is correct. Probably correlation thing anyway. The ones who feel the cold more are going to tend to be smaller, slimmer, less fat, etc. Ergo smaller volume/surface area ratio. Though ISTR women are actually better at coping with heat loss weight for weight.

    Of course, not so many males wear skirts etc. (except in Scotland, and those are thick wool and worn with long woolly socks).
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,769
    MaxPB said:

    Andy_JS said:

    "Brexit to blame for Britain's truck driver crisis, lectures favourite to succeed Merkel
    Olaf Scholz takes aim at UK over HGV shortfall despite Germany facing its own shortages of up to 60,000 drivers"

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/09/27/brexit-blame-britains-truck-driver-crisis-lectures-favourite/

    Wasn't he asked directly about this by a UK reporter, in the usual solipsistic way of UK reporters? He could have just told him (politely) to foxtrot oscar I guess.

    'Scholz insults UK by refusing to comment on the most important situation of the moment!'
    https://twitter.com/GermanAmbUK/status/1442485166446837761

    He was asked if he was going to "send" truck drivers to the UK.

    What does that even mean?

    He answered it the only way he could, by a couple of comments about whether they would want to go, plus a comment about the visa point post-Brexit.
    How could he even do that? Round them up and ship them off?
    Hang on, didn't Donald Trump talk about Mexico sending their murderers and their rapists to the US? So, I presume the way it works is that the government rounds up the undesirables/HGV drivers and puts them on a plane with a one way ticket.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,614

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    Pulpstar said:

    RobD said:

    eek said:

    Phil said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Charles said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    Why should eg a successful middle aged lawyer or businessman who owns their own home be on a lower real marginal tax rate than that Film Studies graduate who has a lower income and rent to pay?
    Ooo goodie!

    Why should a middle aged supermarket check out lady subsidise the teenage son of a QC to spend 3 years drinking his way through a film studies degree?
    The middle aged supermarket checkout lady shouldn't have much tax to pay but the QC should so its the QC paying for it not the check out lady ultimately.

    I answered your question, now can you answer mine?
    I'm sure she'd notice when taxes went up to pay for the £8bn or so needed to fund it.
    If my proposal that all income were taxed at the same rate regardless of how it was taxed (so merging NI, Income Tax and graduate tax etc together) then her taxes as a worker ought to be able to go down not up. It would be those living on unearned incomes that see their taxes rise to match those of earned incomes.
    Regardless of your tax proposals, she would be paying more tax if the taxpayer had to fund the £8bn a year needed to cover tuition fees.
    The taxpayer does have to fund tuition fees as it stands.

    However as it stands even relatively low-earning but young graduates have to pay higher taxes, while even high earning older graduates don't have to pay higher taxes.

    Its pure age discrimination.
    No it doesn't, that's the whole point of tuition fees. We are talking about the difference between the current situation, and one where tuition fees are abolished. In the latter, the checkout lady would certainly notice it in her pay packet.
    No she wouldn't. Not with my proposal, indeed her taxes could go down.

    The people who benefit from the current system aren't checkout ladies, they're landlords and elderly lawyers and pensioners etc who can earn lots of income without seeing that income taxed at the same rates that others get taxed at.
    We're talking about two separate things. Regardless of whether we are using the current tax system, or your tax system, abolishing tuition fees would result in a net cost to the taxpayer of around £8bn a year.
    Which is absolutely a rounding error compared to the cost to the exchequer of ensuring the retired, landlords, inheritees etc don't pay the same rate of income tax as those actually working for their income pay.
    Just to give a sense of scale, that "rounding error" is about the same as the revenue from the new NI tax hike.
    Which again wouldn't have been needed if everyone paid the same share.

    Tax everyone on the same income the same rate, regardless of how its earned. Don't punish people for being workers, or punish them even more for being young workers.
    Yes, but regardless of what tax system you use, abolishing tuition fees will result in a net cost of £8bn, which will be a noticeable tax increase, at least based on the reaction to the NI one.
    It will only be a tax increase for those who aren't paying their share. For those who are paying their share it will be a tax cut.

    If you're going to charge for education then charge for education, but if you're going to charge based on earnings then that's income tax. Charging some different rates of income tax than others is not equitable.
    Again you are conflating your proposed tax reforms with the narrow point regarding whether or not taxpayers should pay for tuition. If taxpayers are paying for it, regardless of the system, you will be in the situation Charles described right back at the start of this thread.
    Taxpayers are already paying for it.

    Its just the taxpayers are simply only some of the taxpayers paying a tax surcharge.
    Come off it. Only graduates are paying for it, not all taxpayers.
    Come off it. Via PAYE some taxpayers are paying for it, not all graduates.
    Not all taxpayers are repaying student loans, maybe something like 20-25%? Many more taxpayers would have to foot the bill if tuition fees were abolished, including the checkout lady mentioned at the start.
    Not all graduates are paying the graduate tax.

    Taxpayers would have a fairer bill if all taxpayers were taxed the same rather than being taxed differently based upon age etc.
    Its not a tax. Its repayment of a loan.
    It is a tax.

    If I am making a loan repayment then I have a fixed amount I repay each month. If I increase my earnings, I don't suddenly start having to pay more out of PAYE as a result.

    This is a PAYE tax levied on certain people but not others. If it walks like a tax, and quacks like a tax ...
    No. Its a variable loan repayment. Its not a tax, it never was a tax.
    The student loan system is a graduate tax that is structured legally as a loan for political reasons.

    But if it walks like a tax, talks like a tax & quacks like a tax then we should call it what it is - a tax on graduates.
    It's not a tax on graduates because people like @MaxPB have earnt enough to pay it off. That wouldn't be the case were it a tax, they would need to continue paying it until they were 55 (or whatever the current end date is).

    It's also collected via tax code and PAYE because that is the easiest way to ensure it's collected.
    An alternative way of doing it (that would probably be an administrative nightmare) would be to give graduates their own tax code, with an additional tax rate to pay for their tuition. You'd raise more from high earners because they couldn't repay it, so you could probably get away with a lower rate overall.
    Balanced by the fact high earners abroad have to pay it these days ? That wouldn't be the case with a tax code.
    Considering this country has much more immigration than emigration that strikes me as a really weird reason it needs to be done this way. If it were a 1% tax paid by everyone, instead of a 9% tax paid by a few, then graduates who go abroad wouldn't pay true - but surely many more graduates who come from abroad would pay which more than makes up for it?
    Hypothecated taxes are a poor idea. They might sound good to voters but in general they are inefficient and we saw that with the idiotic 0.7% aid target. All that happened is aid money got pissed away because they had to spend it.

    I'm all for funding tertiary education properly and funding high value degrees out of general taxation, a hypothecated fund will just result in university fat cats getting rich.
    Completely agreed.

    There shouldn't be any hypothecated taxes, I was just trying to address the issue of there 'having to be a tax rise' if the graduate tax were to be abolished. That tax rise could just be set at the current threshold, if so.

    The current graduate tax system has completely screwed young graduates and warped the university sector. Its a failure, like everything else Gordon Brown ever touched it seems.
    I would add that there should be a sliding scale of state funding based on the *quality* of the degree - and find some way to assess that independent of the rest of the University sector.

    Flog crap degrees if you want. If you want me to pay for them, they better be fucking awesome.
    Which is fine to a point because eventually you have some state/public advisory body picking winners. Would anyone have picked AI as a funded degree 20 years ago? Yet here we are, a nation at the forefront of AI because loads of students studied AI 20 years ago for £1k per year under the old system at UMIST and Imperial who offered courses.
    AI? Applied Inebriation? Wasn't that available at every university?
    What matters is not the subject - but the quality of the teaching and the content of the course.

    I have no problem with degrees in Medieval French Literature - but one that leaves you unable to say anything about Medieval French Literature isn't worth anything.

    You could construct an interesting and useful degree on the subject of Surfing - geography, geology, environment, philosophy etc that would stretch the mind and actually expand your horizons. At the end of such a degree you would have demonstrated that you can absorb information, existing theories and reason answers.....

    We have universities teaching courses in maths that produce people who are useless at maths.
  • TheWhiteRabbitTheWhiteRabbit Posts: 12,387
    edited September 2021
    MaxPB said:

    Andy_JS said:

    "Brexit to blame for Britain's truck driver crisis, lectures favourite to succeed Merkel
    Olaf Scholz takes aim at UK over HGV shortfall despite Germany facing its own shortages of up to 60,000 drivers"

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/09/27/brexit-blame-britains-truck-driver-crisis-lectures-favourite/

    Wasn't he asked directly about this by a UK reporter, in the usual solipsistic way of UK reporters? He could have just told him (politely) to foxtrot oscar I guess.

    'Scholz insults UK by refusing to comment on the most important situation of the moment!'
    https://twitter.com/GermanAmbUK/status/1442485166446837761

    He was asked if he was going to "send" truck drivers to the UK.

    What does that even mean?

    He answered it the only way he could, by a couple of comments about whether they would want to go, plus a comment about the visa point post-Brexit.
    How could he even do that? Round them up and ship them off?
    To me it was a grammatical construction usually reserved for firefighters or soldiers or similar, e.g.

    Are you prepared to send firefighters to Australia to help with the wildfires?
    Are you prepared to send the Army to Kosovo to help keep the peace?
    Are you prepared to send HMS Queen Elizabeth to the South China Sea?

    Etc. Etc.
  • TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Stocky said:

    Passed three petrol station on way to the gym - all out of fuel. I hear that the closest motorway (M1) service station is out too.

    My in-laws have their 50th Anniversary Party this Saturday, with people travelling by car 100 miles each way from London, similar from Bath and 50 miles from Cambridge.

    PB brains trust: What are the chances of the Party having to be cancelled?

    Seems to me that the tankers will be in demand everywhere - who knows when the petrol stations will be replenished with fuel? I think there are many like me who haven't panic-bought fuel but will be quick off the mark should fuel become available so I can see this dragging on for weeks.

    Many in the countryside live 15 miles + from nearest petrol station - do they risk a journey on spec for fuel? I think not. Quasi-lockdown I guess.

    The problem is that the wrong kind of people are buying petrol.
    The wrong kind of people will soon have nowhere left to store it.

    In the bath, maybe.....
    The govt says that if everyone just bought £20 of petrol every week as per usual we'd be fine.

    Does anyone do that?
    Yes. Last time I saw figures on this, most people do.

    I've always filled my tank in full from empty, but most people get £10 or £20 at a time. Though I don't know if cards wiping out cash has changed things.

    Its worth noting how often when you go to the pump, that the person before you at the pump stopped it at £20 or so. Its how most people normally use the pumps.
    Blimey that's interesting. How do we know this btw?
    People collate and publish all sorts of random data. I can't remember how or where I read it but it struck me as so interesting I remembered it.

    I think it was in a discussion of cash and card transactions. Essentially people historically tended to buy fuel rounded to a bank note. Now remarkably even people paying on card still do it.

    I'm not sure if it's economic or psychological but a lot of people do it. Most in fact last I saw. One reason such a large panic is so immediately possible, as most people don't normally fill their tanks.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,056
    dixiedean said:

    Stocky said:

    Passed three petrol station on way to the gym - all out of fuel. I hear that the closest motorway (M1) service station is out too.

    My in-laws have their 50th Anniversary Party this Saturday, with people travelling by car 100 miles each way from London, similar from Bath and 50 miles from Cambridge.

    PB brains trust: What are the chances of the Party having to be cancelled?

    Seems to me that the tankers will be in demand everywhere - who knows when the petrol stations will be replenished with fuel? I think there are many like me who haven't panic-bought fuel but will be quick off the mark should fuel become available so I can see this dragging on for weeks.

    Many in the countryside live 15 miles + from nearest petrol station - do they risk a journey on spec for fuel? I think not. Quasi-lockdown I guess.

    Perhaps it's just a cunning plan to get everyone back on public transport?
    That Boris! He's a 3-D chess genius!
    Nah, he is just converting the range-sceptics to electric vehicles.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,614

    MaxPB said:

    Pulpstar said:

    RobD said:

    eek said:

    Phil said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Charles said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    Why should eg a successful middle aged lawyer or businessman who owns their own home be on a lower real marginal tax rate than that Film Studies graduate who has a lower income and rent to pay?
    Ooo goodie!

    Why should a middle aged supermarket check out lady subsidise the teenage son of a QC to spend 3 years drinking his way through a film studies degree?
    The middle aged supermarket checkout lady shouldn't have much tax to pay but the QC should so its the QC paying for it not the check out lady ultimately.

    I answered your question, now can you answer mine?
    I'm sure she'd notice when taxes went up to pay for the £8bn or so needed to fund it.
    If my proposal that all income were taxed at the same rate regardless of how it was taxed (so merging NI, Income Tax and graduate tax etc together) then her taxes as a worker ought to be able to go down not up. It would be those living on unearned incomes that see their taxes rise to match those of earned incomes.
    Regardless of your tax proposals, she would be paying more tax if the taxpayer had to fund the £8bn a year needed to cover tuition fees.
    The taxpayer does have to fund tuition fees as it stands.

    However as it stands even relatively low-earning but young graduates have to pay higher taxes, while even high earning older graduates don't have to pay higher taxes.

    Its pure age discrimination.
    No it doesn't, that's the whole point of tuition fees. We are talking about the difference between the current situation, and one where tuition fees are abolished. In the latter, the checkout lady would certainly notice it in her pay packet.
    No she wouldn't. Not with my proposal, indeed her taxes could go down.

    The people who benefit from the current system aren't checkout ladies, they're landlords and elderly lawyers and pensioners etc who can earn lots of income without seeing that income taxed at the same rates that others get taxed at.
    We're talking about two separate things. Regardless of whether we are using the current tax system, or your tax system, abolishing tuition fees would result in a net cost to the taxpayer of around £8bn a year.
    Which is absolutely a rounding error compared to the cost to the exchequer of ensuring the retired, landlords, inheritees etc don't pay the same rate of income tax as those actually working for their income pay.
    Just to give a sense of scale, that "rounding error" is about the same as the revenue from the new NI tax hike.
    Which again wouldn't have been needed if everyone paid the same share.

    Tax everyone on the same income the same rate, regardless of how its earned. Don't punish people for being workers, or punish them even more for being young workers.
    Yes, but regardless of what tax system you use, abolishing tuition fees will result in a net cost of £8bn, which will be a noticeable tax increase, at least based on the reaction to the NI one.
    It will only be a tax increase for those who aren't paying their share. For those who are paying their share it will be a tax cut.

    If you're going to charge for education then charge for education, but if you're going to charge based on earnings then that's income tax. Charging some different rates of income tax than others is not equitable.
    Again you are conflating your proposed tax reforms with the narrow point regarding whether or not taxpayers should pay for tuition. If taxpayers are paying for it, regardless of the system, you will be in the situation Charles described right back at the start of this thread.
    Taxpayers are already paying for it.

    Its just the taxpayers are simply only some of the taxpayers paying a tax surcharge.
    Come off it. Only graduates are paying for it, not all taxpayers.
    Come off it. Via PAYE some taxpayers are paying for it, not all graduates.
    Not all taxpayers are repaying student loans, maybe something like 20-25%? Many more taxpayers would have to foot the bill if tuition fees were abolished, including the checkout lady mentioned at the start.
    Not all graduates are paying the graduate tax.

    Taxpayers would have a fairer bill if all taxpayers were taxed the same rather than being taxed differently based upon age etc.
    Its not a tax. Its repayment of a loan.
    It is a tax.

    If I am making a loan repayment then I have a fixed amount I repay each month. If I increase my earnings, I don't suddenly start having to pay more out of PAYE as a result.

    This is a PAYE tax levied on certain people but not others. If it walks like a tax, and quacks like a tax ...
    No. Its a variable loan repayment. Its not a tax, it never was a tax.
    The student loan system is a graduate tax that is structured legally as a loan for political reasons.

    But if it walks like a tax, talks like a tax & quacks like a tax then we should call it what it is - a tax on graduates.
    It's not a tax on graduates because people like @MaxPB have earnt enough to pay it off. That wouldn't be the case were it a tax, they would need to continue paying it until they were 55 (or whatever the current end date is).

    It's also collected via tax code and PAYE because that is the easiest way to ensure it's collected.
    An alternative way of doing it (that would probably be an administrative nightmare) would be to give graduates their own tax code, with an additional tax rate to pay for their tuition. You'd raise more from high earners because they couldn't repay it, so you could probably get away with a lower rate overall.
    Balanced by the fact high earners abroad have to pay it these days ? That wouldn't be the case with a tax code.
    Considering this country has much more immigration than emigration that strikes me as a really weird reason it needs to be done this way. If it were a 1% tax paid by everyone, instead of a 9% tax paid by a few, then graduates who go abroad wouldn't pay true - but surely many more graduates who come from abroad would pay which more than makes up for it?
    Hypothecated taxes are a poor idea. They might sound good to voters but in general they are inefficient and we saw that with the idiotic 0.7% aid target. All that happened is aid money got pissed away because they had to spend it.

    I'm all for funding tertiary education properly and funding high value degrees out of general taxation, a hypothecated fund will just result in university fat cats getting rich.
    Completely agreed.

    There shouldn't be any hypothecated taxes, I was just trying to address the issue of there 'having to be a tax rise' if the graduate tax were to be abolished. That tax rise could just be set at the current threshold, if so.

    The current graduate tax system has completely screwed young graduates and warped the university sector. Its a failure, like everything else Gordon Brown ever touched it seems.
    I would add that there should be a sliding scale of state funding based on the *quality* of the degree - and find some way to assess that independent of the rest of the University sector.

    Flog crap degrees if you want. If you want me to pay for them, they better be fucking awesome.
    Lord save us from those brilliant but narrow minds who think that the only degrees that have value are the ones that are similar to their own.
    No - but they need to actually be rigorous and teach something.

    I interviewed a chap who was in his finally year of an IT degree. Predicted first. His final year project was something that my teenage daughter could have done for a hobby project in the holidays. The code he's "written" for it was broken, since he'd copied it from the Internet. And he didn't understand it.

    He'd wasted his money.

    The university in question should be burnt to the ground.
    One of my interesting interviews was of a Cambridge grad who had recently graduated in the subject I had studied many years earlier at a rather less prestigious institution. To say his level of understanding was superficial was an understatement. Perhaps his college should have been razed? Is this evidence of anecdote? Discuss!

    There is a very large amount of prejudice from people who have been to certain institutions who have confirmation bias. They wish to hire in their own image. It is a big mistake.
    They are being paid a vast amount of money to try and impart knowledge. Giving people a first is a claim they succeeded.

    I am not expecting people to be like me. But if they have attended university for 3 years, they should have some acquaintance with the subject they thought they were studying. Otherwise, what happened?
  • Scott_xP said:

    Halfords reveal the sale of jerry cans went up 1,656 per cent this weekend.

    Somebody is having a good crisis.
    Exciting new area for the PPE grifters to get stuck in to.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,604

    Mortimer said:

    Andy_JS said:

    O/T

    Still got this really bad cold after about a week. It might be because people didn't get the usual immunity to colds last year because they were not mixing with others in the usual way.

    Yeah, same for me. The strange thing is that I can't imagine where I caught it. We were on holiday in the Lake District at the time I caught it, walking the fells during the day without meeting anyone at all other than a brief greeting to the small number of other walkers we met. The only indoor contact we had was at breakfast and dinner in the small hotel where we were staying, where everything was well socially-distanced, staff all wearing masks, and no-one coughing, sneezing or even sniffling.
    Makes me think all the performative covid theatre is in fact pretty useless at stopping transmission of respiratory viruses, and has been all along...
    The whole 2m distance thing in indoor settings is pointless. Good ventilation is what matters. Enter an empty room and you can catch a dose from the person who coughed in there 10 minutes earlier.
    Our Uni approach is exactly this - there is no distancing any more, ventilation is king. Although it will be more challenging getting the ones who feel the cold more* to keep the windows open in December...

    *Wanted to say women, but then thought it would open a vast can of worms...
    Can duly opened.

    I remember reading that this seemingly irreconcilable phenomenon had been proven by scientists.

    To my mind, it is at its most vexatious in offices in high summer: the blokes keep turning on the aircon and the girls keep turning it off. It led to several ‘heated’ staff meetings at one of my former employers!
  • MaxPB said:

    Pulpstar said:

    RobD said:

    eek said:

    Phil said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Charles said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    Why should eg a successful middle aged lawyer or businessman who owns their own home be on a lower real marginal tax rate than that Film Studies graduate who has a lower income and rent to pay?
    Ooo goodie!

    Why should a middle aged supermarket check out lady subsidise the teenage son of a QC to spend 3 years drinking his way through a film studies degree?
    The middle aged supermarket checkout lady shouldn't have much tax to pay but the QC should so its the QC paying for it not the check out lady ultimately.

    I answered your question, now can you answer mine?
    I'm sure she'd notice when taxes went up to pay for the £8bn or so needed to fund it.
    If my proposal that all income were taxed at the same rate regardless of how it was taxed (so merging NI, Income Tax and graduate tax etc together) then her taxes as a worker ought to be able to go down not up. It would be those living on unearned incomes that see their taxes rise to match those of earned incomes.
    Regardless of your tax proposals, she would be paying more tax if the taxpayer had to fund the £8bn a year needed to cover tuition fees.
    The taxpayer does have to fund tuition fees as it stands.

    However as it stands even relatively low-earning but young graduates have to pay higher taxes, while even high earning older graduates don't have to pay higher taxes.

    Its pure age discrimination.
    No it doesn't, that's the whole point of tuition fees. We are talking about the difference between the current situation, and one where tuition fees are abolished. In the latter, the checkout lady would certainly notice it in her pay packet.
    No she wouldn't. Not with my proposal, indeed her taxes could go down.

    The people who benefit from the current system aren't checkout ladies, they're landlords and elderly lawyers and pensioners etc who can earn lots of income without seeing that income taxed at the same rates that others get taxed at.
    We're talking about two separate things. Regardless of whether we are using the current tax system, or your tax system, abolishing tuition fees would result in a net cost to the taxpayer of around £8bn a year.
    Which is absolutely a rounding error compared to the cost to the exchequer of ensuring the retired, landlords, inheritees etc don't pay the same rate of income tax as those actually working for their income pay.
    Just to give a sense of scale, that "rounding error" is about the same as the revenue from the new NI tax hike.
    Which again wouldn't have been needed if everyone paid the same share.

    Tax everyone on the same income the same rate, regardless of how its earned. Don't punish people for being workers, or punish them even more for being young workers.
    Yes, but regardless of what tax system you use, abolishing tuition fees will result in a net cost of £8bn, which will be a noticeable tax increase, at least based on the reaction to the NI one.
    It will only be a tax increase for those who aren't paying their share. For those who are paying their share it will be a tax cut.

    If you're going to charge for education then charge for education, but if you're going to charge based on earnings then that's income tax. Charging some different rates of income tax than others is not equitable.
    Again you are conflating your proposed tax reforms with the narrow point regarding whether or not taxpayers should pay for tuition. If taxpayers are paying for it, regardless of the system, you will be in the situation Charles described right back at the start of this thread.
    Taxpayers are already paying for it.

    Its just the taxpayers are simply only some of the taxpayers paying a tax surcharge.
    Come off it. Only graduates are paying for it, not all taxpayers.
    Come off it. Via PAYE some taxpayers are paying for it, not all graduates.
    Not all taxpayers are repaying student loans, maybe something like 20-25%? Many more taxpayers would have to foot the bill if tuition fees were abolished, including the checkout lady mentioned at the start.
    Not all graduates are paying the graduate tax.

    Taxpayers would have a fairer bill if all taxpayers were taxed the same rather than being taxed differently based upon age etc.
    Its not a tax. Its repayment of a loan.
    It is a tax.

    If I am making a loan repayment then I have a fixed amount I repay each month. If I increase my earnings, I don't suddenly start having to pay more out of PAYE as a result.

    This is a PAYE tax levied on certain people but not others. If it walks like a tax, and quacks like a tax ...
    No. Its a variable loan repayment. Its not a tax, it never was a tax.
    The student loan system is a graduate tax that is structured legally as a loan for political reasons.

    But if it walks like a tax, talks like a tax & quacks like a tax then we should call it what it is - a tax on graduates.
    It's not a tax on graduates because people like @MaxPB have earnt enough to pay it off. That wouldn't be the case were it a tax, they would need to continue paying it until they were 55 (or whatever the current end date is).

    It's also collected via tax code and PAYE because that is the easiest way to ensure it's collected.
    An alternative way of doing it (that would probably be an administrative nightmare) would be to give graduates their own tax code, with an additional tax rate to pay for their tuition. You'd raise more from high earners because they couldn't repay it, so you could probably get away with a lower rate overall.
    Balanced by the fact high earners abroad have to pay it these days ? That wouldn't be the case with a tax code.
    Considering this country has much more immigration than emigration that strikes me as a really weird reason it needs to be done this way. If it were a 1% tax paid by everyone, instead of a 9% tax paid by a few, then graduates who go abroad wouldn't pay true - but surely many more graduates who come from abroad would pay which more than makes up for it?
    Hypothecated taxes are a poor idea. They might sound good to voters but in general they are inefficient and we saw that with the idiotic 0.7% aid target. All that happened is aid money got pissed away because they had to spend it.

    I'm all for funding tertiary education properly and funding high value degrees out of general taxation, a hypothecated fund will just result in university fat cats getting rich.
    Completely agreed.

    There shouldn't be any hypothecated taxes, I was just trying to address the issue of there 'having to be a tax rise' if the graduate tax were to be abolished. That tax rise could just be set at the current threshold, if so.

    The current graduate tax system has completely screwed young graduates and warped the university sector. Its a failure, like everything else Gordon Brown ever touched it seems.
    I would add that there should be a sliding scale of state funding based on the *quality* of the degree - and find some way to assess that independent of the rest of the University sector.

    Flog crap degrees if you want. If you want me to pay for them, they better be fucking awesome.
    Lord save us from those brilliant but narrow minds who think that the only degrees that have value are the ones that are similar to their own.
    No - but they need to actually be rigorous and teach something.

    I interviewed a chap who was in his finally year of an IT degree. Predicted first. His final year project was something that my teenage daughter could have done for a hobby project in the holidays. The code he's "written" for it was broken, since he'd copied it from the Internet. And he didn't understand it.

    He'd wasted his money.

    The university in question should be burnt to the ground.
    One of my interesting interviews was of a Cambridge grad who had recently graduated in the subject I had studied many years earlier at a rather less prestigious institution. To say his level of understanding was superficial was an understatement. Perhaps his college should have been razed? Is this evidence of anecdote? Discuss!

    There is a very large amount of prejudice from people who have been to certain institutions who have confirmation bias. They wish to hire in their own image. It is a big mistake.
    Don't you think that if you had met your 21-year-old self, you would have regarded your level of understanding as superficial too?
    In some matters perhaps, but on my scientific area of study I think I would showed a certain level of enthusiasm. This poor chap was so lacking in understanding I wondered whether he had been to the college described by Tom Sharpe in Porterhouse Blue, where wealthy but dim folk went and got people to write their essays. My point is that while Oxbridge has a high number of very clever people it does not have a monopoly, and it certainly isn't devoid of those who might have been better doing something else.
  • TOPPING said:

    Stocky said:

    Passed three petrol station on way to the gym - all out of fuel. I hear that the closest motorway (M1) service station is out too.

    My in-laws have their 50th Anniversary Party this Saturday, with people travelling by car 100 miles each way from London, similar from Bath and 50 miles from Cambridge.

    PB brains trust: What are the chances of the Party having to be cancelled?

    Seems to me that the tankers will be in demand everywhere - who knows when the petrol stations will be replenished with fuel? I think there are many like me who haven't panic-bought fuel but will be quick off the mark should fuel become available so I can see this dragging on for weeks.

    Many in the countryside live 15 miles + from nearest petrol station - do they risk a journey on spec for fuel? I think not. Quasi-lockdown I guess.

    The problem is that the wrong kind of people are buying petrol.
    The wrong kind of people will soon have nowhere left to store it.

    In the bath, maybe.....
    ...next to the coal?....
  • isamisam Posts: 40,730
    Got to say, the fuel shortage isn't like #emptyshelvesofperrier round here - big queues or No fuel is all I have encountered
  • Scott_xP said:

    Halfords reveal the sale of jerry cans went up 1,656 per cent this weekend.

    Somebody is having a good crisis.
    Exciting new area for the PPE grifters to get stuck in to.
    They could pitch for a government contract to deliver a jerry can to every home.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,138

    Mortimer said:

    Andy_JS said:

    O/T

    Still got this really bad cold after about a week. It might be because people didn't get the usual immunity to colds last year because they were not mixing with others in the usual way.

    Yeah, same for me. The strange thing is that I can't imagine where I caught it. We were on holiday in the Lake District at the time I caught it, walking the fells during the day without meeting anyone at all other than a brief greeting to the small number of other walkers we met. The only indoor contact we had was at breakfast and dinner in the small hotel where we were staying, where everything was well socially-distanced, staff all wearing masks, and no-one coughing, sneezing or even sniffling.
    Makes me think all the performative covid theatre is in fact pretty useless at stopping transmission of respiratory viruses, and has been all along...
    The whole 2m distance thing in indoor settings is pointless. Good ventilation is what matters. Enter an empty room and you can catch a dose from the person who coughed in there 10 minutes earlier.
    Our Uni approach is exactly this - there is no distancing any more, ventilation is king. Although it will be more challenging getting the ones who feel the cold more* to keep the windows open in December...

    *Wanted to say women, but then thought it would open a vast can of worms...
    Can duly opened.

    I remember reading that this seemingly irreconcilable phenomenon had been proven by scientists.

    To my mind, it is at its most vexatious in offices in high summer: the blokes keep turning on the aircon and the girls keep turning it off. It led to several ‘heated’ staff meetings at one of my former employers!
    Maybe there is a market for summer-weight kilts?
  • I wonder what the latest R&W poll will have. It is due a 5pm

    I expect a labour lead
  • Andy_JS said:

    "Brexit to blame for Britain's truck driver crisis, lectures favourite to succeed Merkel
    Olaf Scholz takes aim at UK over HGV shortfall despite Germany facing its own shortages of up to 60,000 drivers"

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/09/27/brexit-blame-britains-truck-driver-crisis-lectures-favourite/

    Wasn't he asked directly about this by a UK reporter, in the usual solipsistic way of UK reporters? He could have just told him (politely) to foxtrot oscar I guess.

    'Scholz insults UK by refusing to comment on the most important situation of the moment!'
    https://twitter.com/GermanAmbUK/status/1442485166446837761

    He was asked if he was going to "send" truck drivers to the UK.

    What does that even mean?

    He answered it the only way he could, by a couple of comments about whether they would want to go, plus a comment about the visa point post-Brexit.
    Ah, it was Matt Frei. Would have expected better of him.
    Matt Frei? Are we back to egg jokes again?
  • isamisam Posts: 40,730

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Stocky said:

    Passed three petrol station on way to the gym - all out of fuel. I hear that the closest motorway (M1) service station is out too.

    My in-laws have their 50th Anniversary Party this Saturday, with people travelling by car 100 miles each way from London, similar from Bath and 50 miles from Cambridge.

    PB brains trust: What are the chances of the Party having to be cancelled?

    Seems to me that the tankers will be in demand everywhere - who knows when the petrol stations will be replenished with fuel? I think there are many like me who haven't panic-bought fuel but will be quick off the mark should fuel become available so I can see this dragging on for weeks.

    Many in the countryside live 15 miles + from nearest petrol station - do they risk a journey on spec for fuel? I think not. Quasi-lockdown I guess.

    The problem is that the wrong kind of people are buying petrol.
    The wrong kind of people will soon have nowhere left to store it.

    In the bath, maybe.....
    The govt says that if everyone just bought £20 of petrol every week as per usual we'd be fine.

    Does anyone do that?
    Yes. Last time I saw figures on this, most people do.

    I've always filled my tank in full from empty, but most people get £10 or £20 at a time. Though I don't know if cards wiping out cash has changed things.

    Its worth noting how often when you go to the pump, that the person before you at the pump stopped it at £20 or so. Its how most people normally use the pumps.
    I do normally just chuck in £20. Or £25 if I go to £20.01. Or £30 if I go to £25.01, and so on
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842

    Mortimer said:

    Andy_JS said:

    O/T

    Still got this really bad cold after about a week. It might be because people didn't get the usual immunity to colds last year because they were not mixing with others in the usual way.

    Yeah, same for me. The strange thing is that I can't imagine where I caught it. We were on holiday in the Lake District at the time I caught it, walking the fells during the day without meeting anyone at all other than a brief greeting to the small number of other walkers we met. The only indoor contact we had was at breakfast and dinner in the small hotel where we were staying, where everything was well socially-distanced, staff all wearing masks, and no-one coughing, sneezing or even sniffling.
    Makes me think all the performative covid theatre is in fact pretty useless at stopping transmission of respiratory viruses, and has been all along...
    The whole 2m distance thing in indoor settings is pointless. Good ventilation is what matters. Enter an empty room and you can catch a dose from the person who coughed in there 10 minutes earlier.
    Our Uni approach is exactly this - there is no distancing any more, ventilation is king. Although it will be more challenging getting the ones who feel the cold more* to keep the windows open in December...

    *Wanted to say women, but then thought it would open a vast can of worms...
    Can duly opened.

    I remember reading that this seemingly irreconcilable phenomenon had been proven by scientists.

    To my mind, it is at its most vexatious in offices in high summer: the blokes keep turning on the aircon and the girls keep turning it off. It led to several ‘heated’ staff meetings at one of my former employers!
    No aircon here...
  • kjhkjh Posts: 10,458
    isam said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Stocky said:

    Passed three petrol station on way to the gym - all out of fuel. I hear that the closest motorway (M1) service station is out too.

    My in-laws have their 50th Anniversary Party this Saturday, with people travelling by car 100 miles each way from London, similar from Bath and 50 miles from Cambridge.

    PB brains trust: What are the chances of the Party having to be cancelled?

    Seems to me that the tankers will be in demand everywhere - who knows when the petrol stations will be replenished with fuel? I think there are many like me who haven't panic-bought fuel but will be quick off the mark should fuel become available so I can see this dragging on for weeks.

    Many in the countryside live 15 miles + from nearest petrol station - do they risk a journey on spec for fuel? I think not. Quasi-lockdown I guess.

    The problem is that the wrong kind of people are buying petrol.
    The wrong kind of people will soon have nowhere left to store it.

    In the bath, maybe.....
    The govt says that if everyone just bought £20 of petrol every week as per usual we'd be fine.

    Does anyone do that?
    Yes. Last time I saw figures on this, most people do.

    I've always filled my tank in full from empty, but most people get £10 or £20 at a time. Though I don't know if cards wiping out cash has changed things.

    Its worth noting how often when you go to the pump, that the person before you at the pump stopped it at £20 or so. Its how most people normally use the pumps.
    I do normally just chuck in £20. Or £25 if I go to £20.01. Or £30 if I go to £25.01, and so on
    Don't you find you eventually get very wet, smelly and scared doing this?
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,056
    edited September 2021
    isam said:

    Got to say, the fuel shortage isn't like #emptyshelvesofperrier round here - big queues or No fuel is all I have encountered

    I passed 3 fuel stations today. All sold out, with signs up.

    Roads seemed quiet, so not all bad.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835

    Pulpstar said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Stocky said:

    Passed three petrol station on way to the gym - all out of fuel. I hear that the closest motorway (M1) service station is out too.

    My in-laws have their 50th Anniversary Party this Saturday, with people travelling by car 100 miles each way from London, similar from Bath and 50 miles from Cambridge.

    PB brains trust: What are the chances of the Party having to be cancelled?

    Seems to me that the tankers will be in demand everywhere - who knows when the petrol stations will be replenished with fuel? I think there are many like me who haven't panic-bought fuel but will be quick off the mark should fuel become available so I can see this dragging on for weeks.

    Many in the countryside live 15 miles + from nearest petrol station - do they risk a journey on spec for fuel? I think not. Quasi-lockdown I guess.

    The problem is that the wrong kind of people are buying petrol.
    The wrong kind of people will soon have nowhere left to store it.

    In the bath, maybe.....
    The govt says that if everyone just bought £20 of petrol every week as per usual we'd be fine.

    Does anyone do that?
    No. Always run to 1/4 of tank to yellow light then fill.
    My dad always said never let it get to the yellow light - if you let it go too low, you can start pulling in some of the sludge and contaminants that settle over time to the bottom of the tank. Don't know if that's still the case for modern cars and petrol supplies, though.

    At uni I was surprised a friend always let his car get down to the red light, and would then put a fiver's worth in (this was early 1990s). That was all he could afford at any one time. I guess many people don't want to have fifty or sixty pounds lying in their petrol tank for weeks, when it could be feeding their family...

    (I remember seeing a JCB's diesel tank that needed welding. We drained it and then steam-cleaned the interior. There was a thick sludge at the bottom, which probably would not have helped the rust.)
    2 points I haven't seen made re everyone driving with full tanks.
    1 A big diversion of usual discretionary spending.
    2 Much worse fuel efficiency.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,878
    Random question, totally OT. I've always wondered about the camouflage paint jobs on WWII aeroplanes, such as spitfires etc. Was the camouflage pre-deteremined and the same or did the painting vary between planes?
  • Pro_RataPro_Rata Posts: 4,784
    Cookie said:

    Minor irritation of the afternoon:
    Middle daughter (year 5) has covid. She is fine - a bit of a headache, which goes away with calpol. At least six of her classmates also have it. So she's at home. We've lateral flowed everyone else in the house - all negative. However, Trafford public health have now changed the rules to say that siblings of children with positive tests now can't come into school until they get a negative PCR, which has to be at least three days after the test of the first child to test positive. The reason given was that Trafford apparently has one of the highest rates of covid among school age children. (I don't know if this is true - it may be, but I have seen councils blatantly lie about this in the past.)
    Now I accept that this is a much better situation than a year ago. But my beef is that covid safetyism still rules. There is still no attempt by the agencies of the state to balance the costs and benefits from actions of this sort. It's still do-everything-we-can-to-stop-it-spreading. More school will be missed, parents will need to take time off or work from home, and the overton window will be gradually shifted back towards normalisation of lockdowns. And the worse you make the consequences of testing positive (three children at home rather than one, in this case), the less likely people are to test at all.

    I'm sure I read somewhere recently (may have been Calderdale's advice) that the rules schools have been told by PHE is that over 5 in a class is to be classed as an 'outbreak' and that the school would be under instruction to send the class home.

    It will be interesting to see if that plays out in fact, because bubbles by stealth that only come to light when a class is sent home would be wildly unpopular if my understanding is correct. And would be another piece of evidence that the government is routinely and wantonly bullshitting us. (as I'm a little unsure of my facts here, I will stick to the subjunctive).
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,164
    dixiedean said:

    Pulpstar said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Stocky said:

    Passed three petrol station on way to the gym - all out of fuel. I hear that the closest motorway (M1) service station is out too.

    My in-laws have their 50th Anniversary Party this Saturday, with people travelling by car 100 miles each way from London, similar from Bath and 50 miles from Cambridge.

    PB brains trust: What are the chances of the Party having to be cancelled?

    Seems to me that the tankers will be in demand everywhere - who knows when the petrol stations will be replenished with fuel? I think there are many like me who haven't panic-bought fuel but will be quick off the mark should fuel become available so I can see this dragging on for weeks.

    Many in the countryside live 15 miles + from nearest petrol station - do they risk a journey on spec for fuel? I think not. Quasi-lockdown I guess.

    The problem is that the wrong kind of people are buying petrol.
    The wrong kind of people will soon have nowhere left to store it.

    In the bath, maybe.....
    The govt says that if everyone just bought £20 of petrol every week as per usual we'd be fine.

    Does anyone do that?
    No. Always run to 1/4 of tank to yellow light then fill.
    My dad always said never let it get to the yellow light - if you let it go too low, you can start pulling in some of the sludge and contaminants that settle over time to the bottom of the tank. Don't know if that's still the case for modern cars and petrol supplies, though.

    At uni I was surprised a friend always let his car get down to the red light, and would then put a fiver's worth in (this was early 1990s). That was all he could afford at any one time. I guess many people don't want to have fifty or sixty pounds lying in their petrol tank for weeks, when it could be feeding their family...

    (I remember seeing a JCB's diesel tank that needed welding. We drained it and then steam-cleaned the interior. There was a thick sludge at the bottom, which probably would not have helped the rust.)
    2 points I haven't seen made re everyone driving with full tanks.
    1 A big diversion of usual discretionary spending.
    2 Much worse fuel efficiency.
    Must be pretty marginal on number 2 these days given how heavy modern cars are.
  • dixiedean said:

    Outside Asda Llandudno

    No queue at filling station and filling as normal

    Not for long if you tell everyone!
    "I saw... its thoughts. I saw what they're planning to do. They're like locusts. They're moving from petrol station to petrol station... their whole civilization. After they've consumed every drop of petrol and diesel they move on... and we're next. Nuke 'em. Let's nuke the bastards!"
    It was a little longer when I came out but the service station closed on my way in is now open with a modest queue
  • Pulpstar said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Stocky said:

    Passed three petrol station on way to the gym - all out of fuel. I hear that the closest motorway (M1) service station is out too.

    My in-laws have their 50th Anniversary Party this Saturday, with people travelling by car 100 miles each way from London, similar from Bath and 50 miles from Cambridge.

    PB brains trust: What are the chances of the Party having to be cancelled?

    Seems to me that the tankers will be in demand everywhere - who knows when the petrol stations will be replenished with fuel? I think there are many like me who haven't panic-bought fuel but will be quick off the mark should fuel become available so I can see this dragging on for weeks.

    Many in the countryside live 15 miles + from nearest petrol station - do they risk a journey on spec for fuel? I think not. Quasi-lockdown I guess.

    The problem is that the wrong kind of people are buying petrol.
    The wrong kind of people will soon have nowhere left to store it.

    In the bath, maybe.....
    The govt says that if everyone just bought £20 of petrol every week as per usual we'd be fine.

    Does anyone do that?
    No. Always run to 1/4 of tank to yellow light then fill.
    My wife would last a year on that !!!!!!
  • Mask anecdote...

    I had to visit the vet this morning. Their blurb says that they want owners to wear a mask. So I did. However, once inside it was clear that none of the staff were masked. So next time I won't bother.

    None of the pets were masked either, btw.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835

    Andy_JS said:

    "Brexit to blame for Britain's truck driver crisis, lectures favourite to succeed Merkel
    Olaf Scholz takes aim at UK over HGV shortfall despite Germany facing its own shortages of up to 60,000 drivers"

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/09/27/brexit-blame-britains-truck-driver-crisis-lectures-favourite/

    Wasn't he asked directly about this by a UK reporter, in the usual solipsistic way of UK reporters? He could have just told him (politely) to foxtrot oscar I guess.

    'Scholz insults UK by refusing to comment on the most important situation of the moment!'
    https://twitter.com/GermanAmbUK/status/1442485166446837761

    He was asked if he was going to "send" truck drivers to the UK.

    What does that even mean?

    He answered it the only way he could, by a couple of comments about whether they would want to go, plus a comment about the visa point post-Brexit.
    But. Merkel has been ousted. Surely all will now be well with the EU?
  • isamisam Posts: 40,730
    kjh said:

    isam said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Stocky said:

    Passed three petrol station on way to the gym - all out of fuel. I hear that the closest motorway (M1) service station is out too.

    My in-laws have their 50th Anniversary Party this Saturday, with people travelling by car 100 miles each way from London, similar from Bath and 50 miles from Cambridge.

    PB brains trust: What are the chances of the Party having to be cancelled?

    Seems to me that the tankers will be in demand everywhere - who knows when the petrol stations will be replenished with fuel? I think there are many like me who haven't panic-bought fuel but will be quick off the mark should fuel become available so I can see this dragging on for weeks.

    Many in the countryside live 15 miles + from nearest petrol station - do they risk a journey on spec for fuel? I think not. Quasi-lockdown I guess.

    The problem is that the wrong kind of people are buying petrol.
    The wrong kind of people will soon have nowhere left to store it.

    In the bath, maybe.....
    The govt says that if everyone just bought £20 of petrol every week as per usual we'd be fine.

    Does anyone do that?
    Yes. Last time I saw figures on this, most people do.

    I've always filled my tank in full from empty, but most people get £10 or £20 at a time. Though I don't know if cards wiping out cash has changed things.

    Its worth noting how often when you go to the pump, that the person before you at the pump stopped it at £20 or so. Its how most people normally use the pumps.
    I do normally just chuck in £20. Or £25 if I go to £20.01. Or £30 if I go to £25.01, and so on
    Don't you find you eventually get very wet, smelly and scared doing this?
    I'm sorry, I don't follow?
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    Foxy said:

    isam said:

    Got to say, the fuel shortage isn't like #emptyshelvesofperrier round here - big queues or No fuel is all I have encountered

    I passed 3 fuel stations today. All sold out, with signs up.

    Roads seemed quiet, so not all bad.
    Yes, one of the side effects of this will be people driving less to conserve fuel having just put in a full tank. It's why by Wednesday or so everything will be back to normal.
  • Scott_xP said:

    Halfords reveal the sale of jerry cans went up 1,656 per cent this weekend.

    Somebody is having a good crisis.
    Exciting new area for the PPE grifters to get stuck in to.
    They could pitch for a government contract to deliver a jerry can to every home.
    'We cannot guarantee that these will be leak free, but this is an emergency! Any fire damage claims should be addressed to the Chinese manufacturer.'
  • MaxPB said:

    Foxy said:

    isam said:

    Got to say, the fuel shortage isn't like #emptyshelvesofperrier round here - big queues or No fuel is all I have encountered

    I passed 3 fuel stations today. All sold out, with signs up.

    Roads seemed quiet, so not all bad.
    Yes, one of the side effects of this will be people driving less to conserve fuel having just put in a full tank. It's why by Wednesday or so everything will be back to normal.
    That's the advantage of a hybrid. An overnight charge gives you just enough range to drive round for a couple of hours in the vain hope of finding an open petrol station.
  • Andy_JS said:

    "Brexit to blame for Britain's truck driver crisis, lectures favourite to succeed Merkel
    Olaf Scholz takes aim at UK over HGV shortfall despite Germany facing its own shortages of up to 60,000 drivers"

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/09/27/brexit-blame-britains-truck-driver-crisis-lectures-favourite/

    Wasn't he asked directly about this by a UK reporter, in the usual solipsistic way of UK reporters? He could have just told him (politely) to foxtrot oscar I guess.

    'Scholz insults UK by refusing to comment on the most important situation of the moment!'
    https://twitter.com/GermanAmbUK/status/1442485166446837761

    He was asked if he was going to "send" truck drivers to the UK.

    What does that even mean?

    He answered it the only way he could, by a couple of comments about whether they would want to go, plus a comment about the visa point post-Brexit.
    Ah, it was Matt Frei. Would have expected better of him.
    I think it was a light hearted input. I thought the politician answered it very well. His English is so much better than my schoolboy German.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,604
    These petrol buying anecdotes are bizarre.

    You cannot seriously be telling me you pay for anything in cash?
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    edited September 2021
    Balrog said:

    Stocky said:

    Phil said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Charles said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    Why should eg a successful middle aged lawyer or businessman who owns their own home be on a lower real marginal tax rate than that Film Studies graduate who has a lower income and rent to pay?
    Ooo goodie!

    Why should a middle aged supermarket check out lady subsidise the teenage son of a QC to spend 3 years drinking his way through a film studies degree?
    The middle aged supermarket checkout lady shouldn't have much tax to pay but the QC should so its the QC paying for it not the check out lady ultimately.

    I answered your question, now can you answer mine?
    I'm sure she'd notice when taxes went up to pay for the £8bn or so needed to fund it.
    If my proposal that all income were taxed at the same rate regardless of how it was taxed (so merging NI, Income Tax and graduate tax etc together) then her taxes as a worker ought to be able to go down not up. It would be those living on unearned incomes that see their taxes rise to match those of earned incomes.
    Regardless of your tax proposals, she would be paying more tax if the taxpayer had to fund the £8bn a year needed to cover tuition fees.
    The taxpayer does have to fund tuition fees as it stands.

    However as it stands even relatively low-earning but young graduates have to pay higher taxes, while even high earning older graduates don't have to pay higher taxes.

    Its pure age discrimination.
    No it doesn't, that's the whole point of tuition fees. We are talking about the difference between the current situation, and one where tuition fees are abolished. In the latter, the checkout lady would certainly notice it in her pay packet.
    No she wouldn't. Not with my proposal, indeed her taxes could go down.

    The people who benefit from the current system aren't checkout ladies, they're landlords and elderly lawyers and pensioners etc who can earn lots of income without seeing that income taxed at the same rates that others get taxed at.
    We're talking about two separate things. Regardless of whether we are using the current tax system, or your tax system, abolishing tuition fees would result in a net cost to the taxpayer of around £8bn a year.
    Which is absolutely a rounding error compared to the cost to the exchequer of ensuring the retired, landlords, inheritees etc don't pay the same rate of income tax as those actually working for their income pay.
    Just to give a sense of scale, that "rounding error" is about the same as the revenue from the new NI tax hike.
    Which again wouldn't have been needed if everyone paid the same share.

    Tax everyone on the same income the same rate, regardless of how its earned. Don't punish people for being workers, or punish them even more for being young workers.
    Yes, but regardless of what tax system you use, abolishing tuition fees will result in a net cost of £8bn, which will be a noticeable tax increase, at least based on the reaction to the NI one.
    It will only be a tax increase for those who aren't paying their share. For those who are paying their share it will be a tax cut.

    If you're going to charge for education then charge for education, but if you're going to charge based on earnings then that's income tax. Charging some different rates of income tax than others is not equitable.
    Again you are conflating your proposed tax reforms with the narrow point regarding whether or not taxpayers should pay for tuition. If taxpayers are paying for it, regardless of the system, you will be in the situation Charles described right back at the start of this thread.
    Taxpayers are already paying for it.

    Its just the taxpayers are simply only some of the taxpayers paying a tax surcharge.
    Come off it. Only graduates are paying for it, not all taxpayers.
    Come off it. Via PAYE some taxpayers are paying for it, not all graduates.
    Not all taxpayers are repaying student loans, maybe something like 20-25%? Many more taxpayers would have to foot the bill if tuition fees were abolished, including the checkout lady mentioned at the start.
    Not all graduates are paying the graduate tax.

    Taxpayers would have a fairer bill if all taxpayers were taxed the same rather than being taxed differently based upon age etc.
    Its not a tax. Its repayment of a loan.
    It is a tax.

    If I am making a loan repayment then I have a fixed amount I repay each month. If I increase my earnings, I don't suddenly start having to pay more out of PAYE as a result.

    This is a PAYE tax levied on certain people but not others. If it walks like a tax, and quacks like a tax ...
    No. Its a variable loan repayment. Its not a tax, it never was a tax.
    The student loan system is a graduate tax that is structured legally as a loan for political reasons.

    But if it walks like a tax, talks like a tax & quacks like a tax then we should call it what it is - a tax on graduates.
    Correct, unfortunately named a loan but is it a much more a graduate tax (in effect a higher rate of income tax) - with a novel features.

    1) you are not put on to the higher tax rate until your income* is above a certain figure; 2) the liability to incur the higher tax rate ends at 30 years (or earlier death) and 3) you have the opportunity to buy yourself out of the punitive tax rate early by paying a lump sum (you would be mad to do so).

    * note that it is taxable income that counts not earnings. So, for mature student, pensions can be liable and for everyone investment income too.

    What appals me about the Chancellor's musing is the retrospective nature of the changes he contemplates. Any changes should apply to new students only, or it is retrospective taxation.
    Why would you be mad to buy yourself out? I give my kids the money rather them taking out a student loan as an extra 9% tax for half their lives seems unfair when I got a grant.

    If they made it into a real graduate tax and applied it to everyone that has a degree, including those that went through universities before the loan scheme, I wonder what the rate would be...
    Unless they avoid taking out a penny in loans the interest charged is such that it will not be repaid and will likely increase in size at a rate that is more rapid them the repayments reduce it.

    So given that I don't have £60,000 spare cash lying around, I've adopted the more pragmatic approach of giving them £20k or so when they decide to buy a house and then sub the mortgage a bit as well if need be.
  • OK, I've looked it up and the average spend at a petrol filling station is £35:

    https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5c6ec9dde5274a0ec3c09a24/DJS_Report.pdf

    Estimates for the proportion of that amount spent in shop range from £2-5, although I think the latter includes people who didn't buy petrol.

    You're welcome.
  • AlistairMAlistairM Posts: 2,004
    Pro_Rata said:

    Cookie said:

    Minor irritation of the afternoon:
    Middle daughter (year 5) has covid. She is fine - a bit of a headache, which goes away with calpol. At least six of her classmates also have it. So she's at home. We've lateral flowed everyone else in the house - all negative. However, Trafford public health have now changed the rules to say that siblings of children with positive tests now can't come into school until they get a negative PCR, which has to be at least three days after the test of the first child to test positive. The reason given was that Trafford apparently has one of the highest rates of covid among school age children. (I don't know if this is true - it may be, but I have seen councils blatantly lie about this in the past.)
    Now I accept that this is a much better situation than a year ago. But my beef is that covid safetyism still rules. There is still no attempt by the agencies of the state to balance the costs and benefits from actions of this sort. It's still do-everything-we-can-to-stop-it-spreading. More school will be missed, parents will need to take time off or work from home, and the overton window will be gradually shifted back towards normalisation of lockdowns. And the worse you make the consequences of testing positive (three children at home rather than one, in this case), the less likely people are to test at all.

    I'm sure I read somewhere recently (may have been Calderdale's advice) that the rules schools have been told by PHE is that over 5 in a class is to be classed as an 'outbreak' and that the school would be under instruction to send the class home.

    It will be interesting to see if that plays out in fact, because bubbles by stealth that only come to light when a class is sent home would be wildly unpopular if my understanding is correct. And would be another piece of evidence that the government is routinely and wantonly bullshitting us. (as I'm a little unsure of my facts here, I will stick to the subjunctive).
    My daughter's Y8 class had 12 off with Covid last week (plus 3 where the parents no longer wanted them to go in) from one initial student with it. The rest of the class carried on as normal. Quite sensible in my view as the rest of them are highly likely to be immune.
  • isamisam Posts: 40,730
    edited September 2021

    These petrol buying anecdotes are bizarre.

    You cannot seriously be telling me you pay for anything in cash?

    Almost every job that's been done in my new house!
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,138
    edited September 2021

    Random question, totally OT. I've always wondered about the camouflage paint jobs on WWII aeroplanes, such as spitfires etc. Was the camouflage pre-deteremined and the same or did the painting vary between planes?

    Depended.

    Paint was scarce and added weight. And colour was an important recognition element (for friends as well as enemy).

    RAF was very strictly regimented. Had a basic pattern for one, two, four engined planes, and detailed drawings for each type. I think some production lines even had pre-cut rubber masks (I've seen an argument about that on one enthusiast website). At least initially, mirror image schemes on ev en and odd numbered planes. Inevitably some modification during in-service repainting, e.g. black and white left/right undersides on Spits during Battle of Britain, for identification, later replaced by sky-colour, originally mixed but standardised with time.

    Edit: as Mattw says, there were different schemes for special purposes, other than the bog standard Dark Earth, Dark Green and something on the bottom to suit night or day skies.

    Luftwaffe - basically as above but ground crews would spray on extra green mottle etc as needed. Tended to break down later in the war - basic scheme and thge crew added ad libitum.

    Russians, more or less standardised though the emphasis was on numbers out the door. US was olive drab on top and grey below mostly, or plain natural metal ot save weight.

    Japanese Air Force - varied, depended on factory.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 39,748
    edited September 2021

    Andy_JS said:

    "Brexit to blame for Britain's truck driver crisis, lectures favourite to succeed Merkel
    Olaf Scholz takes aim at UK over HGV shortfall despite Germany facing its own shortages of up to 60,000 drivers"

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/09/27/brexit-blame-britains-truck-driver-crisis-lectures-favourite/

    Wasn't he asked directly about this by a UK reporter, in the usual solipsistic way of UK reporters? He could have just told him (politely) to foxtrot oscar I guess.

    'Scholz insults UK by refusing to comment on the most important situation of the moment!'
    https://twitter.com/GermanAmbUK/status/1442485166446837761

    He was asked if he was going to "send" truck drivers to the UK.

    What does that even mean?

    He answered it the only way he could, by a couple of comments about whether they would want to go, plus a comment about the visa point post-Brexit.
    Ah, it was Matt Frei. Would have expected better of him.
    I think it was a light hearted input. I thought the politician answered it very well. His English is so much better than my schoolboy German.
    Och, probably, but the way the Telegraph has run with it is typical, and all too indicative of what a pile of shit that paper has become.
  • Does alcohol-based hand sanitiser work as a petrol substitute?
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,080
    edited September 2021

    Random question, totally OT. I've always wondered about the camouflage paint jobs on WWII aeroplanes, such as spitfires etc. Was the camouflage pre-deteremined and the same or did the painting vary between planes?

    There were a large range of predesigned schemes.

    But I see no reason why they would vary between the same model of plane in the same circumstances with the same task - eg Mosquitos in the desert.

    A Spitfire for photo recon might be pink (below), different to one flying at low level.

    More familiar with naval things, where there were literally books of camouflage schemes.


  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835
    Foxy said:

    dixiedean said:

    Stocky said:

    Passed three petrol station on way to the gym - all out of fuel. I hear that the closest motorway (M1) service station is out too.

    My in-laws have their 50th Anniversary Party this Saturday, with people travelling by car 100 miles each way from London, similar from Bath and 50 miles from Cambridge.

    PB brains trust: What are the chances of the Party having to be cancelled?

    Seems to me that the tankers will be in demand everywhere - who knows when the petrol stations will be replenished with fuel? I think there are many like me who haven't panic-bought fuel but will be quick off the mark should fuel become available so I can see this dragging on for weeks.

    Many in the countryside live 15 miles + from nearest petrol station - do they risk a journey on spec for fuel? I think not. Quasi-lockdown I guess.

    Perhaps it's just a cunning plan to get everyone back on public transport?
    That Boris! He's a 3-D chess genius!
    Nah, he is just converting the range-sceptics to electric vehicles.
    Crumbs. Hadn't thought of that. My tiny mind isn't worthy to comprehend the full range of his genius.
  • Andy_JS said:

    "Brexit to blame for Britain's truck driver crisis, lectures favourite to succeed Merkel
    Olaf Scholz takes aim at UK over HGV shortfall despite Germany facing its own shortages of up to 60,000 drivers"

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/09/27/brexit-blame-britains-truck-driver-crisis-lectures-favourite/

    Wasn't he asked directly about this by a UK reporter, in the usual solipsistic way of UK reporters? He could have just told him (politely) to foxtrot oscar I guess.

    'Scholz insults UK by refusing to comment on the most important situation of the moment!'
    https://twitter.com/GermanAmbUK/status/1442485166446837761

    He was asked if he was going to "send" truck drivers to the UK.

    What does that even mean?

    He answered it the only way he could, by a couple of comments about whether they would want to go, plus a comment about the visa point post-Brexit.
    Ah, it was Matt Frei. Would have expected better of him.
    Matt Frei? Are we back to egg jokes again?
    Still funnier than Spitting Image.
  • mwadamsmwadams Posts: 3,089

    Random question, totally OT. I've always wondered about the camouflage paint jobs on WWII aeroplanes, such as spitfires etc. Was the camouflage pre-deteremined and the same or did the painting vary between planes?

    It's quite complicated, but basically they were pre-determined.

    https://ww2aircraft.net/forum/threads/raf-markings-and-camouflage.9316/
  • FlatlanderFlatlander Posts: 3,853
    Anecdata:
    Just been out to take someone for a booster jab.

    Passed 4 petrol stations, all had petrol, none had much of a queue. No obvious signs of a crisis.
  • Random question, totally OT. I've always wondered about the camouflage paint jobs on WWII aeroplanes, such as spitfires etc. Was the camouflage pre-deteremined and the same or did the painting vary between planes?

    I suspect the camouflage was standard. Special paint I suppose, comes out of the tin in that pattern.

    :neutral:
This discussion has been closed.