How Trump could ensure the UK rejoins the EU – politicalbetting.com

bondegezou said:

HYUFD said:

bondegezou said:

HYUFD said:

Malmesbury said:

HYUFD said:

Malmesbury said:

Mexicanpete said:

Malmesbury said:

Mexicanpete said:

williamglenn said:

Malmesbury said:

williamglenn said:

kinabalu said:

williamglenn said:

kinabalu said:

williamglenn said:

bondegezou said:

The stark difference in the responses of Conservative and Reform voters in those polls tells you much about the difference in who supports each.

That’s why they embody the real political divide in British society. Labour will become an increasingly marginal relic of the 20th century.

Nonsense on stilts. The rich poor divide is only going to rise in salience as a political issue which means a party of the left will remain prominent. That doesn't have to be Labour but it's most likely to be. There's no socialist Farage on the horizon and when there is they are more likely to emerge from within Labour than from another party or a new party.

Labour can't represent the interests the working class because they reject the idea that they have any interests.

There's no lumpen "working class" but there is a crisis of inequality. Addressing this is the only way to reduce the number of people struggling in this relatively wealthy country of ours. Labour for all their flaws are the best bet on this. It's why I vote for them and why I'm a member.

This suggests that if there is a crisis, it's that the top 1% and 10% are doing better at the expense of the next 40%, but the bottom half have not seen any erosion in their share of income.

Note that, historically, revolutions of various kinds don’t come from the bottom.

The struggling portion of the middle, on the other hand…

Look at what people are spending money on.

Something the cliche about the "left behind" misses is that it's really the people in the middle who have been squeezed down by globalisation.

F*** yes! As one of the squeezed middle I can no longer afford a new BMW, so I'll have to make do with the one I have got for my daily journey to the soup kitchen.

I think you’ll find plenty of people who were sold the University Dream and now find themselves working for minimum wage plus a tiny bit. They have the fun of paying the rent from that.

Though I suppose you’ll tell us they could easily afford a BMW. If they cut back on the avocados from whole foods and the coffees from the hipster cafe on the corner.

“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

There's always the Bank of Mum and Dad or their inheritance. Just ask HY.

Why are you Tories so concerned with the debt of my children having gone to university? They should have gone down the coal mines like their Great Grandfathers before them, and known their place. A top university education should be for the elite of society and it should be free! Shouldn't it.

What about those who are earning pitiful zero hours wages and living in Rachmanesque accommodation? Do you not have a heart for them?

I’m not a Tory - haven’t voted for them in many a year.

I just listen to the complaints of those I speak to - simply turning jobs that used to be non-degree into degree jobs hasn’t made people richer. We need to try something different.

Which is why I advocate a complete merger of the university system with the apprentice/trade skills system. To start with, we get rid of the stupid prejudices between the two.

All courses become degree modules.

Next we encourage the kind of cross cultural mixing that produces new ideas - so the poetry student learns some welding. The bricklayer learns some Keats. The business grad learns about battery manufacture…

Welcome to the age of “1st from Cambridge in Tudor music and CNC operation”

Or just charge fees for degrees based on their actual graduate premium, so economics from Cambridge or law from Oxford or medicine from Imperial costs far more than studying humanities or creative arts from a lower ranked university

Tried and failed

No not tried and certainly not failed. Tuition fees are the same ie £9k whatever university you attend and whatever course you study which is ludicrous, no other OECD nation that has fees for degrees has such a ridiculous system. In the US Harvard and Yale and Stanford and MIT charge massively higher fees than lower ranked colleges to study there and law schools and medical schools and business schools also charge more

£9k is the maximum universities can charge, but it’s not what they have to charge. They can charge less.

Don’t Australia and Ireland also have the same charge irrespective of university? (Although Australia does vary that depending on the type of course.)

Yes and all of them will charge the maximum they can make. No university other than Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial and LSE should be able to charge the maximum in my view and no course other than Medicine, Law and Economics which are massively oversubscribed and with high graduate earning premiums should be able to charge the maximum tuition fee either .

Tuition fees in Australia also vary on course and university unlike us
https://www.studyin-australia.com/study-guide/cost-of-studying-in-australia-for-international-students/

It seems odd to dictate that only those 4 universities should be able to charge more. I would’ve thought that, as a Conservative, you would support a free market where every university can decide what to charge.

I note St Andrews is above Imperial in the Complete University Guide league table and second in the Guardian ranking. St Andrews is also second in the Times ranking, with Durham also above Imperial. In the THE world rankings, UCL, Edinburgh and King’s are all above LSE. Those three plus Manchester are above LSE in the QS world rankings.

There are other very oversubscribed courses, like psychology, computer science and dentistry. LSE is the most oversubscribed university, but Edinburgh is 2nd and UCL 3rd.

Electrical engineering, maths and physics have very high earning potential too.

WhisperingOracle said:

kinabalu said:

WhisperingOracle said:

Malmesbury said:

david_herdson said:

Leon said:

MattW said:

I've set up a Bluesky starter pack with a dozen people here: https://go.bsky.app/Loys5Md

I think I've added everyone who asked, but if I missed you PM me here or on Bluesky, and I'll update. I've left Alistair Meeks out, as he is not noticeably here.

I've also included several feeds around UK Politics and Parliament.

You get tabs for "who is here", "feeds", and "posts" (Which I think is for the accounts included).

For those not familiar, Bluesky pushes far less at you than Twitter, so both following and blocking tend to be more actively done. Starter Packs are to help find your way into clumps of the network than match your interests.

Bluesky is also crushingly dull. Which is a bit off-putting. No offence, but it is chock-full of people like, well, you

Going from Twitter to Bluesky is like going from a crowded, bustling pub where there's a fight in one corner but also a girl has got her tits out in the other, and there's a snug where you can buy heroin, and the landlord insists on playing vintage Led Zep and gangsta rap and projecting Leni Riefenstahl movies on the wall even as strange robots descend from the rafters and serve jellified tequila shots, to a library in a cathedral square where seven frriendly pensioners, all from Newent, discuss the history of Newent, and there's a genuinely interesting lecture, which you can actually hear, on fossil discoveries in Argentina

Escaping from the first to the second often feels like a relief. It IS a relief. But then after about half an hour you get a bit twitchy and think "fuck Newent" and you head back to the awful but brilliant pub

As you note though, the dullness is a feature rather than a bug.

Now, you may have an unusually high appetite for activity, excitement and stimulation - your life history, such as I know of it, would suggest so to me - but not everyone does want a pub like that. Me? I just want somewhere where I can get a decent drink, probably food, maybe some time at the pool table, and be able to listen to and converse with those I'm there with.

What kind of person doesn’t want heroin, jelly shots, low cost stabbing and semi-demi-fascism in their pub?

Sounds like Camden in the '80s, as I remember it

I once got throttled in a Camden pub. I beat this guy at pool with a full fluent clearance and kind of 'over celebrated', a bit like Tom Cruise in Color of Money. Turned out this guy was a 'face' who'd just got out of prison. If I hadn't had my g/f with me I think he might have been on his way back there.

Good to hear you got out the end ! I remember a mixture of good and bad, a Withnail and I paradise of idealists and small-time crooks.

Luckyguy1983 said:

Mel Stride had the mother of all shit interviews on Camilla Tominey. He actually refused to call for Rachel Reeves' resignation and said 'It's a matter for the Prime Minister' like he was some sort of junior Government spokesperson. Tominey was gobsmacked. How can the Tories take a great opportunity like that and instead make the interview all about how shit they are?

https://www.gbnews.com/politics/rachel-reeves-resign-grill-mel-stride-politics

I hate the GBNews site but it's also on Youtube.

It's also notable that since the Tories have no economic policies of their own, he was stuck telling Tominey how great Hunt's policies were not what the Tories would actually do. That isn't Stride's fault, it's Kemi's moronic 2 year no policy policy.

Sodding well improve you bunch of absolute muppets.

Luckyguy1983 said:

Mel Stride had the mother of all shit interviews on Camilla Tominey. He actually refused to call for Rachel Reeves' resignation and said 'It's a matter for the Prime Minister' like he was some sort of junior Government spokesperson. Tominey was gobsmacked. How can the Tories take a great opportunity like that and instead make the interview all about how shit they are?

https://www.gbnews.com/politics/rachel-reeves-resign-grill-mel-stride-politics

I hate the GBNews site but it's also on Youtube.

It's also notable that since the Tories have no economic policies of their own, he was stuck telling Tominey how great Hunt's policies were not what the Tories would actually do. That isn't Stride's fault, it's Kemi's moronic 2 year no policy policy.

Sodding well improve you bunch of absolute muppets.

Scott_xP said:

Gardenwalker said:

The Tories are dead.
Brexit severely weakened them as an ideologically coherent party of national ambition, Boris and Truss dealt the death blows.

Kemi is a lightweight, and she has inherited an impossible task. She doesn’t have the brains, gravitas, or charisma to pull it off (and who does?).

A lot of words to say Brexit killed the Tories.

I still hope the Conservative and Unionist Party might someday rise from the ashes

ydoethur said:

HYUFD said:

Malmesbury said:

Mexicanpete said:

Malmesbury said:

Mexicanpete said:

williamglenn said:

Malmesbury said:

williamglenn said:

kinabalu said:

williamglenn said:

kinabalu said:

williamglenn said:

bondegezou said:

The stark difference in the responses of Conservative and Reform voters in those polls tells you much about the difference in who supports each.

That’s why they embody the real political divide in British society. Labour will become an increasingly marginal relic of the 20th century.

Nonsense on stilts. The rich poor divide is only going to rise in salience as a political issue which means a party of the left will remain prominent. That doesn't have to be Labour but it's most likely to be. There's no socialist Farage on the horizon and when there is they are more likely to emerge from within Labour than from another party or a new party.

Labour can't represent the interests the working class because they reject the idea that they have any interests.

There's no lumpen "working class" but there is a crisis of inequality. Addressing this is the only way to reduce the number of people struggling in this relatively wealthy country of ours. Labour for all their flaws are the best bet on this. It's why I vote for them and why I'm a member.

This suggests that if there is a crisis, it's that the top 1% and 10% are doing better at the expense of the next 40%, but the bottom half have not seen any erosion in their share of income.

Note that, historically, revolutions of various kinds don’t come from the bottom.

The struggling portion of the middle, on the other hand…

Look at what people are spending money on.

Something the cliche about the "left behind" misses is that it's really the people in the middle who have been squeezed down by globalisation.

F*** yes! As one of the squeezed middle I can no longer afford a new BMW, so I'll have to make do with the one I have got for my daily journey to the soup kitchen.

I think you’ll find plenty of people who were sold the University Dream and now find themselves working for minimum wage plus a tiny bit. They have the fun of paying the rent from that.

Though I suppose you’ll tell us they could easily afford a BMW. If they cut back on the avocados from whole foods and the coffees from the hipster cafe on the corner.

“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

There's always the Bank of Mum and Dad or their inheritance. Just ask HY.

Why are you Tories so concerned with the debt of my children having gone to university? They should have gone down the coal mines like their Great Grandfathers before them, and known their place. A top university education should be for the elite of society and it should be free! Shouldn't it.

What about those who are earning pitiful zero hours wages and living in Rachmanesque accommodation? Do you not have a heart for them?

I’m not a Tory - haven’t voted for them in many a year.

I just listen to the complaints of those I speak to - simply turning jobs that used to be non-degree into degree jobs hasn’t made people richer. We need to try something different.

Which is why I advocate a complete merger of the university system with the apprentice/trade skills system. To start with, we get rid of the stupid prejudices between the two.

All courses become degree modules.

Next we encourage the kind of cross cultural mixing that produces new ideas - so the poetry student learns some welding. The bricklayer learns some Keats. The business grad learns about battery manufacture…

Welcome to the age of “1st from Cambridge in Tudor music and CNC operation”

Or just charge fees for degrees based on their actual graduate premium, so economics from Cambridge or law from Oxford or medicine from Imperial costs far more than studying humanities or creative arts from a lower ranked university

If we charged the full cost of a PPE degree at Oxford, what would be looking at? £3 billion per year per student?

david_herdson said:

Leon said:

MattW said:

I've set up a Bluesky starter pack with a dozen people here: https://go.bsky.app/Loys5Md

I think I've added everyone who asked, but if I missed you PM me here or on Bluesky, and I'll update. I've left Alistair Meeks out, as he is not noticeably here.

I've also included several feeds around UK Politics and Parliament.

You get tabs for "who is here", "feeds", and "posts" (Which I think is for the accounts included).

For those not familiar, Bluesky pushes far less at you than Twitter, so both following and blocking tend to be more actively done. Starter Packs are to help find your way into clumps of the network than match your interests.

Bluesky is also crushingly dull. Which is a bit off-putting. No offence, but it is chock-full of people like, well, you

Going from Twitter to Bluesky is like going from a crowded, bustling pub where there's a fight in one corner but also a girl has got her tits out in the other, and there's a snug where you can buy heroin, and the landlord insists on playing vintage Led Zep and gangsta rap and projecting Leni Riefenstahl movies on the wall even as strange robots descend from the rafters and serve jellified tequila shots, to a library in a cathedral square where seven frriendly pensioners, all from Newent, discuss the history of Newent, and there's a genuinely interesting lecture, which you can actually hear, on fossil discoveries in Argentina

Escaping from the first to the second often feels like a relief. It IS a relief. But then after about half an hour you get a bit twitchy and think "fuck Newent" and you head back to the awful but brilliant pub

As you note though, the dullness is a feature rather than a bug.

Now, you may have an unusually high appetite for activity, excitement and stimulation - your life history, such as I know of it, would suggest so to me - but not everyone does want a pub like that. Me? I just want somewhere where I can get a decent drink, probably food, maybe some time at the pool table, and be able to listen to and converse with those I'm there with.

Luckyguy1983 said:

Mel Stride had the mother of all shit interviews on Camilla Tominey. He actually refused to call for Rachel Reeves' resignation and said 'It's a matter for the Prime Minister' like he was some sort of junior Government spokesperson. Tominey was gobsmacked. How can the Tories take a great opportunity like that and instead make the interview all about how shit they are?

https://www.gbnews.com/politics/rachel-reeves-resign-grill-mel-stride-politics

I hate the GBNews site but it's also on Youtube.

It's also notable that since the Tories have no economic policies of their own, he was stuck telling Tominey how great Hunt's policies were not what the Tories would actually do. That isn't Stride's fault, it's Kemi's moronic 2 year no policy policy.

Sodding well improve you bunch of absolute muppets.

SandyRentool said:

HYUFD said:

ydoethur said:

HYUFD said:

Malmesbury said:

Mexicanpete said:

Malmesbury said:

Mexicanpete said:

williamglenn said:

Malmesbury said:

williamglenn said:

kinabalu said:

williamglenn said:

kinabalu said:

williamglenn said:

bondegezou said:

The stark difference in the responses of Conservative and Reform voters in those polls tells you much about the difference in who supports each.

That’s why they embody the real political divide in British society. Labour will become an increasingly marginal relic of the 20th century.

Nonsense on stilts. The rich poor divide is only going to rise in salience as a political issue which means a party of the left will remain prominent. That doesn't have to be Labour but it's most likely to be. There's no socialist Farage on the horizon and when there is they are more likely to emerge from within Labour than from another party or a new party.

Labour can't represent the interests the working class because they reject the idea that they have any interests.

There's no lumpen "working class" but there is a crisis of inequality. Addressing this is the only way to reduce the number of people struggling in this relatively wealthy country of ours. Labour for all their flaws are the best bet on this. It's why I vote for them and why I'm a member.

This suggests that if there is a crisis, it's that the top 1% and 10% are doing better at the expense of the next 40%, but the bottom half have not seen any erosion in their share of income.

Note that, historically, revolutions of various kinds don’t come from the bottom.

The struggling portion of the middle, on the other hand…

Look at what people are spending money on.

Something the cliche about the "left behind" misses is that it's really the people in the middle who have been squeezed down by globalisation.

F*** yes! As one of the squeezed middle I can no longer afford a new BMW, so I'll have to make do with the one I have got for my daily journey to the soup kitchen.

I think you’ll find plenty of people who were sold the University Dream and now find themselves working for minimum wage plus a tiny bit. They have the fun of paying the rent from that.

Though I suppose you’ll tell us they could easily afford a BMW. If they cut back on the avocados from whole foods and the coffees from the hipster cafe on the corner.

“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

There's always the Bank of Mum and Dad or their inheritance. Just ask HY.

Why are you Tories so concerned with the debt of my children having gone to university? They should have gone down the coal mines like their Great Grandfathers before them, and known their place. A top university education should be for the elite of society and it should be free! Shouldn't it.

What about those who are earning pitiful zero hours wages and living in Rachmanesque accommodation? Do you not have a heart for them?

I’m not a Tory - haven’t voted for them in many a year.

I just listen to the complaints of those I speak to - simply turning jobs that used to be non-degree into degree jobs hasn’t made people richer. We need to try something different.

Which is why I advocate a complete merger of the university system with the apprentice/trade skills system. To start with, we get rid of the stupid prejudices between the two.

All courses become degree modules.

Next we encourage the kind of cross cultural mixing that produces new ideas - so the poetry student learns some welding. The bricklayer learns some Keats. The business grad learns about battery manufacture…

Welcome to the age of “1st from Cambridge in Tudor music and CNC operation”

Or just charge fees for degrees based on their actual graduate premium, so economics from Cambridge or law from Oxford or medicine from Imperial costs far more than studying humanities or creative arts from a lower ranked university

If we charged the full cost of a PPE degree at Oxford, what would be looking at? £3 billion per year per student?

To be fair only PPE graduates who focus on the Economics in their final year really go onto make a fortune, not those who focus on the Politics or Philosophy.

Rishi earnt far more at Goldman Sacks as an analyst and then in the hedge fund world than he did as an MP or even as a Cabinet Minister and PM. He also therefore built up more assets and savings than ex PPE SPADs and researchers like Cameron and the Milibands did before becoming MPs

How many PBers have PPE degrees?

Do we need a support group?

Gardenwalker said:

Scott_xP said:

Gardenwalker said:

The Tories are dead.
Brexit severely weakened them as an ideologically coherent party of national ambition, Boris and Truss dealt the death blows.

Kemi is a lightweight, and she has inherited an impossible task. She doesn’t have the brains, gravitas, or charisma to pull it off (and who does?).

A lot of words to say Brexit killed the Tories.

I still hope the Conservative and Unionist Party might someday rise from the ashes

Brexit really was the death knell, I agree, in that Boris and Truss follow directly from the lurch to populism, grift, and irresponsibility.

Gardenwalker said:

Scott_xP said:

Gardenwalker said:

The Tories are dead.
Brexit severely weakened them as an ideologically coherent party of national ambition, Boris and Truss dealt the death blows.

Kemi is a lightweight, and she has inherited an impossible task. She doesn’t have the brains, gravitas, or charisma to pull it off (and who does?).

A lot of words to say Brexit killed the Tories.

I still hope the Conservative and Unionist Party might someday rise from the ashes

Brexit really was the death knell, I agree, in that Boris and Truss follow directly from the lurch to populism, grift, and irresponsibility.

Gardenwalker said:

It follows that Labour can probably win in 2029 on an anti-Reform platform.

Especially under a Wes Streeting or similar.

HYUFD said:

viewcode said:

HYUFD said:

bondegezou said:

HYUFD said:

Barnesian said:

kinabalu said:

williamglenn said:

kinabalu said:

williamglenn said:

bondegezou said:

The stark difference in the responses of Conservative and Reform voters in those polls tells you much about the difference in who supports each.

That’s why they embody the real political divide in British society. Labour will become an increasingly marginal relic of the 20th century.

Nonsense on stilts. The rich poor divide is only going to rise in salience as a political issue which means a party of the left will remain prominent. That doesn't have to be Labour but it's most likely to be. There's no socialist Farage on the horizon and when there is they are more likely to emerge from within Labour than from another party or a new party.

Labour can't represent the interests the working class because they reject the idea that they have any interests.

There's no lumpen "working class" but there is a crisis of inequality. Addressing this is the only way to reduce the number of people struggling in this relatively wealthy country of ours. Labour for all their flaws are the best bet on this. It's why I vote for them and why I'm a member.

There is a large ex-council house estate near me. I've canvassed it over the years.
It used to be Labour, then tactical Lib Dem. Now it is a hot bed of Reform.

I think Reform are as big a threat to Labour as they are to the Tories. And Starmer knows it.

The latest Find Out Now poll data tables show that Labour has lost 10% of its 35% GE share to Reform. That is 3.5% of the electorate.
Conservatives have lost 17% of their 24% share. That is 4% of the electorate.
These figures imply that Reform's increase in share is equally from Tory and Labour.

I think the two big voting blocks are going to be Reform and anti-Reform with lots of tactical voting, in the same way as it was Tory and anti-Tory at the last election.

Latest projection of EMA of polls, without tactical voting, is as follows:

Electoral Calculus though is now projecting a hung parliament based on poll averages. Even if Labour still have most seats and 310 MPs that would be the biggest decline in seats for a newly elected government at the next GE since Asquith's Liberal government lost 123 MPs at the January 1910 general election
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/prediction_main.html

But that’s because of how crazily successful they were last year, and by crazily successful, I mean, were rewarded by FPTP when voting was split many ways.

True but if Starmer's government hadn't been so crap they wouldn't have seen a 7% decline in their voteshare...

Seven percentage points, not seven percent.

Seven percentage point drop looks like this: 30% to 23%
Seven percent drop looks like this: 30% to 27.9%

If you wish to be pedantic...

JohnLilburne said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

Mel Stride had the mother of all shit interviews on Camilla Tominey. He actually refused to call for Rachel Reeves' resignation and said 'It's a matter for the Prime Minister' like he was some sort of junior Government spokesperson. Tominey was gobsmacked. How can the Tories take a great opportunity like that and instead make the interview all about how shit they are?

https://www.gbnews.com/politics/rachel-reeves-resign-grill-mel-stride-politics

I hate the GBNews site but it's also on Youtube.

It's also notable that since the Tories have no economic policies of their own, he was stuck telling Tominey how great Hunt's policies were not what the Tories would actually do. That isn't Stride's fault, it's Kemi's moronic 2 year no policy policy.

Sodding well improve you bunch of absolute muppets.

Makes sense to me. Calling for a cabinet minister to resign just because they have done something you disagree with is pretty asinine. Politicians should stop doing it.

And the problem with saying what Labour should have done is... well the question is really about how to fix the mess the Tories left.

And there won't be an election for 4 or 5 years, alternative policies aren't really needed. Maybe some alternative *ideas* but to be honest we are too fixated on parties coming in and and changing stuff, they need fewer policies not more

bigjohnowls said:

Gardenwalker said:

It follows that Labour can probably win in 2029 on an anti-Reform platform.

Especially under a Wes Streeting or similar.

Streeting wont win his own seat in 2029

Gardenwalker said:

A joint UK-Mauritius statement “could come tomorrow” according to a Bloomberg reporter.

MattW said:

viewcode said:

MattW said:

I've set up a Bluesky starter pack with a dozen people here: https://go.bsky.app/Loys5Md

I think I've added everyone who asked, but if I missed you PM me here or on Bluesky, and I'll update. I've left Alistair Meeks out, as he is not noticeably here.

I've also included several feeds around UK Politics and Parliament.

You get tabs for "who is here", "feeds", and "posts" (Which I think is for the accounts included).

For those not familiar, Bluesky pushes far less at you than Twitter, so both following and blocking tend to be more actively done. Starter Packs are to help find your way into clumps of the network than match your interests.

That link resolves to https://bsky.app/start/did:plc:6n5txih6p3ylv4bk6zdavbzn/3lfk4fvp5yv26 . An easier version of the same starter pack is here: https://bsky.app/starter-pack/mattwardman.bsky.social/3lfk4fvp5yv26

This is the link in my profile.
https://bsky.app/starter-pack/mattwardman.bsky.social/3lfk4fvp5yv26

If you ask me to add an account, I'll add it to that one, and we'll see if it appears on both.

eek said:

bigjohnowls said:

Gardenwalker said:

It follows that Labour can probably win in 2029 on an anti-Reform platform.

Especially under a Wes Streeting or similar.

Streeting wont win his own seat in 2029

Sorry but Gaza ain’t going to be an issue in 2028/9. Given the lack of support for Reform there Ilford North is going to return to a very safe Labour seat

Leon said:

Gardenwalker said:

A joint UK-Mauritius statement “could come tomorrow” according to a Bloomberg reporter.

Jesus they’ve gone and done it. The worst deal in British history, a fittingly bathetic end to the British Empire as I sit in colonial Rangoon. We’ve ended up giving away possessions and paying billions for the pleasure

pigeon said:

Gardenwalker said:

The Tories are dead.
Brexit severely weakened them as an ideologically coherent party of national ambition, Boris and Truss dealt the death blows.

Kemi is a lightweight, and she has inherited an impossible task. She doesn’t have the brains, gravitas, or charisma to pull it off (and who does?).

Moreover, what the Hell does an electable Tory party look like now? Their rump vote of wealthy pensioners will applaud the small state model (provided that the Triple Lock is exempted and punishing austerity is only applied to people under 65,) but it's dead as a doornail so far as most of the rest of the population is concerned. So you're left with the problem that Labour isn't capable of solving: how to find enough money to make everything work again yet still win the next election. Only the Tories are in an even more hopeless position to fix the mess because their core vote is, at once, the largest burden on the state and the ones who are sitting on the bulk of the remaining available resources.

My best guess as things stand is that the major net beneficiaries at the next GE will be Reform. You can quite easily see a moribund Conservative Party shipping almost as many marginal seats to the Liberal Democrats as it manages to win back from Labour.

bigjohnowls said:

eek said:

bigjohnowls said:

Gardenwalker said:

It follows that Labour can probably win in 2029 on an anti-Reform platform.

Especially under a Wes Streeting or similar.

Streeting wont win his own seat in 2029

Sorry but Gaza ain’t going to be an issue in 2028/9. Given the lack of support for Reform there Ilford North is going to return to a very safe Labour seat

There will be very few safe Labour seats imo

eek said:

bigjohnowls said:

Gardenwalker said:

It follows that Labour can probably win in 2029 on an anti-Reform platform.

Especially under a Wes Streeting or similar.

Streeting wont win his own seat in 2029

Sorry but Gaza ain’t going to be an issue in 2028/9. Given the lack of support for Reform there Ilford North is going to return to a very safe Labour seat

bigjohnowls said:

Are SKS fans deserting the sinking ship yet?

Or happy to support Austerity Reeves attack on the disabled as long as the Millionaire Donors are OK?

If only somebody on PB had warned us Austerity Reeves was a Red Tory!

Leon said:

MattW said:

I've set up a Bluesky starter pack with a dozen people here: https://go.bsky.app/Loys5Md

I think I've added everyone who asked, but if I missed you PM me here or on Bluesky, and I'll update. I've left Alistair Meeks out, as he is not noticeably here.

I've also included several feeds around UK Politics and Parliament.

You get tabs for "who is here", "feeds", and "posts" (Which I think is for the accounts included).

For those not familiar, Bluesky pushes far less at you than Twitter, so both following and blocking tend to be more actively done. Starter Packs are to help find your way into clumps of the network than match your interests.

Bluesky is also crushingly dull. Which is a bit off-putting. No offence, but it is chock-full of people like, well, you

Going from Twitter to Bluesky is like going from a crowded, bustling pub where there's a fight in one corner but also a girl has got her tits out in the other, and there's a snug where you can buy heroin, and the landlord insists on playing vintage Led Zep and gangsta rap and projecting Leni Riefenstahl movies on the wall even as strange robots descend from the rafters and serve jellified tequila shots, to a library in a cathedral square where seven frriendly pensioners, all from Newent, discuss the history of Newent, and there's a genuinely interesting lecture, which you can actually hear, on fossil discoveries in Argentina

Escaping from the first to the second often feels like a relief. It IS a relief. But then after about half an hour you get a bit twitchy and think "fuck Newent" and you head back to the awful but brilliant pub

ydoethur said:

HYUFD said:

Malmesbury said:

Mexicanpete said:

Malmesbury said:

Mexicanpete said:

williamglenn said:

Malmesbury said:

williamglenn said:

kinabalu said:

williamglenn said:

kinabalu said:

williamglenn said:

bondegezou said:

The stark difference in the responses of Conservative and Reform voters in those polls tells you much about the difference in who supports each.

That’s why they embody the real political divide in British society. Labour will become an increasingly marginal relic of the 20th century.

Nonsense on stilts. The rich poor divide is only going to rise in salience as a political issue which means a party of the left will remain prominent. That doesn't have to be Labour but it's most likely to be. There's no socialist Farage on the horizon and when there is they are more likely to emerge from within Labour than from another party or a new party.

Labour can't represent the interests the working class because they reject the idea that they have any interests.

There's no lumpen "working class" but there is a crisis of inequality. Addressing this is the only way to reduce the number of people struggling in this relatively wealthy country of ours. Labour for all their flaws are the best bet on this. It's why I vote for them and why I'm a member.

This suggests that if there is a crisis, it's that the top 1% and 10% are doing better at the expense of the next 40%, but the bottom half have not seen any erosion in their share of income.

Note that, historically, revolutions of various kinds don’t come from the bottom.

The struggling portion of the middle, on the other hand…

Look at what people are spending money on.

Something the cliche about the "left behind" misses is that it's really the people in the middle who have been squeezed down by globalisation.

F*** yes! As one of the squeezed middle I can no longer afford a new BMW, so I'll have to make do with the one I have got for my daily journey to the soup kitchen.

I think you’ll find plenty of people who were sold the University Dream and now find themselves working for minimum wage plus a tiny bit. They have the fun of paying the rent from that.

Though I suppose you’ll tell us they could easily afford a BMW. If they cut back on the avocados from whole foods and the coffees from the hipster cafe on the corner.

“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

There's always the Bank of Mum and Dad or their inheritance. Just ask HY.

Why are you Tories so concerned with the debt of my children having gone to university? They should have gone down the coal mines like their Great Grandfathers before them, and known their place. A top university education should be for the elite of society and it should be free! Shouldn't it.

What about those who are earning pitiful zero hours wages and living in Rachmanesque accommodation? Do you not have a heart for them?

I’m not a Tory - haven’t voted for them in many a year.

I just listen to the complaints of those I speak to - simply turning jobs that used to be non-degree into degree jobs hasn’t made people richer. We need to try something different.

Which is why I advocate a complete merger of the university system with the apprentice/trade skills system. To start with, we get rid of the stupid prejudices between the two.

All courses become degree modules.

Next we encourage the kind of cross cultural mixing that produces new ideas - so the poetry student learns some welding. The bricklayer learns some Keats. The business grad learns about battery manufacture…

Welcome to the age of “1st from Cambridge in Tudor music and CNC operation”

Or just charge fees for degrees based on their actual graduate premium, so economics from Cambridge or law from Oxford or medicine from Imperial costs far more than studying humanities or creative arts from a lower ranked university

If we charged the full cost of a PPE degree at Oxford, what would be looking at? £3 billion per year per student?

Leon said:

Barnesian said:

I think old age brings anesthesia - a dulling of the senses.

It's physical. Taste goes so there's a yearning for spicy food that you can actually taste.

And it's mental. So a delight in potential catastrophes. Invasion of extra terrestrials. Domination by AI. Calamitous global warming. WW3.

The alternative is dozing in the day room in Weston Super Mare.

I'm loving 2025 and all its promise. Is this selfish?

At least 2 of those might happen - if not in 2025 then really quite soon

IanB2 said:

Barnesian said:

I think old age brings anesthesia - a dulling of the senses.

It's physical. Taste goes so there's a yearning for spicy food that you can actually taste.

And it's mental. So a delight in potential catastrophes. Invasion of extra terrestrials. Domination by AI. Calamitous global warming. WW3.

That appears to be aimed at a particular, rapidly ageing (mentally, for sure, physically, who can say?) PB’er.

DecrepiterJohnL said:

bigjohnowls said:

eek said:

bigjohnowls said:

Gardenwalker said:

It follows that Labour can probably win in 2029 on an anti-Reform platform.

Especially under a Wes Streeting or similar.

Streeting wont win his own seat in 2029

Sorry but Gaza ain’t going to be an issue in 2028/9. Given the lack of support for Reform there Ilford North is going to return to a very safe Labour seat

There will be very few safe Labour seats imo

Within living memory, Ilford North (aka Chez Wes Streeting) was a safe Conservative seat.

kinabalu said:

Barnesian said:

I think old age brings anesthesia - a dulling of the senses.

It's physical. Taste goes so there's a yearning for spicy food that you can actually taste.

And it's mental. So a delight in potential catastrophes. Invasion of extra terrestrials. Domination by AI. Calamitous global warming. WW3.

The alternative is dozing in the day room in Weston Super Mare.

I'm loving 2025 and all its promise. Is this selfish?

It isn't but I don't (at 64) feel the same way. I'm ok if I stay detached and just "interested" - because it's interesting - but at root I'm anxious about how things are going. People in the west are letting themselves down imo. First whiff of reversal after centuries of privilege and domination and they're voting in droves for tinpot Caligulas and Napoleons.

DecrepiterJohnL said:

kinabalu said:

viewcode said:

"Zuckerberg Says Most Companies Need More ‘Masculine Energy'", by Riley Griffin, January 10, 2025, Bloomberg.com

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-10/mark-zuckerberg-slams-biden-administration-on-joe-rogan-s-podcast
https://archive.is/ugNmr

Oh dear! Still, these erstwhile woke billionaires rediscovering themselves as reactionaries does mean I can stop pretending to like them. It's clarifying.

Have you seen The Social Network? Zuckerberg's rating site for lady students hardly screams ‘woke’. What America has is a bunch of ultra-rich guys whose main interest seems to be their own bank balances.

Gardenwalker said:

It follows that Labour can probably win in 2029 on an anti-Reform platform.

Especially under a Wes Streeting or similar.

DecrepiterJohnL said:

bigjohnowls said:

eek said:

bigjohnowls said:

Gardenwalker said:

It follows that Labour can probably win in 2029 on an anti-Reform platform.

Especially under a Wes Streeting or similar.

Streeting wont win his own seat in 2029

Sorry but Gaza ain’t going to be an issue in 2028/9. Given the lack of support for Reform there Ilford North is going to return to a very safe Labour seat

There will be very few safe Labour seats imo

Within living memory, Ilford North (aka Chez Wes Streeting) was a safe Conservative seat.

numbertwelve said:

pigeon said:

bigjohnowls said:

Are SKS fans deserting the sinking ship yet?

Or happy to support Austerity Reeves attack on the disabled as long as the Millionaire Donors are OK?

If only somebody on PB had warned us Austerity Reeves was a Red Tory!

I don't agree that Reeves is any sort of a Tory. But I do think that, if she decides the answer to her fiscal rules coming under pressure from higher borrowing costs is to implement more cuts, a lot of voters will look at Labour and ask whether very much has changed.

If the Labour Party stumbles its way through the rest of this Parliament simply managing decline and making empty promises of jam tomorrow then it will be in serious trouble. I think we've all had enough of jam tomorrow. Failure to deliver = lots of Reform MPs next time.

It feels like the March statement is now going to be incredibly important for Labour. If it does result in Reeves having to confirm that the fiscal headroom has gone and cuts will follow, it is going to cause a lot of fallout.

Labour don’t like being the bad guys. Labour MPs will be gutted to have to vote for deeper spending cuts.

The electorate will have another round of the “this isn’t what we voted for” anger.

The question is who ultimately benefits.

Stuartinromford said:

HYUFD said:

boulay said:

HYUFD said:

bondegezou said:

HYUFD said:

Malmesbury said:

HYUFD said:

Malmesbury said:

Mexicanpete said:

Malmesbury said:

Mexicanpete said:

williamglenn said:

Malmesbury said:

williamglenn said:

kinabalu said:

williamglenn said:

kinabalu said:

williamglenn said:

bondegezou said:

The stark difference in the responses of Conservative and Reform voters in those polls tells you much about the difference in who supports each.

That’s why they embody the real political divide in British society. Labour will become an increasingly marginal relic of the 20th century.

Nonsense on stilts. The rich poor divide is only going to rise in salience as a political issue which means a party of the left will remain prominent. That doesn't have to be Labour but it's most likely to be. There's no socialist Farage on the horizon and when there is they are more likely to emerge from within Labour than from another party or a new party.

Labour can't represent the interests the working class because they reject the idea that they have any interests.

There's no lumpen "working class" but there is a crisis of inequality. Addressing this is the only way to reduce the number of people struggling in this relatively wealthy country of ours. Labour for all their flaws are the best bet on this. It's why I vote for them and why I'm a member.

This suggests that if there is a crisis, it's that the top 1% and 10% are doing better at the expense of the next 40%, but the bottom half have not seen any erosion in their share of income.

Note that, historically, revolutions of various kinds don’t come from the bottom.

The struggling portion of the middle, on the other hand…

Look at what people are spending money on.

Something the cliche about the "left behind" misses is that it's really the people in the middle who have been squeezed down by globalisation.

F*** yes! As one of the squeezed middle I can no longer afford a new BMW, so I'll have to make do with the one I have got for my daily journey to the soup kitchen.

I think you’ll find plenty of people who were sold the University Dream and now find themselves working for minimum wage plus a tiny bit. They have the fun of paying the rent from that.

Though I suppose you’ll tell us they could easily afford a BMW. If they cut back on the avocados from whole foods and the coffees from the hipster cafe on the corner.

“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

There's always the Bank of Mum and Dad or their inheritance. Just ask HY.

Why are you Tories so concerned with the debt of my children having gone to university? They should have gone down the coal mines like their Great Grandfathers before them, and known their place. A top university education should be for the elite of society and it should be free! Shouldn't it.

What about those who are earning pitiful zero hours wages and living in Rachmanesque accommodation? Do you not have a heart for them?

I’m not a Tory - haven’t voted for them in many a year.

I just listen to the complaints of those I speak to - simply turning jobs that used to be non-degree into degree jobs hasn’t made people richer. We need to try something different.

Which is why I advocate a complete merger of the university system with the apprentice/trade skills system. To start with, we get rid of the stupid prejudices between the two.

All courses become degree modules.

Next we encourage the kind of cross cultural mixing that produces new ideas - so the poetry student learns some welding. The bricklayer learns some Keats. The business grad learns about battery manufacture…

Welcome to the age of “1st from Cambridge in Tudor music and CNC operation”

Or just charge fees for degrees based on their actual graduate premium, so economics from Cambridge or law from Oxford or medicine from Imperial costs far more than studying humanities or creative arts from a lower ranked university

Tried and failed

No not tried and certainly not failed. Tuition fees are the same ie £9k whatever university you attend and whatever course you study which is ludicrous, no other OECD nation that has fees for degrees has such a ridiculous system. In the US Harvard and Yale and Stanford and MIT charge massively higher fees than lower ranked colleges to study there and law schools and medical schools and business schools also charge more

£9k is the maximum universities can charge, but it’s not what they have to charge. They can charge less.

Don’t Australia and Ireland also have the same charge irrespective of university? (Although Australia does vary that depending on the type of course.)

Yes and all of them will charge the maximum they can make. No university other than Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial and LSE should be able to charge the maximum in my view and no course other than Medicine, Law and Economics which are massively oversubscribed and with high graduate earning premiums should be able to charge the maximum tuition fee either .

Tuition fees in Australia also vary on course and university unlike us
https://www.studyin-australia.com/study-guide/cost-of-studying-in-australia-for-international-students/

Would it not make more sense to reduce the cost of key courses and the best ranked courses so that they are more accessible to anyone regardless of their backgrounds and therefore make it more attractive for students to take those degrees and furnish the country with what it needs?

No, fees should be based on the average graduate earnings premium they give primarily as those course with the highest earnings premium will have the highest demand and also be most affordable to pay back, with the remainder of fees being highest for courses which cost the most to run.

Scholarships and bursaries can be used to reduce the cost of courses for those from low income backgrounds

Obvious consequence there is that people who go to high-cost universities will be seriously discouraged from the sort of careers that have high social value but relatively low pay.

Forget trying to get good maths/physics grads to work in schools, or able lawyers doing anything other than the most commercial of work. Or anyone working for charities or the Church of England.

Is that really the sort of country you want to live in?

Hanson said:

another_richard said:

IanB2 said:

williamglenn said:

kinabalu said:

williamglenn said:

kinabalu said:

williamglenn said:

bondegezou said:

The stark difference in the responses of Conservative and Reform voters in those polls tells you much about the difference in who supports each.

That’s why they embody the real political divide in British society. Labour will become an increasingly marginal relic of the 20th century.

Nonsense on stilts. The rich poor divide is only going to rise in salience as a political issue which means a party of the left will remain prominent. That doesn't have to be Labour but it's most likely to be. There's no socialist Farage on the horizon and when there is they are more likely to emerge from within Labour than from another party or a new party.

Labour can't represent the interests the working class because they reject the idea that they have any interests.

There's no lumpen "working class" but there is a crisis of inequality. Addressing this is the only way to reduce the number of people struggling in this relatively wealthy country of ours. Labour for all their flaws are the best bet on this. It's why I vote for them and why I'm a member.

This suggests that if there is a crisis, it's that the top 1% and 10% are doing better at the expense of the next 40%, but the bottom half have not seen any erosion in their share of income.

Income isn’t the relevant indicator, though. Wealth is. Since 2008 especially, asset price appreciation has been the issue.

The successive minimum wage increases have delivered a reasonable % increase in low earners’ income, but they’re still further and further away from home ownership, and being crippled by inflationary rent increases.

Low earners have rarely been able to afford home ownership.

Its housing affordability for the 25-75% band which is socioeconomically and politically vital.

Disagree. In the 90s you could pick up a terrace in the north of england for 40 grand.

IanB2 said:

Hanson said:

Its also why AI wont give us the utopian future pro.ised though it will make life easier in lots of ways.

Are you this week’s Sunday Russian? Given that your time zone is ahead of ours, you’re relatively late on the scene today?

Hanson said:

kinabalu said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:

kinabalu said:

viewcode said:

"Zuckerberg Says Most Companies Need More ‘Masculine Energy'", by Riley Griffin, January 10, 2025, Bloomberg.com

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-10/mark-zuckerberg-slams-biden-administration-on-joe-rogan-s-podcast
https://archive.is/ugNmr

Oh dear! Still, these erstwhile woke billionaires rediscovering themselves as reactionaries does mean I can stop pretending to like them. It's clarifying.

Have you seen The Social Network? Zuckerberg's rating site for lady students hardly screams ‘woke’. What America has is a bunch of ultra-rich guys whose main interest seems to be their own bank balances.

Mainly a calculation, isn't it, the political positioning of these guys. Not sure about Elon Musk though. If this far right activist persona is an act it's a good one. His heart does seem to be in it.

Silicon Valley in the past say 80s and 90s was historically libertarian. It was socially liberal to the extent the dudes there liked free and easy sex but i dont think it was ever naturally woke.

numbertwelve said:

pigeon said:

bigjohnowls said:

Are SKS fans deserting the sinking ship yet?

Or happy to support Austerity Reeves attack on the disabled as long as the Millionaire Donors are OK?

If only somebody on PB had warned us Austerity Reeves was a Red Tory!

I don't agree that Reeves is any sort of a Tory. But I do think that, if she decides the answer to her fiscal rules coming under pressure from higher borrowing costs is to implement more cuts, a lot of voters will look at Labour and ask whether very much has changed.

If the Labour Party stumbles its way through the rest of this Parliament simply managing decline and making empty promises of jam tomorrow then it will be in serious trouble. I think we've all had enough of jam tomorrow. Failure to deliver = lots of Reform MPs next time.

It feels like the March statement is now going to be incredibly important for Labour. If it does result in Reeves having to confirm that the fiscal headroom has gone and cuts will follow, it is going to cause a lot of fallout.

Labour don’t like being the bad guys. Labour MPs will be gutted to have to vote for deeper spending cuts.

The electorate will have another round of the “this isn’t what we voted for” anger.

The question is who ultimately benefits.

HYUFD said:

Gardenwalker said:

It follows that Labour can probably win in 2029 on an anti-Reform platform.

Especially under a Wes Streeting or similar.

That would require Reform to be their main opposition in the polls, at the moment it is still the Tories so Labour can lose middle class voters to them and the LDs and working class voters to Reform and hard leftists to the Greens and Corbynite Independents

IanB2 said:

HYUFD said:

Gardenwalker said:

It follows that Labour can probably win in 2029 on an anti-Reform platform.

Especially under a Wes Streeting or similar.

That would require Reform to be their main opposition in the polls, at the moment it is still the Tories so Labour can lose middle class voters to them and the LDs and working class voters to Reform and hard leftists to the Greens and Corbynite Independents

You should be worrying about coming third (or worse), next time around. Sensible educated middle class folk won’t vote for you after the Brexit-Johnson-Truss fruitloop shitshow, and working class Brexit types would rather vote for the real thing.

Your party is starting to look like Woolworths, finding itself stuck without a market.

algarkirk said:

HYUFD said:

bondegezou said:

HYUFD said:

Malmesbury said:

HYUFD said:

Malmesbury said:

Mexicanpete said:

Malmesbury said:

Mexicanpete said:

williamglenn said:

Malmesbury said:

williamglenn said:

kinabalu said:

williamglenn said:

kinabalu said:

williamglenn said:

bondegezou said:

The stark difference in the responses of Conservative and Reform voters in those polls tells you much about the difference in who supports each.

That’s why they embody the real political divide in British society. Labour will become an increasingly marginal relic of the 20th century.

Nonsense on stilts. The rich poor divide is only going to rise in salience as a political issue which means a party of the left will remain prominent. That doesn't have to be Labour but it's most likely to be. There's no socialist Farage on the horizon and when there is they are more likely to emerge from within Labour than from another party or a new party.

Labour can't represent the interests the working class because they reject the idea that they have any interests.

There's no lumpen "working class" but there is a crisis of inequality. Addressing this is the only way to reduce the number of people struggling in this relatively wealthy country of ours. Labour for all their flaws are the best bet on this. It's why I vote for them and why I'm a member.

This suggests that if there is a crisis, it's that the top 1% and 10% are doing better at the expense of the next 40%, but the bottom half have not seen any erosion in their share of income.

Note that, historically, revolutions of various kinds don’t come from the bottom.

The struggling portion of the middle, on the other hand…

Look at what people are spending money on.

Something the cliche about the "left behind" misses is that it's really the people in the middle who have been squeezed down by globalisation.

F*** yes! As one of the squeezed middle I can no longer afford a new BMW, so I'll have to make do with the one I have got for my daily journey to the soup kitchen.

I think you’ll find plenty of people who were sold the University Dream and now find themselves working for minimum wage plus a tiny bit. They have the fun of paying the rent from that.

Though I suppose you’ll tell us they could easily afford a BMW. If they cut back on the avocados from whole foods and the coffees from the hipster cafe on the corner.

“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

There's always the Bank of Mum and Dad or their inheritance. Just ask HY.

Why are you Tories so concerned with the debt of my children having gone to university? They should have gone down the coal mines like their Great Grandfathers before them, and known their place. A top university education should be for the elite of society and it should be free! Shouldn't it.

What about those who are earning pitiful zero hours wages and living in Rachmanesque accommodation? Do you not have a heart for them?

I’m not a Tory - haven’t voted for them in many a year.

I just listen to the complaints of those I speak to - simply turning jobs that used to be non-degree into degree jobs hasn’t made people richer. We need to try something different.

Which is why I advocate a complete merger of the university system with the apprentice/trade skills system. To start with, we get rid of the stupid prejudices between the two.

All courses become degree modules.

Next we encourage the kind of cross cultural mixing that produces new ideas - so the poetry student learns some welding. The bricklayer learns some Keats. The business grad learns about battery manufacture…

Welcome to the age of “1st from Cambridge in Tudor music and CNC operation”

Or just charge fees for degrees based on their actual graduate premium, so economics from Cambridge or law from Oxford or medicine from Imperial costs far more than studying humanities or creative arts from a lower ranked university

Tried and failed

No not tried and certainly not failed. Tuition fees are the same ie £9k whatever university you attend and whatever course you study which is ludicrous, no other OECD nation that has fees for degrees has such a ridiculous system. In the US Harvard and Yale and Stanford and MIT charge massively higher fees than lower ranked colleges to study there and law schools and medical schools and business schools also charge more

£9k is the maximum universities can charge, but it’s not what they have to charge. They can charge less.

Don’t Australia and Ireland also have the same charge irrespective of university? (Although Australia does vary that depending on the type of course.)

Yes and all of them will charge the maximum they can make. No university other than Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial and LSE should be able to charge the maximum in my view and no course other than Medicine, Law Computer Science and Economics which are massively oversubscribed and with high graduate earning premiums should be able to charge the maximum tuition fee either .

Tuition fees in Australia also vary on course and university unlike us and by institution in Ireland too
https://www.studyin-australia.com/study-guide/cost-of-studying-in-australia-for-international-students/
https://www.si-ireland.com/ireland-study-info/tuition-fees-ireland/

No doubt for now my cause is lost, but the thought that there would subjects where people are encouraged to do them only if they want financial advantage indicates cultural and moral collapse. This triumph of extrinsic over intrinsic value removes a huge amount of what makes living worth the effort.

kinabalu said:

Hanson said:

Leon said:

Barnesian said:

I think old age brings anesthesia - a dulling of the senses.

It's physical. Taste goes so there's a yearning for spicy food that you can actually taste.

And it's mental. So a delight in potential catastrophes. Invasion of extra terrestrials. Domination by AI. Calamitous global warming. WW3.

The alternative is dozing in the day room in Weston Super Mare.

I'm loving 2025 and all its promise. Is this selfish?

At least 2 of those might happen - if not in 2025 then really quite soon

As human beings we need to keep stimulation constant. Its why prosperity never lasts as we get bored. Its why empires fall. Its why retirement sucks for so many. We need challenhe and new experiences not retiring in an armchair at 60 for 20 years.

I retired at 49. Or "petered out" would be more accurate. I was like a stone skimming across the water, at first with zipping force, the skips long and fast, then gradually losing momentum, airtime shorter and shorter, until plop plop plop ... plop.

HYUFD said:

bondegezou said:

HYUFD said:

bondegezou said:

HYUFD said:

Malmesbury said:

HYUFD said:

Malmesbury said:

Mexicanpete said:

Malmesbury said:

Mexicanpete said:

williamglenn said:

Malmesbury said:

williamglenn said:

kinabalu said:

williamglenn said:

kinabalu said:

williamglenn said:

bondegezou said:

The stark difference in the responses of Conservative and Reform voters in those polls tells you much about the difference in who supports each.

That’s why they embody the real political divide in British society. Labour will become an increasingly marginal relic of the 20th century.

Nonsense on stilts. The rich poor divide is only going to rise in salience as a political issue which means a party of the left will remain prominent. That doesn't have to be Labour but it's most likely to be. There's no socialist Farage on the horizon and when there is they are more likely to emerge from within Labour than from another party or a new party.

Labour can't represent the interests the working class because they reject the idea that they have any interests.

There's no lumpen "working class" but there is a crisis of inequality. Addressing this is the only way to reduce the number of people struggling in this relatively wealthy country of ours. Labour for all their flaws are the best bet on this. It's why I vote for them and why I'm a member.

This suggests that if there is a crisis, it's that the top 1% and 10% are doing better at the expense of the next 40%, but the bottom half have not seen any erosion in their share of income.

Note that, historically, revolutions of various kinds don’t come from the bottom.

The struggling portion of the middle, on the other hand…

Look at what people are spending money on.

Something the cliche about the "left behind" misses is that it's really the people in the middle who have been squeezed down by globalisation.

F*** yes! As one of the squeezed middle I can no longer afford a new BMW, so I'll have to make do with the one I have got for my daily journey to the soup kitchen.

I think you’ll find plenty of people who were sold the University Dream and now find themselves working for minimum wage plus a tiny bit. They have the fun of paying the rent from that.

Though I suppose you’ll tell us they could easily afford a BMW. If they cut back on the avocados from whole foods and the coffees from the hipster cafe on the corner.

“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

There's always the Bank of Mum and Dad or their inheritance. Just ask HY.

Why are you Tories so concerned with the debt of my children having gone to university? They should have gone down the coal mines like their Great Grandfathers before them, and known their place. A top university education should be for the elite of society and it should be free! Shouldn't it.

What about those who are earning pitiful zero hours wages and living in Rachmanesque accommodation? Do you not have a heart for them?

I’m not a Tory - haven’t voted for them in many a year.

I just listen to the complaints of those I speak to - simply turning jobs that used to be non-degree into degree jobs hasn’t made people richer. We need to try something different.

Which is why I advocate a complete merger of the university system with the apprentice/trade skills system. To start with, we get rid of the stupid prejudices between the two.

All courses become degree modules.

Next we encourage the kind of cross cultural mixing that produces new ideas - so the poetry student learns some welding. The bricklayer learns some Keats. The business grad learns about battery manufacture…

Welcome to the age of “1st from Cambridge in Tudor music and CNC operation”

Or just charge fees for degrees based on their actual graduate premium, so economics from Cambridge or law from Oxford or medicine from Imperial costs far more than studying humanities or creative arts from a lower ranked university

Tried and failed

No not tried and certainly not failed. Tuition fees are the same ie £9k whatever university you attend and whatever course you study which is ludicrous, no other OECD nation that has fees for degrees has such a ridiculous system. In the US Harvard and Yale and Stanford and MIT charge massively higher fees than lower ranked colleges to study there and law schools and medical schools and business schools also charge more

£9k is the maximum universities can charge, but it’s not what they have to charge. They can charge less.

Don’t Australia and Ireland also have the same charge irrespective of university? (Although Australia does vary that depending on the type of course.)

Yes and all of them will charge the maximum they can make. No university other than Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial and LSE should be able to charge the maximum in my view and no course other than Medicine, Law and Economics which are massively oversubscribed and with high graduate earning premiums should be able to charge the maximum tuition fee either .

Tuition fees in Australia also vary on course and university unlike us
https://www.studyin-australia.com/study-guide/cost-of-studying-in-australia-for-international-students/

It seems odd to dictate that only those 4 universities should be able to charge more. I would’ve thought that, as a Conservative, you would support a free market where every university can decide what to charge.

I note St Andrews is above Imperial in the Complete University Guide league table and second in the Guardian ranking. St Andrews is also second in the Times ranking, with Durham also above Imperial. In the THE world rankings, UCL, Edinburgh and King’s are all above LSE. Those three plus Manchester are above LSE in the QS world rankings.

There are other very oversubscribed courses, like psychology, computer science and dentistry. LSE is the most oversubscribed university, but Edinburgh is 2nd and UCL 3rd.

Electrical engineering, maths and physics have very high earning potential too.

There may be some scope for St Andrews, Durham, Edinburgh and Kings to also charge the maximum fees and LSE not to if not in the top 5 but I would only allow the top 5 UK universities listed in most university league tables to charge the maximum fee