"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Total b*ll*cks. France for example experiencing similar levels of immigration and not dropping down the health league.
Nothing to do with 14 years of ruinous Conservative government, oh no.
Bloody immigrunts comin’ over ‘ere and lowerin’ ar life expectancy. Pass me another Big Mac, luv.
A Scotsman taking the piss on life expectency is the very definition of skating on thin ice...
All in the geography Mark, not all of us die in our 50's we also have pockets like the home counties where the rich live long and prosperous lives. I just wish I lived in one of them.
Indeed, I can walk 200 yards and I cross the border into the neighbourhood with (I think) the lowest life expectancy in Scotland. Fittingly the Louden Tavern marks the boundary.
What is the caviar and fois gras like in there TUD
If we're going to talk about Afghan health care and life expectancy, it is important to note that Afghan women and girls are denied ALL healthcare because men are not allowed to treat them and women are denied all education. Permanently - as the Taliban has recently announced. So their life expectancy is low and they will have to endure pain and suffering which in any vaguely civilised society would be treatable. What is being done to them is barbaric. They are treated worse than animals.
None of this will have an impact on our health outcomes or system because it is not Afghan women and girls who are arriving here as migrants, whether via the boats or otherwise. It is Afghan men.
To call what is happening in Afghanistan medieval is an insult to the Middle Ages.
Agreed on this, but women Afghan refugees are coming to the UK, I know two of them.
A few are. Rowling has been helping fund those trying to help Afghan women judges flee the country. But the vast majority are trapped and they do not form a significant number of those arriving via unorthodox routes. Frankly, Afghan women deserve asylum far more than other groups.
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Total b*ll*cks. France for example experiencing similar levels of immigration and not dropping down the health league.
Nothing to do with 14 years of ruinous Conservative government, oh no.
Bloody immigrunts comin’ over ‘ere and lowerin’ ar life expectancy. Pass me another Big Mac, luv.
A Scotsman taking the piss on life expectency is the very definition of skating on thin ice...
All in the geography Mark, not all of us die in our 50's we also have pockets like the home counties where the rich live long and prosperous lives. I just wish I lived in one of them.
Indeed, I can walk 200 yards and I cross the border into the neighbourhood with (I think) the lowest life expectancy in Scotland. Fittingly the Louden Tavern marks the boundary.
Govan?
Dennistoun>Shettleston, though it's a fast moving situation, Govan could be the new prematurely aged kid on the block.
If we're going to talk about Afghan health care and life expectancy, it is important to note that Afghan women and girls are denied ALL healthcare because men are not allowed to treat them and women are denied all education. Permanently - as the Taliban has recently announced. So their life expectancy is low and they will have to endure pain and suffering which in any vaguely civilised society would be treatable. What is being done to them is barbaric. They are treated worse than animals.
None of this will have an impact on our health outcomes or system because it is not Afghan women and girls who are arriving here as migrants, whether via the boats or otherwise. It is Afghan men.
To call what is happening in Afghanistan medieval is an insult to the Middle Ages.
It's also incredibly shortsighted and foolish.
It is evil. Pure evil.
Note that Taliban leaders send their own daughters to the Middle East to be educated. Fucking hypocrites.
There are groups here (mostly women) who are trying to provide some education via the internet to Afghan girls and women but it is a difficult business and risky for the girls themselves.
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
And ironically many of their voters are on them but we’ll likely see the same FAFO where the gullible vote for Reform thinking the cuts will fall on others and then when they’re the ones fxcked we’ll see the same moaning and shock.
Labour also recognised the need to try to stop the rate of growth of the bill. They were right.
They’re still trying to tackle it through ILR changes
On PB many here want to attack pensions growth with the triple lock being reformed or removed
They’re right too
But, muh, Reform 😂
Why shouldn't Reform policies be subject to the same scrutiny as everyone else's?
On benefits, having signed up to the Triple Lock (apparently), Farage has come out as might be expected against "the scroungers". Now, he thinks there's an £18 billion pot of gold at the end of that rainbow - we'll see.
This notion there are millions of people who could work but don't because of "mild anxiety" really needs to be challenged. Let's define "mild anxiety" - what does it mean? How many people are really signed off because of that? Is there a regular review process? How will the Government barge their way into that - a Reform person in every consultation who can overturn a GP's findings - seriously?
The distinction here is between those who want to work but cannot and those who don't want to work. Most would agree we should help the former as much as possible to get back into work - I'm looking at Carers and challenging higher levels of unemployment among those with physical and mental disabilities.
The latter group, those who don't want to work and simply choose to live off benefits - well, we have choices and consequences. IF you turn off the tap, leave them with nothing - one of three things will happen - they'll find work, possibly in the black economy, they'll resort to crime or they'll die of starvation.
The other side of this is the availability of work and the willingness and flexibility of employers to take on people who may not be well suited to the world of work (primarily those with disabilities) or those who can only work certain hours because of other commitments (again carers). We need to encourage and if necessaey coerce employers to be more willing to take on staff for whom extra support is needed.
Benefits needs a long hard look at , far too easy to get , far too generous and all tax free along with free housing and council tax, bring back eth old days where you had to physically sign on every week and if offered any job that you did not take then benefits chopped.
And ironically many of their voters are on them but we’ll likely see the same FAFO where the gullible vote for Reform thinking the cuts will fall on others and then when they’re the ones fxcked we’ll see the same moaning and shock.
Labour also recognised the need to try to stop the rate of growth of the bill. They were right.
They’re still trying to tackle it through ILR changes
On PB many here want to attack pensions growth with the triple lock being reformed or removed
They’re right too
But, muh, Reform 😂
Net migration could be negative in the next year or so.
yes we are swapping skilled high earning workers for unskilled people and asylum seekers, great deal.
If Labour fall to third or worse in the local elections then Starmer will face immense pressure to go. However, his main and most popular rival Burnham is not an MP and ineligible to stand and there is no evidence Rayner or Streeting or Ed Miliband would poll significantly better than Starmer either.
As the Survation poll shows Labour members are also split about removing him and if Labour are second on seats and NEV Starmer may even survive and if Labour as well as Reform have beaten the Tories it will then be Kemi under pressure
Pedro Torrijos @Pedro_Torrijos Translated from Spanish This man is called Mohamed Bzeek, he lives in California and that little girl he’s holding in his arms died just a few days after this photo was taken, also in his arms. She wasn’t his daughter. She was one of the ten children who have died under his care. Because Bzeek is a foster father and he only takes in terminally ill children, so that they don’t die alone.
He was born in Tripoli in 1954, before leaving Libya he used to run marathons. In 1978 he entered the United States on a student visa and there he stayed. He lives in Azusa, one of those suburbs on the outskirts of Los Angeles where lorries rumble through and where the houses have a generic look about them, clustered together without drawing attention...
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue.
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
Our younger grandson has, post university, emigrated. His older cousin doesn't pay the same rates as currently; he's now in his mid thirties. However he and his wife are not living the way I would expect people in their positions (experienced teachers) to live.
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
Taht was the original idea. But the universities ended up charging the maximum they were allowed, uniformly. At this point some actual experts in higher education can tell you why.
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
Where would you put, for example, medicine?
A sane policy would be for all student loans to be repaid on behalf of NHS staff, over a period of time.
So while they work in the NHS, no repayments. And after 7 years or so, the loan itself would be paid off.
Along with guaranteeing training places for those who graduate, with a good degree in medicine, from a UK university, it would go a long way to making entry into a medical career more attractive.
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
We could do that. Universities are a fun example of just how broke we are as a country:
Your government slashed funding for universities That means they all have to charge fees up to the cap That means they have to desperately attract any students they can charge more fees for - hence the huge wave of Chinese students into cities like Sheffield And at the same time, so many universities totter on the edge of bankruptsy
Students pay record fees they can never repay for tuition at universities who despite the fees are broke and have to cut funding for tuition.
However have we managed to both impoverish graduates and universities at the same time?
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
Where would you put, for example, medicine?
A sane policy would be for all student loans to be repaid on behalf of NHS staff, over a period of time.
So while they work in the NHS, no repayments. And after 7 years or so, the loan itself would be paid off.
Along with guaranteeing training places for those who graduate, with a good degree in medicine, from a UK university, it would go a long way to making entry into a medical career more attractive.
I've Liked that, but would that, or something similar apply to all public service posts, or only the NHS?
Speaking as one of those Labour members I very much want SKS to stay - until next year when he can make way (via a proper leadership contest) for somebody who will be better at the job and have a fighting chance of winning a GE in 2029. In my considered assessment this outcome is best for (in ascending order of importance) Keir himself, the party, the country, and my betting book.
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support.
Fair enough - everybody wants their debts wiped - but where do we find the £300 billion to do so? Taxes are strangling the economy, borrowing is at a record level and public expenditure has proved, under the current shower at least, uncutable.
Also wiping debts rewards deadbeats as those who have paid their loans on time or early are left subsidising those that haven't.
Not that I think it's a terrible idea - it's just yet another mess that Blair and Heir to Blair have saddled the country with, and there is no easy solution.
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
We could do that. Universities are a fun example of just how broke we are as a country:
Your government slashed funding for universities That means they all have to charge fees up to the cap That means they have to desperately attract any students they can charge more fees for - hence the huge wave of Chinese students into cities like Sheffield And at the same time, so many universities totter on the edge of bankruptsy
Students pay record fees they can never repay for tuition at universities who despite the fees are broke and have to cut funding for tuition.
However have we managed to both impoverish graduates and universities at the same time?
I live fairly near Oxford so have been taking a few postgraduate courses that don't lead to anything but are interesting in themselves. That said, the cost is eye-watering (typically over £1000 for a single once-a-week two-hour course), and I wonder if the facilities aren't a bit too luxurious. I'm lucky to be able to afford the cost without blinking too much, but is there a place for some more affordable functional universities with good tuition and basic facilities?
"And by the way, if that piece is right, Global Consult, the consultancy firm which Mandelson co-founded, was "reportedly absent from his vetting." How on earth is that possible? If you are looking to mitigate risk and conflicts of interest how could you possibly exclude a 24% share in a consultancy firm with international clients looking for UK contracts? What more blatant risk could you have?
We can already infer that the correspondence with Epstein was not disclosed or found because surely he would never have been appointed if it was.
So, this is 2 major risks that have apparently not been identified in the DV. Where the recommendation was that he not be appointed. We have got quite wrapped up with what Starmer was and was not told but was it worth the paper it was written on?"
The context of this was a presentation made to Starmer and Mandelson by a client of Mandelson's firm that was not reported by Starmer for reasons that are somewhat unclear, a client who ended up with a defence contract worth £750m.
To me, this looks like a breach of the Ministerial code by Starmer with very serious consequences which, at the very least, shows appalling judgment by him. If this gains traction things may well move a lot faster than some of his potential successors might want.
And ironically many of their voters are on them but we’ll likely see the same FAFO where the gullible vote for Reform thinking the cuts will fall on others and then when they’re the ones fxcked we’ll see the same moaning and shock.
Labour also recognised the need to try to stop the rate of growth of the bill. They were right.
They’re still trying to tackle it through ILR changes
On PB many here want to attack pensions growth with the triple lock being reformed or removed
They’re right too
But, muh, Reform 😂
Net migration could be negative in the next year or so.
yes we are swapping skilled high earning workers for unskilled people and asylum seekers, great deal.
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
Where would you put, for example, medicine?
A sane policy would be for all student loans to be repaid on behalf of NHS staff, over a period of time.
So while they work in the NHS, no repayments. And after 7 years or so, the loan itself would be paid off.
Along with guaranteeing training places for those who graduate, with a good degree in medicine, from a UK university, it would go a long way to making entry into a medical career more attractive.
I've Liked that, but would that, or something similar apply to all public service posts, or only the NHS?
Where do we have actual shortages?
Teachers - in some areas. NHS medical staff - huge, importing on a massive scale.
And ironically many of their voters are on them but we’ll likely see the same FAFO where the gullible vote for Reform thinking the cuts will fall on others and then when they’re the ones fxcked we’ll see the same moaning and shock.
Labour also recognised the need to try to stop the rate of growth of the bill. They were right.
They’re still trying to tackle it through ILR changes
On PB many here want to attack pensions growth with the triple lock being reformed or removed
They’re right too
But, muh, Reform 😂
Why shouldn't Reform policies be subject to the same scrutiny as everyone else's?
On benefits, having signed up to the Triple Lock (apparently), Farage has come out as might be expected against "the scroungers". Now, he thinks there's an £18 billion pot of gold at the end of that rainbow - we'll see.
This notion there are millions of people who could work but don't because of "mild anxiety" really needs to be challenged. Let's define "mild anxiety" - what does it mean? How many people are really signed off because of that? Is there a regular review process? How will the Government barge their way into that - a Reform person in every consultation who can overturn a GP's findings - seriously?
The distinction here is between those who want to work but cannot and those who don't want to work. Most would agree we should help the former as much as possible to get back into work - I'm looking at Carers and challenging higher levels of unemployment among those with physical and mental disabilities.
The latter group, those who don't want to work and simply choose to live off benefits - well, we have choices and consequences. IF you turn off the tap, leave them with nothing - one of three things will happen - they'll find work, possibly in the black economy, they'll resort to crime or they'll die of starvation.
The other side of this is the availability of work and the willingness and flexibility of employers to take on people who may not be well suited to the world of work (primarily those with disabilities) or those who can only work certain hours because of other commitments (again carers). We need to encourage and if necessaey coerce employers to be more willing to take on staff for whom extra support is needed.
If you think Nico67’s comment I replied to was scrutiny I’m pleased for you.
I’ve criticised Reform for signing up to the triple lock here.
No, it wasn't and I completely agree there's a huge incongruity to which Reform need to respond.
Indeed, all parties signed up to maintaining the Triple Lock need to explain how it is affordable when we are £130 billion in the hole in terms of borrowing.
There's a compelling argument for land value taxation and some form of additional property value taxation and I would contend targetting benefits to basic rate taxpayers over higher rate is also something needing to be explored.
The current "cliff edge" nature of our tax rates creates obvious problems with that and a more graduated approach to tax banding might allow for a more flexible approach in terms of benefit payments. No one, I'm sure, wants to see pensioners struggle and while universality is cheap and easy to administer, we know money ends up where it isn't needed as well as where it is.
"And by the way, if that piece is right, Global Consult, the consultancy firm which Mandelson co-founded, was "reportedly absent from his vetting." How on earth is that possible? If you are looking to mitigate risk and conflicts of interest how could you possibly exclude a 24% share in a consultancy firm with international clients looking for UK contracts? What more blatant risk could you have?
We can already infer that the correspondence with Epstein was not disclosed or found because surely he would never have been appointed if it was.
So, this is 2 major risks that have apparently not been identified in the DV. Where the recommendation was that he not be appointed. We have got quite wrapped up with what Starmer was and was not told but was it worth the paper it was written on?"
The context of this was a presentation made to Starmer and Mandelson by a client of Mandelson's firm that was not reported by Starmer for reasons that are somewhat unclear, a client who ended up with a defence contract worth £750m.
To me, this looks like a breach of the Ministerial code by Starmer with very serious consequences which, at the very least, shows appalling judgment by him. If this gains traction things may well move a lot faster than some of his potential successors might want.
Given that Global Consult was Mandy's way to monetise his contacts and schmoozing, this represented a problem.
If they put it in the vetting, he would fail on obvious conflicts of interest.
But asking him to give it up would be asking him to burn down the financial structure that made him privately wealthy. So he would turn the job down.
So not putting it ion the vetting was the simple answer to "Not failing the PM's choice for Ambassador"
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
We could do that. Universities are a fun example of just how broke we are as a country:
Your government slashed funding for universities That means they all have to charge fees up to the cap That means they have to desperately attract any students they can charge more fees for - hence the huge wave of Chinese students into cities like Sheffield And at the same time, so many universities totter on the edge of bankruptsy
Students pay record fees they can never repay for tuition at universities who despite the fees are broke and have to cut funding for tuition.
However have we managed to both impoverish graduates and universities at the same time?
I live fairly near Oxford so have been taking a few postgraduate courses that don't lead to anything but are interesting in themselves. That said, the cost is eye-watering (typically over £1000 for a single once-a-week two-hour course), and I wonder if the facilities aren't a bit too luxurious. I'm lucky to be able to afford the cost without blinking too much, but is there a place for some more affordable functional universities with good tuition and basic facilities?
With Oxford, it's about limits on numbers and their place in the international market for higher education.
Your not going to get many foreign students signing up to the style of student accommodation that was there in the 1980s, Or the other facilities.
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
We could do that. Universities are a fun example of just how broke we are as a country:
Your government slashed funding for universities That means they all have to charge fees up to the cap That means they have to desperately attract any students they can charge more fees for - hence the huge wave of Chinese students into cities like Sheffield And at the same time, so many universities totter on the edge of bankruptsy
Students pay record fees they can never repay for tuition at universities who despite the fees are broke and have to cut funding for tuition.
However have we managed to both impoverish graduates and universities at the same time?
I live fairly near Oxford so have been taking a few postgraduate courses that don't lead to anything but are interesting in themselves. That said, the cost is eye-watering (typically over £1000 for a single once-a-week two-hour course), and I wonder if the facilities aren't a bit too luxurious. I'm lucky to be able to afford the cost without blinking too much, but is there a place for some more affordable functional universities with good tuition and basic facilities?
The problem won't just be the university tuition costs, the living expenses are now sky high because student accommodation has been taken over by pension funds and others.
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
Taht was the original idea. But the universities ended up charging the maximum they were allowed, uniformly. At this point some actual experts in higher education can tell you why.
It doesn't require an expert - the quality of your university course is revealed in the price, so as no University is going to offer a second rate course and no student is going to willing take a second rate course the price is always going to be the maximum allowed.
"And by the way, if that piece is right, Global Consult, the consultancy firm which Mandelson co-founded, was "reportedly absent from his vetting." How on earth is that possible? If you are looking to mitigate risk and conflicts of interest how could you possibly exclude a 24% share in a consultancy firm with international clients looking for UK contracts? What more blatant risk could you have?
We can already infer that the correspondence with Epstein was not disclosed or found because surely he would never have been appointed if it was.
So, this is 2 major risks that have apparently not been identified in the DV. Where the recommendation was that he not be appointed. We have got quite wrapped up with what Starmer was and was not told but was it worth the paper it was written on?"
The context of this was a presentation made to Starmer and Mandelson by a client of Mandelson's firm that was not reported by Starmer for reasons that are somewhat unclear, a client who ended up with a defence contract worth £750m.
To me, this looks like a breach of the Ministerial code by Starmer with very serious consequences which, at the very least, shows appalling judgment by him. If this gains traction things may well move a lot faster than some of his potential successors might want.
He should be out Number 10 without his feet touching the street.
We were on notice about Starmer with all the freebies from Lord Alli for clothes, glasses and accommodation. He seems “Intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich” - and showering it around in his direction.
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
The difficulty is paying for it, because loans not government spending now fund university courses.
The only practical option would I think be a graduate tax applied to all. That is, abolish student loans as such and instead require all who attended university to pay a premium of 1% on income tax above the current threshold for each year that they attended university, including into pensionable age, up to 30 years maximum. So as an undergraduate (masters were relatively uncommon until recently) George Osborne would pay an extra 3% income tax each year for the next 30 years assuming he lives to at least 85. A undergraduate in their late 30s who has already spent say 15 years paying 9% extra in income tax would only face another 15 years of payments at a much reduced 3% rate.
That is fairly practical, as universities have been pretty fastidious in keeping records of their past students which could be drawn upon by HMRC, supplemented by tax returns as necessary.
And ironically many of their voters are on them but we’ll likely see the same FAFO where the gullible vote for Reform thinking the cuts will fall on others and then when they’re the ones fxcked we’ll see the same moaning and shock.
Labour also recognised the need to try to stop the rate of growth of the bill. They were right.
They’re still trying to tackle it through ILR changes
On PB many here want to attack pensions growth with the triple lock being reformed or removed
They’re right too
But, muh, Reform 😂
Why shouldn't Reform policies be subject to the same scrutiny as everyone else's?
On benefits, having signed up to the Triple Lock (apparently), Farage has come out as might be expected against "the scroungers". Now, he thinks there's an £18 billion pot of gold at the end of that rainbow - we'll see.
This notion there are millions of people who could work but don't because of "mild anxiety" really needs to be challenged. Let's define "mild anxiety" - what does it mean? How many people are really signed off because of that? Is there a regular review process? How will the Government barge their way into that - a Reform person in every consultation who can overturn a GP's findings - seriously?
The distinction here is between those who want to work but cannot and those who don't want to work. Most would agree we should help the former as much as possible to get back into work - I'm looking at Carers and challenging higher levels of unemployment among those with physical and mental disabilities.
The latter group, those who don't want to work and simply choose to live off benefits - well, we have choices and consequences. IF you turn off the tap, leave them with nothing - one of three things will happen - they'll find work, possibly in the black economy, they'll resort to crime or they'll die of starvation.
The other side of this is the availability of work and the willingness and flexibility of employers to take on people who may not be well suited to the world of work (primarily those with disabilities) or those who can only work certain hours because of other commitments (again carers). We need to encourage and if necessaey coerce employers to be more willing to take on staff for whom extra support is needed.
Benefits needs a long hard look at , far too easy to get , far too generous and all tax free along with free housing and council tax, bring back eth old days where you had to physically sign on every week and if offered any job that you did not take then benefits chopped.
There's a distinction here.
There are those with physical and mental disabilities who often want to work but cannot - what if you are registered blind for example? Should we cut back their benefits? No, I'd argue we should be cajoling more employers to find work.
What about Carers who can only work a few hours? Some might only be able to work remotely but others would welcome coming into a working environment, even if only briefly?
The other side of the coin is those who choose not to work - now, that's a lifestyle choice but should we be funding that? If the societal decision is no, then what are the consequences of cutting off the tap of benefits to those people? Some will have to find work to survive - that may be in the black economy. Others will resort to petty crime to survive and may end up incarcerated as a result. If you can support yourself without benefits and choose not to work, I don't have a problem.
I'd also be looking at those who struggle even in paid employment to make ends meet. Should we support the hard working whose income just isn't enough?
I agree it needs a lot of thought but I'm not seeing that overarching thinking in any of the parties (though snippets are happening here and there).
"And by the way, if that piece is right, Global Consult, the consultancy firm which Mandelson co-founded, was "reportedly absent from his vetting." How on earth is that possible? If you are looking to mitigate risk and conflicts of interest how could you possibly exclude a 24% share in a consultancy firm with international clients looking for UK contracts? What more blatant risk could you have?
We can already infer that the correspondence with Epstein was not disclosed or found because surely he would never have been appointed if it was.
So, this is 2 major risks that have apparently not been identified in the DV. Where the recommendation was that he not be appointed. We have got quite wrapped up with what Starmer was and was not told but was it worth the paper it was written on?"
The context of this was a presentation made to Starmer and Mandelson by a client of Mandelson's firm that was not reported by Starmer for reasons that are somewhat unclear, a client who ended up with a defence contract worth £750m.
To me, this looks like a breach of the Ministerial code by Starmer with very serious consequences which, at the very least, shows appalling judgment by him. If this gains traction things may well move a lot faster than some of his potential successors might want.
He should be out Number 10 without his feet touching the street.
We were on notice about Starmer with all the freebies from Lord Alli for clothes, glasses and accommodation. He seems “Intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich” - and showering it around in his direction.
The quote is, of course, from Mandelson.
While I've opined before that employing Mandelson for the specific job might have turned out to be a good idea, the company he and nowStarmer keep would lead one to suspect something about wrong 'un's.
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support.
Fair enough - everybody wants their debts wiped - but where do we find the £300 billion to do so? Taxes are strangling the economy, borrowing is at a record level and public expenditure has proved, under the current shower at least, uncutable.
Also wiping debts rewards deadbeats as those who have paid their loans on time or early are left subsidising those that haven't.
Not that I think it's a terrible idea - it's just yet another mess that Blair and Heir to Blair have saddled the country with, and there is no easy solution.
History of UK student loans 1990 top-up for maintenance grants (Conservatives under Thatcher) 1998 tuition fees £1000pa (Labour under Blair) 2006 tuition fees £3000pa (Labour under Blair) 2012 £9K/ 9% tax system (Coalition under Cameron / Clegg)
While I didn't agree with Labour introducing tuition fees, it bore no resemblance to that introduced by the coalition. It went from being unfair but repayable to this massively inequitable decades long tax.
If Scotland, with 8% of the population can afford to fund 5% of the UK's undergraduate tuition fees, why can't England and Wales have a less onerous system.
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
Taht was the original idea. But the universities ended up charging the maximum they were allowed, uniformly. At this point some actual experts in higher education can tell you why.
It doesn't require an expert - the quality of your university course is revealed in the price, so as no University is going to offer a second rate course and no student is going to willing take a second rate course the price is always going to be the maximum allowed.
And from a recruitment point of view, 9k fees with a 2k bursary provided by the university is a more attractive deal than 7k fees.
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
We could do that. Universities are a fun example of just how broke we are as a country:
Your government slashed funding for universities That means they all have to charge fees up to the cap That means they have to desperately attract any students they can charge more fees for - hence the huge wave of Chinese students into cities like Sheffield And at the same time, so many universities totter on the edge of bankruptsy
Students pay record fees they can never repay for tuition at universities who despite the fees are broke and have to cut funding for tuition.
However have we managed to both impoverish graduates and universities at the same time?
They may all need to charge fees but fees should be charged on the graduate earning premium for the course. Those studying Economics, Business Studies or Law or Medicine or IT especially at a Russell Group university should have a very high ceiling on the fee that can be charged for their courses so it is effectively uncapped. Those studying arts or humanities courses should have a strict cap and limit on the fees that can be charged for those courses given their lower earnings premium.
That should be set in statute law and the one size fits all tuition fee for all courses and universities ended
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support.
Fair enough - everybody wants their debts wiped - but where do we find the £300 billion to do so? Taxes are strangling the economy, borrowing is at a record level and public expenditure has proved, under the current shower at least, uncutable.
Also wiping debts rewards deadbeats as those who have paid their loans on time or early are left subsidising those that haven't.
Not that I think it's a terrible idea - it's just yet another mess that Blair and Heir to Blair have saddled the country with, and there is no easy solution.
History of UK student loans 1990 top-up for maintenance grants (Conservatives under Thatcher) 1998 tuition fees £1000pa (Labour under Blair) 2006 tuition fees £3000pa (Labour under Blair) 2012 £9K/ 9% tax system (Coalition under Cameron / Clegg)
While I didn't agree with Labour introducing tuition fees, it bore no resemblance to that introduced by the coalition. It went from being unfair but repayable to this massively inequitable decades long tax.
If Scotland, with 8% of the population can afford to fund 5% of the UK's undergraduate tuition fees, why can't England and Wales have a less onerous system.
Your summary misses out some post-2012 changes. The system introduced in 2012 was designed to be quite graduate tax-like, but the Conservatives have subsequently changed it to be more regressive.
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
Taht was the original idea. But the universities ended up charging the maximum they were allowed, uniformly. At this point some actual experts in higher education can tell you why.
It doesn't require an expert - the quality of your university course is revealed in the price, so as no University is going to offer a second rate course and no student is going to willing take a second rate course the price is always going to be the maximum allowed.
The maximum allowed should only be able to be charged by Russell Group universities for Law, Economics, Medicine and MBAs and IT, There should then be a sliding scale so that lower ranked university humanities courses actually are told to cut the fees for their courses
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
Where would you put, for example, medicine?
Maximum fee, always huge demand for it and most doctors and surgeons end up earning six figures before they retire
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
The difficulty is paying for it, because loans not government spending now fund university courses.
The only practical option would I think be a graduate tax applied to all. That is, abolish student loans as such and instead require all who attended university to pay a premium of 1% on income tax above the current threshold for each year that they attended university, including into pensionable age, up to 30 years maximum. So as an undergraduate (masters were relatively uncommon until recently) George Osborne would pay an extra 3% income tax each year for the next 30 years assuming he lives to at least 85. A undergraduate in their late 30s who has already spent say 15 years paying 9% extra in income tax would only face another 15 years of payments at a much reduced 3% rate.
That is fairly practical, as universities have been pretty fastidious in keeping records of their past students which could be drawn upon by HMRC, supplemented by tax returns as necessary.
Universities may have good records, but I doubt the Student Loans Company does. So if we take me, for example, I graduated in 2005 and had paid off my loan in around 2010 (smaller loans then, plus I did ok). I bet you would struggle to account for the years of payment from my peers.
I backward looking grad taxes are a post office scandal waiting to happen.
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
Taht was the original idea. But the universities ended up charging the maximum they were allowed, uniformly. At this point some actual experts in higher education can tell you why.
It doesn't require an expert - the quality of your university course is revealed in the price, so as no University is going to offer a second rate course and no student is going to willing take a second rate course the price is always going to be the maximum allowed.
The maximum allowed should only be able to be charged by Russell Group universities for Law, Economics, Medicine and MBAs and IT, There should then be a sliding scale so that lower ranked university humanities courses actually are told to cut the fees for their courses
Can you evidence that the Russell Group is better than other universities? E.g. for Pharmacy - what is the highest ranked Uni where you can study pharmacy?
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
We could do that. Universities are a fun example of just how broke we are as a country:
Your government slashed funding for universities That means they all have to charge fees up to the cap That means they have to desperately attract any students they can charge more fees for - hence the huge wave of Chinese students into cities like Sheffield And at the same time, so many universities totter on the edge of bankruptsy
Students pay record fees they can never repay for tuition at universities who despite the fees are broke and have to cut funding for tuition.
However have we managed to both impoverish graduates and universities at the same time?
I live fairly near Oxford so have been taking a few postgraduate courses that don't lead to anything but are interesting in themselves. That said, the cost is eye-watering (typically over £1000 for a single once-a-week two-hour course), and I wonder if the facilities aren't a bit too luxurious. I'm lucky to be able to afford the cost without blinking too much, but is there a place for some more affordable functional universities with good tuition and basic facilities?
The problem won't just be the university tuition costs, the living expenses are now sky high because student accommodation has been taken over by pension funds and others.
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
Taht was the original idea. But the universities ended up charging the maximum they were allowed, uniformly. At this point some actual experts in higher education can tell you why.
It doesn't require an expert - the quality of your university course is revealed in the price, so as no University is going to offer a second rate course and no student is going to willing take a second rate course the price is always going to be the maximum allowed.
The maximum allowed should only be able to be charged by Russell Group universities for Law, Economics, Medicine and MBAs and IT, There should then be a sliding scale so that lower ranked university humanities courses actually are told to cut the fees for their courses
Can you evidence that the Russell Group is better than other universities? E.g. for Pharmacy - what is the highest ranked Uni where you can study pharmacy?
Your obsession with the Russell Group is mad.
But it shows how much Russell Group's "advertising" has worked since it was formed in 1993.
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
Where would you put, for example, medicine?
Maximum fee, always huge demand for it and most doctors and surgeons end up earning six figures before they retire
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support.
Fair enough - everybody wants their debts wiped - but where do we find the £300 billion to do so? Taxes are strangling the economy, borrowing is at a record level and public expenditure has proved, under the current shower at least, uncutable.
Also wiping debts rewards deadbeats as those who have paid their loans on time or early are left subsidising those that haven't.
Not that I think it's a terrible idea - it's just yet another mess that Blair and Heir to Blair have saddled the country with, and there is no easy solution.
History of UK student loans 1990 top-up for maintenance grants (Conservatives under Thatcher) 1998 tuition fees £1000pa (Labour under Blair) 2006 tuition fees £3000pa (Labour under Blair) 2012 £9K/ 9% tax system (Coalition under Cameron / Clegg)
While I didn't agree with Labour introducing tuition fees, it bore no resemblance to that introduced by the coalition. It went from being unfair but repayable to this massively inequitable decades long tax.
If Scotland, with 8% of the population can afford to fund 5% of the UK's undergraduate tuition fees, why can't England and Wales have a less onerous system.
Your summary misses out some post-2012 changes. The system introduced in 2012 was designed to be quite graduate tax-like, but the Conservatives have subsequently changed it to be more regressive.
Noted, but overall it's Bad 10x Bad 12?x Bad
The current system also fails badly in being gamed, a minority are now taking loans with no intention of earning enough or staying in UK to make repayments. This bad debt then falls on those genuinely interested in a degree and career and rest of taxpayers
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
Taht was the original idea. But the universities ended up charging the maximum they were allowed, uniformly. At this point some actual experts in higher education can tell you why.
It doesn't require an expert - the quality of your university course is revealed in the price, so as no University is going to offer a second rate course and no student is going to willing take a second rate course the price is always going to be the maximum allowed.
The maximum allowed should only be able to be charged by Russell Group universities for Law, Economics, Medicine and MBAs and IT, There should then be a sliding scale so that lower ranked university humanities courses actually are told to cut the fees for their courses
Can you evidence that the Russell Group is better than other universities? E.g. for Pharmacy - what is the highest ranked Uni where you can study pharmacy?
Your obsession with the Russell Group is mad.
I suspect what HY is hoping for is a return to only the wealthiest 7% enjoying the benefits of the University system. This is why people like HY are so exercised by people who they don't believe can afford University loans, which essentially is everyone after the 2023 scheme was adopted.
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
Taht was the original idea. But the universities ended up charging the maximum they were allowed, uniformly. At this point some actual experts in higher education can tell you why.
It doesn't require an expert - the quality of your university course is revealed in the price, so as no University is going to offer a second rate course and no student is going to willing take a second rate course the price is always going to be the maximum allowed.
The maximum allowed should only be able to be charged by Russell Group universities for Law, Economics, Medicine and MBAs and IT, There should then be a sliding scale so that lower ranked university humanities courses actually are told to cut the fees for their courses
Can you evidence that the Russell Group is better than other universities? E.g. for Pharmacy - what is the highest ranked Uni where you can study pharmacy?
Your obsession with the Russell Group is mad.
In my day (end of the '50's) it was London followed by Nottingham.
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
Where would you put, for example, medicine?
Maximum fee, always huge demand for it and most doctors and surgeons end up earning six figures before they retire
What about a teacher?
I'm not happy about the marketisation proposed, can the thick rich kids who become Doctors be separated to only provide healthcare to those proposing this marketisation?
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
Taht was the original idea. But the universities ended up charging the maximum they were allowed, uniformly. At this point some actual experts in higher education can tell you why.
It doesn't require an expert - the quality of your university course is revealed in the price, so as no University is going to offer a second rate course and no student is going to willing take a second rate course the price is always going to be the maximum allowed.
The maximum allowed should only be able to be charged by Russell Group universities for Law, Economics, Medicine and MBAs and IT, There should then be a sliding scale so that lower ranked university humanities courses actually are told to cut the fees for their courses
Can you evidence that the Russell Group is better than other universities? E.g. for Pharmacy - what is the highest ranked Uni where you can study pharmacy?
Your obsession with the Russell Group is mad.
'According to the latest LEO data (tax year 2022-23), the median graduate earns approximately £34,000 ten years after graduation. Russell Group graduates earn a median of approximately £40,000-42,000 at the same point — roughly 18-24% more'
"And by the way, if that piece is right, Global Consult, the consultancy firm which Mandelson co-founded, was "reportedly absent from his vetting." How on earth is that possible? If you are looking to mitigate risk and conflicts of interest how could you possibly exclude a 24% share in a consultancy firm with international clients looking for UK contracts? What more blatant risk could you have?
We can already infer that the correspondence with Epstein was not disclosed or found because surely he would never have been appointed if it was.
So, this is 2 major risks that have apparently not been identified in the DV. Where the recommendation was that he not be appointed. We have got quite wrapped up with what Starmer was and was not told but was it worth the paper it was written on?"
The context of this was a presentation made to Starmer and Mandelson by a client of Mandelson's firm that was not reported by Starmer for reasons that are somewhat unclear, a client who ended up with a defence contract worth £750m.
To me, this looks like a breach of the Ministerial code by Starmer with very serious consequences which, at the very least, shows appalling judgment by him. If this gains traction things may well move a lot faster than some of his potential successors might want.
He should be out Number 10 without his feet touching the street.
We were on notice about Starmer with all the freebies from Lord Alli for clothes, glasses and accommodation. He seems “Intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich” - and showering it around in his direction.
The quote is, of course, from Mandelson.
Politicians of all parties have been "helped" by their "friends" since time immaterial and Starmer was no exception. I seem to recall an outbreak of neo-puritanism as soon as it was revealed there were free tickets to Taylor Swift concerts and to national events (some ofthe latter to which Government and Opposition politicians are routinely invited).
This was all a throwback to "expenses", duck houses and getting your London flat redecorated at the taxpayer's expense.
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
Where would you put, for example, medicine?
Maximum fee, always huge demand for it and most doctors and surgeons end up earning six figures before they retire
What about a teacher?
Average fee at most, even below average fee for shortage subjects
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
Taht was the original idea. But the universities ended up charging the maximum they were allowed, uniformly. At this point some actual experts in higher education can tell you why.
It doesn't require an expert - the quality of your university course is revealed in the price, so as no University is going to offer a second rate course and no student is going to willing take a second rate course the price is always going to be the maximum allowed.
The maximum allowed should only be able to be charged by Russell Group universities for Law, Economics, Medicine and MBAs and IT, There should then be a sliding scale so that lower ranked university humanities courses actually are told to cut the fees for their courses
Can you evidence that the Russell Group is better than other universities? E.g. for Pharmacy - what is the highest ranked Uni where you can study pharmacy?
Your obsession with the Russell Group is mad.
I suspect what HY is hoping for is a return to only the wealthiest 7% enjoying the benefits of the University system. This is why people like HY are so exercised by people who they don't believe can afford University loans, which essentially is everyone after the 2023 scheme was adopted.
No, just a genuine market, so Oxbridge Law and Medicine and Economics graduates are charged the highest fees and those studying creative arts and humanities at lower ranked universities the lowest fees
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
Taht was the original idea. But the universities ended up charging the maximum they were allowed, uniformly. At this point some actual experts in higher education can tell you why.
It doesn't require an expert - the quality of your university course is revealed in the price, so as no University is going to offer a second rate course and no student is going to willing take a second rate course the price is always going to be the maximum allowed.
The maximum allowed should only be able to be charged by Russell Group universities for Law, Economics, Medicine and MBAs and IT, There should then be a sliding scale so that lower ranked university humanities courses actually are told to cut the fees for their courses
Can you evidence that the Russell Group is better than other universities? E.g. for Pharmacy - what is the highest ranked Uni where you can study pharmacy?
Your obsession with the Russell Group is mad.
I suspect what HY is hoping for is a return to only the wealthiest 7% enjoying the benefits of the University system. This is why people like HY are so exercised by people who they don't believe can afford University loans, which essentially is everyone after the 2023 scheme was adopted.
You cannot return to a system which never existed.
Even when less than 2% of people went to university the likes of Wilson, Heath and Thatcher managed to do so.
While a reduction of the number of people going to university to what it was in the 1980s would principally affect the thicker half of middle class teenagers.
"And by the way, if that piece is right, Global Consult, the consultancy firm which Mandelson co-founded, was "reportedly absent from his vetting." How on earth is that possible? If you are looking to mitigate risk and conflicts of interest how could you possibly exclude a 24% share in a consultancy firm with international clients looking for UK contracts? What more blatant risk could you have?
We can already infer that the correspondence with Epstein was not disclosed or found because surely he would never have been appointed if it was.
So, this is 2 major risks that have apparently not been identified in the DV. Where the recommendation was that he not be appointed. We have got quite wrapped up with what Starmer was and was not told but was it worth the paper it was written on?"
The context of this was a presentation made to Starmer and Mandelson by a client of Mandelson's firm that was not reported by Starmer for reasons that are somewhat unclear, a client who ended up with a defence contract worth £750m.
To me, this looks like a breach of the Ministerial code by Starmer with very serious consequences which, at the very least, shows appalling judgment by him. If this gains traction things may well move a lot faster than some of his potential successors might want.
He should be out Number 10 without his feet touching the street.
We were on notice about Starmer with all the freebies from Lord Alli for clothes, glasses and accommodation. He seems “Intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich” - and showering it around in his direction.
The quote is, of course, from Mandelson.
Politicians of all parties have been "helped" by their "friends" since time immaterial and Starmer was no exception. I seem to recall an outbreak of neo-puritanism as soon as it was revealed there were free tickets to Taylor Swift concerts and to national events (some ofthe latter to which Government and Opposition politicians are routinely invited).
This was all a throwback to "expenses", duck houses and getting your London flat redecorated at the taxpayer's expense.
It's a throwback to politicians lining their pockets - and voters hating it.
Labour was elected on a platform of being better than the Tories.
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
Taht was the original idea. But the universities ended up charging the maximum they were allowed, uniformly. At this point some actual experts in higher education can tell you why.
It doesn't require an expert - the quality of your university course is revealed in the price, so as no University is going to offer a second rate course and no student is going to willing take a second rate course the price is always going to be the maximum allowed.
The maximum allowed should only be able to be charged by Russell Group universities for Law, Economics, Medicine and MBAs and IT, There should then be a sliding scale so that lower ranked university humanities courses actually are told to cut the fees for their courses
Can you evidence that the Russell Group is better than other universities? E.g. for Pharmacy - what is the highest ranked Uni where you can study pharmacy?
Your obsession with the Russell Group is mad.
I suspect what HY is hoping for is a return to only the wealthiest 7% enjoying the benefits of the University system. This is why people like HY are so exercised by people who they don't believe can afford University loans, which essentially is everyone after the 2023 scheme was adopted.
No, just a genuine market, so Oxbridge Law and Medicine and Economics graduates are charged the highest fees and those studying creative arts and humanities at lower ranked universities the lowest fees
What about Oxbridge under-graduates reading Classics? That strikes me as a bollocks degree.
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
For that to explain the gap you’d need the comparator countries to have lower rates of immigration (and ideally to run correlations between the two variables). Otherwise it’s deductive reasoning.
bollox
Let's try to unpack exactly why @MarqueeMark is so wrong. First, MM appears to view differences in life expectancy to be permanent ("migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population") for reasons he does not expand on. That is, if you are Afghan, he proposes that you are always less healthy than someone who is British. However, the main reason life expectancies are different in the two countries is because Afghanistan is a much more dangerous place to live, because it has terrible healthcare. It's being in Afghanistan that is the problem, not being Afghan.
MM also makes the very common mistake of misunderstanding what life expectancy numbers mean. Afghanistan's life expectancy is 59 versus 80 in the UK (2021 figures). People often presume that this means most Afghans live to be about 59. However, this is not the case. The lower life expectancy is driven by high infant mortality, which brings down the average, but if you survive infancy, then conditional life expectancy is much higher. The difference between life expectancy at birth between Afghanistan and the UK is 21 years, but conditional life expectancy at age 15 in Afghanistan is an additional 67 years, and the UK figure is also 67 years!
The aggregation of available data on mortality in migrant populations is crucial for comprehensively and rigorously summarising the knowledge base, providing insight with regard to the association between migration and mortality to inform health services, and countering discriminatory or hostile policies.36,37 Contrary to the negative representation of migrants in the media as a burden to health systems,38 our research provides substantial evidence in support of the mortality advantage of migrants compared with the general population in high-income countries. These results therefore challenge misconceptions and policies that do injustice to migrants, representing them as a risk and burden to health systems and society, and instead highlight positive contributions of migration in these countries.
Previous research3,39 has identified several factors that might contribute to improved health outcomes in migrants compared with host populations, and non-migrating peers in countries of origin. Data supporting a healthy migrant hypothesis suggest that healthier migrants might be more likely to choose to migrate, benefit from decisions to migrate, or successfully migrate, and that health is thus a predictor of migration.40,41
No, I've misread the table! Life expectancy at 15 isn't that close between Afghanistan and the UK, but it is a lot closer than life expectancy at birth. It's about 10 years apart.
You went to all that trouble and got everything wrong because you’re fucking stupid. It’s terrifying to think an intellectual midget like you was on a sub-committee of SAGE
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
Taht was the original idea. But the universities ended up charging the maximum they were allowed, uniformly. At this point some actual experts in higher education can tell you why.
It doesn't require an expert - the quality of your university course is revealed in the price, so as no University is going to offer a second rate course and no student is going to willing take a second rate course the price is always going to be the maximum allowed.
The maximum allowed should only be able to be charged by Russell Group universities for Law, Economics, Medicine and MBAs and IT, There should then be a sliding scale so that lower ranked university humanities courses actually are told to cut the fees for their courses
Can you evidence that the Russell Group is better than other universities? E.g. for Pharmacy - what is the highest ranked Uni where you can study pharmacy?
Your obsession with the Russell Group is mad.
I suspect what HY is hoping for is a return to only the wealthiest 7% enjoying the benefits of the University system. This is why people like HY are so exercised by people who they don't believe can afford University loans, which essentially is everyone after the 2023 scheme was adopted.
You cannot return to a system which never existed.
Even when less than 2% of people went to university the likes of Wilson, Heath and Thatcher managed to do so.
While a reduction of the number of people going to university to what it was in the 1980s would principally affect the thicker half of middle class teenagers.
You Tories are desperate for "scumbag filth" not to go to University.
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support.
Fair enough - everybody wants their debts wiped - but where do we find the £300 billion to do so? Taxes are strangling the economy, borrowing is at a record level and public expenditure has proved, under the current shower at least, uncutable.
Also wiping debts rewards deadbeats as those who have paid their loans on time or early are left subsidising those that haven't.
Not that I think it's a terrible idea - it's just yet another mess that Blair and Heir to Blair have saddled the country with, and there is no easy solution.
History of UK student loans 1990 top-up for maintenance grants (Conservatives under Thatcher) 1998 tuition fees £1000pa (Labour under Blair) 2006 tuition fees £3000pa (Labour under Blair) 2012 £9K/ 9% tax system (Coalition under Cameron / Clegg)
While I didn't agree with Labour introducing tuition fees, it bore no resemblance to that introduced by the coalition. It went from being unfair but repayable to this massively inequitable decades long tax.
If Scotland, with 8% of the population can afford to fund 5% of the UK's undergraduate tuition fees, why can't England and Wales have a less onerous system.
Your summary misses out some post-2012 changes. The system introduced in 2012 was designed to be quite graduate tax-like, but the Conservatives have subsequently changed it to be more regressive.
Noted, but overall it's Bad 10x Bad 12?x Bad
The current system also fails badly in being gamed, a minority are now taking loans with no intention of earning enough or staying in UK to make repayments. This bad debt then falls on those genuinely interested in a degree and career and rest of taxpayers
The expectation of the original 2012 design was that lots of people would never pay off their loan, because it was designed to function more like a graduate tax, with lower earners paying less. One of the thing that's happened post-2012 is that the repayment period has been extended, so people are paying more.
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
We could do that. Universities are a fun example of just how broke we are as a country:
Your government slashed funding for universities That means they all have to charge fees up to the cap That means they have to desperately attract any students they can charge more fees for - hence the huge wave of Chinese students into cities like Sheffield And at the same time, so many universities totter on the edge of bankruptsy
Students pay record fees they can never repay for tuition at universities who despite the fees are broke and have to cut funding for tuition.
However have we managed to both impoverish graduates and universities at the same time?
I live fairly near Oxford so have been taking a few postgraduate courses that don't lead to anything but are interesting in themselves. That said, the cost is eye-watering (typically over £1000 for a single once-a-week two-hour course), and I wonder if the facilities aren't a bit too luxurious. I'm lucky to be able to afford the cost without blinking too much, but is there a place for some more affordable functional universities with good tuition and basic facilities?
With Oxford, it's about limits on numbers and their place in the international market for higher education.
Your not going to get many foreign students signing up to the style of student accommodation that was there in the 1980s, Or the other facilities.
In the early 2000s my Cambridge college was spending a lot of money en-suiting rooms. But the impetus was that summer conferences were big business back then, and conference guests didn't like sharing bathrooms.
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
Taht was the original idea. But the universities ended up charging the maximum they were allowed, uniformly. At this point some actual experts in higher education can tell you why.
It doesn't require an expert - the quality of your university course is revealed in the price, so as no University is going to offer a second rate course and no student is going to willing take a second rate course the price is always going to be the maximum allowed.
The maximum allowed should only be able to be charged by Russell Group universities for Law, Economics, Medicine and MBAs and IT, There should then be a sliding scale so that lower ranked university humanities courses actually are told to cut the fees for their courses
Can you evidence that the Russell Group is better than other universities? E.g. for Pharmacy - what is the highest ranked Uni where you can study pharmacy?
Your obsession with the Russell Group is mad.
In my day (end of the '50's) it was London followed by Nottingham.
London meaning the School of Pharmacy? Which merged into UCL, and thus became part of the Russell Group, in 2012. Nottingham is also Russell Group.
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
Taht was the original idea. But the universities ended up charging the maximum they were allowed, uniformly. At this point some actual experts in higher education can tell you why.
It doesn't require an expert - the quality of your university course is revealed in the price, so as no University is going to offer a second rate course and no student is going to willing take a second rate course the price is always going to be the maximum allowed.
The maximum allowed should only be able to be charged by Russell Group universities for Law, Economics, Medicine and MBAs and IT, There should then be a sliding scale so that lower ranked university humanities courses actually are told to cut the fees for their courses
Can you evidence that the Russell Group is better than other universities? E.g. for Pharmacy - what is the highest ranked Uni where you can study pharmacy?
Your obsession with the Russell Group is mad.
I suspect what HY is hoping for is a return to only the wealthiest 7% enjoying the benefits of the University system. This is why people like HY are so exercised by people who they don't believe can afford University loans, which essentially is everyone after the 2023 scheme was adopted.
No, just a genuine market, so Oxbridge Law and Medicine and Economics graduates are charged the highest fees and those studying creative arts and humanities at lower ranked universities the lowest fees
If it were a genuine market, you wouldn't have to specify where the maximum can be charged. The market would work that out.
I JUST GOT KNOCKED TO THE SIDE BY A WILD, CHARGING GORILLA IN THE VIRUNGA VOLCANOES OF RWANDA
Another Monday morning in the office, huh
I always said sending people to Rwanda was incredibly dangerous.
To be fair the gorilla was about two feet high and three years old. So it wasn’t overly dangerous
His dad the silverback was decidedly scarier. These creatures are enormous. They let you come within inches. It is an amazing experience like everyone says. Truly truly profound
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
Taht was the original idea. But the universities ended up charging the maximum they were allowed, uniformly. At this point some actual experts in higher education can tell you why.
It doesn't require an expert - the quality of your university course is revealed in the price, so as no University is going to offer a second rate course and no student is going to willing take a second rate course the price is always going to be the maximum allowed.
The maximum allowed should only be able to be charged by Russell Group universities for Law, Economics, Medicine and MBAs and IT, There should then be a sliding scale so that lower ranked university humanities courses actually are told to cut the fees for their courses
Can you evidence that the Russell Group is better than other universities? E.g. for Pharmacy - what is the highest ranked Uni where you can study pharmacy?
Your obsession with the Russell Group is mad.
I suspect what HY is hoping for is a return to only the wealthiest 7% enjoying the benefits of the University system. This is why people like HY are so exercised by people who they don't believe can afford University loans, which essentially is everyone after the 2023 scheme was adopted.
No, just a genuine market, so Oxbridge Law and Medicine and Economics graduates are charged the highest fees and those studying creative arts and humanities at lower ranked universities the lowest fees
If it were a genuine market, you wouldn't have to specify where the maximum can be charged. The market would work that out.
Fine, scrap the cap and let universities charge whatever fees they wanted, within 5-10 years Russell Group Law, Medicine and Economics courses would charge a huge fee and still have huge demand and students are not going to pay a fortune for creative arts and humanities courses at lower ranked universities. So those courses either charge a lower fee or or go bust
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support.
Fair enough - everybody wants their debts wiped - but where do we find the £300 billion to do so? Taxes are strangling the economy, borrowing is at a record level and public expenditure has proved, under the current shower at least, uncutable.
Also wiping debts rewards deadbeats as those who have paid their loans on time or early are left subsidising those that haven't.
Not that I think it's a terrible idea - it's just yet another mess that Blair and Heir to Blair have saddled the country with, and there is no easy solution.
History of UK student loans 1990 top-up for maintenance grants (Conservatives under Thatcher) 1998 tuition fees £1000pa (Labour under Blair) 2006 tuition fees £3000pa (Labour under Blair) 2012 £9K/ 9% tax system (Coalition under Cameron / Clegg)
While I didn't agree with Labour introducing tuition fees, it bore no resemblance to that introduced by the coalition. It went from being unfair but repayable to this massively inequitable decades long tax.
If Scotland, with 8% of the population can afford to fund 5% of the UK's undergraduate tuition fees, why can't England and Wales have a less onerous system.
Your summary misses out some post-2012 changes. The system introduced in 2012 was designed to be quite graduate tax-like, but the Conservatives have subsequently changed it to be more regressive.
Noted, but overall it's Bad 10x Bad 12?x Bad
The current system also fails badly in being gamed, a minority are now taking loans with no intention of earning enough or staying in UK to make repayments. This bad debt then falls on those genuinely interested in a degree and career and rest of taxpayers
The expectation of the original 2012 design was that lots of people would never pay off their loan, because it was designed to function more like a graduate tax, with lower earners paying less. One of the thing that's happened post-2012 is that the repayment period has been extended, so people are paying more.
It was still a really shit idea, that it's become more shit was also predicted by those who opposed it at the time.
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
Taht was the original idea. But the universities ended up charging the maximum they were allowed, uniformly. At this point some actual experts in higher education can tell you why.
It doesn't require an expert - the quality of your university course is revealed in the price, so as no University is going to offer a second rate course and no student is going to willing take a second rate course the price is always going to be the maximum allowed.
The maximum allowed should only be able to be charged by Russell Group universities for Law, Economics, Medicine and MBAs and IT, There should then be a sliding scale so that lower ranked university humanities courses actually are told to cut the fees for their courses
Can you evidence that the Russell Group is better than other universities? E.g. for Pharmacy - what is the highest ranked Uni where you can study pharmacy?
Your obsession with the Russell Group is mad.
I suspect what HY is hoping for is a return to only the wealthiest 7% enjoying the benefits of the University system. This is why people like HY are so exercised by people who they don't believe can afford University loans, which essentially is everyone after the 2023 scheme was adopted.
No, just a genuine market, so Oxbridge Law and Medicine and Economics graduates are charged the highest fees and those studying creative arts and humanities at lower ranked universities the lowest fees
What about Oxbridge under-graduates reading Classics? That strikes me as a bollocks degree.
No, it is a proper degree in a traditional subject requiring extensive understanding of grammar and cases
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
Taht was the original idea. But the universities ended up charging the maximum they were allowed, uniformly. At this point some actual experts in higher education can tell you why.
It doesn't require an expert - the quality of your university course is revealed in the price, so as no University is going to offer a second rate course and no student is going to willing take a second rate course the price is always going to be the maximum allowed.
The maximum allowed should only be able to be charged by Russell Group universities for Law, Economics, Medicine and MBAs and IT, There should then be a sliding scale so that lower ranked university humanities courses actually are told to cut the fees for their courses
Can you evidence that the Russell Group is better than other universities? E.g. for Pharmacy - what is the highest ranked Uni where you can study pharmacy?
Your obsession with the Russell Group is mad.
I suspect what HY is hoping for is a return to only the wealthiest 7% enjoying the benefits of the University system. This is why people like HY are so exercised by people who they don't believe can afford University loans, which essentially is everyone after the 2023 scheme was adopted.
No, just a genuine market, so Oxbridge Law and Medicine and Economics graduates are charged the highest fees and those studying creative arts and humanities at lower ranked universities the lowest fees
What about Oxbridge under-graduates reading Classics? That strikes me as a bollocks degree.
No, it is a proper degree in a traditional subject requiring extensive understanding of grammar and cases
Rubbish. It is even less useful than my politics degree.
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
Taht was the original idea. But the universities ended up charging the maximum they were allowed, uniformly. At this point some actual experts in higher education can tell you why.
It doesn't require an expert - the quality of your university course is revealed in the price, so as no University is going to offer a second rate course and no student is going to willing take a second rate course the price is always going to be the maximum allowed.
The maximum allowed should only be able to be charged by Russell Group universities for Law, Economics, Medicine and MBAs and IT, There should then be a sliding scale so that lower ranked university humanities courses actually are told to cut the fees for their courses
Can you evidence that the Russell Group is better than other universities? E.g. for Pharmacy - what is the highest ranked Uni where you can study pharmacy?
Your obsession with the Russell Group is mad.
I suspect what HY is hoping for is a return to only the wealthiest 7% enjoying the benefits of the University system. This is why people like HY are so exercised by people who they don't believe can afford University loans, which essentially is everyone after the 2023 scheme was adopted.
No, just a genuine market, so Oxbridge Law and Medicine and Economics graduates are charged the highest fees and those studying creative arts and humanities at lower ranked universities the lowest fees
What about Oxbridge under-graduates reading Classics? That strikes me as a bollocks degree.
No, it is a proper degree in a traditional subject requiring extensive understanding of grammar and cases
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
Taht was the original idea. But the universities ended up charging the maximum they were allowed, uniformly. At this point some actual experts in higher education can tell you why.
It doesn't require an expert - the quality of your university course is revealed in the price, so as no University is going to offer a second rate course and no student is going to willing take a second rate course the price is always going to be the maximum allowed.
The maximum allowed should only be able to be charged by Russell Group universities for Law, Economics, Medicine and MBAs and IT, There should then be a sliding scale so that lower ranked university humanities courses actually are told to cut the fees for their courses
Can you evidence that the Russell Group is better than other universities? E.g. for Pharmacy - what is the highest ranked Uni where you can study pharmacy?
Your obsession with the Russell Group is mad.
I suspect what HY is hoping for is a return to only the wealthiest 7% enjoying the benefits of the University system. This is why people like HY are so exercised by people who they don't believe can afford University loans, which essentially is everyone after the 2023 scheme was adopted.
No, just a genuine market, so Oxbridge Law and Medicine and Economics graduates are charged the highest fees and those studying creative arts and humanities at lower ranked universities the lowest fees
What about Oxbridge under-graduates reading Classics? That strikes me as a bollocks degree.
No, it is a proper degree in a traditional subject requiring extensive understanding of grammar and cases
Rubbish. It is even less useful than my politics degree.
Not if you want to be a Classics academic, an archivist, an archaeologist, a Classics teacher, even as Boris proved PM.
It is also more intellectually challenging than a politics degree I would suggest
"And by the way, if that piece is right, Global Consult, the consultancy firm which Mandelson co-founded, was "reportedly absent from his vetting." How on earth is that possible? If you are looking to mitigate risk and conflicts of interest how could you possibly exclude a 24% share in a consultancy firm with international clients looking for UK contracts? What more blatant risk could you have?
We can already infer that the correspondence with Epstein was not disclosed or found because surely he would never have been appointed if it was.
So, this is 2 major risks that have apparently not been identified in the DV. Where the recommendation was that he not be appointed. We have got quite wrapped up with what Starmer was and was not told but was it worth the paper it was written on?"
The context of this was a presentation made to Starmer and Mandelson by a client of Mandelson's firm that was not reported by Starmer for reasons that are somewhat unclear, a client who ended up with a defence contract worth £750m.
To me, this looks like a breach of the Ministerial code by Starmer with very serious consequences which, at the very least, shows appalling judgment by him. If this gains traction things may well move a lot faster than some of his potential successors might want.
As I have said ad nauseam, conflicts of interest are to the heart of every scandal. It is no different here. The Nolan Principles are pretty weak on this BTW.
But Mandelson should either have been required to sell his shares in his firm when he became Ambassador or put them in a blind trust and a list of all that firm's clients should have been provided and any visit to or meeting with them by any Minister, let alone the PM, carefully scrutinised and approved by some sort of independent person before it went ahead with civil servants attending and a proper record made. Precisely in order to ensure no shenanigans or a perception of them.
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
Taht was the original idea. But the universities ended up charging the maximum they were allowed, uniformly. At this point some actual experts in higher education can tell you why.
It doesn't require an expert - the quality of your university course is revealed in the price, so as no University is going to offer a second rate course and no student is going to willing take a second rate course the price is always going to be the maximum allowed.
The maximum allowed should only be able to be charged by Russell Group universities for Law, Economics, Medicine and MBAs and IT, There should then be a sliding scale so that lower ranked university humanities courses actually are told to cut the fees for their courses
Can you evidence that the Russell Group is better than other universities? E.g. for Pharmacy - what is the highest ranked Uni where you can study pharmacy?
Your obsession with the Russell Group is mad.
I suspect what HY is hoping for is a return to only the wealthiest 7% enjoying the benefits of the University system. This is why people like HY are so exercised by people who they don't believe can afford University loans, which essentially is everyone after the 2023 scheme was adopted.
No, just a genuine market, so Oxbridge Law and Medicine and Economics graduates are charged the highest fees and those studying creative arts and humanities at lower ranked universities the lowest fees
What about Oxbridge under-graduates reading Classics? That strikes me as a bollocks degree.
No, it is a proper degree in a traditional subject requiring extensive understanding of grammar and cases
What's the commercial value of that?
Universities are not all about commerce but intellectual rigour and research as well, I am a Tory not a pure capitalist. Harold Macmillan and Boris were both great champions and students of Classics
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
Taht was the original idea. But the universities ended up charging the maximum they were allowed, uniformly. At this point some actual experts in higher education can tell you why.
It doesn't require an expert - the quality of your university course is revealed in the price, so as no University is going to offer a second rate course and no student is going to willing take a second rate course the price is always going to be the maximum allowed.
The maximum allowed should only be able to be charged by Russell Group universities for Law, Economics, Medicine and MBAs and IT, There should then be a sliding scale so that lower ranked university humanities courses actually are told to cut the fees for their courses
Can you evidence that the Russell Group is better than other universities? E.g. for Pharmacy - what is the highest ranked Uni where you can study pharmacy?
Your obsession with the Russell Group is mad.
I suspect what HY is hoping for is a return to only the wealthiest 7% enjoying the benefits of the University system. This is why people like HY are so exercised by people who they don't believe can afford University loans, which essentially is everyone after the 2023 scheme was adopted.
No, just a genuine market, so Oxbridge Law and Medicine and Economics graduates are charged the highest fees and those studying creative arts and humanities at lower ranked universities the lowest fees
What about Oxbridge under-graduates reading Classics? That strikes me as a bollocks degree.
No, it is a proper degree in a traditional subject requiring extensive understanding of grammar and cases
Rubbish. It is even less useful than my politics degree.
Not if you want to be a Classics academic, an archivist, an archaeologist, a Classics teacher, even as Boris proved PM.
It is also more intellectually challenging than a politics degree I would suggest
More appropriate than discussing the work of right wing theorists like Robert Nozick?
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
Taht was the original idea. But the universities ended up charging the maximum they were allowed, uniformly. At this point some actual experts in higher education can tell you why.
It doesn't require an expert - the quality of your university course is revealed in the price, so as no University is going to offer a second rate course and no student is going to willing take a second rate course the price is always going to be the maximum allowed.
The maximum allowed should only be able to be charged by Russell Group universities for Law, Economics, Medicine and MBAs and IT, There should then be a sliding scale so that lower ranked university humanities courses actually are told to cut the fees for their courses
Can you evidence that the Russell Group is better than other universities? E.g. for Pharmacy - what is the highest ranked Uni where you can study pharmacy?
Your obsession with the Russell Group is mad.
I suspect what HY is hoping for is a return to only the wealthiest 7% enjoying the benefits of the University system. This is why people like HY are so exercised by people who they don't believe can afford University loans, which essentially is everyone after the 2023 scheme was adopted.
No, just a genuine market, so Oxbridge Law and Medicine and Economics graduates are charged the highest fees and those studying creative arts and humanities at lower ranked universities the lowest fees
What about Oxbridge under-graduates reading Classics? That strikes me as a bollocks degree.
No, it is a proper degree in a traditional subject requiring extensive understanding of grammar and cases
What's the commercial value of that?
Universities are not all about commerce but intellectual rigour and research as well, I am a Tory not a pure capitalist. Harold Macmillan and Boris were both great champions and students of Classics
Your single argument during this thread has been about the commercial value of a degree.
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
Taht was the original idea. But the universities ended up charging the maximum they were allowed, uniformly. At this point some actual experts in higher education can tell you why.
It doesn't require an expert - the quality of your university course is revealed in the price, so as no University is going to offer a second rate course and no student is going to willing take a second rate course the price is always going to be the maximum allowed.
The maximum allowed should only be able to be charged by Russell Group universities for Law, Economics, Medicine and MBAs and IT, There should then be a sliding scale so that lower ranked university humanities courses actually are told to cut the fees for their courses
Can you evidence that the Russell Group is better than other universities? E.g. for Pharmacy - what is the highest ranked Uni where you can study pharmacy?
Your obsession with the Russell Group is mad.
I suspect what HY is hoping for is a return to only the wealthiest 7% enjoying the benefits of the University system. This is why people like HY are so exercised by people who they don't believe can afford University loans, which essentially is everyone after the 2023 scheme was adopted.
No, just a genuine market, so Oxbridge Law and Medicine and Economics graduates are charged the highest fees and those studying creative arts and humanities at lower ranked universities the lowest fees
What about Oxbridge under-graduates reading Classics? That strikes me as a bollocks degree.
No, it is a proper degree in a traditional subject requiring extensive understanding of grammar and cases
Rubbish. It is even less useful than my politics degree.
An understanding of hubris and nemesis has been pretty bloody useful in my career. And, frankly, if others had understood this we might not have seen quite so many people repeatedly make the same stupid mistakes. As we are seeing now with our politicians and others.
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
Taht was the original idea. But the universities ended up charging the maximum they were allowed, uniformly. At this point some actual experts in higher education can tell you why.
It doesn't require an expert - the quality of your university course is revealed in the price, so as no University is going to offer a second rate course and no student is going to willing take a second rate course the price is always going to be the maximum allowed.
The maximum allowed should only be able to be charged by Russell Group universities for Law, Economics, Medicine and MBAs and IT, There should then be a sliding scale so that lower ranked university humanities courses actually are told to cut the fees for their courses
Can you evidence that the Russell Group is better than other universities? E.g. for Pharmacy - what is the highest ranked Uni where you can study pharmacy?
Your obsession with the Russell Group is mad.
I suspect what HY is hoping for is a return to only the wealthiest 7% enjoying the benefits of the University system. This is why people like HY are so exercised by people who they don't believe can afford University loans, which essentially is everyone after the 2023 scheme was adopted.
No, just a genuine market, so Oxbridge Law and Medicine and Economics graduates are charged the highest fees and those studying creative arts and humanities at lower ranked universities the lowest fees
What about Oxbridge under-graduates reading Classics? That strikes me as a bollocks degree.
No, it is a proper degree in a traditional subject requiring extensive understanding of grammar and cases
What's the commercial value of that?
Universities are not all about commerce but intellectual rigour and research as well, I am a Tory not a pure capitalist. Harold Macmillan and Boris were both great champions and students of Classics
Your single argument during this thread has been about the commercial value of a degree.
In terms of FEES CHARGED, of course Economics and Medicine and Law at Oxford should be charged more than Classics, that doesn't mean Classics courses shouldn't still exist
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
Taht was the original idea. But the universities ended up charging the maximum they were allowed, uniformly. At this point some actual experts in higher education can tell you why.
It doesn't require an expert - the quality of your university course is revealed in the price, so as no University is going to offer a second rate course and no student is going to willing take a second rate course the price is always going to be the maximum allowed.
The maximum allowed should only be able to be charged by Russell Group universities for Law, Economics, Medicine and MBAs and IT, There should then be a sliding scale so that lower ranked university humanities courses actually are told to cut the fees for their courses
Can you evidence that the Russell Group is better than other universities? E.g. for Pharmacy - what is the highest ranked Uni where you can study pharmacy?
Your obsession with the Russell Group is mad.
I suspect what HY is hoping for is a return to only the wealthiest 7% enjoying the benefits of the University system. This is why people like HY are so exercised by people who they don't believe can afford University loans, which essentially is everyone after the 2023 scheme was adopted.
No, just a genuine market, so Oxbridge Law and Medicine and Economics graduates are charged the highest fees and those studying creative arts and humanities at lower ranked universities the lowest fees
What about Oxbridge under-graduates reading Classics? That strikes me as a bollocks degree.
No, it is a proper degree in a traditional subject requiring extensive understanding of grammar and cases
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
Taht was the original idea. But the universities ended up charging the maximum they were allowed, uniformly. At this point some actual experts in higher education can tell you why.
It doesn't require an expert - the quality of your university course is revealed in the price, so as no University is going to offer a second rate course and no student is going to willing take a second rate course the price is always going to be the maximum allowed.
The maximum allowed should only be able to be charged by Russell Group universities for Law, Economics, Medicine and MBAs and IT, There should then be a sliding scale so that lower ranked university humanities courses actually are told to cut the fees for their courses
Can you evidence that the Russell Group is better than other universities? E.g. for Pharmacy - what is the highest ranked Uni where you can study pharmacy?
Your obsession with the Russell Group is mad.
I suspect what HY is hoping for is a return to only the wealthiest 7% enjoying the benefits of the University system. This is why people like HY are so exercised by people who they don't believe can afford University loans, which essentially is everyone after the 2023 scheme was adopted.
No, just a genuine market, so Oxbridge Law and Medicine and Economics graduates are charged the highest fees and those studying creative arts and humanities at lower ranked universities the lowest fees
What about Oxbridge under-graduates reading Classics? That strikes me as a bollocks degree.
No, it is a proper degree in a traditional subject requiring extensive understanding of grammar and cases
What's the commercial value of that?
Universities are not all about commerce but intellectual rigour and research as well, I am a Tory not a pure capitalist. Harold Macmillan and Boris were both great champions and students of Classics
Your single argument during this thread has been about the commercial value of a degree.
In terms of FEES CHARGED, of course Economics and Medicine and Law at Oxford should be charged more than Classics, that doesn't mean Classics courses shouldn't still exist
So on the basis of your argument regarding Classics, why should film studies be binned?
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
Taht was the original idea. But the universities ended up charging the maximum they were allowed, uniformly. At this point some actual experts in higher education can tell you why.
It doesn't require an expert - the quality of your university course is revealed in the price, so as no University is going to offer a second rate course and no student is going to willing take a second rate course the price is always going to be the maximum allowed.
The maximum allowed should only be able to be charged by Russell Group universities for Law, Economics, Medicine and MBAs and IT, There should then be a sliding scale so that lower ranked university humanities courses actually are told to cut the fees for their courses
Can you evidence that the Russell Group is better than other universities? E.g. for Pharmacy - what is the highest ranked Uni where you can study pharmacy?
Your obsession with the Russell Group is mad.
I suspect what HY is hoping for is a return to only the wealthiest 7% enjoying the benefits of the University system. This is why people like HY are so exercised by people who they don't believe can afford University loans, which essentially is everyone after the 2023 scheme was adopted.
No, just a genuine market, so Oxbridge Law and Medicine and Economics graduates are charged the highest fees and those studying creative arts and humanities at lower ranked universities the lowest fees
What about Oxbridge under-graduates reading Classics? That strikes me as a bollocks degree.
No, it is a proper degree in a traditional subject requiring extensive understanding of grammar and cases
You can learn most of that at A level.
You still need a Classics degree to teach Classics or be a Classics Professor at Oxford or say a curator at the British Museum
Prostitutes’ ‘beware book’ could include client list of police and lawyers
Evidence that has gone missing since Emma Caldwell murder could have been damaging for officers, says retired detective
A “beware book” kept by women working in Glasgow’s red-light district around the time of Emma Caldwell’s murder could be damning for police if its contents were uncovered, a retired detective has said.
The book was used by women involved in prostitution to warn each other about potentially dangerous or suspicious clients, at a time when they felt they had to rely on “their wits and each other, not the authorities” to remain safe.
Kept at the city’s Base 75 drop-in centre, the book contained information such as vehicle registrations, names, nicknames and descriptions of clients.
One woman who wrote in the book claimed that the clients listed in it included “lawyers, police, all sorts”.
The “beware book” was taken as evidence by police during the investigation into Caldwell’s murder in 2005. It has since “gone missing”.
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
Taht was the original idea. But the universities ended up charging the maximum they were allowed, uniformly. At this point some actual experts in higher education can tell you why.
It doesn't require an expert - the quality of your university course is revealed in the price, so as no University is going to offer a second rate course and no student is going to willing take a second rate course the price is always going to be the maximum allowed.
The maximum allowed should only be able to be charged by Russell Group universities for Law, Economics, Medicine and MBAs and IT, There should then be a sliding scale so that lower ranked university humanities courses actually are told to cut the fees for their courses
Can you evidence that the Russell Group is better than other universities? E.g. for Pharmacy - what is the highest ranked Uni where you can study pharmacy?
Your obsession with the Russell Group is mad.
I suspect what HY is hoping for is a return to only the wealthiest 7% enjoying the benefits of the University system. This is why people like HY are so exercised by people who they don't believe can afford University loans, which essentially is everyone after the 2023 scheme was adopted.
No, just a genuine market, so Oxbridge Law and Medicine and Economics graduates are charged the highest fees and those studying creative arts and humanities at lower ranked universities the lowest fees
What about Oxbridge under-graduates reading Classics? That strikes me as a bollocks degree.
No, it is a proper degree in a traditional subject requiring extensive understanding of grammar and cases
What's the commercial value of that?
Universities are not all about commerce but intellectual rigour and research as well, I am a Tory not a pure capitalist. Harold Macmillan and Boris were both great champions and students of Classics
Your single argument during this thread has been about the commercial value of a degree.
In terms of FEES CHARGED, of course Economics and Medicine and Law at Oxford should be charged more than Classics, that doesn't mean Classics courses shouldn't still exist
So on the basis of your argument regarding Classics, why should film studies be binned?
I never said it should be banned but it should also have a lower fee
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
Taht was the original idea. But the universities ended up charging the maximum they were allowed, uniformly. At this point some actual experts in higher education can tell you why.
It doesn't require an expert - the quality of your university course is revealed in the price, so as no University is going to offer a second rate course and no student is going to willing take a second rate course the price is always going to be the maximum allowed.
The maximum allowed should only be able to be charged by Russell Group universities for Law, Economics, Medicine and MBAs and IT, There should then be a sliding scale so that lower ranked university humanities courses actually are told to cut the fees for their courses
Can you evidence that the Russell Group is better than other universities? E.g. for Pharmacy - what is the highest ranked Uni where you can study pharmacy?
Your obsession with the Russell Group is mad.
I suspect what HY is hoping for is a return to only the wealthiest 7% enjoying the benefits of the University system. This is why people like HY are so exercised by people who they don't believe can afford University loans, which essentially is everyone after the 2023 scheme was adopted.
No, just a genuine market, so Oxbridge Law and Medicine and Economics graduates are charged the highest fees and those studying creative arts and humanities at lower ranked universities the lowest fees
What about Oxbridge under-graduates reading Classics? That strikes me as a bollocks degree.
No, it is a proper degree in a traditional subject requiring extensive understanding of grammar and cases
Rubbish. It is even less useful than my politics degree.
To overlook the intrinsic as opposed to the utilitarian value of education is one of the consequences of overlooking the intrinsic value of education. Gradgrind rules.
To recover from this illness try a study of one of the fruits of profound learning and scholarship of the ancient world. Potts on Elamite archaeology, Howard-Johnston on the 6th and 7th century Byzantine/Persians wars, Peter Brown on anything under the sun. Or Mary Beard's vigorous and radical defence of classics published recently.
What @HYUFD has blissfully ignored is my point about funding.
Under the system his lot brought in we simultaneously have three problems: Students who owe literally unpayable amounts at punitive rates of interest Universities who are broke despite charging these vast fees Towns and Cities being swamped by a student immigration flood
The solution is not "let the Russel Group charge more fees". We need to start funding education properly. Its the best long term investment we can make.
The potential market for a new stealth fighter independent of US arms export controls is far stronger than it was a year ago. The UK has partners wanting to proceed with the project and a number of others showing interest. The continuing delay in seated funding for defence puts the entire project at risk - and such delays make the eventual costs higher even if it does go ahead.
UK’s stealth fighter project faces a 10-week deadline to secure new government funds or risk its teams being disbanded, one of the defence groups involved has warned. More than 4,000 staff in the UK are already working on the project @FT https://x.com/ModernNavy/status/2048689381821882678
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
Taht was the original idea. But the universities ended up charging the maximum they were allowed, uniformly. At this point some actual experts in higher education can tell you why.
It doesn't require an expert - the quality of your university course is revealed in the price, so as no University is going to offer a second rate course and no student is going to willing take a second rate course the price is always going to be the maximum allowed.
The maximum allowed should only be able to be charged by Russell Group universities for Law, Economics, Medicine and MBAs and IT, There should then be a sliding scale so that lower ranked university humanities courses actually are told to cut the fees for their courses
Can you evidence that the Russell Group is better than other universities? E.g. for Pharmacy - what is the highest ranked Uni where you can study pharmacy?
Your obsession with the Russell Group is mad.
I suspect what HY is hoping for is a return to only the wealthiest 7% enjoying the benefits of the University system. This is why people like HY are so exercised by people who they don't believe can afford University loans, which essentially is everyone after the 2023 scheme was adopted.
No, just a genuine market, so Oxbridge Law and Medicine and Economics graduates are charged the highest fees and those studying creative arts and humanities at lower ranked universities the lowest fees
What about Oxbridge under-graduates reading Classics? That strikes me as a bollocks degree.
No, it is a proper degree in a traditional subject requiring extensive understanding of grammar and cases
Rubbish. It is even less useful than my politics degree.
To overlook the intrinsic as opposed to the utilitarian value of education is one of the consequences of overlooking the intrinsic value of education. Gradgrind rules.
To recover from this illness try a study of one of the fruits of profound learning and scholarship of the ancient world. Potts on Elamite archaeology, Howard-Johnston on the 6th and 7th century Byzantine/Persians wars, Peter Brown on anything under the sun. Or Mary Beard's vigorous and radical defence of classics published recently.
I agree entirely with your first paragraph.
HY's initial argument was specifically in favour of the utilitarian requirement for a university education. But then he adds his own preferred Arts subject into the mix, in the next breath he wants to dispose of Arts degrees that he doesn't value.
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
Taht was the original idea. But the universities ended up charging the maximum they were allowed, uniformly. At this point some actual experts in higher education can tell you why.
It doesn't require an expert - the quality of your university course is revealed in the price, so as no University is going to offer a second rate course and no student is going to willing take a second rate course the price is always going to be the maximum allowed.
The maximum allowed should only be able to be charged by Russell Group universities for Law, Economics, Medicine and MBAs and IT, There should then be a sliding scale so that lower ranked university humanities courses actually are told to cut the fees for their courses
Can you evidence that the Russell Group is better than other universities? E.g. for Pharmacy - what is the highest ranked Uni where you can study pharmacy?
Your obsession with the Russell Group is mad.
In my day (end of the '50's) it was London followed by Nottingham.
London meaning the School of Pharmacy? Which merged into UCL, and thus became part of the Russell Group, in 2012. Nottingham is also Russell Group.
However, today, it's places like non-RG Swansea.
I didn't realise Swansea offered Pharmacy. In my day the only place in Wales was Cardiff.
"And by the way, if that piece is right, Global Consult, the consultancy firm which Mandelson co-founded, was "reportedly absent from his vetting." How on earth is that possible? If you are looking to mitigate risk and conflicts of interest how could you possibly exclude a 24% share in a consultancy firm with international clients looking for UK contracts? What more blatant risk could you have?
We can already infer that the correspondence with Epstein was not disclosed or found because surely he would never have been appointed if it was.
So, this is 2 major risks that have apparently not been identified in the DV. Where the recommendation was that he not be appointed. We have got quite wrapped up with what Starmer was and was not told but was it worth the paper it was written on?"
The context of this was a presentation made to Starmer and Mandelson by a client of Mandelson's firm that was not reported by Starmer for reasons that are somewhat unclear, a client who ended up with a defence contract worth £750m.
To me, this looks like a breach of the Ministerial code by Starmer with very serious consequences which, at the very least, shows appalling judgment by him. If this gains traction things may well move a lot faster than some of his potential successors might want.
As I have said ad nauseam, conflicts of interest are to the heart of every scandal. It is no different here. The Nolan Principles are pretty weak on this BTW.
But Mandelson should either have been required to sell his shares in his firm when he became Ambassador or put them in a blind trust and a list of all that firm's clients should have been provided and any visit to or meeting with them by any Minister, let alone the PM, carefully scrutinised and approved by some sort of independent person before it went ahead with civil servants attending and a proper record made. Precisely in order to ensure no shenanigans or a perception of them.
And that’s precisely why the consulting firm wasn’t included in the vetting.
If it was, either Mandy would be rejected or forced to sell. Forcing him to sell would mean him backing out if the Ambassadorship in a way that would embarrass the PM
Either way, Mandy would have failed to become Ambassador. And the PM would have suffered major embarrassment.
"And a man in my position can't afford to be made to look ridiculous!”
What @HYUFD has blissfully ignored is my point about funding.
Under the system his lot brought in we simultaneously have three problems: Students who owe literally unpayable amounts at punitive rates of interest Universities who are broke despite charging these vast fees Towns and Cities being swamped by a student immigration flood
The solution is not "let the Russel Group charge more fees". We need to start funding education properly. Its the best long term investment we can make.
I have an idea. We could sell the service to foreigners who are happy to pay three times the fees to subsidise domestic students. Job done, oh wait...
What @HYUFD has blissfully ignored is my point about funding.
Under the system his lot brought in we simultaneously have three problems: Students who owe literally unpayable amounts at punitive rates of interest Universities who are broke despite charging these vast fees Towns and Cities being swamped by a student immigration flood
The solution is not "let the Russel Group charge more fees". We need to start funding education properly. Its the best long term investment we can make.
There seems to be a move to create Campuses (Campi?) by UK Universities overseas. Sunderland Uni has one in Hong Kong. So why not take education to the global masses to save having to charge large fees plus accomodation costs. Simpler to do.
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
Taht was the original idea. But the universities ended up charging the maximum they were allowed, uniformly. At this point some actual experts in higher education can tell you why.
It doesn't require an expert - the quality of your university course is revealed in the price, so as no University is going to offer a second rate course and no student is going to willing take a second rate course the price is always going to be the maximum allowed.
The maximum allowed should only be able to be charged by Russell Group universities for Law, Economics, Medicine and MBAs and IT, There should then be a sliding scale so that lower ranked university humanities courses actually are told to cut the fees for their courses
Can you evidence that the Russell Group is better than other universities? E.g. for Pharmacy - what is the highest ranked Uni where you can study pharmacy?
Your obsession with the Russell Group is mad.
I suspect what HY is hoping for is a return to only the wealthiest 7% enjoying the benefits of the University system. This is why people like HY are so exercised by people who they don't believe can afford University loans, which essentially is everyone after the 2023 scheme was adopted.
No, just a genuine market, so Oxbridge Law and Medicine and Economics graduates are charged the highest fees and those studying creative arts and humanities at lower ranked universities the lowest fees
What about Oxbridge under-graduates reading Classics? That strikes me as a bollocks degree.
No, it is a proper degree in a traditional subject requiring extensive understanding of grammar and cases
Rubbish. It is even less useful than my politics degree.
An understanding of hubris and nemesis has been pretty bloody useful in my career. And, frankly, if others had understood this we might not have seen quite so many people repeatedly make the same stupid mistakes. As we are seeing now with our politicians and others.
The realisation that it's all been done before, in Ancient Roman and Greek politics, is a useful one.
The Thirty Tyrants are especially illustrative - striping citizenship to avoid the annoyance of finding people guilty, war on immigrants, recruiting a thuggish "police force" to back anyone they didn't like, selling the country to a hostile foreign power, Making Athens Great Again ...
The potential market for a new stealth fighter independent of US arms export controls is far stronger than it was a year ago. The UK has partners wanting to proceed with the project and a number of others showing interest. The continuing delay in seated funding for defence puts the entire project at risk - and such delays make the eventual costs higher even if it does go ahead.
UK’s stealth fighter project faces a 10-week deadline to secure new government funds or risk its teams being disbanded, one of the defence groups involved has warned. More than 4,000 staff in the UK are already working on the project @FT https://x.com/ModernNavy/status/2048689381821882678
Starmer spent the weekend at Chequers plotting how to keep his job for a few extra miserable months, instead of making decisions on issues of national importance like this.
I expect one of the cliched, "lines to take," they will have agreed is to say that Starmer is, "concentrating on getting on with the job," when he has, of course, been doing precisely the opposite.
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
Taht was the original idea. But the universities ended up charging the maximum they were allowed, uniformly. At this point some actual experts in higher education can tell you why.
It doesn't require an expert - the quality of your university course is revealed in the price, so as no University is going to offer a second rate course and no student is going to willing take a second rate course the price is always going to be the maximum allowed.
The maximum allowed should only be able to be charged by Russell Group universities for Law, Economics, Medicine and MBAs and IT, There should then be a sliding scale so that lower ranked university humanities courses actually are told to cut the fees for their courses
Can you evidence that the Russell Group is better than other universities? E.g. for Pharmacy - what is the highest ranked Uni where you can study pharmacy?
Your obsession with the Russell Group is mad.
I suspect what HY is hoping for is a return to only the wealthiest 7% enjoying the benefits of the University system. This is why people like HY are so exercised by people who they don't believe can afford University loans, which essentially is everyone after the 2023 scheme was adopted.
No, just a genuine market, so Oxbridge Law and Medicine and Economics graduates are charged the highest fees and those studying creative arts and humanities at lower ranked universities the lowest fees
What about Oxbridge under-graduates reading Classics? That strikes me as a bollocks degree.
No, it is a proper degree in a traditional subject requiring extensive understanding of grammar and cases
Rubbish. It is even less useful than my politics degree.
An understanding of hubris and nemesis has been pretty bloody useful in my career. And, frankly, if others had understood this we might not have seen quite so many people repeatedly make the same stupid mistakes. As we are seeing now with our politicians and others.
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
Taht was the original idea. But the universities ended up charging the maximum they were allowed, uniformly. At this point some actual experts in higher education can tell you why.
It doesn't require an expert - the quality of your university course is revealed in the price, so as no University is going to offer a second rate course and no student is going to willing take a second rate course the price is always going to be the maximum allowed.
The maximum allowed should only be able to be charged by Russell Group universities for Law, Economics, Medicine and MBAs and IT, There should then be a sliding scale so that lower ranked university humanities courses actually are told to cut the fees for their courses
Can you evidence that the Russell Group is better than other universities? E.g. for Pharmacy - what is the highest ranked Uni where you can study pharmacy?
Your obsession with the Russell Group is mad.
I suspect what HY is hoping for is a return to only the wealthiest 7% enjoying the benefits of the University system. This is why people like HY are so exercised by people who they don't believe can afford University loans, which essentially is everyone after the 2023 scheme was adopted.
No, just a genuine market, so Oxbridge Law and Medicine and Economics graduates are charged the highest fees and those studying creative arts and humanities at lower ranked universities the lowest fees
What about Oxbridge under-graduates reading Classics? That strikes me as a bollocks degree.
No, it is a proper degree in a traditional subject requiring extensive understanding of grammar and cases
Rubbish. It is even less useful than my politics degree.
To overlook the intrinsic as opposed to the utilitarian value of education is one of the consequences of overlooking the intrinsic value of education. Gradgrind rules.
To recover from this illness try a study of one of the fruits of profound learning and scholarship of the ancient world. Potts on Elamite archaeology, Howard-Johnston on the 6th and 7th century Byzantine/Persians wars, Peter Brown on anything under the sun. Or Mary Beard's vigorous and radical defence of classics published recently.
My older daughter is studying classics at St Andrews and absolutely loves it. And it’s a lot harder that film studies at Sussex Uni
She’s shown me some of her assignments. Reading a lot of difficult books full of dense and challenging ideas. But also some of the greatest ideas in human history
She’s worried the course is non vocational. I’ve told her to forget that and enjoy it (which she does). We have no idea if anyone will have a job in a decade. So study what you love
What @HYUFD has blissfully ignored is my point about funding.
Under the system his lot brought in we simultaneously have three problems: Students who owe literally unpayable amounts at punitive rates of interest Universities who are broke despite charging these vast fees Towns and Cities being swamped by a student immigration flood
The solution is not "let the Russel Group charge more fees". We need to start funding education properly. Its the best long term investment we can make.
I have an idea. We could sell the service to foreigners who are happy to pay three times the fees to subsidise domestic students. Job done, oh wait...
The problem really took off, when universities started selling visas as a way to enter the country.
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
Taht was the original idea. But the universities ended up charging the maximum they were allowed, uniformly. At this point some actual experts in higher education can tell you why.
It doesn't require an expert - the quality of your university course is revealed in the price, so as no University is going to offer a second rate course and no student is going to willing take a second rate course the price is always going to be the maximum allowed.
The maximum allowed should only be able to be charged by Russell Group universities for Law, Economics, Medicine and MBAs and IT, There should then be a sliding scale so that lower ranked university humanities courses actually are told to cut the fees for their courses
Can you evidence that the Russell Group is better than other universities? E.g. for Pharmacy - what is the highest ranked Uni where you can study pharmacy?
Your obsession with the Russell Group is mad.
I suspect what HY is hoping for is a return to only the wealthiest 7% enjoying the benefits of the University system. This is why people like HY are so exercised by people who they don't believe can afford University loans, which essentially is everyone after the 2023 scheme was adopted.
No, just a genuine market, so Oxbridge Law and Medicine and Economics graduates are charged the highest fees and those studying creative arts and humanities at lower ranked universities the lowest fees
What about Oxbridge under-graduates reading Classics? That strikes me as a bollocks degree.
No, it is a proper degree in a traditional subject requiring extensive understanding of grammar and cases
Rubbish. It is even less useful than my politics degree.
An understanding of hubris and nemesis has been pretty bloody useful in my career. And, frankly, if others had understood this we might not have seen quite so many people repeatedly make the same stupid mistakes. As we are seeing now with our politicians and others.
It didn't seem to do much for Johnson, though.
The actual subject of a first degree is nearly irrelevant, in any case.
It's about learning how to learn at a high level
The important consideration s rigour and depth.
I recall a panic about a degree in Surfing. I could easily see how such a degree *could* be turned into a fascinating dive (Ha) through ecology, costal erosion, wave forms and formation, materials engineering, hydrodynamic modelling etc etc.
And ironically many of their voters are on them but we’ll likely see the same FAFO where the gullible vote for Reform thinking the cuts will fall on others and then when they’re the ones fxcked we’ll see the same moaning and shock.
Labour also recognised the need to try to stop the rate of growth of the bill. They were right.
They’re still trying to tackle it through ILR changes
On PB many here want to attack pensions growth with the triple lock being reformed or removed
They’re right too
But, muh, Reform 😂
Why shouldn't Reform policies be subject to the same scrutiny as everyone else's?
On benefits, having signed up to the Triple Lock (apparently), Farage has come out as might be expected against "the scroungers". Now, he thinks there's an £18 billion pot of gold at the end of that rainbow - we'll see.
This notion there are millions of people who could work but don't because of "mild anxiety" really needs to be challenged. Let's define "mild anxiety" - what does it mean? How many people are really signed off because of that? Is there a regular review process? How will the Government barge their way into that - a Reform person in every consultation who can overturn a GP's findings - seriously?
The distinction here is between those who want to work but cannot and those who don't want to work. Most would agree we should help the former as much as possible to get back into work - I'm looking at Carers and challenging higher levels of unemployment among those with physical and mental disabilities.
The latter group, those who don't want to work and simply choose to live off benefits - well, we have choices and consequences. IF you turn off the tap, leave them with nothing - one of three things will happen - they'll find work, possibly in the black economy, they'll resort to crime or they'll die of starvation.
The other side of this is the availability of work and the willingness and flexibility of employers to take on people who may not be well suited to the world of work (primarily those with disabilities) or those who can only work certain hours because of other commitments (again carers). We need to encourage and if necessaey coerce employers to be more willing to take on staff for whom extra support is needed.
If you think Nico67’s comment I replied to was scrutiny I’m pleased for you.
I’ve criticised Reform for signing up to the triple lock here.
No, it wasn't and I completely agree there's a huge incongruity to which Reform need to respond.
Indeed, all parties signed up to maintaining the Triple Lock need to explain how it is affordable when we are £130 billion in the hole in terms of borrowing.
There's a compelling argument for land value taxation and some form of additional property value taxation and I would contend targetting benefits to basic rate taxpayers over higher rate is also something needing to be explored.
The current "cliff edge" nature of our tax rates creates obvious problems with that and a more graduated approach to tax banding might allow for a more flexible approach in terms of benefit payments. No one, I'm sure, wants to see pensioners struggle and while universality is cheap and easy to administer, we know money ends up where it isn't needed as well as where it is.
Because there is no political constituency for it amongst the public at large and politicians don't want to be first to lead on it and risk a pile-on.
"Foxy: Pretty appalling UK figures on healthy life expectancy, declining by 2 years in the last decade. It has improved slowly in comparable countries:
We are not going to be reducing the welfare bill if we do not tackle this issue."
It is hardly surprising though, when we have immigration at scale from countries with much lower life expectancies. Have a wave of immigrants from say Afghanistan - where life expectancy is 12 years less than world averages - and it is an inevitable consequence.
Even worse, life expectancy in Nigeria is around 54, one of the lowest in the world.
The extra health care burden is an obvious consequence of large scale population migration into the UK. Better universal healthcare, free at the point of use, is one of the drivers of the desire to make a new life here. The likelihood is the migrants are likely to have greater health issues manifesting earlier than the native born population. Outwith any arguments about the rights and wrongs of migration, we simply have not made provision for this on a national scale.
Some of us are working ourselves to exhaustion. And for what?
As a nation, we don’t “make provision” for anything. Everything is put on the credit card
More importantly, we have been for decades. And more subtly, we treated short-term windfalls as long-term entitlements.
And all those bills have finally turned inescapably red.
For me the crazy spot was after the birth of our first child. My wife had a decent job, and after maternity leave she went back. We realised that by the time she'd paid for tax and childcare, she was working for free. So she quit.
We have a society where families need 2 jobs to pay the bills. Housing costs are unaffordable without 2 incomes and even then can be impossible for many. As a starter for 10, that's a bad place to be.
Sometimes its worth having someone 'working for free' if they aspire to continuing the career. My wife went back to work doing 3 days rather than 5, and yes we pay childcare (though its heavily subsidised now) but it means she doesn't have a 5 year gap in the career.
Granddaughter-in-law is in a similar position. We shouldn't forget, either, the effect of the student loans 'tax'. Yes, one doesn't 'have' to 'have' to pay back the loan but it's still hanging over people, and there's (or used to be anyway) a culture of paying off loans.
Yes it is a tax. Total generational inequality. Young people in their 20s and 30s face paying an extra 9% marginal rate of income tax for most of their working lives, unlike the likes of 55 year old George Osborne and others responsible for the policy, who not only pay 0% extra in income tax but who like me were probably paid to go to university (in the form of a non means tested maintenance grant.)
It is something that really annoys my children. Getting rid of this burden on them is something I would support. That and a real push on housing.
We should also have a genuine market in course fees based on graduate earning premium, so Economics at Cambridge is far more expensive than say Creative Arts at Brighton. That way student loans repayments are highest for the highest graduate earners and cheaper for the lowest graduate earners
Taht was the original idea. But the universities ended up charging the maximum they were allowed, uniformly. At this point some actual experts in higher education can tell you why.
It doesn't require an expert - the quality of your university course is revealed in the price, so as no University is going to offer a second rate course and no student is going to willing take a second rate course the price is always going to be the maximum allowed.
The maximum allowed should only be able to be charged by Russell Group universities for Law, Economics, Medicine and MBAs and IT, There should then be a sliding scale so that lower ranked university humanities courses actually are told to cut the fees for their courses
Can you evidence that the Russell Group is better than other universities? E.g. for Pharmacy - what is the highest ranked Uni where you can study pharmacy?
Your obsession with the Russell Group is mad.
I suspect what HY is hoping for is a return to only the wealthiest 7% enjoying the benefits of the University system. This is why people like HY are so exercised by people who they don't believe can afford University loans, which essentially is everyone after the 2023 scheme was adopted.
No, just a genuine market, so Oxbridge Law and Medicine and Economics graduates are charged the highest fees and those studying creative arts and humanities at lower ranked universities the lowest fees
What about Oxbridge under-graduates reading Classics? That strikes me as a bollocks degree.
No, it is a proper degree in a traditional subject requiring extensive understanding of grammar and cases
Rubbish. It is even less useful than my politics degree.
An understanding of hubris and nemesis has been pretty bloody useful in my career. And, frankly, if others had understood this we might not have seen quite so many people repeatedly make the same stupid mistakes. As we are seeing now with our politicians and others.
It didn't seem to do much for Johnson, though.
The actual subject of a first degree is nearly irrelevant, in any case.
It's about learning how to learn at a high level
The important consideration s rigour and depth.
I recall a panic about a degree in Surfing. I could easily see how such a degree *could* be turned into a fascinating dive (Ha) through ecology, costal erosion, wave forms and formation, materials engineering, hydrodynamic modelling etc etc.
Richard Feynman: "Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough."
Comments
Note that Taliban leaders send their own daughters to the Middle East to be educated. Fucking hypocrites.
There are groups here (mostly women) who are trying to provide some education via the internet to Afghan girls and women but it is a difficult business and risky for the girls themselves.
As the Survation poll shows Labour members are also split about removing him and if Labour are second on seats and NEV Starmer may even survive and if Labour as well as Reform have beaten the Tories it will then be Kemi under pressure
Pedro Torrijos
@Pedro_Torrijos
Translated from Spanish
This man is called Mohamed Bzeek, he lives in California and that little girl he’s holding in his arms died just a few days after this photo was taken, also in his arms. She wasn’t his daughter. She was one of the ten children who have died under his care. Because Bzeek is a foster father and he only takes in terminally ill children, so that they don’t die alone.
He was born in Tripoli in 1954, before leaving Libya he used to run marathons. In 1978 he entered the United States on a student visa and there he stayed. He lives in Azusa, one of those suburbs on the outskirts of Los Angeles where lorries rumble through and where the houses have a generic look about them, clustered together without drawing attention...
https://x.com/Pedro_Torrijos/status/2048430454915670145?s=20
So while they work in the NHS, no repayments. And after 7 years or so, the loan itself would be paid off.
Along with guaranteeing training places for those who graduate, with a good degree in medicine, from a UK university, it would go a long way to making entry into a medical career more attractive.
Your government slashed funding for universities
That means they all have to charge fees up to the cap
That means they have to desperately attract any students they can charge more fees for - hence the huge wave of Chinese students into cities like Sheffield
And at the same time, so many universities totter on the edge of bankruptsy
Students pay record fees they can never repay for tuition at universities who despite the fees are broke and have to cut funding for tuition.
However have we managed to both impoverish graduates and universities at the same time?
Also wiping debts rewards deadbeats as those who have paid their loans on time or early are left subsidising those that haven't.
Not that I think it's a terrible idea - it's just yet another mess that Blair and Heir to Blair have saddled the country with, and there is no easy solution.
"And by the way, if that piece is right, Global Consult, the consultancy firm which Mandelson co-founded, was "reportedly absent from his vetting." How on earth is that possible? If you are looking to mitigate risk and conflicts of interest how could you possibly exclude a 24% share in a consultancy firm with international clients looking for UK contracts? What more blatant risk could you have?
We can already infer that the correspondence with Epstein was not disclosed or found because surely he would never have been appointed if it was.
So, this is 2 major risks that have apparently not been identified in the DV. Where the recommendation was that he not be appointed. We have got quite wrapped up with what Starmer was and was not told but was it worth the paper it was written on?"
The context of this was a presentation made to Starmer and Mandelson by a client of Mandelson's firm that was not reported by Starmer for reasons that are somewhat unclear, a client who ended up with a defence contract worth £750m.
To me, this looks like a breach of the Ministerial code by Starmer with very serious consequences which, at the very least, shows appalling judgment by him. If this gains traction things may well move a lot faster than some of his potential successors might want.
Teachers - in some areas.
NHS medical staff - huge, importing on a massive scale.
Indeed, all parties signed up to maintaining the Triple Lock need to explain how it is affordable when we are £130 billion in the hole in terms of borrowing.
There's a compelling argument for land value taxation and some form of additional property value taxation and I would contend targetting benefits to basic rate taxpayers over higher rate is also something needing to be explored.
The current "cliff edge" nature of our tax rates creates obvious problems with that and a more graduated approach to tax banding might allow for a more flexible approach in terms of benefit payments. No one, I'm sure, wants to see pensioners struggle and while universality is cheap and easy to administer, we know money ends up where it isn't needed as well as where it is.
If they put it in the vetting, he would fail on obvious conflicts of interest.
But asking him to give it up would be asking him to burn down the financial structure that made him privately wealthy. So he would turn the job down.
So not putting it ion the vetting was the simple answer to "Not failing the PM's choice for Ambassador"
Your not going to get many foreign students signing up to the style of student accommodation that was there in the 1980s, Or the other facilities.
Cost of a room in Durham for next year £160+..
We were on notice about Starmer with all the freebies from Lord Alli for clothes, glasses and accommodation. He seems “Intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich” - and showering it around in his direction.
The quote is, of course, from Mandelson.
The only practical option would I think be a graduate tax applied to all. That is, abolish student loans as such and instead require all who attended university to pay a premium of 1% on income tax above the current threshold for each year that they attended university, including into pensionable age, up to 30 years maximum. So as an undergraduate (masters were relatively uncommon until recently) George Osborne would pay an extra 3% income tax each year for the next 30 years assuming he lives to at least 85. A undergraduate in their late 30s who has already spent say 15 years paying 9% extra in income tax would only face another 15 years of payments at a much reduced 3% rate.
That is fairly practical, as universities have been pretty fastidious in keeping records of their past students which could be drawn upon by HMRC, supplemented by tax returns as necessary.
There are those with physical and mental disabilities who often want to work but cannot - what if you are registered blind for example? Should we cut back their benefits? No, I'd argue we should be cajoling more employers to find work.
What about Carers who can only work a few hours? Some might only be able to work remotely but others would welcome coming into a working environment, even if only briefly?
The other side of the coin is those who choose not to work - now, that's a lifestyle choice but should we be funding that? If the societal decision is no, then what are the consequences of cutting off the tap of benefits to those people? Some will have to find work to survive - that may be in the black economy. Others will resort to petty crime to survive and may end up incarcerated as a result. If you can support yourself without benefits and choose not to work, I don't have a problem.
I'd also be looking at those who struggle even in paid employment to make ends meet. Should we support the hard working whose income just isn't enough?
I agree it needs a lot of thought but I'm not seeing that overarching thinking in any of the parties (though snippets are happening here and there).
1990 top-up for maintenance grants (Conservatives under Thatcher)
1998 tuition fees £1000pa (Labour under Blair)
2006 tuition fees £3000pa (Labour under Blair)
2012 £9K/ 9% tax system (Coalition under Cameron / Clegg)
While I didn't agree with Labour introducing tuition fees, it bore no resemblance to that introduced by the coalition.
It went from being unfair but repayable to this massively inequitable decades long tax.
If Scotland, with 8% of the population can afford to fund 5% of the UK's undergraduate tuition fees, why can't England and Wales have a less onerous system.
But in education, expense = reassurance.
That should be set in statute law and the one size fits all tuition fee for all courses and universities ended
I backward looking grad taxes are a post office scandal waiting to happen.
Your obsession with the Russell Group is mad.
Bad
10x Bad
12?x Bad
The current system also fails badly in being gamed, a minority are now taking loans with no intention of earning enough or staying in UK to make repayments. This bad debt then falls on those genuinely interested in a degree and career and rest of taxpayers
https://careermetrics.co.uk/blog/russell-group-earnings/
This was all a throwback to "expenses", duck houses and getting your London flat redecorated at the taxpayer's expense.
Even when less than 2% of people went to university the likes of Wilson, Heath and Thatcher managed to do so.
While a reduction of the number of people going to university to what it was in the 1980s would principally affect the thicker half of middle class teenagers.
Labour was elected on a platform of being better than the Tories.
Better at hoovering up freebies maybe...
You went to all that trouble and got everything wrong because you’re fucking stupid. It’s terrifying to think an intellectual midget like you was on a sub-committee of SAGE
However, today, it's places like non-RG Swansea.
I JUST GOT KNOCKED TO THE SIDE BY A WILD, CHARGING GORILLA IN THE VIRUNGA VOLCANOES OF RWANDA
Another Monday morning in the office, huh
His dad the silverback was decidedly scarier. These creatures are enormous. They let you come within inches. It is an amazing experience like everyone says. Truly truly profound
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/education/article/arts-students-minimum-wage-data-ktdh7xwwn
It is also more intellectually challenging than a politics degree I would suggest
But Mandelson should either have been required to sell his shares in his firm when he became Ambassador or put them in a blind trust and a list of all that firm's clients should have been provided and any visit to or meeting with them by any Minister, let alone the PM, carefully scrutinised and approved by some sort of independent person before it went ahead with civil servants attending and a proper record made. Precisely in order to ensure no shenanigans or a perception of them.
Prostitutes’ ‘beware book’ could include client list of police and lawyers
Evidence that has gone missing since Emma Caldwell murder could have been damaging for officers, says retired detective
A “beware book” kept by women working in Glasgow’s red-light district around the time of Emma Caldwell’s murder could be damning for police if its contents were uncovered, a retired detective has said.
The book was used by women involved in prostitution to warn each other about potentially dangerous or suspicious clients, at a time when they felt they had to rely on “their wits and each other, not the authorities” to remain safe.
Kept at the city’s Base 75 drop-in centre, the book contained information such as vehicle registrations, names, nicknames and descriptions of clients.
One woman who wrote in the book claimed that the clients listed in it included “lawyers, police, all sorts”.
The “beware book” was taken as evidence by police during the investigation into Caldwell’s murder in 2005. It has since “gone missing”.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/04/27/missing-prostitutes-beware-book-could-include-client-list/?recomm_id=3d296c60-d228-4ce5-8226-078ffccb66f1
To recover from this illness try a study of one of the fruits of profound learning and scholarship of the ancient world. Potts on Elamite archaeology, Howard-Johnston on the 6th and 7th century Byzantine/Persians wars, Peter Brown on anything under the sun. Or Mary Beard's vigorous and radical defence of classics published recently.
Under the system his lot brought in we simultaneously have three problems:
Students who owe literally unpayable amounts at punitive rates of interest
Universities who are broke despite charging these vast fees
Towns and Cities being swamped by a student immigration flood
The solution is not "let the Russel Group charge more fees". We need to start funding education properly. Its the best long term investment we can make.
The potential market for a new stealth fighter independent of US arms export controls is far stronger than it was a year ago.
The UK has partners wanting to proceed with the project and a number of others showing interest. The continuing delay in seated funding for defence puts the entire project at risk - and such delays make the eventual costs higher even if it does go ahead.
UK’s stealth fighter project faces a 10-week deadline to secure new government funds or risk its teams being disbanded, one of the defence groups involved has warned. More than 4,000 staff in the UK are already working on the project @FT
https://x.com/ModernNavy/status/2048689381821882678
I’ve now read quite a lot about it, but no one has a really good answer to the basic question: WHY
Yes the Tutsis were favoured by colonialists but that’s true or many ex colonies around the world. Divide and rule was an imperialist doctrine
Only in Rwanda did 900,000 die in three months of insane psychotic slaughter
HY's initial argument was specifically in favour of the utilitarian requirement for a university education. But then he adds his own preferred Arts subject into the mix, in the next breath he wants to dispose of Arts degrees that he doesn't value.
If it was, either Mandy would be rejected or forced to sell. Forcing him to sell would mean him backing out if the Ambassadorship in a way that would embarrass the PM
Either way, Mandy would have failed to become Ambassador. And the PM would have suffered major embarrassment.
"And a man in my position can't afford to be made to look ridiculous!”
The Thirty Tyrants are especially illustrative - striping citizenship to avoid the annoyance of finding people guilty, war on immigrants, recruiting a thuggish "police force" to back anyone they didn't like, selling the country to a hostile foreign power, Making Athens Great Again ...
I expect one of the cliched, "lines to take," they will have agreed is to say that Starmer is, "concentrating on getting on with the job," when he has, of course, been doing precisely the opposite.
She’s shown me some of her assignments. Reading a lot of difficult books full of dense and challenging ideas. But also some of the greatest ideas in human history
She’s worried the course is non vocational. I’ve told her to forget that and enjoy it (which she does). We have no idea if anyone will have a job in a decade. So study what you love
See the effect of the crackdown on this.
It's about learning how to learn at a high level
The important consideration s rigour and depth.
I recall a panic about a degree in Surfing. I could easily see how such a degree *could* be turned into a fascinating dive (Ha) through ecology, costal erosion, wave forms and formation, materials engineering, hydrodynamic modelling etc etc.