"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
One student, at the same university that my daughter is at, is doing a study on Elizabeth I, as part of her classics degree.
The aim of the study is to look at the transactions by Liz I - being very gifted in languages, Lizzy did very accurate translations as to meaning. Except where her personal beliefs were involved.
So, by seeing where Liz I changed the meaning from the original text, you can illuminate the opinions and ideas of Liz I - from her own writings.
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
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
Classics from St Andrews will always be a good degree. A better source of pride than perhaps you might sometimes lay claim to.
"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.
Noted. While I am sure there have to be boundaries, it seems to me that academia/education generally is an area where the general concept of freedom of thought needs to be extended broadly. In terms of general human flourishing as in the Maslow pyramid I don't think limiting 'utility' to the things which belong at the bottom is a good plan. Mozart, Aeschylus and Kant are 'useful', though there are better words, for human flourishing, not just decoration.
Profound learning is a good in itself. But as with the liberal theory about freedom of thought, including the freedom to be maverick, silly and contrarian, only wide freedoms allow maximal light to shine on as yet unexplored possibilities. Academia is a big chunk of this enterprise.
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
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
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
Classics from St Andrews will always be a good degree. A better source of pride than perhaps you might sometimes lay claim to.
Not quite sure what you mean, but I am a damn sight more proud of her prize winning progress at St Andrew’s than I am of my 2:2 in Philosophy from UCL, which I acquired despite attending no lectures or tutorials for two and a half years, and just doing drugs and chasing girls instead
"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
I studied Journalism (why?) which I did for a year before binning it. The video production side doesn't really have an impact on my Youtubing now.
I have 4 jobs: Food Industry Consultant - trading is all about personal relationships Food Importer / Distributer - building relationships with customers and suppliers Family Shop & webstores - a dying industry which is under threat from AI run stores YouTuber now with 4 channels at various stages - AI a threat in general but already huge pushback to AI slop. People want to interact with people
So I feel reasonably secure as I continue to flog my guts out. My kids? Eldest has a 1st in English and is a briliant writer but can't get a job doing anything. Am encouraging them to think about how they can make money being creative Middle is about to spend 4 years at Art school specialising in photography. AI isn't going to screw over the creative arts so he'll be ok Youngest is brighter than the rest of us put together. Interested in depth in both energy sciences (and went off to school this morning in her Shell fleece) and palaeontology. Should be ok if we get her nudged into the science / engineering side
Kids today? Under severe threat from technology taking jobs to line the pockets of a few. The kind of "work will be optional" bollocks from Musk suggests a future where we have mass unrest and hunger, and it really concerns me.
"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
"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.
Johnson was an example of the sorts of men I spent my career interviewing about their misbehaviour.
Sheffield MP Abtisam Mohamed fights NatWest plans to remove only cashpoint at Hallamshire Hospital
Removing the only cashpoint from a hospital will affect vulnerable elderly people, an MP says A Sheffield MP is fighting plans by NatWest to close the only cash machine at the Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield.
Abtisam Mohamed said removing the unit by the main entrance on B Road would remove access to cash for vulnerable and elderly people occupying the 500 beds in the hospital and staff.
NatWest says usage has fallen 69 per cent in the last six years and there is another cash machine less than a mile away.
"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
Classics from St Andrews will always be a good degree. A better source of pride than perhaps you might sometimes lay claim to.
Not quite sure what you mean, but I am a damn sight more proud of her prize winning progress at St Andrew’s than I am of my 2:2 in Philosophy from UCL, which I acquired despite attending no lectures or tutorials for two and a half years, and just doing drugs and chasing girls instead
Well I got a 3rd - and much the same as you I sold myself a little short in that, but hey - it was fun. I just meant it is a real thing to be really proud of and you should be quietly proud. And that quietly proud hasn't always been your modus operandi with far smaller claims to your fame.
"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
I studied Journalism (why?) which I did for a year before binning it. The video production side doesn't really have an impact on my Youtubing now.
I have 4 jobs: Food Industry Consultant - trading is all about personal relationships Food Importer / Distributer - building relationships with customers and suppliers Family Shop & webstores - a dying industry which is under threat from AI run stores YouTuber now with 4 channels at various stages - AI a threat in general but already huge pushback to AI slop. People want to interact with people
So I feel reasonably secure as I continue to flog my guts out. My kids? Eldest has a 1st in English and is a briliant writer but can't get a job doing anything. Am encouraging them to think about how they can make money being creative Middle is about to spend 4 years at Art school specialising in photography. AI isn't going to screw over the creative arts so he'll be ok Youngest is brighter than the rest of us put together. Interested in depth in both energy sciences (and went off to school this morning in her Shell fleece) and palaeontology. Should be ok if we get her nudged into the science / engineering side
Kids today? Under severe threat from technology taking jobs to line the pockets of a few. The kind of "work will be optional" bollocks from Musk suggests a future where we have mass unrest and hunger, and it really concerns me.
Are you serious? Photography is ALREADY fucked. Totally fucked. I know this very well as some of my best friends are well known pro photographers, at least half of whom have had to give up as the industry has basically died. One of my best female friends used to be a lecturer in photography at a well known London college, but she resigned, partly - in her own words - “because I felt so bad teaching a useless degree to students paying good money, and lying to them that they might get a photography job at the end”
I don’t wish to be cruel or nasty, really. I hope all your lovely kids thrive, and I am sure they will if they are as hard working as you. But.. photography?? No. No no no
Sheffield MP Abtisam Mohamed fights NatWest plans to remove only cashpoint at Hallamshire Hospital
Removing the only cashpoint from a hospital will affect vulnerable elderly people, an MP says A Sheffield MP is fighting plans by NatWest to close the only cash machine at the Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield.
Abtisam Mohamed said removing the unit by the main entrance on B Road would remove access to cash for vulnerable and elderly people occupying the 500 beds in the hospital and staff.
NatWest says usage has fallen 69 per cent in the last six years and there is another cash machine less than a mile away.
"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
I studied Journalism (why?) which I did for a year before binning it. The video production side doesn't really have an impact on my Youtubing now.
I have 4 jobs: Food Industry Consultant - trading is all about personal relationships Food Importer / Distributer - building relationships with customers and suppliers Family Shop & webstores - a dying industry which is under threat from AI run stores YouTuber now with 4 channels at various stages - AI a threat in general but already huge pushback to AI slop. People want to interact with people
So I feel reasonably secure as I continue to flog my guts out. My kids? Eldest has a 1st in English and is a briliant writer but can't get a job doing anything. Am encouraging them to think about how they can make money being creative Middle is about to spend 4 years at Art school specialising in photography. AI isn't going to screw over the creative arts so he'll be ok Youngest is brighter than the rest of us put together. Interested in depth in both energy sciences (and went off to school this morning in her Shell fleece) and palaeontology. Should be ok if we get her nudged into the science / engineering side
Kids today? Under severe threat from technology taking jobs to line the pockets of a few. The kind of "work will be optional" bollocks from Musk suggests a future where we have mass unrest and hunger, and it really concerns me.
I'd suggest that the "AI" thing is more about an additional tool to do work rather than replacing people. The low end jobs may go - see the IT revolution, data entry, typists etc, but I think there will be *increasing* opportunities for those with a flexible mind, who can acquire skills and learn.
In my experience, LLMs are only useful when commanded and monitored by people who know what they are doing.
The Rwanda genocide is maybe the weirdest of all 20th century mass atrocities
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
Partition of India 1947 says "Namaste/Salaam Aleikum" - perhaps a million dead, 10 million or more refugees.
But there you can see a reason for the appalling violence, and the scale of the violence. But Rwanda? It is much more difficult
Oh, and in the same region - the bloody birth of Bangladesh (ex-East Pakistan) in 1971 - another million dead due to repression by "West" Pakistan, and a similar number of refugees to that at Partition.
"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
Classics from St Andrews will always be a good degree. A better source of pride than perhaps you might sometimes lay claim to.
Not quite sure what you mean, but I am a damn sight more proud of her prize winning progress at St Andrew’s than I am of my 2:2 in Philosophy from UCL, which I acquired despite attending no lectures or tutorials for two and a half years, and just doing drugs and chasing girls instead
Well I got a 3rd - and much the same as you I sold myself a little short in that, but hey - it was fun. I just meant it is a real thing to be really proud of and you should be quietly proud. And that quietly proud hasn't always been your modus operandi with far smaller claims to your fame.
Still no idea what you’re on about. You should have studied Lucidity
"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
Classics from St Andrews will always be a good degree. A better source of pride than perhaps you might sometimes lay claim to.
Not quite sure what you mean, but I am a damn sight more proud of her prize winning progress at St Andrew’s than I am of my 2:2 in Philosophy from UCL, which I acquired despite attending no lectures or tutorials for two and a half years, and just doing drugs and chasing girls instead
Well I got a 3rd - and much the same as you I sold myself a little short in that, but hey - it was fun. I just meant it is a real thing to be really proud of and you should be quietly proud. And that quietly proud hasn't always been your modus operandi with far smaller claims to your fame.
Still no idea what you’re on about. You should have studied Lucidity
I can see how you might find comments that basically say 'Well done Leon' a little hard to fit in to the everyday picture. I just meant 'Well done Leon'!
Sheffield MP Abtisam Mohamed fights NatWest plans to remove only cashpoint at Hallamshire Hospital
Removing the only cashpoint from a hospital will affect vulnerable elderly people, an MP says A Sheffield MP is fighting plans by NatWest to close the only cash machine at the Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield.
Abtisam Mohamed said removing the unit by the main entrance on B Road would remove access to cash for vulnerable and elderly people occupying the 500 beds in the hospital and staff.
NatWest says usage has fallen 69 per cent in the last six years and there is another cash machine less than a mile away.
This morning I found out Barclays stopped taking foreign cheques for business accounts in October 2024, large corporates aside. Took it down the cheque-cashing place for a laugh. They don't cash cheques - of any kind - any more. World's moving 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.
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
Classics from St Andrews will always be a good degree. A better source of pride than perhaps you might sometimes lay claim to.
Not quite sure what you mean, but I am a damn sight more proud of her prize winning progress at St Andrew’s than I am of my 2:2 in Philosophy from UCL, which I acquired despite attending no lectures or tutorials for two and a half years, and just doing drugs and chasing girls instead
Well I got a 3rd - and much the same as you I sold myself a little short in that, but hey - it was fun. I just meant it is a real thing to be really proud of and you should be quietly proud. And that quietly proud hasn't always been your modus operandi with far smaller claims to your fame.
Still no idea what you’re on about. You should have studied Lucidity
I can see how you might find comments that basically say 'Well done Leon' a little hard to fit in to the everyday picture. I just meant 'Well done Leon'!
lol, ok. I’m still slightly confuddled but I’ll take a genuine compliment and accept it graciously. Also well done you on getting a 3rd. I kinda wish I’d gotten a 3rd, it’s much more dashing and interesting than a boring 2:2
"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.
Exactly. It is utterly flagrant, and I think, unsurvivable. Can we imagine the outrage if Boris had done the same thing?
"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
Classics from St Andrews will always be a good degree. A better source of pride than perhaps you might sometimes lay claim to.
Not quite sure what you mean, but I am a damn sight more proud of her prize winning progress at St Andrew’s than I am of my 2:2 in Philosophy from UCL, which I acquired despite attending no lectures or tutorials for two and a half years, and just doing drugs and chasing girls instead
Well I got a 3rd - and much the same as you I sold myself a little short in that, but hey - it was fun. I just meant it is a real thing to be really proud of and you should be quietly proud. And that quietly proud hasn't always been your modus operandi with far smaller claims to your fame.
Still no idea what you’re on about. You should have studied Lucidity
I can see how you might find comments that basically say 'Well done Leon' a little hard to fit in to the everyday picture. I just meant 'Well done Leon'!
lol, ok. I’m still slightly confuddled but I’ll take a genuine compliment and accept it graciously. Also well done you on getting a 3rd. I kinda wish I’d gotten a 3rd, it’s much more dashing and interesting than a boring 2:2
Well my plans were to get a 2nd - I wanted to stay on, and my director of studies was prepared to let me if I got a 2nd. I got the top 3rd.
"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.
Exactly. It is utterly flagrant, and I think, unsurvivable. Can we imagine the outrage if Boris had done the same thing?
I can imagine it, yeah. You’d be defending it to the hilt, alleging a “blob” hit job.
"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
Classics from St Andrews will always be a good degree. A better source of pride than perhaps you might sometimes lay claim to.
Not quite sure what you mean, but I am a damn sight more proud of her prize winning progress at St Andrew’s than I am of my 2:2 in Philosophy from UCL, which I acquired despite attending no lectures or tutorials for two and a half years, and just doing drugs and chasing girls instead
Well I got a 3rd - and much the same as you I sold myself a little short in that, but hey - it was fun. I just meant it is a real thing to be really proud of and you should be quietly proud. And that quietly proud hasn't always been your modus operandi with far smaller claims to your fame.
Still no idea what you’re on about. You should have studied Lucidity
I can see how you might find comments that basically say 'Well done Leon' a little hard to fit in to the everyday picture. I just meant 'Well done Leon'!
lol, ok. I’m still slightly confuddled but I’ll take a genuine compliment and accept it graciously. Also well done you on getting a 3rd. I kinda wish I’d gotten a 3rd, it’s much more dashing and interesting than a boring 2:2
"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
Classics from St Andrews will always be a good degree. A better source of pride than perhaps you might sometimes lay claim to.
Not quite sure what you mean, but I am a damn sight more proud of her prize winning progress at St Andrew’s than I am of my 2:2 in Philosophy from UCL, which I acquired despite attending no lectures or tutorials for two and a half years, and just doing drugs and chasing girls instead
Well I got a 3rd - and much the same as you I sold myself a little short in that, but hey - it was fun. I just meant it is a real thing to be really proud of and you should be quietly proud. And that quietly proud hasn't always been your modus operandi with far smaller claims to your fame.
Still no idea what you’re on about. You should have studied Lucidity
I can see how you might find comments that basically say 'Well done Leon' a little hard to fit in to the everyday picture. I just meant 'Well done Leon'!
lol, ok. I’m still slightly confuddled but I’ll take a genuine compliment and accept it graciously. Also well done you on getting a 3rd. I kinda wish I’d gotten a 3rd, it’s much more dashing and interesting than a boring 2:2
Well my plans were to get a 2nd - I wanted to stay on, and my director of studies was prepared to let me if I got a 2nd. I got the top 3rd.
“The top 3rd” is a somewhat weird locution. It’s like saying “I’m the tallest Pygmy in Zaire”
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.
Kemi has already said she would cap the interest charged to RPI only on student loans.
Universities who cannot charge a fee that sustains their courses would go bust if they cannot cut costs enough either.
Fine to fund students when only 10% went to university, taxpayers cannot now afford to fund students for their course and maintenance costs now 40% go to university, especially when over half of taxpayers still don't go to university themselves
"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.
Exactly. It is utterly flagrant, and I think, unsurvivable. Can we imagine the outrage if Boris had done the same thing?
I can imagine it, yeah. You’d be defending it to the hilt, alleging a “blob” hit job.
I'm sure that Starmer followed the process of not applying any Pressure to anyone. Any pressure applied wasn't him, and also wasn't pressure in the definition of pressure. Which doesn't exist.
So, some people, completely independently, left everything out of Mandy's vetting that might fail. Which was part of a process.
As a result, Mandy's vetting file included everything - except for a number of secret documents, a few others which are part of still active files, some correspondence lost in the floods of 1967, some records which went astray in the move to London and others when the War Office was incorporated in the Ministry of Defence, and the normal withdrawal of papers whose publication could give grounds for an action for libel or breach of confidence or cause embarrassment to friendly governments.
So the Process was completed, Starmer was unaware and no files crossed his desk. What's not to like?
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.
Kemi has already said she would cap the interest charged to RPI only on student loans.
Universities who cannot charge a fee that sustains their courses would go bust if they cannot cut costs enough either.
Fine to fund students when only 10% went to university, taxpayers cannot now afford to fund students for their course and maintenance costs now 40% go to university, especially when over half of taxpayers still don't go to university themselves
We’re not a country; we’re two snobs in a trench coat.
"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
Classics from St Andrews will always be a good degree. A better source of pride than perhaps you might sometimes lay claim to.
Not quite sure what you mean, but I am a damn sight more proud of her prize winning progress at St Andrew’s than I am of my 2:2 in Philosophy from UCL, which I acquired despite attending no lectures or tutorials for two and a half years, and just doing drugs and chasing girls instead
Well I got a 3rd - and much the same as you I sold myself a little short in that, but hey - it was fun. I just meant it is a real thing to be really proud of and you should be quietly proud. And that quietly proud hasn't always been your modus operandi with far smaller claims to your fame.
Still no idea what you’re on about. You should have studied Lucidity
I can see how you might find comments that basically say 'Well done Leon' a little hard to fit in to the everyday picture. I just meant 'Well done Leon'!
lol, ok. I’m still slightly confuddled but I’ll take a genuine compliment and accept it graciously. Also well done you on getting a 3rd. I kinda wish I’d gotten a 3rd, it’s much more dashing and interesting than a boring 2:2
Well my plans were to get a 2nd - I wanted to stay on, and my director of studies was prepared to let me if I got a 2nd. I got the top 3rd.
“The top 3rd” is a somewhat weird locution. It’s like saying “I’m the tallest Pygmy in Zaire”
I think its fair to seek minor merit where one can. I'll not be running adverts though.
"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.
Exactly. It is utterly flagrant, and I think, unsurvivable. Can we imagine the outrage if Boris had done the same thing?
I can imagine it, yeah. You’d be defending it to the hilt, alleging a “blob” hit job.
I'm sure that Starmer followed the process of not applying any Pressure to anyone. Any pressure applied wasn't him, and also wasn't pressure in the definition of pressure. Which doesn't exist.
So, some people, completely independently, left everything out of Mandy's vetting that might fail. Which was part of a process.
As a result, Mandy's vetting file included everything - except for a number of secret documents, a few others which are part of still active files, some correspondence lost in the floods of 1967, some records which went astray in the move to London and others when the War Office was incorporated in the Ministry of Defence, and the normal withdrawal of papers whose publication could give grounds for an action for libel or breach of confidence or cause embarrassment to friendly governments.
So the Process was completed, Starmer was unaware and no files crossed his desk. What's not to like?
I’m not defending Starmer, just enjoying @Luckyguy1983 new found love of due process and regulations
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.
Kemi has already said she would cap the interest charged to RPI only on student loans.
Universities who cannot charge a fee that sustains their courses would go bust if they cannot cut costs enough either.
Fine to fund students when only 10% went to university, taxpayers cannot now afford to fund students for their course and maintenance costs now 40% go to university, especially when over half of taxpayers still don't go to university themselves
We’re not a country; we’re two snobs in a trench coat.
Is one of them @Leon and the other the tallest pygmy in Zaire?
"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.
Exactly. It is utterly flagrant, and I think, unsurvivable. Can we imagine the outrage if Boris had done the same thing?
"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.
Exactly. It is utterly flagrant, and I think, unsurvivable. Can we imagine the outrage if Boris had done the same thing?
Labour are gonna get marmalised on May 7 and I am pretty sure things will move fast from that point
"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
Indeed, though having a successful millionaire thriller writer as he father makes it a bit easier for her to study a subject she loves than if her father was on minimum wage or a below average income. In which case such students will be more likely to study a vocational degree more likely to get them a high earning job like Law or Business.
Though as you state with AI you also want to learn creative skills and I am sure your daughter will be learning a lot of that and still plenty of jobs in museums etc for Classicists AI can't do
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.
Indeed and I'm happy to agree with you on this.
I thought Badenoch was trying to move the debate on this but she too seems to have fallen into the old trap of offering the sun, moon and stars without explaining how it is to be funded.
Is there no constituency for it? Rather like my motivations for voting LEAVE in 2016, there's a sense we cannot simply go on as we are, bleeding to death from a thousand non-cuts. The language needs to reflect a more reasoned debate rather than simply "we must stop the scroungers" or "cut benefits by 50%" or such nonsense.
Once we accept not everyone who takes benefits is some form of feckless layabout and many would like not to be on benefits and pay their own way,we might start getting somewhere.
The Conservatives (and others) used to believe in aspiration but that has to mean more than inserting the phrase "hard working families" into every other sentence.
People, I think, are less interested in seeing the rewards of hard work for themselves but want to see their families and communities prosper and improve. It's amazing what people will sacrifice for a better life for their children (such as a better education).
The other truth is society and life are more complex in an ageing population. I mention carers on here a lot because they are an important group - not just those wotk in residential care facilities or those providing domicilary support but the real heroes and heroines - family members who sacrifice their own careers, ambitions and potential to ensure older (and younger) relatives with physical and mental challenges are cared for and loved within familiar environments.
They are the people we need to help rather than discriminate against via a punitive taxation 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.
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.
No I don't, I would let the market decide, if Arts degrees have low demand of students to study them they either cut their fees to increase demand or cut their costs to next to nothing or are scrapped
"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
Classics from St Andrews will always be a good degree. A better source of pride than perhaps you might sometimes lay claim to.
Not quite sure what you mean, but I am a damn sight more proud of her prize winning progress at St Andrew’s than I am of my 2:2 in Philosophy from UCL, which I acquired despite attending no lectures or tutorials for two and a half years, and just doing drugs and chasing girls instead
Well I got a 3rd - and much the same as you I sold myself a little short in that, but hey - it was fun. I just meant it is a real thing to be really proud of and you should be quietly proud. And that quietly proud hasn't always been your modus operandi with far smaller claims to your fame.
Still no idea what you’re on about. You should have studied Lucidity
I can see how you might find comments that basically say 'Well done Leon' a little hard to fit in to the everyday picture. I just meant 'Well done Leon'!
lol, ok. I’m still slightly confuddled but I’ll take a genuine compliment and accept it graciously. Also well done you on getting a 3rd. I kinda wish I’d gotten a 3rd, it’s much more dashing and interesting than a boring 2:2
Well my plans were to get a 2nd - I wanted to stay on, and my director of studies was prepared to let me if I got a 2nd. I got the top 3rd.
“The top 3rd” is a somewhat weird locution. It’s like saying “I’m the tallest Pygmy in Zaire”
The range and scope of your insults to people here makes me think you are so pissed off with pleasing/being nice about your tourist clients, that we provide some balance.
"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.
It rather looks as if vetting missed a bit here and there. Perhaps they need to hire a few 12 year old hackers so that they can read his emails.
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.
Kemi has already said she would cap the interest charged to RPI only on student loans.
Universities who cannot charge a fee that sustains their courses would go bust if they cannot cut costs enough either.
Fine to fund students when only 10% went to university, taxpayers cannot now afford to fund students for their course and maintenance costs now 40% go to university, especially when over half of taxpayers still don't go to university themselves
We’re not a country; we’re two snobs in a trench coat.
The Protagonist: "You British don't have a monopoly on snobbery, you know." Crosby: "Well, not a monopoly. More of a controlling interest!"
"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.
Exactly. It is utterly flagrant, and I think, unsurvivable. Can we imagine the outrage if Boris had done the same thing?
I can imagine it, yeah. You’d be defending it to the hilt, alleging a “blob” hit job.
I'm sure that Starmer followed the process of not applying any Pressure to anyone. Any pressure applied wasn't him, and also wasn't pressure in the definition of pressure. Which doesn't exist.
So, some people, completely independently, left everything out of Mandy's vetting that might fail. Which was part of a process.
As a result, Mandy's vetting file included everything - except for a number of secret documents, a few others which are part of still active files, some correspondence lost in the floods of 1967, some records which went astray in the move to London and others when the War Office was incorporated in the Ministry of Defence, and the normal withdrawal of papers whose publication could give grounds for an action for libel or breach of confidence or cause embarrassment to friendly governments.
So the Process was completed, Starmer was unaware and no files crossed his desk. What's not to like?
I’m not defending Starmer, just enjoying @Luckyguy1983 new found love of due process and regulations
I know..
But Starmer's justification for this will be a beauty. The Forms Were Obeyed, as they say in the Landsraad.
"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
Indeed, though having a successful millionaire thriller writer as he father makes it a bit easier for her to study a subject she loves than if her father was on minimum wage or a below average income. In which case such students will be more likely to study a vocational degree more likely to get them a high earning job like Law or Business.
Though as you state with AI you also want to learn creative skills and I am sure your daughter will be learning a lot of that and still plenty of jobs in museums etc for Classicists AI can't do
I’m not allowed to discuss THAT technology so I will restrict myself to observing that virtually ALL “intellectual” jobs are threatened, and nothing I have seen lately dissuades me from that, and I have seen quite a lot
In other news it is fucking pissing down in Rwanda. But I spent the morning larking about with wild gorillas, and it was beaut. So let the rain fall, and keep the jungle green
"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.
Exactly. It is utterly flagrant, and I think, unsurvivable. Can we imagine the outrage if Boris had done the same thing?
"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.
Exactly. It is utterly flagrant, and I think, unsurvivable. Can we imagine the outrage if Boris had done the same thing?
Labour are gonna get marmalised on May 7 and I am pretty sure things will move fast from that point
I believe your London residence is in Camden - might be one of the many interesting results in London.
"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.
No I don't, I would let the market decide, if Arts degrees have low demand of students to study them they either cut their fees to increase demand or cut their costs to next to nothing or are scrapped
So you are comfortable with the market dispensing with Classics degrees?
"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.
Exactly. It is utterly flagrant, and I think, unsurvivable. Can we imagine the outrage if Boris had done the same thing?
"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.
Exactly. It is utterly flagrant, and I think, unsurvivable. Can we imagine the outrage if Boris had done the same thing?
Labour are gonna get marmalised on May 7 and I am pretty sure things will move fast from that point
"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.
Exactly. It is utterly flagrant, and I think, unsurvivable. Can we imagine the outrage if Boris had done the same thing?
"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.
Exactly. It is utterly flagrant, and I think, unsurvivable. Can we imagine the outrage if Boris had done the same thing?
Labour are gonna get marmalised on May 7 and I am pretty sure things will move fast from that point
Provided the Tories as well as Labour beat Reform, otherwise if Labour come second and beat the Tories even if Reform win Starmer likely stays and it will be Kemi in trouble.
So Labourites who want Sir Keir gone should be praying for a good Tory performance in May and a Kemi mini surge, indeed ideally they would want Reform, the Tories and the Greens to beat Labour on seats won and NEV to ensure a big enough stake is pushed through the heart of Starmer's leadership
"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
I studied Journalism (why?) which I did for a year before binning it. The video production side doesn't really have an impact on my Youtubing now.
I have 4 jobs: Food Industry Consultant - trading is all about personal relationships Food Importer / Distributer - building relationships with customers and suppliers Family Shop & webstores - a dying industry which is under threat from AI run stores YouTuber now with 4 channels at various stages - AI a threat in general but already huge pushback to AI slop. People want to interact with people
So I feel reasonably secure as I continue to flog my guts out. My kids? Eldest has a 1st in English and is a briliant writer but can't get a job doing anything. Am encouraging them to think about how they can make money being creative Middle is about to spend 4 years at Art school specialising in photography. AI isn't going to screw over the creative arts so he'll be ok Youngest is brighter than the rest of us put together. Interested in depth in both energy sciences (and went off to school this morning in her Shell fleece) and palaeontology. Should be ok if we get her nudged into the science / engineering side
Kids today? Under severe threat from technology taking jobs to line the pockets of a few. The kind of "work will be optional" bollocks from Musk suggests a future where we have mass unrest and hunger, and it really concerns me.
Are you serious? Photography is ALREADY fucked. Totally fucked. I know this very well as some of my best friends are well known pro photographers, at least half of whom have had to give up as the industry has basically died. One of my best female friends used to be a lecturer in photography at a well known London college, but she resigned, partly - in her own words - “because I felt so bad teaching a useless degree to students paying good money, and lying to them that they might get a photography job at the end”
I don’t wish to be cruel or nasty, really. I hope all your lovely kids thrive, and I am sure they will if they are as hard working as you. But.. photography?? No. No no no
The pushback against AI shit is already happening. Art won't get removed by it. Anyway, God alone knows whether there's a job taking pictures at the end. Just go do what you want 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.
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.
No I don't, I would let the market decide, if Arts degrees have low demand of students to study them they either cut their fees to increase demand or cut their costs to next to nothing or are scrapped
So you are comfortable with the market dispensing with Classics degrees?
If no students want to study it at lower ranked universities even with a low fee, sadly so.
There will always be jobs at Eton and Winchester though for Oxbridge and St Andrews classicists or for those who want to go into academia at an ancient university or be a columnist for a broadsheet newspaper
"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
Classics from St Andrews will always be a good degree. A better source of pride than perhaps you might sometimes lay claim to.
Not quite sure what you mean, but I am a damn sight more proud of her prize winning progress at St Andrew’s than I am of my 2:2 in Philosophy from UCL, which I acquired despite attending no lectures or tutorials for two and a half years, and just doing drugs and chasing girls instead
Well I got a 3rd - and much the same as you I sold myself a little short in that, but hey - it was fun. I just meant it is a real thing to be really proud of and you should be quietly proud. And that quietly proud hasn't always been your modus operandi with far smaller claims to your fame.
Still no idea what you’re on about. You should have studied Lucidity
I can see how you might find comments that basically say 'Well done Leon' a little hard to fit in to the everyday picture. I just meant 'Well done Leon'!
lol, ok. I’m still slightly confuddled but I’ll take a genuine compliment and accept it graciously. Also well done you on getting a 3rd. I kinda wish I’d gotten a 3rd, it’s much more dashing and interesting than a boring 2:2
Well my plans were to get a 2nd - I wanted to stay on, and my director of studies was prepared to let me if I got a 2nd. I got the top 3rd.
“The top 3rd” is a somewhat weird locution. It’s like saying “I’m the tallest Pygmy in Zaire”
The range and scope of your insults to people here makes me think you are so pissed off with pleasing/being nice about your tourist clients, that we provide some balance.
I didn't really take it as an insult. I imagine the Zaire embassy are considering their response though.
"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.
Exactly. It is utterly flagrant, and I think, unsurvivable. Can we imagine the outrage if Boris had done the same thing?
"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.
Exactly. It is utterly flagrant, and I think, unsurvivable. Can we imagine the outrage if Boris had done the same thing?
Labour are gonna get marmalised on May 7 and I am pretty sure things will move fast from that point
I believe you are in Camden - might be one of the many interesting results in London.
Indeed. Might it turn Green??
Worth noting that Starmer’s personal vote in Camden Holborn and St Pancras in GE24 was seriously disappointing - down 17.4%. He only won because the extant majority was so huge it could take a beating
There’s a real chance he could personally lose the seat in 28-29
"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.
Exactly. It is utterly flagrant, and I think, unsurvivable. Can we imagine the outrage if Boris had done the same thing?
"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.
Exactly. It is utterly flagrant, and I think, unsurvivable. Can we imagine the outrage if Boris had done the same thing?
Labour are gonna get marmalised on May 7 and I am pretty sure things will move fast from that point
Labour’s problem is that pretty much all of its MPs are dweebs. They need a normal person like Mark Carney.
Worse than that, they need about 50 of them, as not only do they need a "normal" person to be PM, they've also got acres of ministerial posts to fill too.
A good part of why this government is failing is not just Starmer - it's also that he leads a parliamentary party comprised mainly of morons who thought governing just meant doling out ever more money to their favored client groups.
Finding a "normal" face to go at the head of this column of idiots isn't going to apprechably help to resolve the problem.
"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
Indeed, though having a successful millionaire thriller writer as he father makes it a bit easier for her to study a subject she loves than if her father was on minimum wage or a below average income. In which case such students will be more likely to study a vocational degree more likely to get them a high earning job like Law or Business.
Though as you state with AI you also want to learn creative skills and I am sure your daughter will be learning a lot of that and still plenty of jobs in museums etc for Classicists AI can't do
I’m not allowed to discuss THAT technology so I will restrict myself to observing that virtually ALL “intellectual” jobs are threatened, and nothing I have seen lately dissuades me from that, and I have seen quite a lot
In other news it is fucking pissing down in Rwanda. But I spent the morning larking about with wild gorillas, and it was beaut. So let the rain fall, and keep the jungle green
If it goes really bad no job intellectual or not is safe. By which time anyway we will all most be living on a Universal Basic Income funded by a massive robot tax on the big corporations and largest employers only employing robots as no party would get elected to government otherwise ever again without that as its policy
"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
Classics from St Andrews will always be a good degree. A better source of pride than perhaps you might sometimes lay claim to.
Not quite sure what you mean, but I am a damn sight more proud of her prize winning progress at St Andrew’s than I am of my 2:2 in Philosophy from UCL, which I acquired despite attending no lectures or tutorials for two and a half years, and just doing drugs and chasing girls instead
Well I got a 3rd - and much the same as you I sold myself a little short in that, but hey - it was fun. I just meant it is a real thing to be really proud of and you should be quietly proud. And that quietly proud hasn't always been your modus operandi with far smaller claims to your fame.
Still no idea what you’re on about. You should have studied Lucidity
I can see how you might find comments that basically say 'Well done Leon' a little hard to fit in to the everyday picture. I just meant 'Well done Leon'!
lol, ok. I’m still slightly confuddled but I’ll take a genuine compliment and accept it graciously. Also well done you on getting a 3rd. I kinda wish I’d gotten a 3rd, it’s much more dashing and interesting than a boring 2:2
Well my plans were to get a 2nd - I wanted to stay on, and my director of studies was prepared to let me if I got a 2nd. I got the top 3rd.
“The top 3rd” is a somewhat weird locution. It’s like saying “I’m the tallest Pygmy in Zaire”
The range and scope of your insults to people here makes me think you are so pissed off with pleasing/being nice about your tourist clients, that we provide some balance.
That’s actually quite insightful
This part of my job DOES involve an awful lot of smiling and saying thankyou and generally trying to charm and please people so my wonderful job continues
"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.
No I don't, I would let the market decide, if Arts degrees have low demand of students to study them they either cut their fees to increase demand or cut their costs to next to nothing or are scrapped
So you are comfortable with the market dispensing with Classics degrees?
If no students want to study it at lower ranked universities even with a low fee, sadly so.
There will always be jobs at Eton and Winchester though for Oxbridge and St Andrews classicists or for those who want to go into academia at an ancient university or be a columnist for a broadsheet newspaper
The Daily Mail isn't a broadsheet and writing a column for the Daily Mail does not require a Classics degrees.
"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
Indeed, though having a successful millionaire thriller writer as he father makes it a bit easier for her to study a subject she loves than if her father was on minimum wage or a below average income. In which case such students will be more likely to study a vocational degree more likely to get them a high earning job like Law or Business.
Though as you state with AI you also want to learn creative skills and I am sure your daughter will be learning a lot of that and still plenty of jobs in museums etc for Classicists AI can't do
I’m not allowed to discuss THAT technology so I will restrict myself to observing that virtually ALL “intellectual” jobs are threatened, and nothing I have seen lately dissuades me from that, and I have seen quite a lot
In other news it is fucking pissing down in Rwanda. But I spent the morning larking about with wild gorillas, and it was beaut. So let the rain fall, and keep the jungle green
If it goes really bad no job intellectual or not is safe. By which time anyway we will all most be living on a Universal Basic Income funded by a massive robot tax on the big corporations and largest employers only employing robots as no party would get elected to government otherwise ever again without that as its policy
You often repeat this as if it’s certain but just because a government is elected to do something doesn’t mean they can. A “massive robot tax” might not be able to fund a universal basic income and then what?
Some comfort for Sir Keir, Labour still leads with the richest voters, though Keir Hardie would likely be turning in his grave at the fact Labour are now just 4th with the poorest voters
"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
I studied Journalism (why?) which I did for a year before binning it. The video production side doesn't really have an impact on my Youtubing now.
I have 4 jobs: Food Industry Consultant - trading is all about personal relationships Food Importer / Distributer - building relationships with customers and suppliers Family Shop & webstores - a dying industry which is under threat from AI run stores YouTuber now with 4 channels at various stages - AI a threat in general but already huge pushback to AI slop. People want to interact with people
So I feel reasonably secure as I continue to flog my guts out. My kids? Eldest has a 1st in English and is a briliant writer but can't get a job doing anything. Am encouraging them to think about how they can make money being creative Middle is about to spend 4 years at Art school specialising in photography. AI isn't going to screw over the creative arts so he'll be ok Youngest is brighter than the rest of us put together. Interested in depth in both energy sciences (and went off to school this morning in her Shell fleece) and palaeontology. Should be ok if we get her nudged into the science / engineering side
Kids today? Under severe threat from technology taking jobs to line the pockets of a few. The kind of "work will be optional" bollocks from Musk suggests a future where we have mass unrest and hunger, and it really concerns me.
Are you serious? Photography is ALREADY fucked. Totally fucked. I know this very well as some of my best friends are well known pro photographers, at least half of whom have had to give up as the industry has basically died. One of my best female friends used to be a lecturer in photography at a well known London college, but she resigned, partly - in her own words - “because I felt so bad teaching a useless degree to students paying good money, and lying to them that they might get a photography job at the end”
I don’t wish to be cruel or nasty, really. I hope all your lovely kids thrive, and I am sure they will if they are as hard working as you. But.. photography?? No. No no no
The pushback against AI shit is already happening. Art won't get removed by it. Anyway, God alone knows whether there's a job taking pictures at the end. Just go do what you want to do
There’s no job taking pictures NOW, Really. I’m not making this up. The numbers of pro photographers making a career out of it have plunged, and a vanishingly small number make REAL money
Just think about it. How many photographers are household names, the same way Don McCullin, Lord Lichfield, David Bailey were. None? Or indeed Cartier Bresson or Frank Capra
The industry, as we knew it, is dying. A few high art photographers and some portrait photographers will cling on. But when an iPhone can now take as good a photo in an amateur hand as a pro could do 30 years ago, there is no real future in this, as a career
"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
I studied Journalism (why?) which I did for a year before binning it. The video production side doesn't really have an impact on my Youtubing now.
I have 4 jobs: Food Industry Consultant - trading is all about personal relationships Food Importer / Distributer - building relationships with customers and suppliers Family Shop & webstores - a dying industry which is under threat from AI run stores YouTuber now with 4 channels at various stages - AI a threat in general but already huge pushback to AI slop. People want to interact with people
So I feel reasonably secure as I continue to flog my guts out. My kids? Eldest has a 1st in English and is a briliant writer but can't get a job doing anything. Am encouraging them to think about how they can make money being creative Middle is about to spend 4 years at Art school specialising in photography. AI isn't going to screw over the creative arts so he'll be ok Youngest is brighter than the rest of us put together. Interested in depth in both energy sciences (and went off to school this morning in her Shell fleece) and palaeontology. Should be ok if we get her nudged into the science / engineering side
Kids today? Under severe threat from technology taking jobs to line the pockets of a few. The kind of "work will be optional" bollocks from Musk suggests a future where we have mass unrest and hunger, and it really concerns me.
Are you serious? Photography is ALREADY fucked. Totally fucked. I know this very well as some of my best friends are well known pro photographers, at least half of whom have had to give up as the industry has basically died. One of my best female friends used to be a lecturer in photography at a well known London college, but she resigned, partly - in her own words - “because I felt so bad teaching a useless degree to students paying good money, and lying to them that they might get a photography job at the end”
I don’t wish to be cruel or nasty, really. I hope all your lovely kids thrive, and I am sure they will if they are as hard working as you. But.. photography?? No. No no no
The pushback against AI shit is already happening. Art won't get removed by it. Anyway, God alone knows whether there's a job taking pictures at the end. Just go do what you want to do
There’s no job taking pictures NOW, Really. I’m not making this up. The numbers of pro photographers making a career out of it have plunged, and a vanishingly small number make REAL money
Just think about it. How many photographers are household names, the same way Don McCullin, Lord Lichfield, David Bailey were. None? Or indeed Cartier Bresson or Frank Capra
The industry, as we knew it, is dying. A few high art photographers and some portrait photographers will cling on. But when an iPhone can now take as good a photo in an amateur hand as a pro could do 30 years ago, there is no real future in this, as a career
"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
Indeed, though having a successful millionaire thriller writer as he father makes it a bit easier for her to study a subject she loves than if her father was on minimum wage or a below average income. In which case such students will be more likely to study a vocational degree more likely to get them a high earning job like Law or Business.
Though as you state with AI you also want to learn creative skills and I am sure your daughter will be learning a lot of that and still plenty of jobs in museums etc for Classicists AI can't do
I’m not allowed to discuss THAT technology so I will restrict myself to observing that virtually ALL “intellectual” jobs are threatened, and nothing I have seen lately dissuades me from that, and I have seen quite a lot
In other news it is fucking pissing down in Rwanda. But I spent the morning larking about with wild gorillas, and it was beaut. So let the rain fall, and keep the jungle green
If it goes really bad no job intellectual or not is safe. By which time anyway we will all most be living on a Universal Basic Income funded by a massive robot tax on the big corporations and largest employers only employing robots as no party would get elected to government otherwise ever again without that as its policy
In which case power and money is concentrated in a small elite, and the rest of us become completely reliant on a complicated machine that can do everything, and most of the current 9 billion population unnecessary. We're all for the chop.
Some comfort for Sir Keir, Labour still leads with the richest voters, though Keir Hardie would likely be turning in his grave at the fact Labour are now just 4th with the poorest voters
"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
I studied Journalism (why?) which I did for a year before binning it. The video production side doesn't really have an impact on my Youtubing now.
I have 4 jobs: Food Industry Consultant - trading is all about personal relationships Food Importer / Distributer - building relationships with customers and suppliers Family Shop & webstores - a dying industry which is under threat from AI run stores YouTuber now with 4 channels at various stages - AI a threat in general but already huge pushback to AI slop. People want to interact with people
So I feel reasonably secure as I continue to flog my guts out. My kids? Eldest has a 1st in English and is a briliant writer but can't get a job doing anything. Am encouraging them to think about how they can make money being creative Middle is about to spend 4 years at Art school specialising in photography. AI isn't going to screw over the creative arts so he'll be ok Youngest is brighter than the rest of us put together. Interested in depth in both energy sciences (and went off to school this morning in her Shell fleece) and palaeontology. Should be ok if we get her nudged into the science / engineering side
Kids today? Under severe threat from technology taking jobs to line the pockets of a few. The kind of "work will be optional" bollocks from Musk suggests a future where we have mass unrest and hunger, and it really concerns me.
Are you serious? Photography is ALREADY fucked. Totally fucked. I know this very well as some of my best friends are well known pro photographers, at least half of whom have had to give up as the industry has basically died. One of my best female friends used to be a lecturer in photography at a well known London college, but she resigned, partly - in her own words - “because I felt so bad teaching a useless degree to students paying good money, and lying to them that they might get a photography job at the end”
I don’t wish to be cruel or nasty, really. I hope all your lovely kids thrive, and I am sure they will if they are as hard working as you. But.. photography?? No. No no no
The pushback against AI shit is already happening. Art won't get removed by it. Anyway, God alone knows whether there's a job taking pictures at the end. Just go do what you want to do
There’s no job taking pictures NOW, Really. I’m not making this up. The numbers of pro photographers making a career out of it have plunged, and a vanishingly small number make REAL money
Just think about it. How many photographers are household names, the same way Don McCullin, Lord Lichfield, David Bailey were. None? Or indeed Cartier Bresson or Frank Capra
The industry, as we knew it, is dying. A few high art photographers and some portrait photographers will cling on. But when an iPhone can now take as good a photo in an amateur hand as a pro could do 30 years ago, there is no real future in this, as a career
I’ve never heard of any of those people mate
I am afraid that reflects rather badly on YOU, except that I have confused Frank Capra with Robert Capa, which reflects rather badly on me
I blame two large “rose water gins” on my jungle balcony in the Virunga mountains
"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
I studied Journalism (why?) which I did for a year before binning it. The video production side doesn't really have an impact on my Youtubing now.
I have 4 jobs: Food Industry Consultant - trading is all about personal relationships Food Importer / Distributer - building relationships with customers and suppliers Family Shop & webstores - a dying industry which is under threat from AI run stores YouTuber now with 4 channels at various stages - AI a threat in general but already huge pushback to AI slop. People want to interact with people
So I feel reasonably secure as I continue to flog my guts out. My kids? Eldest has a 1st in English and is a briliant writer but can't get a job doing anything. Am encouraging them to think about how they can make money being creative Middle is about to spend 4 years at Art school specialising in photography. AI isn't going to screw over the creative arts so he'll be ok Youngest is brighter than the rest of us put together. Interested in depth in both energy sciences (and went off to school this morning in her Shell fleece) and palaeontology. Should be ok if we get her nudged into the science / engineering side
Kids today? Under severe threat from technology taking jobs to line the pockets of a few. The kind of "work will be optional" bollocks from Musk suggests a future where we have mass unrest and hunger, and it really concerns me.
Are you serious? Photography is ALREADY fucked. Totally fucked. I know this very well as some of my best friends are well known pro photographers, at least half of whom have had to give up as the industry has basically died. One of my best female friends used to be a lecturer in photography at a well known London college, but she resigned, partly - in her own words - “because I felt so bad teaching a useless degree to students paying good money, and lying to them that they might get a photography job at the end”
I don’t wish to be cruel or nasty, really. I hope all your lovely kids thrive, and I am sure they will if they are as hard working as you. But.. photography?? No. No no no
The pushback against AI shit is already happening. Art won't get removed by it. Anyway, God alone knows whether there's a job taking pictures at the end. Just go do what you want to do
There’s no job taking pictures NOW, Really. I’m not making this up. The numbers of pro photographers making a career out of it have plunged, and a vanishingly small number make REAL money
Just think about it. How many photographers are household names, the same way Don McCullin, Lord Lichfield, David Bailey were. None? Or indeed Cartier Bresson or Frank Capra
The industry, as we knew it, is dying. A few high art photographers and some portrait photographers will cling on. But when an iPhone can now take as good a photo in an amateur hand as a pro could do 30 years ago, there is no real future in this, as a career
I’ve never heard of any of those people mate
Which shows how the world has changed. I'm 20 years older than one so know who Don McCullin, Lord Lichfield, David Bailey are and some of their work..
"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
I studied Journalism (why?) which I did for a year before binning it. The video production side doesn't really have an impact on my Youtubing now.
I have 4 jobs: Food Industry Consultant - trading is all about personal relationships Food Importer / Distributer - building relationships with customers and suppliers Family Shop & webstores - a dying industry which is under threat from AI run stores YouTuber now with 4 channels at various stages - AI a threat in general but already huge pushback to AI slop. People want to interact with people
So I feel reasonably secure as I continue to flog my guts out. My kids? Eldest has a 1st in English and is a briliant writer but can't get a job doing anything. Am encouraging them to think about how they can make money being creative Middle is about to spend 4 years at Art school specialising in photography. AI isn't going to screw over the creative arts so he'll be ok Youngest is brighter than the rest of us put together. Interested in depth in both energy sciences (and went off to school this morning in her Shell fleece) and palaeontology. Should be ok if we get her nudged into the science / engineering side
Kids today? Under severe threat from technology taking jobs to line the pockets of a few. The kind of "work will be optional" bollocks from Musk suggests a future where we have mass unrest and hunger, and it really concerns me.
Are you serious? Photography is ALREADY fucked. Totally fucked. I know this very well as some of my best friends are well known pro photographers, at least half of whom have had to give up as the industry has basically died. One of my best female friends used to be a lecturer in photography at a well known London college, but she resigned, partly - in her own words - “because I felt so bad teaching a useless degree to students paying good money, and lying to them that they might get a photography job at the end”
I don’t wish to be cruel or nasty, really. I hope all your lovely kids thrive, and I am sure they will if they are as hard working as you. But.. photography?? No. No no no
The pushback against AI shit is already happening. Art won't get removed by it. Anyway, God alone knows whether there's a job taking pictures at the end. Just go do what you want to do
There’s no job taking pictures NOW, Really. I’m not making this up. The numbers of pro photographers making a career out of it have plunged, and a vanishingly small number make REAL money
Just think about it. How many photographers are household names, the same way Don McCullin, Lord Lichfield, David Bailey were. None? Or indeed Cartier Bresson or Frank Capra
The industry, as we knew it, is dying. A few high art photographers and some portrait photographers will cling on. But when an iPhone can now take as good a photo in an amateur hand as a pro could do 30 years ago, there is no real future in this, as a career
I’ve never heard of any of those people mate
Which shows how the world has changed. I'm 20 years older than one so know who Don McCullin, Lord Lichfield, David Bailey are and some of their work..
Yes it’s partly an age thing but it’s also there are no modern equivalents of Bailey and McCullin. They were genuinely significant national cultural figures (also working class- photography was a great career ladder for poor kids)
Possibly the last “famous” modern day British photographer was Martin Parr, but he recently snuffed it, and I cannot think of any others ready to replace him
"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
Indeed, though having a successful millionaire thriller writer as he father makes it a bit easier for her to study a subject she loves than if her father was on minimum wage or a below average income. In which case such students will be more likely to study a vocational degree more likely to get them a high earning job like Law or Business.
Though as you state with AI you also want to learn creative skills and I am sure your daughter will be learning a lot of that and still plenty of jobs in museums etc for Classicists AI can't do
I’m not allowed to discuss THAT technology so I will restrict myself to observing that virtually ALL “intellectual” jobs are threatened, and nothing I have seen lately dissuades me from that, and I have seen quite a lot
In other news it is fucking pissing down in Rwanda. But I spent the morning larking about with wild gorillas, and it was beaut. So let the rain fall, and keep the jungle green
If it goes really bad no job intellectual or not is safe. By which time anyway we will all most be living on a Universal Basic Income funded by a massive robot tax on the big corporations and largest employers only employing robots as no party would get elected to government otherwise ever again without that as its policy
In which case power and money is concentrated in a small elite, and the rest of us become completely reliant on a complicated machine that can do everything, and most of the current 9 billion population unnecessary. We're all for the chop.
Last time we had a situation as unequal as that with power and money so concentrated in a small elite was perhaps France before the French Revolution. Of course the chopping then done by the guillotine somewhat reduced the pool of the French elite the most power and money driven tech bros might care to remember
"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.
Thanks for that admission. There's no doubt that people coming from Afghanistan will have had far, far worse treatment in the health care sytem than they would have had if born here. Some of those conditions that would have been easily treated will have festered and require a greater degree of treatment earlier in life and for more of their life than those born here.
The other issue is dependents who follow them here. Again, they will have had a lifetime of poorer treatment. There will be a lifetime to catch up on once they get here. If their life expectency increases as a result, they will likely require more life-years of treatment than those born here and in the system throughout their life.
I was not taking a pro-Reform stance on "migrant"s - but I was pointing out that our health service has had an extra 11 million population to cater for since 2000. The NHS has not had financial provision for that scale of increase. It is hardly a wonder that it is bursting at the seams. And a proportion of that increase might be young and virile - but not all. And those that aren't have experienced a lack of treatment that requires a significant catch-up.
"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
I studied Journalism (why?) which I did for a year before binning it. The video production side doesn't really have an impact on my Youtubing now.
I have 4 jobs: Food Industry Consultant - trading is all about personal relationships Food Importer / Distributer - building relationships with customers and suppliers Family Shop & webstores - a dying industry which is under threat from AI run stores YouTuber now with 4 channels at various stages - AI a threat in general but already huge pushback to AI slop. People want to interact with people
So I feel reasonably secure as I continue to flog my guts out. My kids? Eldest has a 1st in English and is a briliant writer but can't get a job doing anything. Am encouraging them to think about how they can make money being creative Middle is about to spend 4 years at Art school specialising in photography. AI isn't going to screw over the creative arts so he'll be ok Youngest is brighter than the rest of us put together. Interested in depth in both energy sciences (and went off to school this morning in her Shell fleece) and palaeontology. Should be ok if we get her nudged into the science / engineering side
Kids today? Under severe threat from technology taking jobs to line the pockets of a few. The kind of "work will be optional" bollocks from Musk suggests a future where we have mass unrest and hunger, and it really concerns me.
Are you serious? Photography is ALREADY fucked. Totally fucked. I know this very well as some of my best friends are well known pro photographers, at least half of whom have had to give up as the industry has basically died. One of my best female friends used to be a lecturer in photography at a well known London college, but she resigned, partly - in her own words - “because I felt so bad teaching a useless degree to students paying good money, and lying to them that they might get a photography job at the end”
I don’t wish to be cruel or nasty, really. I hope all your lovely kids thrive, and I am sure they will if they are as hard working as you. But.. photography?? No. No no no
The pushback against AI shit is already happening. Art won't get removed by it. Anyway, God alone knows whether there's a job taking pictures at the end. Just go do what you want to do
There’s no job taking pictures NOW, Really. I’m not making this up. The numbers of pro photographers making a career out of it have plunged, and a vanishingly small number make REAL money
Just think about it. How many photographers are household names, the same way Don McCullin, Lord Lichfield, David Bailey were. None? Or indeed Cartier Bresson or Frank Capra
The industry, as we knew it, is dying. A few high art photographers and some portrait photographers will cling on. But when an iPhone can now take as good a photo in an amateur hand as a pro could do 30 years ago, there is no real future in this, as a career
But where did I say anything about a job in photography? I said creative arts.
"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
I studied Journalism (why?) which I did for a year before binning it. The video production side doesn't really have an impact on my Youtubing now.
I have 4 jobs: Food Industry Consultant - trading is all about personal relationships Food Importer / Distributer - building relationships with customers and suppliers Family Shop & webstores - a dying industry which is under threat from AI run stores YouTuber now with 4 channels at various stages - AI a threat in general but already huge pushback to AI slop. People want to interact with people
So I feel reasonably secure as I continue to flog my guts out. My kids? Eldest has a 1st in English and is a briliant writer but can't get a job doing anything. Am encouraging them to think about how they can make money being creative Middle is about to spend 4 years at Art school specialising in photography. AI isn't going to screw over the creative arts so he'll be ok Youngest is brighter than the rest of us put together. Interested in depth in both energy sciences (and went off to school this morning in her Shell fleece) and palaeontology. Should be ok if we get her nudged into the science / engineering side
Kids today? Under severe threat from technology taking jobs to line the pockets of a few. The kind of "work will be optional" bollocks from Musk suggests a future where we have mass unrest and hunger, and it really concerns me.
Are you serious? Photography is ALREADY fucked. Totally fucked. I know this very well as some of my best friends are well known pro photographers, at least half of whom have had to give up as the industry has basically died. One of my best female friends used to be a lecturer in photography at a well known London college, but she resigned, partly - in her own words - “because I felt so bad teaching a useless degree to students paying good money, and lying to them that they might get a photography job at the end”
I don’t wish to be cruel or nasty, really. I hope all your lovely kids thrive, and I am sure they will if they are as hard working as you. But.. photography?? No. No no no
The pushback against AI shit is already happening. Art won't get removed by it. Anyway, God alone knows whether there's a job taking pictures at the end. Just go do what you want to do
There were more people getting degrees in photography than professional photography jobs years ago. There will be more people getting degrees in photography than professional photography jobs in the future.
"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
I studied Journalism (why?) which I did for a year before binning it. The video production side doesn't really have an impact on my Youtubing now.
I have 4 jobs: Food Industry Consultant - trading is all about personal relationships Food Importer / Distributer - building relationships with customers and suppliers Family Shop & webstores - a dying industry which is under threat from AI run stores YouTuber now with 4 channels at various stages - AI a threat in general but already huge pushback to AI slop. People want to interact with people
So I feel reasonably secure as I continue to flog my guts out. My kids? Eldest has a 1st in English and is a briliant writer but can't get a job doing anything. Am encouraging them to think about how they can make money being creative Middle is about to spend 4 years at Art school specialising in photography. AI isn't going to screw over the creative arts so he'll be ok Youngest is brighter than the rest of us put together. Interested in depth in both energy sciences (and went off to school this morning in her Shell fleece) and palaeontology. Should be ok if we get her nudged into the science / engineering side
Kids today? Under severe threat from technology taking jobs to line the pockets of a few. The kind of "work will be optional" bollocks from Musk suggests a future where we have mass unrest and hunger, and it really concerns me.
Are you serious? Photography is ALREADY fucked. Totally fucked. I know this very well as some of my best friends are well known pro photographers, at least half of whom have had to give up as the industry has basically died. One of my best female friends used to be a lecturer in photography at a well known London college, but she resigned, partly - in her own words - “because I felt so bad teaching a useless degree to students paying good money, and lying to them that they might get a photography job at the end”
I don’t wish to be cruel or nasty, really. I hope all your lovely kids thrive, and I am sure they will if they are as hard working as you. But.. photography?? No. No no no
The pushback against AI shit is already happening. Art won't get removed by it. Anyway, God alone knows whether there's a job taking pictures at the end. Just go do what you want to do
There’s no job taking pictures NOW, Really. I’m not making this up. The numbers of pro photographers making a career out of it have plunged, and a vanishingly small number make REAL money
Just think about it. How many photographers are household names, the same way Don McCullin, Lord Lichfield, David Bailey were. None? Or indeed Cartier Bresson or Frank Capra
The industry, as we knew it, is dying. A few high art photographers and some portrait photographers will cling on. But when an iPhone can now take as good a photo in an amateur hand as a pro could do 30 years ago, there is no real future in this, as a career
I’ve never heard of any of those people mate
I am afraid that reflects rather badly on YOU, except that I have confused Frank Capra with Robert Capa, which reflects rather badly on me
I blame two large “rose water gins” on my jungle balcony in the Virunga mountains
I was just about to help you there; it's a wonderful typo.
Bailey was sufficiently well known to do TV ads back in the day...
"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
Indeed, though having a successful millionaire thriller writer as he father makes it a bit easier for her to study a subject she loves than if her father was on minimum wage or a below average income. In which case such students will be more likely to study a vocational degree more likely to get them a high earning job like Law or Business.
Though as you state with AI you also want to learn creative skills and I am sure your daughter will be learning a lot of that and still plenty of jobs in museums etc for Classicists AI can't do
I’m not allowed to discuss THAT technology so I will restrict myself to observing that virtually ALL “intellectual” jobs are threatened, and nothing I have seen lately dissuades me from that, and I have seen quite a lot
In other news it is fucking pissing down in Rwanda. But I spent the morning larking about with wild gorillas, and it was beaut. So let the rain fall, and keep the jungle green
If it goes really bad no job intellectual or not is safe. By which time anyway we will all most be living on a Universal Basic Income funded by a massive robot tax on the big corporations and largest employers only employing robots as no party would get elected to government otherwise ever again without that as its policy
You often repeat this as if it’s certain but just because a government is elected to do something doesn’t mean they can. A “massive robot tax” might not be able to fund a universal basic income and then what?
You increase the robot tax even further until large corporations and big organisations start creating new jobs for humans not just replacing existing jobs with AI.
You keep taxes down though for small local businesses who prefer human workers to AI
Some comfort for Sir Keir, Labour still leads with the richest voters, though Keir Hardie would likely be turning in his grave at the fact Labour are now just 4th with the poorest voters
"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
I studied Journalism (why?) which I did for a year before binning it. The video production side doesn't really have an impact on my Youtubing now.
I have 4 jobs: Food Industry Consultant - trading is all about personal relationships Food Importer / Distributer - building relationships with customers and suppliers Family Shop & webstores - a dying industry which is under threat from AI run stores YouTuber now with 4 channels at various stages - AI a threat in general but already huge pushback to AI slop. People want to interact with people
So I feel reasonably secure as I continue to flog my guts out. My kids? Eldest has a 1st in English and is a briliant writer but can't get a job doing anything. Am encouraging them to think about how they can make money being creative Middle is about to spend 4 years at Art school specialising in photography. AI isn't going to screw over the creative arts so he'll be ok Youngest is brighter than the rest of us put together. Interested in depth in both energy sciences (and went off to school this morning in her Shell fleece) and palaeontology. Should be ok if we get her nudged into the science / engineering side
Kids today? Under severe threat from technology taking jobs to line the pockets of a few. The kind of "work will be optional" bollocks from Musk suggests a future where we have mass unrest and hunger, and it really concerns me.
Are you serious? Photography is ALREADY fucked. Totally fucked. I know this very well as some of my best friends are well known pro photographers, at least half of whom have had to give up as the industry has basically died. One of my best female friends used to be a lecturer in photography at a well known London college, but she resigned, partly - in her own words - “because I felt so bad teaching a useless degree to students paying good money, and lying to them that they might get a photography job at the end”
I don’t wish to be cruel or nasty, really. I hope all your lovely kids thrive, and I am sure they will if they are as hard working as you. But.. photography?? No. No no no
The pushback against AI shit is already happening. Art won't get removed by it. Anyway, God alone knows whether there's a job taking pictures at the end. Just go do what you want to do
There’s no job taking pictures NOW, Really. I’m not making this up. The numbers of pro photographers making a career out of it have plunged, and a vanishingly small number make REAL money
Just think about it. How many photographers are household names, the same way Don McCullin, Lord Lichfield, David Bailey were. None? Or indeed Cartier Bresson or Frank Capra
The industry, as we knew it, is dying. A few high art photographers and some portrait photographers will cling on. But when an iPhone can now take as good a photo in an amateur hand as a pro could do 30 years ago, there is no real future in this, as a career
I’ve never heard of any of those people mate
Which shows how the world has changed. I'm 20 years older than one so know who Don McCullin, Lord Lichfield, David Bailey are and some of their work..
Yes it’s partly an age thing but it’s also there are no modern equivalents of Bailey and McCullin. They were genuinely significant national cultural figures (also working class- photography was a great career ladder for poor kids)
Possibly the last “famous” modern day British photographer was Martin Parr, but he recently snuffed it, and I cannot think of any others ready to replace him
Rankin.
But he's is similar vintage to us, and pretty well a celebrity photographer; a niche which the vanity of the rich will likely preserve.
"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
Indeed, though having a successful millionaire thriller writer as he father makes it a bit easier for her to study a subject she loves than if her father was on minimum wage or a below average income. In which case such students will be more likely to study a vocational degree more likely to get them a high earning job like Law or Business.
Though as you state with AI you also want to learn creative skills and I am sure your daughter will be learning a lot of that and still plenty of jobs in museums etc for Classicists AI can't do
I’m not allowed to discuss THAT technology so I will restrict myself to observing that virtually ALL “intellectual” jobs are threatened, and nothing I have seen lately dissuades me from that, and I have seen quite a lot
In other news it is fucking pissing down in Rwanda. But I spent the morning larking about with wild gorillas, and it was beaut. So let the rain fall, and keep the jungle green
If it goes really bad no job intellectual or not is safe. By which time anyway we will all most be living on a Universal Basic Income funded by a massive robot tax on the big corporations and largest employers only employing robots as no party would get elected to government otherwise ever again without that as its policy
You often repeat this as if it’s certain but just because a government is elected to do something doesn’t mean they can. A “massive robot tax” might not be able to fund a universal basic income and then what?
There won't be a masssive robot tax as there won't be robots to tax. How can I put this - they won't get licensed for a variety of reasons: Security risk of sticking super-strong humanoid machines throughout society waiting to kill all the humans on command Security risk of having all your personal data and your very existence being stolen by the company making the robot who lives in your house Security risk of your robot seeing all you do. And your kids do Security risk of that Temu robot being a front for foreign governments and dodgy billionaires
And I haven't even mentioned the calamitous effect on society and economy of mass unemployment.
"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.
No I don't, I would let the market decide, if Arts degrees have low demand of students to study them they either cut their fees to increase demand or cut their costs to next to nothing or are scrapped
So you are comfortable with the market dispensing with Classics degrees?
If no students want to study it at lower ranked universities even with a low fee, sadly so.
There will always be jobs at Eton and Winchester though for Oxbridge and St Andrews classicists or for those who want to go into academia at an ancient university or be a columnist for a broadsheet newspaper
The Daily Mail isn't a broadsheet and writing a column for the Daily Mail does not require a Classics degrees.
Boris wrote for the Telegraph and Times and Spectator after university, he only wrote for the Mail after leaving Downing Street
"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
Indeed, though having a successful millionaire thriller writer as he father makes it a bit easier for her to study a subject she loves than if her father was on minimum wage or a below average income. In which case such students will be more likely to study a vocational degree more likely to get them a high earning job like Law or Business.
Though as you state with AI you also want to learn creative skills and I am sure your daughter will be learning a lot of that and still plenty of jobs in museums etc for Classicists AI can't do
I’m not allowed to discuss THAT technology so I will restrict myself to observing that virtually ALL “intellectual” jobs are threatened, and nothing I have seen lately dissuades me from that, and I have seen quite a lot
In other news it is fucking pissing down in Rwanda. But I spent the morning larking about with wild gorillas, and it was beaut. So let the rain fall, and keep the jungle green
If it goes really bad no job intellectual or not is safe. By which time anyway we will all most be living on a Universal Basic Income funded by a massive robot tax on the big corporations and largest employers only employing robots as no party would get elected to government otherwise ever again without that as its policy
In which case power and money is concentrated in a small elite, and the rest of us become completely reliant on a complicated machine that can do everything, and most of the current 9 billion population unnecessary. We're all for the chop.
Last time we had a situation as unequal as that with power and money so concentrated in a small elite was perhaps France before the French Revolution. Of course the chopping then done by the guillotine somewhat reduced the pool of the French elite the most power and money driven tech bros might care to remember
I've gone a bit Kaczynski on this. We're subservient now, and the more I see colleagues and so on dependent on AI, the less capable they become as individuals. I can't see these clowns assemble the guillotine, even the Ikea ones.
Re AI photo / images. As with all these things, there will remain a small elite number of them. But for instance all those who used to take photographs for stock I think are for the scrapheap, who is using stock providers these days, just generate it using AI, let alone 5 years down the line. The systems have already been trained on every photo very taken, so getting it to generate yet another vaguely pleasing one is easy.
We are also rapidly seeing the adoptation of Gaussian Splatting, so a) which opens up new avenues for create your own, b) already generative system to create the models / worlds, and because of the way Gaussian Splatting works you can take picture from any novel view, play with the lighting etc.
"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
I studied Journalism (why?) which I did for a year before binning it. The video production side doesn't really have an impact on my Youtubing now.
I have 4 jobs: Food Industry Consultant - trading is all about personal relationships Food Importer / Distributer - building relationships with customers and suppliers Family Shop & webstores - a dying industry which is under threat from AI run stores YouTuber now with 4 channels at various stages - AI a threat in general but already huge pushback to AI slop. People want to interact with people
So I feel reasonably secure as I continue to flog my guts out. My kids? Eldest has a 1st in English and is a briliant writer but can't get a job doing anything. Am encouraging them to think about how they can make money being creative Middle is about to spend 4 years at Art school specialising in photography. AI isn't going to screw over the creative arts so he'll be ok Youngest is brighter than the rest of us put together. Interested in depth in both energy sciences (and went off to school this morning in her Shell fleece) and palaeontology. Should be ok if we get her nudged into the science / engineering side
Kids today? Under severe threat from technology taking jobs to line the pockets of a few. The kind of "work will be optional" bollocks from Musk suggests a future where we have mass unrest and hunger, and it really concerns me.
Are you serious? Photography is ALREADY fucked. Totally fucked. I know this very well as some of my best friends are well known pro photographers, at least half of whom have had to give up as the industry has basically died. One of my best female friends used to be a lecturer in photography at a well known London college, but she resigned, partly - in her own words - “because I felt so bad teaching a useless degree to students paying good money, and lying to them that they might get a photography job at the end”
I don’t wish to be cruel or nasty, really. I hope all your lovely kids thrive, and I am sure they will if they are as hard working as you. But.. photography?? No. No no no
The pushback against AI shit is already happening. Art won't get removed by it. Anyway, God alone knows whether there's a job taking pictures at the end. Just go do what you want to do
There’s no job taking pictures NOW, Really. I’m not making this up. The numbers of pro photographers making a career out of it have plunged, and a vanishingly small number make REAL money
Just think about it. How many photographers are household names, the same way Don McCullin, Lord Lichfield, David Bailey were. None? Or indeed Cartier Bresson or Frank Capra
The industry, as we knew it, is dying. A few high art photographers and some portrait photographers will cling on. But when an iPhone can now take as good a photo in an amateur hand as a pro could do 30 years ago, there is no real future in this, as a career
I’ve never heard of any of those people mate
Which shows how the world has changed. I'm 20 years older than one so know who Don McCullin, Lord Lichfield, David Bailey are and some of their work..
Yes it’s partly an age thing but it’s also there are no modern equivalents of Bailey and McCullin. They were genuinely significant national cultural figures (also working class- photography was a great career ladder for poor kids)
Possibly the last “famous” modern day British photographer was Martin Parr, but he recently snuffed it, and I cannot think of any others ready to replace him
My wife knows Don McCullin well. I've met him a few times.
He has some astonishing stories related to his photo assignments. The bravery of going into war zones might just single out a true life photographer from a bot.
"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
Indeed, though having a successful millionaire thriller writer as he father makes it a bit easier for her to study a subject she loves than if her father was on minimum wage or a below average income. In which case such students will be more likely to study a vocational degree more likely to get them a high earning job like Law or Business.
Though as you state with AI you also want to learn creative skills and I am sure your daughter will be learning a lot of that and still plenty of jobs in museums etc for Classicists AI can't do
I’m not allowed to discuss THAT technology so I will restrict myself to observing that virtually ALL “intellectual” jobs are threatened, and nothing I have seen lately dissuades me from that, and I have seen quite a lot
In other news it is fucking pissing down in Rwanda. But I spent the morning larking about with wild gorillas, and it was beaut. So let the rain fall, and keep the jungle green
If it goes really bad no job intellectual or not is safe. By which time anyway we will all most be living on a Universal Basic Income funded by a massive robot tax on the big corporations and largest employers only employing robots as no party would get elected to government otherwise ever again without that as its policy
In which case power and money is concentrated in a small elite, and the rest of us become completely reliant on a complicated machine that can do everything, and most of the current 9 billion population unnecessary. We're all for the chop.
Last time we had a situation as unequal as that with power and money so concentrated in a small elite was perhaps France before the French Revolution. Of course the chopping then done by the guillotine somewhat reduced the pool of the French elite the most power and money driven tech bros might care to remember
I've gone a bit Kaczynski on this. We're subservient now, and the more I see colleagues and so on dependent on AI, the less capable they become as individuals. I can't see these clowns assemble the guillotine, even the Ikea ones.
Plenty of disaffected graduates though could, the French revolution was organised by educated lawyers and middle class tradesmen excluded from the elite not the peasants.
Farage and Corbyn and Polanski are also not working class but excluded from the elite still lead ballot box revolts
"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
Indeed, though having a successful millionaire thriller writer as he father makes it a bit easier for her to study a subject she loves than if her father was on minimum wage or a below average income. In which case such students will be more likely to study a vocational degree more likely to get them a high earning job like Law or Business.
Though as you state with AI you also want to learn creative skills and I am sure your daughter will be learning a lot of that and still plenty of jobs in museums etc for Classicists AI can't do
I’m not allowed to discuss THAT technology so I will restrict myself to observing that virtually ALL “intellectual” jobs are threatened, and nothing I have seen lately dissuades me from that, and I have seen quite a lot
In other news it is fucking pissing down in Rwanda. But I spent the morning larking about with wild gorillas, and it was beaut. So let the rain fall, and keep the jungle green
If it goes really bad no job intellectual or not is safe. By which time anyway we will all most be living on a Universal Basic Income funded by a massive robot tax on the big corporations and largest employers only employing robots as no party would get elected to government otherwise ever again without that as its policy
You often repeat this as if it’s certain but just because a government is elected to do something doesn’t mean they can. A “massive robot tax” might not be able to fund a universal basic income and then what?
There won't be a masssive robot tax as there won't be robots to tax. How can I put this - they won't get licensed for a variety of reasons: Security risk of sticking super-strong humanoid machines throughout society waiting to kill all the humans on command Security risk of having all your personal data and your very existence being stolen by the company making the robot who lives in your house Security risk of your robot seeing all you do. And your kids do Security risk of that Temu robot being a front for foreign governments and dodgy billionaires
And I haven't even mentioned the calamitous effect on society and economy of mass unemployment.
Not happening.
Also, who will own the robots, and will we be able to tax them ?
But it's already starting to happen.
8,500 robots. The biggest embodied robotics order we’ve seen so far. ⚡🤖
China’s State Grid is rolling out a massive deployment plan for 2026.
The target: about 8,500 embodied robots, with a total budget of ¥6.8 billion (~$940 million USD).
This is not one type of machine.
It’s a full stack across three categories:
5,000 quadruped robots for inspection across substations, transmission lines, and mountainous grids.
500 humanoid robots for live electrical work — the highest-value segment, with ¥2.5 billion (~$350 million USD) allocated.
3,000 dual-arm robots for equipment operation and fault handling inside substations.
The focus is clear: inspection, live operations, emergency response, and logistics.
And the economics are already defined.
Each unit is expected to save ¥500,000–¥800,000 (~$70K–$110K USD) in annual labor cost.
Inspection efficiency improves 5×.
Fault handling time drops 60%.
Safety incidents are projected to decrease by 80%.
This is not a pilot.
It’s a structured rollout: small-scale in Q1, large-scale in Q3, and expansion in Q4.
And it’s tied to a bigger system.
State Grid is pushing toward 30% penetration in key regions by 2026, over 80% adoption by 2027, and full integration with a digital twin grid by 2030... https://x.com/XRoboHub/status/2047996692507812165
"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
Indeed, though having a successful millionaire thriller writer as he father makes it a bit easier for her to study a subject she loves than if her father was on minimum wage or a below average income. In which case such students will be more likely to study a vocational degree more likely to get them a high earning job like Law or Business.
Though as you state with AI you also want to learn creative skills and I am sure your daughter will be learning a lot of that and still plenty of jobs in museums etc for Classicists AI can't do
I’m not allowed to discuss THAT technology so I will restrict myself to observing that virtually ALL “intellectual” jobs are threatened, and nothing I have seen lately dissuades me from that, and I have seen quite a lot
In other news it is fucking pissing down in Rwanda. But I spent the morning larking about with wild gorillas, and it was beaut. So let the rain fall, and keep the jungle green
If it goes really bad no job intellectual or not is safe. By which time anyway we will all most be living on a Universal Basic Income funded by a massive robot tax on the big corporations and largest employers only employing robots as no party would get elected to government otherwise ever again without that as its policy
You often repeat this as if it’s certain but just because a government is elected to do something doesn’t mean they can. A “massive robot tax” might not be able to fund a universal basic income and then what?
There won't be a masssive robot tax as there won't be robots to tax. How can I put this - they won't get licensed for a variety of reasons: Security risk of sticking super-strong humanoid machines throughout society waiting to kill all the humans on command Security risk of having all your personal data and your very existence being stolen by the company making the robot who lives in your house Security risk of your robot seeing all you do. And your kids do Security risk of that Temu robot being a front for foreign governments and dodgy billionaires
And I haven't even mentioned the calamitous effect on society and economy of mass unemployment.
"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.
Exactly. It is utterly flagrant, and I think, unsurvivable. Can we imagine the outrage if Boris had done the same thing?
"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.
Exactly. It is utterly flagrant, and I think, unsurvivable. Can we imagine the outrage if Boris had done the same thing?
Labour are gonna get marmalised on May 7 and I am pretty sure things will move fast from that point
I believe you are in Camden - might be one of the many interesting results in London.
Indeed. Might it turn Green??
Worth noting that Starmer’s personal vote in Camden Holborn and St Pancras in GE24 was seriously disappointing - down 17.4%. He only won because the extant majority was so huge it could take a beating
There’s a real chance he could personally lose the seat in 28-29
"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
Indeed, though having a successful millionaire thriller writer as he father makes it a bit easier for her to study a subject she loves than if her father was on minimum wage or a below average income. In which case such students will be more likely to study a vocational degree more likely to get them a high earning job like Law or Business.
Though as you state with AI you also want to learn creative skills and I am sure your daughter will be learning a lot of that and still plenty of jobs in museums etc for Classicists AI can't do
As one of the lecturers at LSE said to my son on their open day a few years ago now. "Study what you love at University. You have the rest of your life to be bored."
"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
Indeed, though having a successful millionaire thriller writer as he father makes it a bit easier for her to study a subject she loves than if her father was on minimum wage or a below average income. In which case such students will be more likely to study a vocational degree more likely to get them a high earning job like Law or Business.
Though as you state with AI you also want to learn creative skills and I am sure your daughter will be learning a lot of that and still plenty of jobs in museums etc for Classicists AI can't do
I’m not allowed to discuss THAT technology so I will restrict myself to observing that virtually ALL “intellectual” jobs are threatened, and nothing I have seen lately dissuades me from that, and I have seen quite a lot
In other news it is fucking pissing down in Rwanda. But I spent the morning larking about with wild gorillas, and it was beaut. So let the rain fall, and keep the jungle green
If it goes really bad no job intellectual or not is safe. By which time anyway we will all most be living on a Universal Basic Income funded by a massive robot tax on the big corporations and largest employers only employing robots as no party would get elected to government otherwise ever again without that as its policy
You often repeat this as if it’s certain but just because a government is elected to do something doesn’t mean they can. A “massive robot tax” might not be able to fund a universal basic income and then what?
There won't be a masssive robot tax as there won't be robots to tax. How can I put this - they won't get licensed for a variety of reasons: Security risk of sticking super-strong humanoid machines throughout society waiting to kill all the humans on command Security risk of having all your personal data and your very existence being stolen by the company making the robot who lives in your house Security risk of your robot seeing all you do. And your kids do Security risk of that Temu robot being a front for foreign governments and dodgy billionaires
And I haven't even mentioned the calamitous effect on society and economy of mass unemployment.
Not happening.
Also, who will own the robots, and will we be able to tax them ?
But it's already starting to happen.
8,500 robots. The biggest embodied robotics order we’ve seen so far. ⚡🤖
China’s State Grid is rolling out a massive deployment plan for 2026.
The target: about 8,500 embodied robots, with a total budget of ¥6.8 billion (~$940 million USD).
This is not one type of machine.
It’s a full stack across three categories:
5,000 quadruped robots for inspection across substations, transmission lines, and mountainous grids.
500 humanoid robots for live electrical work — the highest-value segment, with ¥2.5 billion (~$350 million USD) allocated.
3,000 dual-arm robots for equipment operation and fault handling inside substations.
The focus is clear: inspection, live operations, emergency response, and logistics.
And the economics are already defined.
Each unit is expected to save ¥500,000–¥800,000 (~$70K–$110K USD) in annual labor cost.
Inspection efficiency improves 5×.
Fault handling time drops 60%.
Safety incidents are projected to decrease by 80%.
This is not a pilot.
It’s a structured rollout: small-scale in Q1, large-scale in Q3, and expansion in Q4.
And it’s tied to a bigger system.
State Grid is pushing toward 30% penetration in key regions by 2026, over 80% adoption by 2027, and full integration with a digital twin grid by 2030... https://x.com/XRoboHub/status/2047996692507812165
Chinese have also already rolling out robots for construction work.
"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
I studied Journalism (why?) which I did for a year before binning it. The video production side doesn't really have an impact on my Youtubing now.
I have 4 jobs: Food Industry Consultant - trading is all about personal relationships Food Importer / Distributer - building relationships with customers and suppliers Family Shop & webstores - a dying industry which is under threat from AI run stores YouTuber now with 4 channels at various stages - AI a threat in general but already huge pushback to AI slop. People want to interact with people
So I feel reasonably secure as I continue to flog my guts out. My kids? Eldest has a 1st in English and is a briliant writer but can't get a job doing anything. Am encouraging them to think about how they can make money being creative Middle is about to spend 4 years at Art school specialising in photography. AI isn't going to screw over the creative arts so he'll be ok Youngest is brighter than the rest of us put together. Interested in depth in both energy sciences (and went off to school this morning in her Shell fleece) and palaeontology. Should be ok if we get her nudged into the science / engineering side
Kids today? Under severe threat from technology taking jobs to line the pockets of a few. The kind of "work will be optional" bollocks from Musk suggests a future where we have mass unrest and hunger, and it really concerns me.
Are you serious? Photography is ALREADY fucked. Totally fucked. I know this very well as some of my best friends are well known pro photographers, at least half of whom have had to give up as the industry has basically died. One of my best female friends used to be a lecturer in photography at a well known London college, but she resigned, partly - in her own words - “because I felt so bad teaching a useless degree to students paying good money, and lying to them that they might get a photography job at the end”
I don’t wish to be cruel or nasty, really. I hope all your lovely kids thrive, and I am sure they will if they are as hard working as you. But.. photography?? No. No no no
The pushback against AI shit is already happening. Art won't get removed by it. Anyway, God alone knows whether there's a job taking pictures at the end. Just go do what you want to do
There’s no job taking pictures NOW, Really. I’m not making this up. The numbers of pro photographers making a career out of it have plunged, and a vanishingly small number make REAL money
Just think about it. How many photographers are household names, the same way Don McCullin, Lord Lichfield, David Bailey were. None? Or indeed Cartier Bresson or Frank Capra
The industry, as we knew it, is dying. A few high art photographers and some portrait photographers will cling on. But when an iPhone can now take as good a photo in an amateur hand as a pro could do 30 years ago, there is no real future in this, as a career
I’ve never heard of any of those people mate
Which shows how the world has changed. I'm 20 years older than one so know who Don McCullin, Lord Lichfield, David Bailey are and some of their work..
Yes it’s partly an age thing but it’s also there are no modern equivalents of Bailey and McCullin. They were genuinely significant national cultural figures (also working class- photography was a great career ladder for poor kids)
Possibly the last “famous” modern day British photographer was Martin Parr, but he recently snuffed it, and I cannot think of any others ready to replace him
My wife knows Don McCullin well. I've met him a few times.
He has some astonishing stories related to his photo assignments. The bravery of going into war zones might just single out a true life photographer from a bot.
It's journalists with cameras mainly. Dedicated photographers famed for being photographers are a dying breed.
The industry, as we knew it, is dying. A few high art photographers and some portrait photographers will cling on. But when an iPhone can now take as good a photo in an amateur hand as a pro could do 30 years ago, there is no real future in this, as a career
Such has always been the case. Technology makes complex tasks simple and puts them within the grasp of ordinary people, not just the talented or highly trained.
But those people will find new jobs.
Computers used to be installed and operated by trained engineers in white lab coats. Then personal computers happened and those engineers moved on to other work.
AI will kill some careers (photographers and image editors are excellent examples) but not nearly as many as the current hysteria claims, because AI just isn't very good at a lot of tasks.
And the ones it is good at it struggles to make sense on an economic basis. Replacing junior coders with Claude Code may be attractive at a investor-subsidised £200/month flat rate, but not when you have to pay the real £15,000/month cost of the tokens you're burning.
"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
I studied Journalism (why?) which I did for a year before binning it. The video production side doesn't really have an impact on my Youtubing now.
I have 4 jobs: Food Industry Consultant - trading is all about personal relationships Food Importer / Distributer - building relationships with customers and suppliers Family Shop & webstores - a dying industry which is under threat from AI run stores YouTuber now with 4 channels at various stages - AI a threat in general but already huge pushback to AI slop. People want to interact with people
So I feel reasonably secure as I continue to flog my guts out. My kids? Eldest has a 1st in English and is a briliant writer but can't get a job doing anything. Am encouraging them to think about how they can make money being creative Middle is about to spend 4 years at Art school specialising in photography. AI isn't going to screw over the creative arts so he'll be ok Youngest is brighter than the rest of us put together. Interested in depth in both energy sciences (and went off to school this morning in her Shell fleece) and palaeontology. Should be ok if we get her nudged into the science / engineering side
Kids today? Under severe threat from technology taking jobs to line the pockets of a few. The kind of "work will be optional" bollocks from Musk suggests a future where we have mass unrest and hunger, and it really concerns me.
Are you serious? Photography is ALREADY fucked. Totally fucked. I know this very well as some of my best friends are well known pro photographers, at least half of whom have had to give up as the industry has basically died. One of my best female friends used to be a lecturer in photography at a well known London college, but she resigned, partly - in her own words - “because I felt so bad teaching a useless degree to students paying good money, and lying to them that they might get a photography job at the end”
I don’t wish to be cruel or nasty, really. I hope all your lovely kids thrive, and I am sure they will if they are as hard working as you. But.. photography?? No. No no no
The pushback against AI shit is already happening. Art won't get removed by it. Anyway, God alone knows whether there's a job taking pictures at the end. Just go do what you want to do
There’s no job taking pictures NOW, Really. I’m not making this up. The numbers of pro photographers making a career out of it have plunged, and a vanishingly small number make REAL money
Just think about it. How many photographers are household names, the same way Don McCullin, Lord Lichfield, David Bailey were. None? Or indeed Cartier Bresson or Frank Capra
The industry, as we knew it, is dying. A few high art photographers and some portrait photographers will cling on. But when an iPhone can now take as good a photo in an amateur hand as a pro could do 30 years ago, there is no real future in this, as a career
I’ve never heard of any of those people mate
Which shows how the world has changed. I'm 20 years older than one so know who Don McCullin, Lord Lichfield, David Bailey are and some of their work..
Yes it’s partly an age thing but it’s also there are no modern equivalents of Bailey and McCullin. They were genuinely significant national cultural figures (also working class- photography was a great career ladder for poor kids)
Possibly the last “famous” modern day British photographer was Martin Parr, but he recently snuffed it, and I cannot think of any others ready to replace him
My wife knows Don McCullin well. I've met him a few times.
He has some astonishing stories related to his photo assignments. The bravery of going into war zones might just single out a true life photographer from a bot.
It's journalists with cameras mainly. Dedicated photographers famed for being photographers are a dying breed.
I wonder how that has changed these days. I imagine back in the day journlists going to cover anything took a photographer along with them be it war zone or down the court house. Do you need the dedicated photographer now?
"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.
Exactly. It is utterly flagrant, and I think, unsurvivable. Can we imagine the outrage if Boris had done the same thing?
I can imagine it, yeah. You’d be defending it to the hilt, alleging a “blob” hit job.
I'm sure that Starmer followed the process of not applying any Pressure to anyone. Any pressure applied wasn't him, and also wasn't pressure in the definition of pressure. Which doesn't exist.
So, some people, completely independently, left everything out of Mandy's vetting that might fail. Which was part of a process.
As a result, Mandy's vetting file included everything - except for a number of secret documents, a few others which are part of still active files, some correspondence lost in the floods of 1967, some records which went astray in the move to London and others when the War Office was incorporated in the Ministry of Defence, and the normal withdrawal of papers whose publication could give grounds for an action for libel or breach of confidence or cause embarrassment to friendly governments.
So the Process was completed, Starmer was unaware and no files crossed his desk. What's not to like?
I’m not defending Starmer, just enjoying @Luckyguy1983 new found love of due process and regulations
I know..
But Starmer's justification for this will be a beauty. The Forms Were Obeyed, as they say in the Landsraad.
I don't have a 'new found love of process and regulations', I have a long-standing dislike of politicians being at it, which this grubby pair look very much like they are.
I had very mixed feelings about Boris, I wasn't a Boris ultra defending him all 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.
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.
According to, say the Guardian, Bath is the highest ranked UK university that offers a Pharmacy degree. Not Russell Group.
I have a feeling this is probably a bit like Deepseek only spent $6 million training their LLM. Aren't all the altheles these days on for instance some super special baking soda cocktail that costs like £50 a pop.
Comments
The aim of the study is to look at the transactions by Liz I - being very gifted in languages, Lizzy did very accurate translations as to meaning. Except where her personal beliefs were involved.
So, by seeing where Liz I changed the meaning from the original text, you can illuminate the opinions and ideas of Liz I - from her own writings.
Given divorce and infidelity rates in the police I'd be more surprised if there weren't coppers in there tbh.
Profound learning is a good in itself. But as with the liberal theory about freedom of thought, including the freedom to be maverick, silly and contrarian, only wide freedoms allow maximal light to shine on as yet unexplored possibilities. Academia is a big chunk of this enterprise.
Yes, thats what we are reduced to hoping, in these days.
I have 4 jobs:
Food Industry Consultant - trading is all about personal relationships
Food Importer / Distributer - building relationships with customers and suppliers
Family Shop & webstores - a dying industry which is under threat from AI run stores
YouTuber now with 4 channels at various stages - AI a threat in general but already huge pushback to AI slop. People want to interact with people
So I feel reasonably secure as I continue to flog my guts out. My kids?
Eldest has a 1st in English and is a briliant writer but can't get a job doing anything. Am encouraging them to think about how they can make money being creative
Middle is about to spend 4 years at Art school specialising in photography. AI isn't going to screw over the creative arts so he'll be ok
Youngest is brighter than the rest of us put together. Interested in depth in both energy sciences (and went off to school this morning in her Shell fleece) and palaeontology. Should be ok if we get her nudged into the science / engineering side
Kids today? Under severe threat from technology taking jobs to line the pockets of a few. The kind of "work will be optional" bollocks from Musk suggests a future where we have mass unrest and hunger, and it really concerns me.
Sheffield MP Abtisam Mohamed fights NatWest plans to remove only cashpoint at Hallamshire Hospital
Removing the only cashpoint from a hospital will affect vulnerable elderly people, an MP says
A Sheffield MP is fighting plans by NatWest to close the only cash machine at the Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield.
Abtisam Mohamed said removing the unit by the main entrance on B Road would remove access to cash for vulnerable and elderly people occupying the 500 beds in the hospital and staff.
NatWest says usage has fallen 69 per cent in the last six years and there is another cash machine less than a mile away.
https://www.thestar.co.uk/health/sheffield-mp-abtisam-mohamed-fights-natwest-plans-to-remove-only-cashpoint-at-hallamshire-hospital-7410605
I don’t wish to be cruel or nasty, really. I hope all your lovely kids thrive, and I am sure they will if they are as hard working as you. But.. photography?? No. No no no
In my experience, LLMs are only useful when commanded and monitored by people who know what they are doing.
NEW: PMQs will take place on Wednesday.
Last week government sources thought that Parliament would be prorogued before PMQs.
Universities who cannot charge a fee that sustains their courses would go bust if they cannot cut costs enough either.
Fine to fund students when only 10% went to university, taxpayers cannot now afford to fund students for their course and maintenance costs now 40% go to university, especially when over half of taxpayers still don't go to university themselves
So, some people, completely independently, left everything out of Mandy's vetting that might fail. Which was part of a process.
As a result, Mandy's vetting file included everything - except for a number of secret documents, a few others which are part of still active files, some correspondence lost in the floods of 1967, some records which went astray in the move to London and others when the War Office was incorporated in the Ministry of Defence, and the normal withdrawal of papers whose publication could give grounds for an action for libel or breach of confidence or cause embarrassment to friendly governments.
So the Process was completed, Starmer was unaware and no files crossed his desk. What's not to like?
Though as you state with AI you also want to learn creative skills and I am sure your daughter will be learning a lot of that and still plenty of jobs in museums etc for Classicists AI can't do
I thought Badenoch was trying to move the debate on this but she too seems to have fallen into the old trap of offering the sun, moon and stars without explaining how it is to be funded.
Is there no constituency for it? Rather like my motivations for voting LEAVE in 2016, there's a sense we cannot simply go on as we are, bleeding to death from a thousand non-cuts. The language needs to reflect a more reasoned debate rather than simply "we must stop the scroungers" or "cut benefits by 50%" or such nonsense.
Once we accept not everyone who takes benefits is some form of feckless layabout and many would like not to be on benefits and pay their own way,we might start getting somewhere.
The Conservatives (and others) used to believe in aspiration but that has to mean more than inserting the phrase "hard working families" into every other sentence.
People, I think, are less interested in seeing the rewards of hard work for themselves but want to see their families and communities prosper and improve. It's amazing what people will sacrifice for a better life for their children (such as a better education).
The other truth is society and life are more complex in an ageing population. I mention carers on here a lot because they are an important group - not just those wotk in residential care facilities or those providing domicilary support but the real heroes and heroines - family members who sacrifice their own careers, ambitions and potential to ensure older (and younger) relatives with physical and mental challenges are cared for and loved within familiar environments.
They are the people we need to help rather than discriminate against via a punitive taxation system.
Crosby: "Well, not a monopoly. More of a controlling interest!"
But Starmer's justification for this will be a beauty. The Forms Were Obeyed, as they say in the Landsraad.
In other news it is fucking pissing down in Rwanda. But I spent the morning larking about with wild gorillas, and it was beaut. So let the rain fall, and keep the jungle green
So Labourites who want Sir Keir gone should be praying for a good Tory performance in May and a Kemi mini surge, indeed ideally they would want Reform, the Tories and the Greens to beat Labour on seats won and NEV to ensure a big enough stake is pushed through the heart of Starmer's leadership
There will always be jobs at Eton and Winchester though for Oxbridge and St Andrews classicists or for those who want to go into academia at an ancient university or be a columnist for a broadsheet newspaper
Worth noting that Starmer’s personal vote in Camden Holborn and St Pancras in GE24 was seriously disappointing - down 17.4%. He only won because the extant majority was so huge it could take a beating
There’s a real chance he could personally lose the seat in 28-29
A good part of why this government is failing is not just Starmer - it's also that he leads a parliamentary party comprised mainly of morons who thought governing just meant doling out ever more money to their favored client groups.
Finding a "normal" face to go at the head of this column of idiots isn't going to apprechably help to resolve the problem.
This part of my job DOES involve an awful lot of smiling and saying thankyou and generally trying to charm and please people so my wonderful job continues
On here I can vent
https://x.com/TotalSeasons/status/2048670378277363944?s=20
POLL | Voting intention amongst ...
– Richest –
🔴 Lab: 25%
➡️ Ref: 21%
🔵 Con: 18%
🟠 Lib: 18%
🟢 Grn: 16%
– Poorest –
➡️ Ref: 29%
🔵 Con: 22%
🟢 Grn: 19%
🔴 Lab: 10%
🟠 Lib: 10%
https://x.com/LeftieStats/status/2048410085207003638?s=20
Just think about it. How many photographers are household names, the same way Don McCullin, Lord Lichfield, David Bailey were. None? Or indeed Cartier Bresson or Frank Capra
The industry, as we knew it, is dying. A few high art photographers and some portrait photographers will cling on. But when an iPhone can now take as good a photo in an amateur hand as a pro could do 30 years ago, there is no real future in this, as a career
Labour on 10% with the poorest. I would ask if they had no shame but it would of course be rhetorical.
I blame two large “rose water gins” on my jungle balcony in the Virunga mountains
Possibly the last “famous” modern day British photographer was Martin Parr, but he recently snuffed it, and I cannot think of any others ready to replace him
https://x.com/gbnews/status/2048706080268570938
‘Bottling the pride you all feel is the key to changing Britain.’
Prime Minister Keir Starmer says he will fight for working people and a tolerant, decent Britain, as he argues it’s time to strengthen security.
The other issue is dependents who follow them here. Again, they will have had a lifetime of poorer treatment. There will be a lifetime to catch up on once they get here. If their life expectency increases as a result, they will likely require more life-years of treatment than those born here and in the system throughout their life.
I was not taking a pro-Reform stance on "migrant"s - but I was pointing out that our health service has had an extra 11 million population to cater for since 2000. The NHS has not had financial provision for that scale of increase. It is hardly a wonder that it is bursting at the seams. And a proportion of that increase might be young and virile - but not all. And those that aren't have experienced a lack of treatment that requires a significant catch-up.
Beautiful.
Bailey was sufficiently well known to do TV ads back in the day...
You keep taxes down though for small local businesses who prefer human workers to AI
But he's is similar vintage to us, and pretty well a celebrity photographer; a niche which the vanity of the rich will likely preserve.
Security risk of sticking super-strong humanoid machines throughout society waiting to kill all the humans on command
Security risk of having all your personal data and your very existence being stolen by the company making the robot who lives in your house
Security risk of your robot seeing all you do. And your kids do
Security risk of that Temu robot being a front for foreign governments and dodgy billionaires
And I haven't even mentioned the calamitous effect on society and economy of mass unemployment.
Not happening.
We are also rapidly seeing the adoptation of Gaussian Splatting, so a) which opens up new avenues for create your own, b) already generative system to create the models / worlds, and because of the way Gaussian Splatting works you can take picture from any novel view, play with the lighting etc.
He has some astonishing stories related to his photo assignments. The bravery of going into war zones might just single out a true life photographer from a bot.
Farage and Corbyn and Polanski are also not working class but excluded from the elite still lead ballot box revolts
But it's already starting to happen.
8,500 robots. The biggest embodied robotics order we’ve seen so far. ⚡🤖
China’s State Grid is rolling out a massive deployment plan for 2026.
The target: about 8,500 embodied robots, with a total budget of ¥6.8 billion (~$940 million USD).
This is not one type of machine.
It’s a full stack across three categories:
5,000 quadruped robots for inspection across substations, transmission lines, and mountainous grids.
500 humanoid robots for live electrical work — the highest-value segment, with ¥2.5 billion (~$350 million USD) allocated.
3,000 dual-arm robots for equipment operation and fault handling inside substations.
The focus is clear: inspection, live operations, emergency response, and logistics.
And the economics are already defined.
Each unit is expected to save ¥500,000–¥800,000 (~$70K–$110K USD) in annual labor cost.
Inspection efficiency improves 5×.
Fault handling time drops 60%.
Safety incidents are projected to decrease by 80%.
This is not a pilot.
It’s a structured rollout: small-scale in Q1, large-scale in Q3, and expansion in Q4.
And it’s tied to a bigger system.
State Grid is pushing toward 30% penetration in key regions by 2026,
over 80% adoption by 2027,
and full integration with a digital twin grid by 2030...
https://x.com/XRoboHub/status/2047996692507812165
Dedicated photographers famed for being photographers are a dying breed.
But those people will find new jobs.
Computers used to be installed and operated by trained engineers in white lab coats. Then personal computers happened and those engineers moved on to other work.
AI will kill some careers (photographers and image editors are excellent examples) but not nearly as many as the current hysteria claims, because AI just isn't very good at a lot of tasks.
And the ones it is good at it struggles to make sense on an economic basis. Replacing junior coders with Claude Code may be attractive at a investor-subsidised £200/month flat rate, but not when you have to pay the real £15,000/month cost of the tokens you're burning.
I had very mixed feelings about Boris, I wasn't a Boris ultra defending him all the time.
"a breakfast consisting of two slices of bread with honey and tea."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/articles/cp383n09030o
I have a feeling this is probably a bit like Deepseek only spent $6 million training their LLM. Aren't all the altheles these days on for instance some super special baking soda cocktail that costs like £50 a pop.