: Thu Apr 23, 2009 11:35 pm  

an old saying i wish i'd thought of.............

"who ever you vote for the goverment wins!"

: Thu Apr 23, 2009 11:44 pm  

sally cinnamon wrote:

Well at the moment people are funded to go to university, they don't pay at the point of delivery, they repay what they have borrowed to fund their studies through the taxation system. Everything they earn over £15000 a year they pay back at 9% until its paid off.

The alternative would be to have it all paid for free at the point of delivery, but instead of asking the graduates themselves to pay it back when they are earning, you would have to increase the rate of general taxation.

Would you prefer to hand over a bit more to the taxman to make sure that students can afford that last spliff, or do you think they should have the responsbilities to contribute to the cost of their own education when they are able to do so?

The alternative was in effect before the New Labour Government introduced tuition fees. I do not recall tuition fees under a Conservative government. Your comment on "spliffs" is wide of the mark and does not hold credence as students were always responsible for their living costs following the abolition of the student grant subsidy.

On a wider point, (no doubt appearing quite left wing in my argument) society relies on graduates in order to function, why should the individual have to pay? Society needs doctors, dentists, lawyers, engineers and educators. I do lose support for those who are fulfilling a personal, whimsical, urgency to gain greater academic achievement at tax payers expense with no readily apparent, tangible, benefit to society however, especially if they have had sufficient time and ability to develop their own resources in which to fund it without going cap in hand.

: Fri Apr 24, 2009 12:01 am  

sally cinnamon wrote:

Well at the moment people are funded to go to university, they don't pay at the point of delivery, they repay what they have borrowed to fund their studies through the taxation system. Everything they earn over £15000 a year they pay back at 9% until its paid off.

The alternative would be to have it all paid for free at the point of delivery, but instead of asking the graduates themselves to pay it back when they are earning, you would have to increase the rate of general taxation.

Would you prefer to hand over a bit more to the taxman to make sure that students can afford that last spliff, or do you think they should have the responsbilities to contribute to the cost of their own education when they are able to do so?

I agree with the loan system but it has encouraged a situation where students have access to study useless subjects that do not contribute to the country. I see many students in the call centres and desks having had to earn a buck to pay off their loans etc but getting stuck in that job for years.

I prefer the German and French system of where grants are available for skills and education that is in need for the country as metioned before. Yes I would pay more TAX to support this as these people would eventually run and create ideas in the comapnies that would employ me in the future.

Complicated subject , anyway good luck with what you are doing , hopefully not in my hit list !!

: Fri Apr 24, 2009 6:22 am  

I could never vote Tory, ever, just like I could never support Saints or Wigan.

: Fri Apr 24, 2009 6:55 am  

wireboot wrote:

study useless subjects

What are they?

: Fri Apr 24, 2009 7:03 am  

Its not the loan system that has encouraged students to do useless subjects, that was happening anyway, that was especially rife in the latter years of the grant system. The numbers of people entering higher education were skyrocketing and so the bill the taxpayer was footing was also skyrocketing - a system needed to be brought in which kept it in check.

Wires71 is using the easy line that "you didn't have to pay under the Conservatives". I wonder what he thinks the Conservatives solution would have been to the rising bill of paying for grants. Would they have increased taxes or just tried to increase public borrowing, so they could protect the holy grail of free university education.....?

I think the basic problem was the HE sector has got too big, too many people are going into courses which aren't equipping them with anything tangible. Meanwhile the FE sector has been neglected which has left us with a surfeit of media studies graduates and a shortage of people qualified in trades which is why that part of our economy relies on immigrant labour from Poland etc. I agree with wireboot that money should be available for courses that fulfil a shortage, they do that with teaching for shortage subjects, my flatmate is just about to qualify as a secondary Maths teacher, there's a chronic shortage of them, he's had all his fees paid, got a hefty grant and gets a £4000 payoff when he completes his first year.

Working in HE I can see the dilemmas from the other side. There are too many universities and too many courses which means the government subsidy for HE is spread too thinly. Britain doesn't have many natural resources now, so the University and research sector is one of the few things we have where we're still a world leader - the universities are trying to tap the overseas fee payer market to make up for the shortfalls in government subsidy, and we're effectively competing with the US and Australia. We're better than the Aussies but the US have got a march on us so we're trying to up our standards and the bigger traditional universities have invested a lot in the last decade or so. At the more established unis you don't get much in the way of crap accommodation, library services etc that used to be part of the charm of going to uni. The downside of this is that costs are rising and the Vice-Chancellors need more money which isn't forthcoming from the government, they are lobbying to have the fee cap of £3225 raised which will probably mean it will start going to a private elitist system unless some tough action is taken. What really needs to happen IMO is a bigger central subsidy for each uni, even if that means fewer universities get it and others have to merge or go to the wall.

But a strong HE sector, especially in Science, can save Britain from becoming a relative non entity in the global economy, because of our lack of resources we need to offer something, and cutting edge research, the development of new products and technology etc, would save us.

: Fri Apr 24, 2009 7:13 am  

Wires71 wrote:

a) She did break the unions thankfully. The dead didn't remain unburied, the lights stayed on 24/7 and the bow backed working class man could aim to develop his own means of production through enterprise. Unfortunately communities based on trade union dogged (in that I mean some rediculous turn of the century socialist diatribe) industries did suffer as a consequence.

b) The comment on running a business is not lost on me having conceived, built and trade sale exited my own business (see Dragons Den Series III episode 8 ). I do know that the Labour government have cut the guts out of rewarding entreprenurialism with their recent removal of taper relief on CGT for business start-ups for a kick off, not forgetting their masterstroke on IR35.

c) The Tory based media want to do nothing more than to apportion the blame of the current economic condition on Brown no more that the left wing media wanted to laud him with prudence, fiscal control and the irradication of boom and bust when global economic conditions were more favourable. Brown is simply borrowing from tomorrow to ease the pain of today in some vain hope of saving his political skin. Some leader.

having worked in an old pit town in mansfield i witnessed first hand how communities were left to rot when a perfectly viable mine was closed,the tory plans for regenerating the area existed of selling the pit to a private company who then drew methane from the empty shafts to produce energy which was then sold back to the national grid at times of high usage.not one job was created,the station is overlooked by an engineer covering a 50 mile radius.
i have no desire to watch you perform on dragons den but through your posts you personify all that is wrong with a conservative mindset,it's all me,me ,me,greed and a general arrogance to those who may not be as fortunate or rich as you.
as for borrowing from tomorrow to pay for today,how about looking at the legacy of what 20 years of tory rule has done to this country on the whole,on second thoughts don't bother as you are only interested in yourself.

: Fri Apr 24, 2009 7:18 am  

Wires71 wrote: I knew you were referring to WWII. I'll make my point again that The Nazi party were elected by a completely transparent democratic electoral process in 1932 (Reichstag election), then went to the polls again in 1933 to gain a greater mandate with over 8.5 million members by the time of WWII. In terms of WWI, we treated our conscripted servicemen terribly. Shocking life expectancy, training, conditions and equipment. One only needs to read Wilfred Owen(1) or Siegfried Sassoon(2) to understand this inhumanity our Government put them through. Both condemn the nature and motives of WWI and those who sought to profit by it. It was more to do with the axis of power in western Europe caused by the vacuum of the Prussian empire than it ever was about the right to vote. In closing, and paradoxically, our Government didn't give the right to vote to women until after WWI in 1918 mainly due to the serious lack of able bodied men left in the country following the war. 1) http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owen1.html 2) http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/8103/ I read both Owen and Sassoon at University. I'm aware of the horrors of the First World War. All of the above is very interesting but it is irrelevant to the point I made. It was a simple one and still stands. People died in wars, specifically WW2, to protect people's freedoms, including, their right to vote. On the basis that some people did that, all I said was that I don't think it's that big a deal for people to go out and exercise that right. Particularly when they can do it by post. The Nazis may well have been democratically elected, however I still don't think that detracts from the point I was making.

Wires71 wrote: I knew you were referring to WWII. I'll make my point again that The Nazi party were elected by a completely transparent democratic electoral process in 1932 (Reichstag election), then went to the polls again in 1933 to gain a greater mandate with over 8.5 million members by the time of WWII. In terms of WWI, we treated our conscripted servicemen terribly. Shocking life expectancy, training, conditions and equipment. One only needs to read Wilfred Owen(1) or Siegfried Sassoon(2) to understand this inhumanity our Government put them through. Both condemn the nature and motives of WWI and those who sought to profit by it. It was more to do with the axis of power in western Europe caused by the vacuum of the Prussian empire than it ever was about the right to vote. In closing, and paradoxically, our Government didn't give the right to vote to women until after WWI in 1918 mainly due to the serious lack of able bodied men left in the country following the war. 1) http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owen1.html 2) http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/8103/ I read both Owen and Sassoon at University. I'm aware of the horrors of the First World War. All of the above is very interesting but it is irrelevant to the point I made. It was a simple one and still stands. People died in wars, specifically WW2, to protect people's freedoms, including, their right to vote. On the basis that some people did that, all I said was that I don't think it's that big a deal for people to go out and exercise that right. Particularly when they can do it by post. The Nazis may well have been democratically elected, however I still don't think that detracts from the point I was making.

: Fri Apr 24, 2009 7:19 am  

the tache is back wrote:

having worked in an old pit town in mansfield i witnessed first hand how communities were left to rot when a perfectly viable mine was closed,the tory plans for regenerating the area existed of selling the pit to a private company who then drew methane from the empty shafts to produce energy which was then sold back to the national grid at times of high usage.not one job was created,the station is overlooked by an engineer covering a 50 mile radius.
i have no desire to watch you perform on dragons den but through your posts you personify all that is wrong with a conservative mindset,it's all me,me ,me,greed and a general arrogance to those who may not be as fortunate or rich as you.
as for borrowing from tomorrow to pay for today,how about looking at the legacy of what 20 years of tory rule has done to this country on the whole,on second thoughts don't bother as you are only interested in yourself.

Well said The Tache.

Tory Scum

: Fri Apr 24, 2009 8:07 am  

I believe that students should have to pay for their education but i believe that the threshold is for paying it back is way too low at £15,000.
i think it should be doubled to £30,000.
I also think that there should be selective free subjects. Maths, physics, medicine, health care. basically the better, more worthy subjects should be FREE.
Media and sport and the life and times of David Beckham should be paid through the nose.