Nice people thread part 3- Nice as pie

PasturesNew

John_Pierpoint wrote: »

It used to take me 10 minutes from Tower Hill to Waterloo on a push bike to join the little club in the guard's van.

Commuter Cottaging?

PasturesNew

chewmylegoff wrote: »

what does it do? will it allow me to remotely shut down other people's phones when they use them to play music that annoys me? i'd pay for that, especially if it made a rude alert pop up on their screen, and then reformatted the memory of their phone, deleting everything including the music. i might even pay 60p for that one.

No. But that's a much better idea than mine.

I think that's worth £1.

PasturesNew

LydiaJ wrote: »

My builder has texted to say he wants to come on Thursday instead of tomorrow.

Even though tomorrow IS Thursday?

PasturesNew

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

But then you pour another cup, and have to go back to the kitchen to get the milk / sugar out again?

Nobody's ever stayed long enough for seconds.

Actually, I've not been brought up in a tea drinking household, but it's the same for coffee.... it's made in a mug and handed over.

lemonjelly

purch wrote: »

I usually use a pair of powerful binoculars.

You can get arrested for stuff like that...

lemonjelly

I'm concerned. As most of you know, I work in a college. Education has taken a battering in with the cuts. Financial support for courses has all but been wiped away.

Unfortunately, though it was common knowledge, & indeed announced who will lose concessions for their course fees, it seems that apart from 1 other person, no-one has picked up on how huge this will be. It used to be the case that you wouldn't have to pay tuition fees for a course if you were on JSA, ESA, income support, housing benefit, tax credits, incapacity benefit, pension credit & others. Now it is just JSA & ESA.

Our catchement area is flooded with single moms on income support. They aren't going to be able to afford to pay £800 for a course. Thus won't enrol.

Over the next week or 3, the penny will drop. Then finger pointing & blame laying will begin. Even though it was common knowledge 7-8 months ago.

lemonjelly

PasturesNew wrote: »

Commuter Cottaging?

MP's lose their jobs for doing stuff like that...

PasturesNew

lemonjelly wrote: »

I'm concerned. As most of you know, I work in a college. Education has taken a battering in with the cuts. Financial support for courses has all but been wiped away.

Unfortunately, though it was common knowledge, & indeed announced who will lose concessions for their course fees, it seems that apart from 1 other person, no-one has picked up on how huge this will be. It used to be the case that you wouldn't have to pay tuition fees for a course if you were on JSA, ESA, income support, housing benefit, tax credits, incapacity benefit, pension credit & others. Now it is just JSA & ESA.

Our catchement area is flooded with single moms on income support. They aren't going to be able to afford to pay £800 for a course. Thus won't enrol.

Over the next week or 3, the penny will drop. Then finger pointing & blame laying will begin. Even though it was common knowledge 7-8 months ago.

That's annoyed me for years, that people on benefits with more money than me and all the time in the world can get courses free ... and I'd have to pay for them (so don't as they're expensive).

silvercar

lemonjelly wrote: »

I'm concerned. As most of you know, I work in a college. Education has taken a battering in with the cuts. Financial support for courses has all but been wiped away.

Unfortunately, though it was common knowledge, & indeed announced who will lose concessions for their course fees, it seems that apart from 1 other person, no-one has picked up on how huge this will be. It used to be the case that you wouldn't have to pay tuition fees for a course if you were on JSA, ESA, income support, housing benefit, tax credits, incapacity benefit, pension credit & others. Now it is just JSA & ESA.

Our catchement area is flooded with single moms on income support. They aren't going to be able to afford to pay £800 for a course. Thus won't enrol.

Over the next week or 3, the penny will drop. Then finger pointing & blame laying will begin. Even though it was common knowledge 7-8 months ago.

If they are enrolling to give themselves a better education then I have sympathy. If they are enrolling because it is easier to pop into college sporadically than sit at home doing nothing and being a college student gives many extras like not having to sign on, a free creche access to education funding etc then I'm having less sympathy. I would even go as far as to say, it will mean that everyone you get on your courses will be people who want to study.

lemonjelly

PasturesNew wrote: »

That's annoyed me for years, that people on benefits with more money than me and all the time in the world can get courses free ... and I'd have to pay for them (so don't as they're expensive).

silvercar wrote: »

If they are enrolling to give themselves a better education then I have sympathy. If they are enrolling because it is easier to pop into college sporadically than sit at home doing nothing and being a college student gives many extras like not having to sign on, a free creche access to education funding etc then I'm having less sympathy. I would even go as far as to say, it will mean that everyone you get on your courses will be people who want to study.

I feel it is a balance issue, & typically, we've gone from 1 extreme to the other.

PN I see & agree completely with the points you raise. Indeed, since I've been here I have tried to address this imbalance.

silvercar most f-t students will be excluded from claiming benefits. Part time students can claim benefits, however speaking for where I work in particular, we have streamlined support such as childcare to make it dependent on attendance.

In theory I agree, the ones who really want to study will be here. However consider a young girl, just turned 19 years old. Suffers from ill health, so is on income support. However is a whizz on computers, & harbours ambitions to be a computer programmer. Can she afford to pay £600.00 plus for course fees?

I am annoyed that tax credits have been removed. People in low paid work who are genuinely looking to better themselves, & need to get (for example) an NVQ in health & social care to go with their several years of work experience in care homes to be able to apply for deputy managers jobs & the like. They can't afford the fees as they're on the breadline, minimum wage, high rents and so on.

The local area has a lot of single moms. We work with a large proportion of them with the access to university courses - many of them want to get into nursing, or physio, or social work or similar after having children. Not all are single moms though, husband may work & they get made redundant. But they won't be able to afford the fees. & this is all before talking about any other costs.

I firmly believe that if you're going to take on a course, you should be ensuring that you can afford it.

I am concerned at how the blame game will be played by everyone when enrolment figures are down massively though. Even though the big cheeses have had enought ime to do stuff about it, well, others will carry the can...