Student Debt on MoneyBox Live BBC4 RUBBISH!!

setmefree2

HarryL wrote: »

I very much think you views are out dated! try 15-20 years........

Go back to managing Fifa.

Welcome to the debate. With those opening comments looks lke you will fit in well on this board......

HarryL wrote: »

PS (edit): Had to add this in. But I've just read some of your posts and whats with your username? You have never appeared to give even slightly balanced opinions or arguments using points from the other side. Its very much 'this is my point of view and tis better than yours' and the assumptions you make to back up your 'ranting' posts are rediculous. you call people progantists and government bloggers with zero proof just the knowledge that they agree with the government (which what? no one does without being paid by them?)

To be fair to twosides newcomers to this board are forced into taking strong positions to drown out the cacophony of drivel from the resident posters who seem dead set on spouting nothing more than government spin.

2sides2everystory

kayr wrote: »

I don't think that's fair really. I may not agree with all they say either but I wouldn't interpret it in the same way you do. Not everything is black and white - most people are somewhere along a spectrum of views. If you read melancholly and lokolo's posts properly you will see they are definitely not posting the government line. You can disagree with their conclusions perhaps (as I do sometimes) but it is unreasonable and unhelpful to label them as government supporters. I also think the accusations levelled at you are OTT - I both agree and disagree with stuff you write but surely that's normal. Not much point in taking sides and seeing others as the enemy - it won't help our kids. Reasoned argument backed up by facts/common sense (yes I know that can be debatable!) is much better.

Whilst I accept what you posted is eminently reasonable, kayr, these are truly exceptional times and I think they call for exceptionally robust dissent. The main protagonists on these threads seem to be deliberately watering down dissent. One of them I stumbled across this morning thanking a poster on another thread who was instantly accusing a pensioner asking advice about whether they would be allowed to freely sell a house belonging to their elderly father after it had been disregarded for means testing against his Local Authority care because they lived in it too. The sense I got was this person believes that wealth accumulated like that is only "borrowed" from the state and should be ploughed back for the state to spend on its outgoings and not inherited even if it is the inheritant's home. I suspect perhaps wrongly, that person benefits from a public sector retirement plan too!

That aside, the views of some are, despite what you say, diametrically opposed to mine on a range of subjects I think. Yes views can often be plotted along a spectrum, but some views are presented as leading views and they must not be allowed to gain traction.

Any 16 17 and 18 year olds plugging into these threads should NOT be taught that there is an easy no harm route to SLC - that would mean all that the overall thrust by us, the contributors and knockers of various arguments, will have achieved is a shameful dishonest result.

Our young people have little idea whether we have "exceptional times" or not because they are the only times they have experienced.


Now is certainly not the time for wishy-washy views which are basically of the type "I don't like it either but we must work with what we have got - think of the children".

MSE should be concentrating like it always used to before it dropped its "Consumer Revenge" tag and started getting invited to government junkets, i.e. on how en masse we can stick it to the greedy corporates and mis-sellers of this world and to those that do their bidding.

I have said it before, but MSE could if it was minded organise template letters or publish phrases that could be attached to 2012 SLC applications (en masse) and warn that the applications were being made under duress. They could publish what then needs to be sent as a Stage 2 complaint against SLC and the government if the applications are rejected. And Stage 3 and whatever was necessary to knock the door down and get the whole monstrous scheme reversed.

If a significant enough proportion of the nation's SLC 2012 applications contained such complaints of duress then the government would have to respond and it could not respond by refusing a significant proportion of the "loans".

I am not a lawyer but I have manoeuvred sufficiently in the past in this crazy world to throw effective spanners in the works of mis-sellers and crooks and that has often been me working alone. MSE has been a force for good for many years but I am becoming concerned that it has been truly nobbled in 2011. The final PPI climbdown result came with a price I think. That's it. No more consumer revenge, you've had your fun, now play it our way. (or else?)

Few of us are world class economists but what we are witnessing right now is a massive reversal of all that has been achieved in developing an equitable and fair distribution of wealth across our society after each of the World Wars and particularly all we have achieved in the UK since WW2.

When Brown was Chancellor we all started hearing fleeting references to his "Keynesian" ideas of economics. Most of us didn't
know much about what that might have meant and probably (myself included) still don't understand. But I believe that we heard about Keynes because Brown believed strongly in the fair distribution of wealth. There are powerful dissenting views and all over the western world they have taken advantage of (if not deliberately created) the dire crisis and are moving so very fast to reverse the norms we have achieved over decades sometimes in the space of a few days. Look at the current attempt today to again move quickly deny rights to workers in jobs for less than two years - I would love to see statistics for the actual length of each employment service achieved by the "labourforce" as true colours Cable now calls us. I bet a significant proportion of us now have a employment experiences under our belts that lasted less than 2 years before we moved on anyway. And, even if we have been in a job 2 years, now they want us to ask ACAS to rule before we can put a claim to an Employment Tribunal. They are bloody useless thesedays. So in practice no rights at all is what we are being herded into this week.


When after Gulf War 2 we heard fleeting references to Halliburton being awarded massive contracts for reconstruction we may have dismissed it as no great shakes, and again when we heard that Halliburton had something to do with the failed concrete foundations for the BP Gulf of Mexico oil leak disaster. Again we may have forgotten it as soon as we heard it.

But that was no coincidence. Who are these people that start wars and can direct military actions from thousands of miles away using sat phones and eyes in the sky yet still let dictators heads get pulled off slowly and let hunting daggers get pushed up rectums in the name of democracy? Who are Halliburton? Who are Blackwater? Are we all being systematically shafted?

Is Richard Branson a good guy and the right guy to take over Northern Rock? I have shaken his hand so I hope so but many don't think so. Who bankrolls him and why?

There are massive shifts occurring right now. Politicians are openly calling each other and corporate executives crooks in ways which they have never dared to do in my lifetime. And that can only be for one reason - that there is indeed a preponderance of crooks and some very dangerous people running the show. None of us might like Nigel Farage very much but he isn't frightened to say such things on the floor of the EU Parliament.

None of us really want to believe anything Putin's Russia says but Max Keiser sits in a television studio here in London and night after night without any compunction whatsoever is prepared to say very loudly that most of what the major financial services companies about is simply Fraud. Fraud on more fraud. The whole system is driven by fraud is what he has been telling anyone curious enough to be tuned in for weeks and weeks. He thinks Branson was gifted (with Northern Rock!). He pulls no punches, he may be on a Death Wish. It may suit Putin very nicely to have a Haw-Haw like that on western tv screens every night, but surely things must be very very wrong for such outspoken stuff to be broadcast so frequently and not just by RT tv?

We need to prepare our young people in far more important ways than simply how to come to accept 'insignificant' mandatory payments like it was some kind of Finnish or German Lutheran tax which every intelligent citizen in their peer group pays without blinking.

We need to teach them how to stand up and stand together and protect their rights and their future wealth by clever use of the law and through true democracy. We do not need to show them how to be obedient wage slaves or wounded dogs. They will learn that soon enough the hard way. We need to give them ideas that mean they will fight for good, not bow to someone else's idea of some greater good.

I brought my kids into the world to be able to navigate it and marvel at it, not to be cowed by mealy-mouthed monsters the moment they leave my care.

They may be young adults with minds of their own, but we still need to show them how to achieve good things and see too that they do, else we abdicate and we fail and they will soon learn that too.

Lokolo

Have you ever thought about writing a book?

Oldernotwiser

kayr wrote: »

. I almost wish this new system was really operated as a graduate tax as I think perhaps students from poorer backgrounds would find that less off putting than £x of debt.
.

I absolutely agree that we should've gone down the genuine graduate tax road for exactly the reason you give. Unfortunately, no government had the courage or honesty to do it, I'm afraid.

Oldernotwiser

Lokolo wrote: »

Have you ever thought about writing a book?

Don't go giving him ideas!

2sides2everystory

I'm afraid if I did write a book, it mightn't do me much good in the writing or in the reviews. Not that I am short of material, mind ...

Voyager2002

PaulW1965 wrote: »

I'm also bemused at how little some people on claim to MSE earn? (How on earth do you guys live?) Are you female? I guess you didn't enter the work force until you were nearly 30? I suppose that alone would put most employers off.

How can anyone on £37k think they should be paying tax at 50%? You say you have 3 degrees? Well none of them are in economics I guess?

Ooh, nasty!

Just for the record, Economics was an important part of degrees 2 and 3 (number one was in Mathematics). My understanding of the economy, partly helped by the things you can learn from MSE and similar places, has enabled me to live quite well on not much money (for example, buying a house at the right time and choosing one whose price increased spectacularly). My earnings have been enough to support a dependant spouse and two children, no worries, but no extravagance either. My gender is completely irrelevant, except to say that I have never had a man supporting me (not surprising since I'm a man who likes women, but I can still hope!).

Oh: I entered the work force when I first graduated (aged 21); returned to study for a year four years later; after a nine-year career I left a permanent professional position to accept a funded PhD place. Any employer who is deterred by that kind of record is not an employer I would want as my boss.

On the question of tax: I remember (just) when tax rates were a good deal higher than they are now. Then Margaret Thatcher told us all that the public sector was very wasteful and inefficient, and promised to deliver exactly the same level of public services at lower cost by making everything work more efficiently. We all know how that promise was broken, but somehow the illusion that we could have good services without paying for them stuck, and it is now widely believed that raising income tax to a sufficiently high level to pay for the services that we expect from the state is politically impossible. My point is simply that if we are to have a system of free university education for everyone who is able and willing to benefit from it (along with a similar level of public services in other aspects of our lives), then we must also have a system of taxation that raises enough money to pay for this. Given that situation, a marginal rate of income tax that reaches fifty per cent on salaries above 37 thousand pounds would seem reasonable.

Spiv_2

2sides2everystory just looking at your signature and I'm wonderin why a free university education is a basic right?

Why should the taxpayer be responsible for the thousands it costs to accomodate and teach 'young people' interest degrees?? Why should they pay for people going to uni just because they enjoy a subject and wish to pursue it? Is it the responsibility of the taxpayer to fund other people’s interests?

It is reasonable enough that school education should be funded by the taxpayer, as every child can go to school. But not everyone has the ability to get into university. So not everyone should be forced to pay for it through tax.

If young people want to study and improve their mind then fine they should do so at their own expense. I did an open uni Masters for an interest degree which I paid for myself. Should I expect the taxpayer to have paid for that too?

Those who argue that the taxpayers should be forced to subsidize people who go to uni seldom bother to think beyond the notion that education is a Good Thing. Some education is not only a good thing but a great thing. But, like most good things, there are limits to how much of it is good — and how good compared to other uses of the resources required.

Nor is there any obvious way to set an arbitrary limit. These are questions that no given individual can answer for a whole society.
The most anyone can do is confront individuals with the costs that their choices are imposing on others who want the same resources for other purposes, and are willing to pay for those resources.
Those who cannot bring themselves to face the tough choices that reality presents often seek escape to some kind of fairy godmother — the government or, more realistically, the taxpayers.



Of course faced with the real cost of uni those who are not serious will have to back off and go face the realities of the adult world in the job market.

Furthermore what if those people who produce, who create wealth and contribute through enormous taxes finally have enough too?

iclaudius_2

Spiv wrote: »

Why should the taxpayer be responsible for the thousands it costs to accomodate and teach 'young people' interest degrees?? Why should they pay for people going to uni just because they enjoy a subject and wish to pursue it? Is it the responsibility of the taxpayer to fund other people’s interests?

It is reasonable enough that school education should be funded by the taxpayer, as every child can go to school. But not everyone has the ability to get into university. So not everyone should be forced to pay for it through tax.

I could not agree with you more on this Spiv. England appears to be at a cross roads, a major shift where for a couple generations, the citizens were led to believe uni degrees were a universal right and one that could be afforded by tax payers.

The economic reality has caught up with us and hence these fast rising student fees which are beginning to represent the real market cost of education.

I am all for parents and young people making adult decisions to save for or go into debt and further themselves.

What originally wound me up is the politicians and the clever bods in Treasury who have found a way to make huge debt at high interest rates look like merely 'affordable payments'

At some point (5-20 yrs) people will wake up and realise the cat sleeping at the foot of their bed is a rather large and dirty hog who has made a large mess of their finances needing to be cleaned up.


I would second the cry for mass petitioning led by MSE:-
asking the government to
1) stop mis-selling young people on debt burden

2) having called a spade have a grown up conversation and encourage young families like mine to save for university and avoid this debt in the first place.

2sides2everystory

Spiv its been aksed or posed before, but nevertheless you deserve an answer - probably it may not be the one you want.

Why should the taxpayer be responsible for the thousands it costs to accomodate and teach 'young people' interest degrees?? Why should they pay for people going to uni just because they enjoy a subject and wish to pursue it? Is it the responsibility of the taxpayer to fund other people’s interests?

I would agree that there are probably far too many doing degrees that are ill-decided upon. I blame universities for pandering to easy money for easy courses where such courses exist. But I can't tell you what they are - I can give you second hand stereotyped pointers to subjects like "sociology" and "media studies" but I don't really know if they are fair game. They are not subjects I could ever see myself or my kids doing (and they tell me they couldn't see the point either).

I will admit to both me and my kids being kind of elitist to the extent that we are broadly "good at everything" so in that I would say our talents would be wasted by having chosen an easy degree (whatever that may mean). In fact we are quite normal but blessed with bright brains and good health and were nurtured by kind hearts. I did BSc Physics and my interests still have no real bounds - my place is littered with several bookspart read simultaneously, my eldest looks like doing a tough MEng but loves Economics and Athletics, my next looks set to do 4 years of Maths but loves History and Languages. I guess we are lucky to have broad talents. But I say again, apart from the luck we've had in not receiving too many setbacks and in fact probably constantly having had some good teachers and mentors in our lives we are just a product of the last two or three generations-worth of UK education systems up till now. Could have been better, but cold have been much worse (in other parts or families in the UK). As I hope I have already made clear in other posts, apart from all else that I am or have become, I am the direct product of what used to be very firmly called the manual end of working class. The end of the spectrum that developed strong muscles lifting and carrying stuff for other people but were not so daft as to smoke or drink themselves to an early death or to gamble hard earned cash at the bookies.

So, to equality. I strongly believe in it in all its facets. It is easy to say that a disabled person should be specially assisted to follow their dream e.g. someone wheelchair bound who has the self-confidence to see themselves as a surgeon deserves as full credibility as the next able-bodied student. But what about the more typical output from UK schools? Those are the ones who have been neglected to the extent that they actually believe they are good at some subjects but not others, those who have been neglected full stop and who have struggled against massive odds but still got average to good results, and those who truly have a mental or genetic blind spot or even an aversion or disinterest in some subjects but are good in others. That's a very broad church.

They all start as deserving citizens of every opportunity that our country can offer.

The question is, at what (artificial) cut off point do you say "this individual has gone as far as they are usefully going to get in our free education system for all?" When do you blow the final whistle? That's a fair question for a third world developing country with other calls on a limited budget. For us in the UK all I can say is "Whatever happened to Education Education Education"? I could say much more but I won't on that just now ...

We were the principal European victors after WW2. Ask yourself this: How is it that those that were destroyed or occupied by the losing side are the countries who have the most distant or shall we say generous or accommodating, or shall we even say far-sighted, cut off points (i.e. measured by the average maximum age of students routinely remaining in and receiving free or very low cost higher education) ?

It is reasonable enough that school education should be funded by the taxpayer, as every child can go to school. But not everyone has the ability to get into university. So not everyone should be forced to pay for it through tax.

I understand the point but it is simplistic if you have followed me so far. "University" is just a word. Education is a better one. Higher Education is what we should strive to obtain for all our lives. I am not kidding. There is no limit. If I keep my health, I will be doing things using latest technology that many may never be able to dream. I can dream so much because of my education, which did not stop at GCSE, did not stop at A level, did not stop at university, and still has not stopped 33 years later. I am still very much a student of the university of life. This will be so for many of the people posting on these threads.

Now at what point are you going to stop funding education?

This reminds me of my days spent working on a farm nearly 40 years ago - we had fantastic intelligent pigs bred mostly for bacon - wonderfully long backed Landrace / Large White crossbred pigs. The farm I worked on had developed a small scale very animal friendly low stress breeding environment for these things and no sooner than a wonderful litter of 10 or even a dozen new piglets were born we were wondering how quickly we could "wean" them from their mother so the farm could bring the boar round to her pen and the farm cold start thinking about profit from the next litter and the one after that.

What was "fair" to the piglets and the sows? Depends on how you measure "fair" doesn't it? In fact it was perfectly possible to wean them young very successfully. I say successfully because you can generally tell if a piglet is content believe it or not! You can bring them up in nursery pens on artificial feed when they are still quite small - maybe only 18 inches nose to tail. When they were born many of these bacon pigs were already easily 12 inches long, and they grow very quickly so it wasn't very long they spent with their mothers. Then again there are as in all societies risks. Some died whilst with their mothers. Some died when weaned. Obviously the farmer knows best? His objective (the farm I was on when I was young) was clearly profit but it was bounded by decency and an appreciation of nature. I know that because I used to see him with tears in his eyes someimes on he farm and sometimes in church singing "All things bright and beautiful" and other heart-stroking stuff that many just don't quite "get" thesedays.

Pigs as you probably know are very intelligent like us.

Pigs are curious and they may or may not set out to improve their own minds but that is what they very quickly do in groups or exploring on their own, but always whilst being nurtured for set periods according to what is good for the market.

If young people want to study and improve their mind then fine they should do so at their own expense. I did an open uni Masters for an interest degree which I paid for myself. Should I expect the taxpayer to have paid for that too?

It really depends for whose benefit you are going to be slaughtered afterwards, doesn't it? And who "owns" you?

Those who argue that the taxpayers should be forced to subsidize people who go to uni seldom bother to think beyond the notion that education is a Good Thing. Some education is not only a good thing but a great thing. But, like most good things, there are limits to how much of it is good — and how good compared to other uses of the resources required.

Yes, yes, good, good, if you are going to improve your mind to the extent that your expectations are raised but then you see fear all around you and you smell it and you know what it is, then perhaps it would have been better if you had not "improved" your mind in the first place and kept your nose clean and head down in that group over there who just got the chop but mercifully didn't see it coming?

Nor is there any obvious way to set an arbitrary limit.

Agreed but other societies in the UK's peer group in Northern Europe clearly have other norms i.e. longer periods of free or nearly so higher education.

These are questions that no given individual can answer for a whole society.

Well hang on a minute there chummy my lad, there is no point identifying a problem if there is no will to solve it.

The most anyone can do is confront individuals with the costs that their choices are imposing on others who want the same resources for other purposes, and are willing to pay for those resources.
Those who cannot bring themselves to face the tough choices that reality presents often seek escape to some kind of fairy godmother — the government or, more realistically, the taxpayers.

Of course faced with the real cost of uni those who are not serious will have to back off and go face the realities of the adult world in the job market.

And that is where your argument spins into simplistic bias towards stopping choices and freedoms for a group of peers and/or young people that you clearly do not rate as special - those who look at life not as now times up, I'm a man/grown woman and must take myself seriously, I must go to work come home eat dinner telly glass of wine or pub Thursdays football Saturdays sex twice a month every other Tuesday if I'm very lucky sleep get up work come home facebook twitter dinner saynoto0870 check bank statement etc...
but as something I believe is more precious than that. I.e. what about the ones who see life as something that still needs developing as far as possible using extended higher education especially into those early years of adulthood? Are they in the wrong country? Are they unusual? Perhaps most people in the UK aged 25 and over might actually believe that because they stopped all that years ago they are only normal and indeed it may then be natural to volunteer their own experience as the norm? Perhaps in Germany or Finland or Denmark or Switzerland or somewhere like that, the same thoughts might not occur until three or four or five years later?

Furthermore what if those people who produce, who create wealth and contribute through enormous taxes finally have enough too?

Ah yes that old chestnut. Well that's an easy one. The current batch who are so high-minded as to think like that AND to then press it as a complaint can swivel on it or, since they are clearly so clever, they know exactly where they can get off and they can take their ball with them. We'll find something to kick around I'm sure.


B^gger, I said it probably wasn't a good idea to write that book!