A University Education is still free (plus grants) in EU - How can we fix it in UK?

TurnUpForTheBooks_2

I said it was fascinating ringo, and I agree it is all about perceptions, but yes, I definitely want to see you, your wife and your brother paying much more tax so that the UK and especially England can pay for all young persons higher education if they are prepared to apply themselves to study. You sound like you have done rather well out of the UK's previous education systems and I say good on you. The wealth you have created will give you and your offspring many extra options in life. However, now is also the time of your working life to help all young people in the country. You don't do it voluntarily, so as someone who has cornered a comfortable life in the UK I say fair enough now we will make you pay - a great new idea for a tax which targets exactly comfortably off people like you.

Sorry and all that but it should not be quite so easy for you to flaunt wealth quite like this - it is slightly unbecoming of you to expect an extremely well educated peer such as me to be impressed by a 63 number plate and rocking gismos that keep you from dieing of boredom while you sit in a commuter jam for 3 hours a day as is a guess but is typical isn't it in our crazy world leading society!

Been there and done that - and worse (4 hours a day!) - but my employer paid for my big boys toys and all the petrol and that was before HMRC tipped it all out of their pram so I wasn't taxed at all for my stupid lifestyle (not saying yours is but mine was!). I was a DINKY good and proper and splashed out in ways you may not yet have thought of. Paying your own money for a flash car is not very imaginative, is it? ) ... sorry but I think I'd have to be a lottery winner to do such because I'd never do it unless I had more money than I had real purpose for! (does that describe you?)


Yes I'd long ago considered Sunderland car workers and all that. Sorry lads and lasses in Sunderland - I would indeed risk your jobs on my new tax ideas and accepted turkeys do not vote for Christmas.

There's more to economics than maintaining the status quo, ringo. If anything needs rocking it is that!

Reply to ringo's PS: Yes as you can tell with my rather easy write off of Sunderland car workers, I am quite familiar with the South East and yes having moved house multiple times and owned my home since I was one year out of uni I think I have probably paid quite a bit in stamp duty as well many of the other taxes you also pay! Enjoy, you never had it so good, but I'd tax you some more. It's healthy for UK to tax you some more! Eventually I know you'll be proud to say "I helped build a better Britain" and not "I helped Britain but it isn't my fault it is in this god-awful mess".

[Deleted User]

So you'd still like to see all and sundry go to university, to study media and business studies at the University of Upper Edmonton.. for free? I think fee's should be charged - but I'd like to see them a lot slimmer, maybe £3k a year. £9k for a degree is pretty fair I think. I've been on training courses that cost £2k for the week so 38 weeks of university for a few £k is pretty good. I'm rather fortunate that it was only £1k a year when I went.

I don't think 'more tax' is the right way for anything - we need to dismantle our 'cradle to grave' socialist nightmare. It's the downfall of the country. It won't happen as it is rather bad for votes

My commute time is about 30 seconds from my bedroom to my laptop. I'm certainly not a DINKY either.

TurnUpForTheBooks_2

Lucky you ! You are rather fortunate in more ways than one thousand pound a year tuition fees :-)

Working from home was not an option for my first 20 years of working life so it was horrible motorway jams for me. I expect you are pleased that people like me slogged to the office to pioneer and develop ways of enabling sundry young graduate workers to display their newly acquired skills obtained at the expense of the taxpayer to then quickly rise to doing their jobs or starting real businesses from the comfort of their own homes.

You make money easily now then ? That's truly excellent and I am in awe of those that have mastered the trick. I am sure you'd like that for everyone. Meantime more tax please, ringo ! i have heard nothing that tells me you've thought of a great use for it all

BTW, what do you mean it won't happen because it is bad for votes? Nothing is bad for votes except election fraud or inclement weather on voting day, or of course no hope for any change to the status quo (which might suit you - maybe you are fairly ambivalent on that one Jack, ... er ...sorry, ringo!) ...

I think you mean that it is bad for politicians who aren't bright enough to find a way to present a ground-breaking new tax and would rather look forward to another 5 years on an MP's salary and expense account.

You forget I think that this tax at these levels already has a track record in a highly developed European country or two. Some of those nationalities paying the tax are actually quite proud to pay it I hear - you can't understand it I expect ? If it were true would you think it was refreshing ?

Check Wiki Car_taxation

[Deleted User]

It's called being a 'virtual worker'. I don't work for myself yet, but for a firm a few hundred miles away. There are quite a lot of people in the tech industries that do this. I have also done my share of commuting in the past so don't pat yourself too hard on your back. I do partake in the school run though

I like to think that the harder you work, the more fortunate you become

TurnUpForTheBooks_2

Well yes ringo, I would like to think we and others like us in debating these things might one day soon be able to pat each other on the back for having reformed our broken system in such a way that everyone agreed it was world leading again.

I don't doubt you and other virtual workers work hard but the way modern money systems and governments work I'm afraid we sometimes need to ask the more successful of you for more tax so we can maintain the envronment that contains but also supports your success. You are welcome to argue against my tax or even to leave and try another venue if it gets implemented and strangely gets accepted longer term.

Meantime, thank you for your contribution and we'd like you to contribute some more :-)

PS had you realised that car taxation varied as much as it does in Europe? I understand that there are extra taxes in some US states also but I am not aware of any larger ones like can be seen in a few European states.

Dunroamin

TurnUpForTheBooks wrote: »

Lucky you ! You are rather fortunate in more ways than one thousand pound a year tuition fees :-)

Working from home was not an option for my first 20 years of working life so it was horrible motorway jams for me. I expect you are pleased that people like me slogged to the office to pioneer and develop ways of enabling sundry young graduate workers to display their newly acquired skills obtained at the expense of the taxpayer to then quickly rise to doing their jobs or starting real businesses from the comfort of their own homes.

You make money easily now then ? That's truly excellent and I am in awe of those that have mastered the trick. I am sure you'd like that for everyone. Meantime more tax please, ringo ! i have heard nothing that tells me you've thought of a great use for it all

BTW, what do you mean it won't happen because it is bad for votes? Nothing is bad for votes except election fraud or inclement weather on voting day, or of course no hope for any change to the status quo (which might suit you - maybe you are fairly ambivalent on that one Jack, ... er ...sorry, ringo!) ...

I think you mean that it is bad for politicians who aren't bright enough to find a way to present a ground-breaking new tax and would rather look forward to another 5 years on an MP's salary and expense account.

You forget I think that this tax at these levels already has a track record in a highly developed European country or two. Some of those nationalities paying the tax are actually quite proud to pay it I hear - you can't understand it I expect ? If it were true would you think it was refreshing ?

Check Wiki Car_taxation

You mean that you're not 19? I'm amazed!

[Deleted User]

Dunroamin wrote: »

You mean that you're not 19? I'm amazed!

its rather unusual for a baby boomer to ask for more taxes. Just another troll I guess

It would be funny to see this moved to DT or the driving forum

Dunroamin

ringo_24601 wrote: »

its rather unusual for a baby boomer to ask for more taxes. Just another troll I guess

It would be funny to see this moved to DT or the driving forum

I doubt s/he's a baby boomer, given the comments made to me about my age.

However, I am always in favour of higher income tax rates and so are friends of my age, so I think you're wrong about that. Not that I would want them spent on paying thousands of students, most of whom are unsuited to a university education, to spend three years of their lives studying low level non academic courses just to keep the unemployment figures down.

Mind you, that's a different thread.

TurnUpForTheBooks_2

I am a babyboomer in favour of higher taxes when the future of the country depends on it. It does right now and those to tax hard are those with the deepest pockets or those who wish to flaunt real or apparent wealth. If you wish to borrow to flaunt apparent wealth that's up to you, but it isn't something a country needs, and personally I can't get my head around it.

Now then Dunroamin. What you keep repeating like some mantra is that there may be hoards of undergraduates who are unsuited and should never have been encouraged to be there in the first place. I don't disagree that far too many arrive unsuited, but whose fault is that?

We are failing to educate young people optimally on several levels. Those that would achieve in any environment get through anyway.

What you are actually saying is pure ageism. All young people are capable of being optimally educated including all those from homes with social problems, all those with physical disabilities of every kind, and the majority of those with mental disorders such as almost the entire range of autism, and especially those who are prone to the sort of stress that sees them having to refer to SFE's CPR regs to see if the plug might be pulled next year or even retrospectively. It is their country's duty to achieve it, and by the time university is where it is at, to support it completely without any means testing whatsoever. Freshmen undergraduates are new adults. They may not be virgins but they are all the best hope we have for a great long term future and they are expected (you expect them to be) totally independent in thought and in financial self management. Or perhaps that is one duty you wish to abdicate to others in the EU and call it Brussels' duty to achieve not just a mobile workforce with no borders but an educated one with say, Britain being Europe's best little answer to providing robocop in the Middle East, and biggest offer to have a wild west in financial services, whilst some other more sober countries provide Europe's best ever motor cars, best ever windpower manufacturing, best technical schools, best welfare system, best health systems, most healthy national wealth distribution profiles, happiest populations and of course best providers of low cost if not totally free higher education (for all of Europe to use if they wish)?

I am not discriminating against you because of your age, but I do wonder that someone of your age does not have a wider outlook so yes I have profiled you (maybe incorrectly for which I apologise) and I have judged you based on what you seem to be saying (for which I also apologise because it is a bit rude and I might not be qualified).


But seriously, what do you actually want going forward other than the status quo where UK is alright, Dunroamin is all right, Taiko is always right (mandatory thanks ?) and any suggestion otherwise tends to be wrong?

Voyager2002

Dunroamin wrote: »

I doubt s/he's a baby boomer, given the comments made to me about my age.

However, I am always in favour of higher income tax rates and so are friends of my age, so I think you're wrong about that. Not that I would want them spent on paying thousands of students, most of whom are unsuited to a university education, to spend three years of their lives studying low level non academic courses just to keep the unemployment figures down.

Mind you, that's a different thread.

I'm in my fifties so not sure if I'm a boomer yet, but I'm all for far higher taxation.

I do believe in a free university education for all those for whom it is appropriate. The tragedy is that we lack a system of apprenticeships and proper vocational training, and it is absurd that people whose first choice would be to train for a skilled trade are instead given the choice between an academic course of higher education or the dole.

In some ways it doesn't really matter if the training that in the past was provided as an apprenticeship is now re-branded as a degree in "Hairdressing Studies" or such-like nonsense: students know what they are doing and emerge able to earn a living. It does matter when someone whose aptitude is practical rather than academic struggle and is miserable for three years, emerging with a third class degree in Physics or another traditional subject. Future employment prospects are very grim.