Mobilise and motivate - abolish Student Loans with Labour

agarnett

I have never been a political party member but their manifesto is the one I'll be voting for without question.

It is an enormous change when one of the two big parties in UK comes out and says they will abolish student loans and thereby model themselves on eight European countries who do not charge tuition fees. I never dreamt there was a possibility I'd ever see it happen. Sad to say it'll be too late for my kids who are both saddled with tens of thousands of debt now, unless their debt can be forgiven.

So what do we think about it, and how should it affect those unfairly saddled with existing student loans?

unforeseen

I take the money to cover this will come from the pot that they keep at the end of the rainbow?

agrinnall

You do know that it was Labour that introduced fees and loans in the first place, don't you? And that Jeremy Corbyn was a Labour MP at that time (although it's likely that he voted against)? There's no chance that any electable Labour party would scrap fees and loans, the best you could hope for would be a reduction to the levels that applied before they were raised by the Tory/Lib Dem coalition.

WibblyGirly

What about those of use who have paid the £9K and will have it taken out of our pay? Will that be written off so I can be in the same position of those after me? Or will I just have to suck up and keep paying whilst knowing others get the same thing for free?
I personally thing the rabbit is out the hat and I don't think fees will be abolished. Maybe just reduced slightly.

IAmWales

unforeseen wrote: »

I take the money to cover this will come from the pot that they keep at the end of the rainbow?

The policies have been costed, if you take the time to read the manifesto you can check them out yourself.

Much of the financing will come from higher taxation on high earners and corporations. Corporation tax would still be the lowest of any G7 country, so not a disincentive to investment. I wouldn't object to increased tax on high earners for the simple fact that for the past seven years every cost cutting measure has hit those on low and middle incomes hardest, so it's time for others to shoulder some of the burden.

spadoosh

How do you feel about helping me to pay for my house? Not up for that?

How do you feel about contributing towards my private pension? No?

Why do you think its ok for people to contribute towards your kids choice of career? (actually its education not the career ill be amazed if more than 50% of students end up working in their field of academia. but thats by the by.)

So Dave, son of Jim, starts working at 18 on minimum wage. Pays his tax does a good job and does that for ever! Can you explain how it is fair that Dave, son of Jim, should pay for your childs choices when the likelihood is he will earn less over his career, have a shorter life, work longer and more than likely in a more physically demanding job.

Looking forward to your response.

spadoosh

IAmWales wrote: »

The policies have been costed, if you take the time to read the manifesto you can check them out yourself.

Much of the financing will come from higher taxation on high earners and corporations. Corporation tax would still be the lowest of any G7 country, so not a disincentive to investment. I wouldn't object to increased tax on high earners for the simple fact that for the past seven years every cost cutting measure has hit those on low and middle incomes hardest, so it's time for others to shoulder some of the burden.

Univesities will cost 783 pence. I will charge vat on private schools (132 pence) and tax rich folk (651 pence)..... see we've costed it!


£13,200,000. There you go, ive just costed my dream house.... now where is it?

Corp tax has been low during a time when weve implemented quite a lot in terms of business law. Like the workplace pension, living wage, non government funded sick and parental leave. The business i work for by the time everything is costed and youve deducted corporation tax at the ~26% the business owner wouldnt be on a much bigger wage than me. All well and good attacking starbucks et al, most businesses arent starbucks though.

Dont get me wrong i quite like the idea of all tax being through business, basically no personal tax liabilities, sounds idyllic.

And contrary to your last statement, never have i been richer. For the first time in my working life i have actually seen real wage growth unless you consider my £17.5k wage to be in the higher income bracket?

This government is the first government ive had that i think has actually considered me, a distinctly average person. Again, all well and good talking about the poor, rich and disabled but most people arent poor, rich or disabled.

agarnett

Hi spadoosh,

I had to read your posts a couple of times before I could decide where in the frame you are. So you are hardworking and you think the conservatives have considered you? Yes you are right. They have considered how they can keep you down at that stupidly low wage and keep you voting for them.

I would double your wages immediately. Then instead of hardly paying any tax I would halve your personal allowance and bring you into belonging again to that great army of hardworkers who actually pay for infrastructure and NHS and justice.

Receiving a shamefully low wage and being one of the Tory's "taken out of tax altogether or nearas dammit" does you no good and the country no good and your kids and their kids no good. You earn every penny of your wage twice over, but they halve that and tell you you've been a good boy so will keep your tax down next year too ... what kind of message is that? A no hope message is what.

I come from a long line of agricultural labourers. Men who walked up and down fields from dawn till dusk behind horses until they dropped - most never got near retirement or owning a house. I too have worked from dawn to dusk in the fields using my brawn and a little bit of brain. I learned how to create things and fix things and feel satisfied with a job well done. Then I moved onwards and upwards a bit. Not a Yuppie in the worse sense - I never did drugs or got drunk and waved wads shouting !!loadsamoney!! except in the safety of my own living room among mates on my birthdays and using monopoly notes!

I am not rich, but I am educated and I am travelled a bit. I see other European economies that thankfully are still much more honest than hours. There is a much narrower wage gap between top bosses and the lowest workers, and no class barriers, such that they all go to the same street parties regularly whether they are dustmen or chief execs. Working men generally all wear proper work overalls which are paid for and cleaned at work ... they don't get expected to ruin their own clothes and train seats on the way home if they are painters and decorators, for example. Labour is respected. So should yours be, first by paying you twice as much!

In better balanced parts of Europe I see shelfstackers paid twice what Tescos pays, even before the employee is aged 18. And I see almost everyone (including voting teenagers) involved and proud to be involved in paying tax to build their countries into proud entities. They even pay tax on the maintenance grants they get alongside their free university tuition for the part that exceeds £6K a year. It's a good habit to learn how to belong and to contribute. Even their soldiers in some parts of Europe are in many cases far more mature, resorceful and cool-minded than ours. And well equipped too, but they don't try to build a bloody economy based on financial services and selling weapons to the Saudis. How skewed is that? They fight alongside our special forces and are respected, but they are paid twice as much.

Why twice as much? Why are you paid a pittance? I know what is like. The last job I had I was paid a pittance too. Half what I was earning twenty years earlier. Why? Ask yourself what has happened?

Ask yourself is your boss clever enough to run a business in 2017? Or is he like the hill farmers who can't survive without subsidies? Uneducated and a simple man who only knows how to graft with his hands like all my ancestors? I have big hands. I graft with them more as a hobby now. I'm a big bloke - still strong at 60.

I am also lucky. My free university education accelerated me into a modest business career and in those days it qualified me for a proper pension. Without those days, which corresponded with strong unions for collective bargaining, I'd have had nothing for my old age. Thatcher smashed our unions to pieces. It was no fault of the labour movement per se, other than the fact that moderates became fearful to speak up, partly because they didn't want a mounted police truncheon across their cranium.

The European countries I have alluded to do as it happens have strong and responsible unions. It is no coincidence. They are respected for what they do. They even are the conduit for significant welfare benefits and some pensions. They especially uphold workers rights, and if Ryanair's model was still based on wrecking working conditions and paying the lowest wages the they would not be flying in because they'd be drummed out by good men and true.

They also have coalitions which bloody well work. Torys tell lies about working together - that's what coalition means. It doesn't mean chaos unless they deliberately make it so as saboteurs.

Education is the key to moving on - not teaching your children to copy what you did, but trying to nurture them as best you know how on how to go one better, and pick up the good from everyone they meet and embrace it to make themselves more rounded than us. And I don't mean nick the goods from everyone they meet in order to make their own fat bellies more rounded which is what so many do in the City and elsewhere!

Are you a good man? I think you are. So am I. My two kids could have gone to European universities with free tuition fees ... any number of them. They could have skipped university of course and got themselves a "trade" in the old parlance. They instead went to English universities and have incurred enormous loan balances in the current scheme. They are saddled with a 9% extra tax for every penny over £21,000pa they earn as a result.

They are brilliant briliant young people because they are people people, not spoiled brats with no work ethic. They are young leaders. They are not afraid to speak in public. I have no idea how the brilliance and optimism still shines through with those stupid soon to be privatised horrible loan balances round their necks and the thought they have to pay that 9% more tax for 30 bloody years. I have no idea how they will vote in this election, but they studied economics before university so they are not conned by politicians. I do know how they voted in the referendum. My daughter is very independent minded.
I haven't been able to tell her anything for quite a while! She believes strongly in in education and freedom of movement, and for a young person she has already been giving back voluntarily with her time in encouraging other young people in education and the world of opportunity. She was so angry with the Brexit result. She could not believe we have so many misguided voters.

The starting salaries for my two fantastic kids were no better than yours, yet they have enormously responsible jobs. My son manages a whole team of Daves sons of Jim and they like the cut of his jib even though he's young. They are also hardworking with manual skills that take intelligent people years to accumulate, and being in UK they are of course also underpaid like he is. Both my kids learned about science and maths and they are applying it in ways which from their position in specialised teams keep us all safe, but again in this stupid low wage low tax economy, like you they are being terribly exploited and haven't a hope in hell of buying a house before they are 40 unless they hit some unexpected jackpot.

It shouldn't be like that. You shouldn't be extolling the virtues of earning £17.5K and being proud of a boss that pays you that. It's a non-business based on uneducated ideas. Its going nowhere. Do you want all the kids to go nowhere too?

Please don't deny them the chance of a university education like it is some bloody luxury. It is no such thing. It is a right.

You surely can see that? If a university education is a personal luxury that shouldn't be available as a right, then you might as well agree that your flat screen tv and your smartphone should only be available to you for £10,000 apiece. You do have a flat screen tv I take it? And a smartphone? Why do you think they exist? Why are they so cheap? You think you have a right to cheap Chinese junk to play Candy Crush and text your Mum and watch the footie when you know that it takes a higher education to know how it works? Yes of course you've the right, but get a balance, man. Those things were designed by brillant educated minds who were once uneducated kids. They didn't choose. They just hoped! Don't take away hope.

Maybe you can't take a flat screen tv apart or a smartphone and fix it if it has gone on the blink, but my kids probably could, and it isn't their job - they just know stuff - they know if stuff adds up and they know if stuff is likely to work again.

Currently I am unlikely to work again, so's you'd notice, beyond a bit of manual labour, and currently the UK economy doesn't add up for either you or me or our kids or your boss. It adds up for the Torys.

Vote to bloody well change it, not for more of the stupid Britich class system and keeping the workers in their place by giving them shiney bead to play with ... Gawd luv us!

PS Tonight I did two things I have never ever done before - I contributed a donation to 38 degrees in their campaign to get everyone out to vote on 8 June in order to restore a properly functioning democracy in UK, and I contributed to a political party that had the brains enough to email me today as one of the many and make it easy for millions of us to donate.

Torys and Michael Ashcroft eat your hearts out.

Students and all hardgrafting people vote Labour on 8 June and do make sure no one you know forgets to vote. If you have been lucky and wise enough to get a higher education, you should know it makes sense. A proper UK democracy depends upon it.

muddymouse

spadoosh wrote: »

How do you feel about helping me to pay for my house? Not up for that?

How do you feel about contributing towards my private pension? No?

Why do you think its ok for people to contribute towards your kids choice of career? (actually its education not the career ill be amazed if more than 50% of students end up working in their field of academia. but thats by the by.)

So Dave, son of Jim, starts working at 18 on minimum wage. Pays his tax does a good job and does that for ever! Can you explain how it is fair that Dave, son of Jim, should pay for your childs choices when the likelihood is he will earn less over his career, have a shorter life, work longer and more than likely in a more physically demanding job.

Looking forward to your response.

Because, as a society, we need teachers and nurses and lawyers, all of which are graduate careers. So when Dave's children need an education or when Dave needs NHS care, he will have contributed towards the high quality services he/his children receive.

Does this really seem unfair to you?

agarnett - What an intelligent, well informed post from someone who the Tories pretend to care for (a self made businessman). I bet your kids are very proud of you.

silvercar

muddymouse wrote: »

Because, as a society, we need teachers and nurses and lawyers, all of which are graduate careers. So when Dave's children need an education or when Dave needs NHS care, he will have contributed towards the high quality services he/his children receive.

Does this really seem unfair to you?

agarnett - What an intelligent, well informed post from someone who the Tories pretend to care for (a self made businessman). I bet your kids are very proud of you.

In the 80s and possibly later, you didn't need a degree to be a nurse or a teacher.

On the OPs first post, the liberal's also promised to abolish tuition fees and that disappeared quickly when they smelt the whiff of power. Don't believe every promise made.

Ryanfuego

Situation's really horrible. When I was a student I have had a deal with student loan and yeah at first it seemed to be easy issue to pay for but it's not that easy as it seems. I don't really know what the government should do with it, because everybody's giving a promises but nobody's keeping their word.