National News Official 2019 General Election Thread

Essexyellows said:
"Global financial crisis" is, in itself, laughable. An economy based on credit & the selling of numbers will always hit the rails sooner or later.
It is the consumerist desire for "stuff" that pushes people into debt & poverty, they go hand in hand.
We have a far higher standard of living than in the 1980`s, and that is irrespective of where you sit on the social ladder.
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Well I was with you for the first two sentences!
 
Canterburyexile said:
It’s a harsh thing to say, but I cannot see how you could possibly vote conservative this time unless you just don’t give a f**k about other people.
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People vote for their own reasons. Many ( including some on here) would vote for their party even if it was run by Micky Mouse (there are some who seem to be absolutely sure that everything about their parties policies is right- I wish I found it that easy)
I am a 'floating voter'. I have voted for 4 parties in the past.
I would quite like to vote labour (would never vote for Johnson), but the Labour parties policies in my view are pie in the sky . 5 years of Labour in my view and the Country will be in a big financial mess. My suspicion is that they will scale back hugely on what they want to do if they were to get a majority.
I assume that the reason why Labour are not walking away with this election (surely they should be) is that other floating voters are equally concerned (plus the voters in the Labour heartlands who are going to vote for Johnson over Brexit)
 
YellowTaxi said:
There are 135000 children who will be homeless this Christmas
There are over 4 million children in poverty in the UK. Ranked by total wealth, the UK is the fifth richest country in the world.
You are either a fool or a liar.
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Define "poverty" for me then as you seem so convinced by the sob stories?
Let me help: https://cpag.org.uk/child-poverty/measuring-poverty

According to that "3.2 million children don`t have a one week holiday a year". I`ll take that as meaning "going away". Well button up on that one. Some of us lived for years as children without a holiday away, nothing has changed there.

Likewise tell me who the "homeless" children are and, more importantly, why they are "homeless"?
According to this; https://fullfact.org/economy/128000-children-are-homeless-britain/
"They refer to the number of children in temporary accommodation earlier this year".............. they have a roof over their head, they aren`t living on the streets. Any accommodation you don`t own yourself could easily be defined as "temporary".
 
Rickets is back. Child mortality is increasing in Britain and you call that “ sob stories”

You’re either really unpleasant or really ignorant. I pity you for being so embittered, and so heartless
“They have a roof over their head...,”

Some of them do. Some of them live in cars. Some of them live on the street. Some of them live in one room.
 
There really isn’t much need for all this so called fact checking and citing of sources in this day and age. Half the information out there is fabricated and made to look real anyway. It’s been made purposefully murky and deceptive, and its tone has been made intentionally divisive and combative, so that people throw mud and insults at each other all day, every day rather than actually talking to each other face to face in a calm and rational manner, before drawing their own conclusions. Not only as to what they believe and why, but what it is that they encounter and how truthful and valid they believe things to be. That’s the beauty of the digitalised, social media age - you can just work people up and pump them full of ‘facts’ and ‘evidence’ that make them angry and want to fight each other. You can just make it about WINNING AND BEATING PEOPLE, rather than actually living in the real world, communicating and trusting their own eyes and ears. The last thing anybody of any value wants is a world where the rest of us can’t just be stoked up, riled and told who to fight and what to believe. It’s much easier and much more beneficial for everybody to be indoors, or at least constantly looking down at their phones, and shouting at each other than it is going outside, communicating rationally and observing what’s going on around them. Nobody REALLY knows why they’re so angry, full of venom and wanting to see people they deem to be ‘against’ them suffer so much. Nobody REALLY knows what it is that they believe it’s all for, what the benefit will be to them or anybody else, or even what needs to happen for them to suddenly be happy. People don’t want to be happy - they have to be angry and fighting. It’s been designed that way, and it’s pretty sad that so few people see it. My own mother is staunchly against anybody who isn’t the Conservatives these days - and yes, she LOVES the Brexit - and she doesn’t even know why. I vividly remember her excitedly telling me Tony Blair was PM in 1997, even though she voted for Paddy Ashdown, because she thought there was a real chance of something better. She then voted Lib Dem until 2015, when something changed and she became far meaner in spirit virtually overnight. Even though the last decade of austerity has directly affected her life in terrible ways - especially when her job at the council was systematically dismantled and then abolished completely, and when the total lack of adequate healthcare and social care had huge impacts on our family - she continues to not only ignore these facts but actively rally behind the people who inflicted her distress. She does nothing outside of work but sit on Facebook reading the news that it carefully selects for her, stewing and taking everything she sees as gospel, and falling further and further into a place where all that matters it being angry, force fed selective ‘facts’, and wanting to see ‘the other side’ crushed. Even though the people she’s campaigning to keep in power have badly harmed her and her family, and offer nothing of any value that has bettered her life. She can’t name anything in recent years that has aided her or made her life better, but she can moan about dozens of things in the last few years that have actively been imposed on her, which have damaged her and caused her distressed. Yet all she wants to do is back those same people who did it to her. That’s the thing about inflicting pain on people - it makes them angry. It makes them want to fight, and savagely destroy, anybody they deem to be an enemy or even an annoyance. If you can find a way to maintain control of those people even as you are the one torturing them, you’ll create an unstoppable army. It’s genuinely sick and twisted, but it’s happened. Yet all it would take for many people to slip from its grip would be to take a breath, take a step back from technology, and simply talk to real people face to face. Because even if they didn’t agree, they’d likely be able to empathise when they see the reality, and they hear the real stories people have to tell. That’s something that’s been lost in recent years, and it’s made it too easy for people to be aggressive and downright sociopathic, and has turned making devastating decisions into nothing more than a game. Because the last thing anybody wants is for anybody to base their opinions, or the way that they vote, on the things that they can actually see and hear around them on a daily basis.

The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.
 
Canterburyexile said:
‘Higher education equality is nice, but do we really need it? What is the point of everyone having a degree and a higher education? Does the state really need that as a giveaway and can our universities afford it. Where does it stop? Who will pay for mature students to study? Will this increase the burden on the top 5%?’

Do we need it? Well, given that a degree is quite usually glass ceiling on many jobs I would say yes. If you can provide a rationale for abolishing it please do so.
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So who benefits from an individual having a university degree?

Well, there's an argument that the nation does to an extent - we need educated doctors, nurses, legal professionals, engineers, scientists etc. etc. But there's now more than 1.8 million 18-24 year olds in tertiary education in the UK. There's no argument that the state needs that many individuals with higher education.

No, for the most part the benefit goes to the individual themselves. As you say, it can help the individual get a better, higher paid job.
What's more - Britain has the excellent student loan system in place which means that if the university system fails you, and you can't get a higher paid job or if you choose to work in a sector with lower pay, then you never have to pay back that loan and your degree becomes effectively free. And if you do earn more than 21k - then the amount you have to repay per year scales with your pay. Repayment is automatic, and it applies to everyone.

If the State pays for free higher education for all, then effectively the ~50% of the population who don't go to university are subsidizing, from their taxes, the 50% that do. A person from a low income background who goes straight into a job at 18 is contributing financially, through their taxes, for their peers to develop skills that will make them more attractive to the jobs market, potentially at that person's expense. How the hell is that fair?

And before you ask - yes, I was lucky enough to enter university in the last year before tuition fees were introduced. So I was able to get a free degree without contributing a penny to my education. And it's idiotic. I benefited from that education - so if a portion of my wages had been taken away over the past twenty years to repay some of the costs.....yes, I might have grumbled. But I would never have argued that it was unfair.


So let's finally get to the question of equality. Because yes, it's important. An overhanging student debt is obviously going to be more meaningful to someone from a low income background than an Eton & Bullingdon toff. But why use such a blunt, dumb instrument?

Here's how Princeton University does it (an example I've chosen because, well, I work for them and so I know it well!):

They have developed (with some federal funding through Pell grants, but also a lot of alumni donations) a Financial Aid package. Their admissions program is entirely need-blind. So they select students based on their skill set and achievements. Then they help them with payment of the fees and maintenance grants depending on their family's income situation.
If the family earns less than $65k, they get Full tuition, college fee, room + board - a Financial Aid package worth over $70k.
There's then a sliding scale - but families that earn in the $120-140k bracket still get Full tuition aid.
Only once you get above $180k a year, do students not necessarily get financial support.

For their most recent class, 82% of Princeton students had no debt upon graduation. Some because Mummy and Daddy paid. Most because they came from lower income backgrounds, and therefore received financial assistance. This is despite the face that fees at the university make UK tuition fees look like a minor inconvenience at over $50k a year.

That to me is a system that takes wealth out of admissions - but does so in a fair way without forcing everyone in the country to subsidize higher education.

But even the current UK system is fairer (and cheaper) than a blanket 'Free University for all' proclamation, which sounds great to students but really doesn't make sense for the country as a whole.
 
tonyw said:
So who benefits from an individual having a university degree?

Well, there's an argument that the nation does to an extent - we need educated doctors, nurses, legal professionals, engineers, scientists etc. etc. But there's now more than 1.8 million 18-24 year olds in tertiary education in the UK. There's no argument that the state needs that many individuals with higher education.

No, for the most part the benefit goes to the individual themselves. As you say, it can help the individual get a better, higher paid job.
What's more - Britain has the excellent student loan system in place which means that if the university system fails you, and you can't get a higher paid job or if you choose to work in a sector with lower pay, then you never have to pay back that loan and your degree becomes effectively free. And if you do earn more than 21k - then the amount you have to repay per year scales with your pay. Repayment is automatic, and it applies to everyone.

If the State pays for free higher education for all, then effectively the ~50% of the population who don't go to university are subsidizing, from their taxes, the 50% that do. A person from a low income background who goes straight into a job at 18 is contributing financially, through their taxes, for their peers to develop skills that will make them more attractive to the jobs market, potentially at that person's expense. How the hell is that fair?

And before you ask - yes, I was lucky enough to enter university in the last year before tuition fees were introduced. So I was able to get a free degree without contributing a penny to my education. And it's idiotic. I benefited from that education - so if a portion of my wages had been taken away over the past twenty years to repay some of the costs.....yes, I might have grumbled. But I would never have argued that it was unfair.


So let's finally get to the question of equality. Because yes, it's important. An overhanging student debt is obviously going to be more meaningful to someone from a low income background than an Eton & Bullingdon toff. But why use such a blunt, dumb instrument?

Here's how Princeton University does it (an example I've chosen because, well, I work for them and so I know it well!):

They have developed (with some federal funding through Pell grants, but also a lot of alumni donations) a Financial Aid package. Their admissions program is entirely need-blind. So they select students based on their skill set and achievements. Then they help them with payment of the fees and maintenance grants depending on their family's income situation.
If the family earns less than $65k, they get Full tuition, college fee, room + board - a Financial Aid package worth over $70k.
There's then a sliding scale - but families that earn in the $120-140k bracket still get Full tuition aid.
Only once you get above $180k a year, do students not necessarily get financial support.

For their most recent class, 82% of Princeton students had no debt upon graduation. Some because Mummy and Daddy paid. Most because they came from lower income backgrounds, and therefore received financial assistance. This is despite the face that fees at the university make UK tuition fees look like a minor inconvenience at over $50k a year.

That to me is a system that takes wealth out of admissions - but does so in a fair way without forcing everyone in the country to subsidize higher education.

But even the current UK system is fairer (and cheaper) than a blanket 'Free University for all' proclamation, which sounds great to students but really doesn't make sense for the country as a whole.
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Some excellent points in here. I would point out that not only is student debt more meaningful to someone from a low income background, it is also a barrier to potential students ever even enrolling. Check out the UKAS stats on this very issue.
 
Princeton has one of the biggest endowments in the world.

It has less than ten thousand undergraduate students.

Those people who go to university where education is free as it used to be in this country either earn a lot of money, in which case they pay it back through taxes, especially if there are progressive taxes at the higher end- above 100000. Or they don’t but they don’t leave with 50000 of debt around their necks, which makes it harder to take out a mortgage and means that other careers where people don’t earn immediately are effectively closed to those without rich parents.
 
Canterburyexile said:
Some excellent points in here. I would point out that not only is student debt more meaningful to someone from a low income background, it is also a barrier to potential students ever even enrolling. Check out the UKAS stats on this very issue.
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I mean I guess I would have two responses to that.

First is that - yes, those UCAS stats show the gap between first and fifth quintile university enrollment narrowing in Scotland slightly faster than in the UK as a whole. But it's still a pretty frickin' massive gap, even in Scotland - there's a lot more at play here than fear of student debt (with, I'm sure, the comparative quality of secondary education being the biggest factor)

The second - which admittedly is a slightly harsher point - is if an individual is put off taking up a degree place because they're going to incur student debt, even though they can take a loan to cover that debt which won't be repayable at all until (and if) they're in a reasonable paying job......well, then they're making a judgement that the degree isn't really going to be valuable to them. And if it's not going to be valuable to them, why should the UK taxpayer be funding it? Do we really think that tertiary education is a basic human right?
 
The loan affects your credit rating.

And you‘re suggesting a degree is only of value in earning power. Which is stupid.

A nurse doesn’t earn a lot , but needs a degree.
 
YellowTaxi said:
Princeton has one of the biggest endowments in the world.

It has less than ten thousand undergraduate students.

Those people who go to university where education is free as it used to be in this country either earn a lot of money, in which case they pay it back through taxes, especially if there are progressive taxes at the higher end- above 100000. Or they don’t but they don’t leave with 50000 of debt around their necks, which makes it harder to take out a mortgage and means that other careers where people don’t earn immediately are effectively closed to those without rich parents.
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Acknowledged - which is why a comparable system in the UK would likely have to have a difference balance of funding between federal government and university funds that it does here (where I think the balance is approximately 24% Federal : 76% Private)

But again, it's why if you are going to move away from the current system back to one where the UK taxpayer has a greater role in subsidizing higher education - at least means test those subsidies so they go to people that need it.


On your final point - if you have student debt, but you choose to go into a low-paid career, then your debt repayments will be zero. So why should that stop you choosing that career? It shouldn't affect taking out a mortgage either. It will affect the size of mortgage that is accessible to you if you're in a high-paying career, but that's just one of the factors you need to take into account when deciding to take a degree, and does not seem to me to be unreasonable.
 
YellowTaxi said:
The loan affects your credit rating.

And you‘re suggesting a degree is only of value in earning power. Which is stupid.

A nurse doesn’t earn a lot , but needs a degree.
Click to expand...

I believe that's simply incorrect - my understanding is that UK student loans do not impact your credit history, or go on your credit report.
I think you're just quoting a commonly-held myth.

And yes a nurse doesn't earn a lot, and yes a nurse needs a degree. But that's why the student loan system is structured as it is, so that a nurse will not have to repay their student loan at all when he or she is in a junior position, and only a relatively small amount when they rise to more senior, more highly paid positions.

But on top of that - I wouldn't argue if you want to say that nursing training should be free to all. Because it's a vital and currently undervalued profession.
 
I think all education should be free and paid for through taxation.- Like it is in say Germany. Anyway interesting discussion, but not the main issue in the General Election for either of us, I suspect
 
I like the idea of doing some further A levels at college in the evening. I’d be happy if that was free
 
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