Why not free education, Lord Browne?
From my first day as a five-year-old at Avenue Road Infants’ School to my final postgraduate seminar at the London School of Economics, my education was free all the way. Not only that, but for the last five years of it, I was accorded state support at a level comparable to a low-wage job.
That is a large part of the explanation of how the son of a railwayman and a nurse from a two-up two-down eventually landed a well-paid career in journalism. But posh kids got more or less the same deal, save for a reduced level of grant to reflect their parents’ prosperity.
In the 1960s, the 1970s and into the monetarist 1980s, the idea that this way of doing things would ever change substantially would have been unthinkable. Free education was an essential aspect of the social democratic settlement.
Will Ed Miliband ditch New Labour’s policy on tuition fees?
contribution by Redpesto
With the Browne Report on higher education finance due out soon, there has been plenty of advance speculation and leaks about his recommendations. The continued advance warnings indicate he will advise either raising the current cap to around £7,000 a year, or abolishing it altogether.
The Liberal Democrats will be in enough trouble explaining how their pledge to vote against any increase in fees will square with their membership of the coalition government.
Ed Miliband however may have other problems.
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New site to help voters campaign on their issues
A new website that aims to give voters “the tools to engage with the policy-makers” launched this week, called ‘Whistle’.
Its founder George Norman says he has raised $1 million in start-up capital to create a site that, ‘brings politicians, activists, voters and candidates together to become better informed, debate real issues, run campaigns and shape their local communities.’
He told Liberal Conspiracy:
If an MP runs two surgeries a month, they might meet 500 of their constituents a year. A constituency has an average of 74,000 voters. That’s a lot of unheard voices. We’re talking about a site that can allow a local politician to connect with voters on a completely different level.
It’s a site where a candidate can prepare the ground for a campaign by explaining their views and answering questions directly and on a large scale.
It’s designed to cut through the arcane trappings of the political establishment and make politics truly popular, says Norman.
The site aims to help people communicate with their MPs (through blogs, forums, and integration with networks like Twitter and Facebook), create their own campaigns and support the causes that matter to them.
It will also charge causes and prospective political candidates £10 for access to campaigning tools.
www.whistle.co.uk / @whistledotcom
Fact: our debt ratio was higher during Tory years than it is now
The Conservatives have consistently stated that interest payments on our public debt are so high that they will spook the markets and cripple our economy.
And so, I quite like this chart showing UK debt interest payments over the last 100 years.
It shows that debt interest payments were higher in the mid 1990s as a percentage of GDP.
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Osborne’s cuts causing ‘double dip’ in housing
House prices are still under downward pressure as sellers continue to outnumber potential buyers. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics) said 44% of its members saw prices fall in the past three months.
Only 6% reported that prices rose, while 50% said they had been stable. The figures highlight the picture painted by other recent surveys, which have shown prices drifting down in recent months.
…
Several respondents fingered the forthcoming cuts in public spending for undermining the confidence of potential buyers. “The overall trend is edging towards reductions in property prices, as buyers become increasingly nervous of the economic climate,” said Edward Waterson of Carter Jonas in York.
Derek Coates of Venmore in Liverpool was more forthright. “Government austerity measures coupled with fears of unemployment and a genuine fear that house prices may well fall further is stifling the market,” he said.
Peter May of Minster Property in Wimborne said the market had acted as if a tap had been turned off. “The general talk of cuts in government spending appears to have caused the fragile confidence in the property market to be shattered and this very much looks like we are heading for a double dip in the housing market,” he said.
Why half a million on Incapacity Benefit cannot start work right away
Today Ian Duncan Smith has reportedly said that ‘about 500,000 living on sickness benefit could go straight into a job’.
Lets leave aside how employable these people are (remembering that while many disabled people are employed in the UK, disabled people with a history of claiming out of work benefits, with low skills and limited recent labour market experience are likely to find it more difficult than your average jobseeker to find work) and look at the labour market facts.
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Johnson doesn’t need economic expertise, just the right tone
"You don't need to be a professor of economics to be a Treasury minister" says Alan Johnson.
I agree. Expertise has no place in politics.
I say this not because I’m some pompous prat who thinks “judgment” matters, but for three reasons.
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Why Phil Woolas is unfit to be in the Labour front-bench
Out of all the shadow cabinet appointments, it’s having Phil Woolas back at the Home Office that is the most disappointing. No actually, it makes me angry given recent revelations.
And it’s worth pointing out once more, properly, why Phil Woolas is unsuitable to be in the Labour party, let alone a shadow minister.
During the recent Labour party conference I went to a debate on immigration that featured Woolas as one of the speakers. He sounded perfectly sensible at the time.
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‘NHS being privatised via back-door’ – Healey
John Healey, the new shadow Health Secretary, has warned that the Coalition Government’s plans to hand GPs control of £80bn of the NHS budget could result in the back-door privatisation of the service.
The shake-up would “open the door” to privatisation even if that was not the Government’s intention because power would shift to unaccountable private companies called in by GPs to handle the commissioning of services, Mr Healey told The Independent in his first newspaper interview since being appointed to the post.
…
When he asked Mr Healey to take on the health brief last Friday, Ed Miliband, the Opposition Leader, told him: “This is the big public services battleground for Labour over the next five years.”
Mr Healey said the plan for GPs to take over commissioning from primary care trusts (PCTs) amounts to “the biggest reorganisation in the NHS since it was set up”. And yet Labour will not be manning the barricades. Reflecting the Labour leader’s desire not to oppose everything the Government does, his health spokesman promises “responsible, constructive as well as strong opposition”.
After a decade of War on Terror, America gives up trying to win
contribution by Andrew J. Bacevich
As the conflict formerly known as the Global War on Terror enters its tenth year, we are entitled to pose this question: When, where, and how will the war end?
This much we know: an enterprise that began in Afghanistan but soon after focused on Iraq has now shifted back — again — to Afghanistan. Whether the swings of this pendulum signify progress toward some final objective is anyone’s guess.
Just over a decade ago, the now-forgotten Kosovo campaign seemingly offered a template for a new American way of war. It was a decision gained without suffering a single American fatality. Kosovo turned out, however, to be a one-off event.
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» The real agenda behind Telegraph’s abortion investigation
» How Scotland Yard monitors prying bloggers and journalists
» When disabled people want to work – employers can hold the back
» Revealed: the reality behind Workfare and why it doesn’t work
» Job snob? No, I’ve got the T-shirt
» Why country-by-country reporting matters to our wellbeing
» If Unions want to become stronger, they need to modernise
» Why work “reforms” in Spain are a warning for workers across Europe
» Five things you need to know about the NHS bill
» Bigger. Fatter. Gypsier. More Racist.
» Laziness levels in Britain getting lazier, wails government
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