Pay your Fees, Crusties!

I'm sorry but I'm going to get all political on yor ass now.

Yesterday, my wife and I missed being caught up in the university fee protests riots around Oxford Circus by a matter of minutes. Shame actually, as I like a bit of excitement.

Only when we got home to see the rolling news on BBC News 24 did we realise how close a brush with 'activism' we'd had. Living so close to all the furor, we also considered going back out and having a gander. But as we saw all the bloodstained masses trying to keep warm in minus degree temperatures by gathering around the firebombs in Parliament Square, we thought we'd stay in our toasty flat in our slippers and finish our ice creams instead.

The fact is though, I think I might have ended up getting arrested had I gone back out. Not through trying to chuck a traffic cone at a policeman, or even for settling light to the statue of Viscount Palmerston (it's about time someone did that actually, I was incidentally thinking the other day).

But for the shamelessly aggressive act of punching the face right off of the head of the ignorant, mindless arses who thought making their point about the tuition fees necessitated desecrating the cenotaph and Churchill monument.

Cenotaph Swinger: Cunt.

Yeah, right on you anarchist warriors! Swinging from the cenotaph will send a message to the war dead not to die in Flanders and Japanese POW camps when they could have been alive and pro-creating so their descendants can pay their taxes towards your media studies degrees!

Regardless of his many faults (and they are numerous, if you know your history, kids) Churchill's wartime leadership does seem to transcend all else and so to piss and graffiti all over his monument in Parliament Square was simply going a bit too far by those responsible - and it's hardly going to stir public support of the plights of the self-proclaimed hard-done by students.

"Never in the field of human conflict, was.... ahhh, that's better".

I'm going to put my twopenneth in on this. You can stop reading now if you don't want to hear it. You may already get the gist of where this is going and might rather put your fingers in your ears and go "La la la la, I'm not listening as I already know the Tory scum and their Lib-Dem lap-dogs are destroying further education and wrecking lives. La la la."

But if you are interested in hearing an alternative opinion - mine is that I find it grossly offensive that self-interested students are expecting the world to share their outrage to what actually seems a very sensible and fair plan put forward by the government.

I do understand the viewpoint that free education for all is a good principle. Indeed I myself was abhorred when one of the first things Tony Blairs did was introduce tuition fees for students. Having started University myself the year before, I wasn't quite so motivated to march as those in the year below me but I shared their sentiments, albeit from afar in the SU bar over a subsidised pint.

But it was a shame to see the prospect of going to University as one that people had to pay for the privilege for, after so long it being a basic entitlement in this country.

That was then though and this is now. Given the current financial mess, we can hardly expect the state to subsidise higher education fully ever again. Indeed, the time has come to look more closely at whether it is justifiable for someones tertiary education to still be as heavily-subsidised as it currently is. And the answer from all sides is a resounding 'no' to this.

I'm no expert, but I have a slightly-informed opinion in that I've read through the arguments for and against, and the other options proposed, and have formed my own conclusion, humble though it may be, that the coalition government's proposals do seem the fairest - and actually fairer than the current system considering the threshold of re-payment will be going up and continue to do so as average wages rise.


I love this picture - "Make The Rich Pay".

Add the damage costs to his university fees invoice, Vince.

 Well, the rich will be the ones paying for it - as most graduates will gain higher wages as a result of their education and thus be paying their fees back rather than street-cleaners and McDonalds workers on minimum wage subsidising their education with their taxes.

The graduates who don't end up on higher wages will never pay back a fricken' penny!

There is so much ignorance and misplaced outrage over what is actually in the fees package passed yesterday. This website may be government propaganda, but it does explain why these measures are being passed and why they believe them to be fair. These are the facts and the facts sound fair to me.

The most laughable argument against the fee rises is that the last generation (i.e. the current government) got free education so it's hypocritical of them to vote in higher fees for the next generation.

It's the same as saying "Someone was giving free sandwiches out the other day but by the time I turned up they had run out of free sandwiches. That's not fair and they should bloody well go away and make me a sandwich for free too, and all those that got free sandwiches are also cunts for not paying for my free sandwich afterwards!"

The fact is, it's always cost the country money to educate people, but now we can no longer afford to foot this bill, especially if we want to maintain the same high-levels of university entrants.

It is only fair that students should help contribute for their education. But only eventually, when they can afford it. The Government still expects to end up paying 40% of the cost of higher education, and I see no reason why a student should not end up fronting more of the bill in such tight times.

The debt amount itself seems is irrelevant as far as I can see. £25k? £40k? £100k? It doesn't matter. The fact is, they will pay an amount back proportional to their income, only at a time when they are earning £21k or above. And get this - if the debt is not paid off in 30 years, it is WIPED OUT COMPLETELY, regardless of how much is still left to pay.

How the hell is this not fair?!

Under Labour's proposed graduate tax scheme, the graduates with lower income will pay back the same percentage as the higher earners, and at a lower threshold of earnings, right down to minimum wage. And the richer graduates will pay less back under the graduate tax than under the current scheme. How the hell is that justifiably fair? The thing that really astounds me is that the apparently socialist party of opposition seems to favour the scheme that will hurt the poorest most.
How much of this outrage is totally misplaced because people don't actually realise all the details of the proposals? That the poorest graduates will pay nothing back at all? That the richest will pay a higher proportion back? That they are wiped out after 30 years? That nothing needs to be paid upfront?

The one thing that does stink, for me, is the Welsh and Scottish situation.
The problem here though is that Westminster does not have jurisdiction anymore in either province thanks to Tony Blairs' costly vanity project of devolution.

As it is, the tax-payers in Scotland and Wales will either be hit harder with the burden, unfairly, or the taxpayers in England will even more unfairly end up helping funding some of that as well without being able to benefit from it. Grossly unfair, but not the fault of this government nor does it justify throwing out the whole idea because of it.

Many of these arguments above I've unashamedly lifted from debates this morning on Facebook with friends who aren't so keen on the proposals and think the protests are justified. Even the pissing on the Cenotaph, probably.

One argument I heard today was that going to university should not be about trying to improve your salary potential - it should be about broadening your mind.

Nothing wrong at all with attending Uni to broaden your mind, I say. And under the current proposals, if you want to broaden your mind by going to university and yet return to your job at Chicken Cottage after you graduate, you can still do that and never pay a penny back.

"So that's 2x fillet burgers, 3x hot wings & a 2,000 word discourse on the affects of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 on future European diplomacy".

And as someone else pointed out, if the government are going to hand out money so I can broaden my mind, will they pay for my gap year travelling around the world to soak up different cultures? Will they subsidise my purchase of recreational drugs? No, they won't.

Free education for all is fine if it can be afforded.
The fact is, it now cannot. And in such a situation it's grossly unfair to expect the poor to subsidise those lucky enough to earn a degree.

I do not believe these proposals are a stepping stone for the dismantling of the welfare state as some may claim. The difference between the welfare state and subsidising further education in particular is that the welfare state is a safety net intended to stop the very poorest of society from ever falling through it.

Not that it's perfect, but it's what separates us from the abilities of poorer nations and the illiberal values of less social-minded nations and something of which we should feel justly proud. This is why it is worth paying for.

Subsidisation for you and I to expand our minds and increase our earning potential at University is a very different matter and surely a lesser priority in austere times.

As a last comment on the matter, I thought this video found via Guido Fawkes' excellent political blogspot was quite apt. It's students from Northumbria University who've made their own music video protesting the fee rises, to the tune of LiveAid's "Do They Know It's Christmas?"

As Guido himself says:
"Comparing the privileged life of an undergraduate to kids starving in Africa, who have to worry about their next meal rather than their media studies assignment. Nice."

So stop wasting your own time and money and go back to your fucking lectures, you ignorant gits.

+++Feel free to post comments with your own opinions, by the way I'd genuinely be interested to hear them.+++

Pics courtesy of the copyright holders noted in each picture.
I hope you don't mind me using them but if you do please don't sue me as I have student debts to pay off.