18 year old electrician paying the tuition fees of 'toffs'
Discussion
On the Today programme this morning, - Theresa May asked Nick Robinson why an 18 year old electrician should pay the tution fees of a university student.
Clearly Chairman May has stepped over to 'the other side' and is now defending the pound in the working man's pocket against the extravagances of the hoity toity middle classes - all very laudable.
But in the interests of stoking Chairman May's class conflict scenario...
Why should the poor pay for the education of the rich?
Why should the rich pay for the education of the poor?
Why should the healthy pay for the care of the sick?
Why should the young pay for the care of the old?
Why should anyone give a f
k about anyone else unless they can make a bob out of them?
This is the nub of Chairman May's argument - why should anyone pay for anything for anyone else - unless there's something in it that even the dopey working man can perceive in his thick, dense, working class skull as a clear benefit for him.
Why should anyone vote Conservative - other than 18 year old electricians?
Clearly Chairman May has stepped over to 'the other side' and is now defending the pound in the working man's pocket against the extravagances of the hoity toity middle classes - all very laudable.
But in the interests of stoking Chairman May's class conflict scenario...
Why should the poor pay for the education of the rich?
Why should the rich pay for the education of the poor?
Why should the healthy pay for the care of the sick?
Why should the young pay for the care of the old?
Why should anyone give a f
k about anyone else unless they can make a bob out of them?This is the nub of Chairman May's argument - why should anyone pay for anything for anyone else - unless there's something in it that even the dopey working man can perceive in his thick, dense, working class skull as a clear benefit for him.
Why should anyone vote Conservative - other than 18 year old electricians?
You seem to have taken the wrong message away from that. Why should the broad population fund something that is of direct benefit to the individual, and make them both more productive tax payers, and significantly personally better off?
Laudable degrees, i.e. Nursing, Teaching where there is no expectation of anything over a middle class life, publically funded in return for public service contracts, cool, no quibbles from me, as long as the recipient understands that qualifying and scarpering off brings financial pain.
David Beckham studies, nah, fund that yourself, and its up to you whether or not to query the 3 contact hours /week being worth nine grand a year.
I have no deep rooted objections to publically funded tertiary education attracting a lifelong graduate tax, but I think the loans system is slightly fairer on the broader population.
Laudable degrees, i.e. Nursing, Teaching where there is no expectation of anything over a middle class life, publically funded in return for public service contracts, cool, no quibbles from me, as long as the recipient understands that qualifying and scarpering off brings financial pain.
David Beckham studies, nah, fund that yourself, and its up to you whether or not to query the 3 contact hours /week being worth nine grand a year.
I have no deep rooted objections to publically funded tertiary education attracting a lifelong graduate tax, but I think the loans system is slightly fairer on the broader population.
footnote said:
On the Today programme this morning, - Theresa May asked Nick Robinson why an 18 year old electrician should pay the tution fees of a university student.
Clearly Chairman May has stepped over to 'the other side' and is now defending the pound in the working man's pocket against the extravagances of the hoity toity middle classes - all very laudable.
But in the interests of stoking Chairman May's class conflict scenario...
Why should the poor pay for the education of the rich?
Why should the rich pay for the education of the poor?
Why should the healthy pay for the care of the sick?
Why should the young pay for the care of the old?
Why should anyone give a fk about anyone else unless they can make a bob out of them?
This is the nub of Chairman May's argument - why should anyone pay for anything for anyone else - unless there's something in it that even the dopey working man can perceive in his thick, dense, working class skull as a clear benefit for him.
Why should anyone vote Conservative - other than 18 year old electricians?
If the veins in your face are still intact............you might have heard the bit about it only being fair that those at Uni made a contribution themselves.Clearly Chairman May has stepped over to 'the other side' and is now defending the pound in the working man's pocket against the extravagances of the hoity toity middle classes - all very laudable.
But in the interests of stoking Chairman May's class conflict scenario...
Why should the poor pay for the education of the rich?
Why should the rich pay for the education of the poor?
Why should the healthy pay for the care of the sick?
Why should the young pay for the care of the old?
Why should anyone give a f
k about anyone else unless they can make a bob out of them?This is the nub of Chairman May's argument - why should anyone pay for anything for anyone else - unless there's something in it that even the dopey working man can perceive in his thick, dense, working class skull as a clear benefit for him.
Why should anyone vote Conservative - other than 18 year old electricians?
I take it you feel that same about subsidies for public transport?
As a lefty, this is a constant source of 'discussion' with my lefty freinds, possibly because I started full time work at 17 whereas they as 'did university'.
I hate the idea that people-not-well-off-but-still-paying-tax have to pay for other people to have a nice time doing something they like for three or four years.
Unfortunately nothing that TMay has suggested will actually change this, nor will anything JC has said either.
The whole university/FE system needs reform. Big money has found a way of tapping more cash out of the government and won't give it up easily.
I hate the idea that people-not-well-off-but-still-paying-tax have to pay for other people to have a nice time doing something they like for three or four years.
Unfortunately nothing that TMay has suggested will actually change this, nor will anything JC has said either.
The whole university/FE system needs reform. Big money has found a way of tapping more cash out of the government and won't give it up easily.
May shows her true colours, just as she did with her citizens of nowhere blah. Like Thatcher, whom she palely imitates, May struggles to grasp the concept of society. Most conservatives that I know appear to be only capable of thinking of the welfare of their families and circle of friends and maybe their immediate community, and seem unable to give a toss about anyone beyond that. Over on a nearby thread where income disparity is being discussed, someone said words to the effect "I don't care about what anyone else gets. I care only about my own income", and there's the problem of conservative thought writ large.
Conservatives call themselves realists, and call those who give a toss about people they will never meet woolly liberals and bleeding hearts, and so on, but conservatives seem to disregard the self interested aspects of wider altruism. If people do not have rubbish lives, they may be less inclined to set fire to my posh house or steal all my nice stuff. Thus you might sensibly choose to give a toss about the rubbishness of life for others even if you actually can't stand those others.
I tend to regard conservatives as defeatist pessimists. They have resigned themselves to everything being rubbish and decided that they might as well do as well as they can while the World can go hang. If you have progressive ideas, you tend to be more of an optimist and think that with effort things could be made better. This is one of the whacky and fun things about the Tory version of Brexit. The wild optimism of the conservative leavers is at odds with the usual pessimism that informs conservative thinking. The love that Corbyn and also some trad labour voters have for Brexit are rather different, and in the case of the latter the love is much less optimistic. Corbyn may be an optimist, but he's also a tad deranged.
Conservatives call themselves realists, and call those who give a toss about people they will never meet woolly liberals and bleeding hearts, and so on, but conservatives seem to disregard the self interested aspects of wider altruism. If people do not have rubbish lives, they may be less inclined to set fire to my posh house or steal all my nice stuff. Thus you might sensibly choose to give a toss about the rubbishness of life for others even if you actually can't stand those others.
I tend to regard conservatives as defeatist pessimists. They have resigned themselves to everything being rubbish and decided that they might as well do as well as they can while the World can go hang. If you have progressive ideas, you tend to be more of an optimist and think that with effort things could be made better. This is one of the whacky and fun things about the Tory version of Brexit. The wild optimism of the conservative leavers is at odds with the usual pessimism that informs conservative thinking. The love that Corbyn and also some trad labour voters have for Brexit are rather different, and in the case of the latter the love is much less optimistic. Corbyn may be an optimist, but he's also a tad deranged.
Edited by anonymous-user on Tuesday 3rd October 10:23
Edited by anonymous-user on Tuesday 3rd October 10:44
footnote said:
Why should the poor pay for the education of the rich?
You could argue that the child may come from rich parents, but he himself is not rich. We used to have means tested grants though, and that should have been left as is.footnote said:
Why should the rich pay for the education of the poor?
It is the state investing in future wealth generators, and there would be nothing wrong with that if there was a criteria for it, instead we got to the stage where failed students were studying degrees that would lead to nothing so unemployment stats looked good and parents felt proud of their graduate kid. There should also have been limitations on paying it all back if you left the country- like all those brit doctors who go off to Australia for an easier life.SamR380 said:
...
I hate the idea that people-not-well-off-but-still-paying-tax have to pay for other people to have a nice time doing something they like for three or four years.
...
Think of it as an investment. Many (not all) of those people who are having the nice time will end up paying the taxes that provide schools and healthcare for less high earners. One or two of them might even invent a Mars spaceship or cure cancer. I hate the idea that people-not-well-off-but-still-paying-tax have to pay for other people to have a nice time doing something they like for three or four years.
...
I am so mega-old that I got university for free. Only I didn't. First, my middle income parents had paid tax for ages. Later, I got a job that pays well and each year I pay shedloads of tax. The investment that UK plc made in me paid off.
SamR380 said:
The whole university/FE system needs reform. Big money has found a way of tapping more cash out of the government and won't give it up easily.
A result of New Labour''s policy to give everyone a university education whether or not it is beneficial to them. I think we'll see a reversal of this trend as the economic downsides to spending 3 years doing a non-degree come to fruition. It's quite refreshing to see senior people in companies with no qualification above A-level, because for many jobs you don't need one. So yes I think Theresa made a good point.Edited by fido on Tuesday 3rd October 10:54
randlemarcus said:
You seem to have taken the wrong message away from that. Why should the broad population fund something that is of direct benefit to the individual, and make them both more productive tax payers, and significantly personally better off?
Because the direct benefit is also to the wider population. As the old saying goes, if you think education is expensive, try ignorance. This is not a new argument. Fund tertiary education, get educated people. Educated people get better jobs, contribute more to society through taxation, spent in turn helping Wayne through college on his Plumbing course.One can make all sorts of arguments about media studies & brain drains and so on but the fact is a well educated population benefits society as whole & a Prime Minister arguing against that is a profoundly depressing tone being set from the top.
May is perhaps closer to Rees-Mogg than she lets on. Imagine a world in which only the children of the well to do go to university, with just a few proley scholarship kids thrown in for good measure. Oh look! That's the world we had before 1945. Forward to backwards with Chairman May!
Eddie Strohacker said:
For the record. Passing A Levels & applying to university is not the definition of a 'Toff'.
Eddie Strohacker, Ba (Hons) 2:1, Builders son.
Sorry mate, you are a toff in the eyes of the PH massive. I am endlessly told that I am basically Lord Snooty's posher brother, because I know how to spell "verisimilitude". Eddie Strohacker, Ba (Hons) 2:1, Builders son.
BV72, MA Hons (Oxon). Builder's son.
(PS: You can tell that Eddie only got a second because he is crap at aspostrophes.)
Like many things the Tories are against, the benefit of free education to whatever level a student is capable of shows up in diverse ways throughout society - overall an educated population is more productive and capable of making advances. Globally, having an ignorant population is a massive economic disadvantage.
Unfortunately the Tories are unable to comprehend anything which does not give an immediate financial benefit, preferably to themselves
Unfortunately the Tories are unable to comprehend anything which does not give an immediate financial benefit, preferably to themselves
Breadvan72 said:
May shows her true colours, just as he did with her citizens of nowhere blah.
Isn’t May a ‘she’?Breadvan72 said:
Like Thatcher, whom she palely imitates, May struggles to grasp the concept of society. Most conservatives that I know appear to be only capable of thinking of the welfare of their families and circle of friends and maybe their immediate community, and seem unable to give a toss about anyone beyond that. Over on a nearby thread where income disparity is being discussed, someone said words to the effect "I don't care about what anyone else gets. I care only about my own income", and there's the problem of conservative thought writ large.
That could be interpreted in two ways - no surprise that you’ve interpreted in the particular way that you did!Breadvan72 said:
Conservatives call themselves realists, and call those who give a toss about people they will never meet woolly liberals and bleeding hearts, and so on, but conservatives seem to disregard the self interested aspects of wider altruism. If people do not have rubbish lives, they may be less inclined to set fire to my posh house or steal all my nice stuff. Thus you might sensibly choose to give a toss about the rubbishness of life for others even if you actually can't stand those others.
Nonsense generalisations are nonsense!Breadvan72 said:
I tend to regard conservatives as defeatist pessimists. They have resigned themselves to everything being rubbish and decided that they might as well do as well as they can while the World can go hang. If you have progressive ideas, you tend to be more of an optimist and think that with effort things could be made better. This is one of the whacky and fun things about the Tory version of Brexit. The wild optimism of the conservative leavers is at odds with the usual pessimism that informs conservative thinking. The love that Corbyn and also some trad labour voters have for Brexit are rather different, and in the case of the latter the love is much less optimistic. Corbyn may be an optimist, but he's also a tad deranged.
Stupid generalisations are stupid.Gassing Station | News, Politics & Economics | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff