Out of touch protestors...and Guardian, Red Ed, Lisa Nandy, CiF, etc.

So the Guardian claim that the student protests yesterday were justified, Red Ed wants to go and join in and Labour MPs are queuing up to show their support.. If you look at the comments on CIF, it would suggest that there's a lot of public support for the protests. I am not so sure. I've already blogged about how small these protests are as a percentage of the UK electorate. In the staffroom of the school where I work - which is by no means a right wing hotbed - there is a great deal of bafflement at the protests and protestors.  I think the first one had some sympathy, but the others have just seemed like a chance for kids to skive off and muck about in London.

Added to that, a lot of the people I work with - and a lot of normal people in general - didn't have EMA, did have to pay some element of fees, did have to work or bring up children whilst they went to university, and certainly haven't had anything like the cushy lifestyle these students seem to have.  Most people look at the protesting students and see people who are more privileged than them, not less. And they're right. I keep harping on about it, but it's a complete myth to claim that the "older generation" had their fees paid for them.  About 5-10% of the older generation had their university fees paid for them.  The other 90-95% didn't go to university. Even as university places have expanded, that's come at the price of people paying fees, doing part-time degrees, going back into study whilst having a family and holding down a part-time job.

Democracy and basic maths

Here's this weird argument I am hearing again and again that somehow, the current student riots are 'democratic' and the government are 'undemocratic'.So we have a poster on Labour List claiming that the government ' lacks democratic legitimacy ' which is funny because 59% of people voted for parties in the coalition and only 35% for the previous Labour government and I never heard anyone on Labour List call that government into question, even after Brown took over without an election.

Of course, this claim is made on the basis of the two parties not carrying out every detail in their manifesto - again, it's a coalition which entails compromise, and it's odd that it's the Lib Dems who get the flak for abandoning tuition fees whereas the Tories don't seem to be getting any flak for abandoning their inheritance tax proposals. And again, both parties have a very good reason for this - the coalition - whereas Labour's failure to enact a good number of their 97 manifesto proposals have nothing like the same justification, given they had a solid mandate from the voters to enact everything in it.

But apparently, regardless of all this, the government is undemocratic and the true keepers of the flame of democracy are...you guessed it, the NUS.

Direct action that is democratically conducted and organised by a mass movement can be empowering and liberating...the real challenge to this government comes from democracy and people taking control of their own lives in resisting this government's ideologically driven attacks.

Hmmm. Let's consider this. 77% of voters voted for parties who wanted to implement Browne.  That suggests there was a fairly strong democratic mandate to adopt it.  Let's also consider how many people are on the streets protesting. The first student protest was the largest and attracted 50,000 people.  Out of an electorate of 45 million people, that's just over 0.1%. Even if we accept that for every person who marches, 10 others felt the same but couldn't be bothered, that's still only just over 1% of the UK electorate. If we consider that a lot of the people marching were under 18, and either subtract them or therefore work it out as a percentage of the UK population, not just electorate, the percentage is even smaller. To put it into perspective, ONE HUNDRED TIMES as many people marched against the Iraq war.  ELEVEN TIMES as many people voted for the BNP in May.  I once worked in an area where I am pretty sure there were 50,000 people who would have marched on Parliament to get rid of all foreigners if they thought they had a chance of success. Is that democracy? What are these people on Labour List suggesting? That if 50,000 people march on an issue, the government should adopt it? That this is somehow democratic?

David Mitchell - not got a clue

Incredible article here by David Mitchell. I don't have a problem with non-professionals commenting on politics - obviously I don't, otherwise where would that leave me - but it would nice to think that if you get a comedian to write a serious article about politics he would try and do some research and make a logical argument. No such luck. First he says this:

One of the many problems with the proposals is that you need to examine them so carefully before you realise that they're not quite as awful as they initially seem. The fact that the vast amount of debt that students will accrue will only be repayable when they earn more than £21,000 a year and will be written off after 30 years of failing to do so elevates the scheme from an utter disgrace to a huge disappointment. .

At least, unlike most of the students, Mitchell has spotted that the scheme is not that awful. But then we get this:

But this scant silver lining is barely noticeable. Kids, especially from poorer backgrounds, will just see the giant cloud of future debt and infer that higher education isn't a welcome opportunity but a big financial gamble.

Quite frankly, if you aren't capable of researching the finance behind this scheme, you aren't bright or motivated enough to go to university.  As Mitchell points out in the previous bit of the paragraph, it's not a 'financial gamble' at all - if the gamble of uni education doesn't pay off, it's the state who will pick up the tab not you. And as I have pointed out before, what is more likely to put off kids?  This plan, or the absurd media hype surrounding it?

 Why have you abandoned a policy that would have alleviated such inequities, and on which you were elected, for one that worsens them?

There is no evidence that free higher ed alleviates inequities. It is a middle class susbidy. The people who have benefitted from the expansion of university places are the children of the middle classes. What is inequitable about rich kids being asked to fund their own education? What is equitable about the taxes of roadsweepers paying for the university education of the children of millionaires? The best bit, however, is this:

The student protests just might be demonstrating a growing political will to reform our higher education system, to have it paid for out of income tax. I think that would be fairer. 

David Mitchell thinks it would be fairer does he? Bless him!  Well if David Mitchell thinks it's fairer, we'd all better do it then. Never mind the fact that paying for higher ed out of income tax means dinner ladies subsidise investment bankers.  Never mind that, David Mitchell thinks it's fairer. Sod the evidence, sod the facts, sod doing any research, an Oxbridge educated comedian thinks he knows best.

Unbelievable.

Are tuition fees bad for poor kids? Or for wealthy kids?

I don’t think the tuition fees are what all the students are making them out to be. All this talking about how poor families will be affected by this – I don’t think that’s necessarily true because families don’t pay for the tuition fees, you pay for the tuition fees when you’ve got a job. 

Who said that? Nick Clegg? Vince Cable? David Willetts?  Doubtless if they had said it, the Guardian and co would be up in arms about their ‘patronising attitude’. But they didn’t say it. It was said by Shamima Blake, a rather wonderful 16 year old from East London who makes you hopeful for the future of this country. 

She was interviewed by Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight last Thursday (27:24 minutes in). Unfortunately, she was outnumbered by two whinging wealthy middle-class kids who admitted they thought it was OK for dinner ladies to subsidise their time in further education.  As Ms Blake went on to say ‘I’ve researched it...and I’m pretty fine with it.’ Fantastic stuff.

One problem with Paxman’s line of argument was that he did concede to the two anti-tuition fees students that it was 'unjust’ that his generation and Nick Clegg’s generation had got a free education but kids now didn’t. This is a common myth I hear going around. It is true that Paxman and Clegg got free higher education. It is not at all true that Paxman and Clegg’s generation got free higher education. A tiny percentage of their generation went to university. Everyone else went to work at 18 and paid their taxes. My mother, who is a part of that generation who didn’t go to university at 18, gets very angry when she hears people pushing this line, and rightly so.  She did go to university when she was older and paid all her fees.  So not only was she denied the chance of university at 18 because there were so few places, when she did eventually get to uni 20 years later she had to pay her fees, and now she has to listen to wealthy, spoilt 18 year olds with about a tenth of her intelligence lecture her about how ‘lucky’ she was and how she should therefore subsidise them. Of course, Paxman and the media and the student protestors don’t even know about people like my mum, or the 35% of UK undergrads who are part-timers and who currently don’t get any help with fees or living costs.   They don’t know about them because for all of the claims to the contrary, this is a protest by the spoilt and self-absorbed children of the middle classes. And this Newsnight debate shows that perfectly.

Another Labour MP denies his own hard work and intelligence

So yesterday we had Bridget Phillipson claiming that a large part of her success in life was down to a £20 a week government subsidy.

And now we have Andy Burnham trying something similar.

My passion in politics is raising aspiration for all. It was forged by the disorientating experience of going in the 1980s from a Merseyside comprehensive to Cambridge University. I spent my first two years fearing the tap on the shoulder and a polite request to leave. But, as I began to see past the façade of opinionated self-confidence, I realised just how unfairly we distribute life chances in this country. It’s still true today – postcode rather than potential determines where a child ends up. 

Hmm. So would Andy Burnham like to give a reason as for why he got in to Cambridge?  Was it all just a fluke? Or could it be down to the fact that he was bright and he worked bloody hard?  Could it also be down to the fact that however class-bound some of our institutions are, they do offer opportunities for those who are bright and work hard - opportunities that men and women in other societies would die for? What's interesting here is that Labour MPs are keen to suggest their success depends on Labour institutions - eg EMA - but very much less keen to suggest their success depends on other institutions - eg Cambridge university, its openness to bright pupils from all walks of life.

From what I can see, Burnham is slagging off the system that did him so well, and suggesting to bright kids that they can't succeed if they've got the wrong postcode. This is an extremely odd way to promote aspiration. How about he tours some of the tough inner city schools out there and tells the kids that if they knuckle under and work hard, they can succeed. I mean, it worked for him...

Browne and Higher Ed

As a Lib Dem, I am supposed to be outraged by the Browne plan to fund universities. Actually, I'm not.  His recommendations seem fairly innocuous to me.  As far as I can see, it’s a capped graduate tax. You don’t pay upfront, what you do pay bears a relation to the cost of your course, you only start paying back if you are earning enough. I can see how Lib Dem MPs who signed the pledge not to increase tuition fees are in an awkward situation. Personally, I felt it was a fairly risky pledge at the time, and not one that was particularly liberal or democratic.  This current scheme is much fairer than the current one or the previous no-fees one.I think it's reasonable to argue that it isn't an increase in fees, it's a capped graduate tax, but good luck getting any of the NUS hacks to listen to reason.

I think the policy of abolishing all tuition fees and having universities funded out of general taxation is misguided. It’s not progressive at all. What it means is that poor people who have never been to university end up subsidising three years of living costs for some of the wealthiest and most privileged people in society, and also pay for the tuition fees that will ensure that person earns more over their career than they could ever hope for.  True, all of society benefits from having university graduates whether we are graduates or not: but I believe most of the studies show that a great deal of the financial benefit of studying at university accrues to the graduate, so it is only fair to ask them to pay more.

Obviously, it’s true that Lib Dems campaigned on abolishing tuition fees,  and so a lot will come down to whether you see the implementation of Browne as being a tuition fee or a kind of capped graduate tax. That will matter a lot in people’s perceptions of whether the Lib Dems have sold out or not.  For me, the important thing is that we don’t end up with a system like America’s, where you have to pay colossal fees up front and then start paying them back mortgage style the month after you graduate. I think that really does penalise kids from poorer families.  This system will not do that.


One final thing - it's been said a lot that this system will make people think twice about going to university. Let us hope so. Let us hope that sixth form students really will think very carefully about whether a university degree is right for them, whether it really is worth the money, and which subject will be the best for them.  What would also be good was if this system would make students think twice about how they should spent their time once at university - reading books and going to seminars, or going out and getting drunk.

Yet more utter misrepresentations of coalition policy and Victorian Britain

I did a lot of Victorian Literature as part of my degree, and it really really annoys me when people utterly misunderstand the Victorians. So we have had Tristram Hunt telling us that cuts to housing benefit will bring back the Victorian workhouse.  And now we have the Guardian telling us that the Browne review will send us back to the days of Jude Fawley.  Utterly unbelievable. Have any of these people actually read any of these texts or studied the Victorians? Let's point out some of the differences between modern Britain and Victorian Britain.

1. The principle of 'less eligibility' in Victorian times meant workhouses had to semi-starve people: the principle of less eligibility now means living in Putney not Westminster.

2. The Victorians had workhouses. We don't and aren't bringing them back.

3. Jude Fawley couldn't go to university because there was no funding for poor people and no access to loans at all.  If Jude had been offered a university education on Browne's terms, HE WOULD HAVE JUMPED AT IT. If any university today were offered a working-class student of Jude's ability and motivation, THEY WOULD CHUCK SCHOLARSHIPS AT HIM. How many working-class kids now do you know who spend their pocket money on Greek and Latin classics and stay up all night teaching themselves Greek and Latin?

4. In Victorian times, poverty did have an impact on people's educational outcomes because they had to work full time from a very young age and they didn't have money for the most important educational resource - books. Everyone in this country gets a guaranteed free 11 years education, and a free two extra years if they meet some basic standards. Everyone also has access to free public libraries.  So modern poverty, such as it is, is completely different in its nature and effects from Victorian poverty.

5. Tristram Hunt refers to Betty Higden in Our Mutual Friend being petrified of the workhouse. I prefer Hardy's less sentimental, more ironic take on workhouses.  Perhaps we should bring them back...