Will hiking tuition fees up bring the house down?

I have tried so hard to get on board with the Coalition Government as a committed Lib Dem, but I cannot stomach Lord Browne's proposed changes.

It is simply wrong that the younger generation should be picking up the tab for the economic mistakes made by their elders.

Having just finished my Masters and still searching for a full time job, I haven't begun to pay back my student loan as yet, but the thought of it scares me regardless of my mother's insistence that I should just think of it as another job to tax. In my Uni days (2006-2009) I was faced with £3000 tuition fees in the final two years and about £3500-4000 on living costs. Now imagine your a student faced with £6000 or £12000 to pay each year and I defy you to honestly say that it wouldn't put you off going in the first place.

The idea, Lord Browne says, is to truly create a market in tuition fees in which fees are driven down by the need to compete. This ignores two facts:

1) Universities will believe that charging higher fees portrays them as more prestigious, fighting to keep up with Oxford and Cambridge, so they won't necessarily put fees at a lower level.

2) There is a vast over-subscription to University places in these tough economic times, and all the fee hike will succeed in is to scare off those whose parents have a lower income because they fear being burdened with such a heavy debt further down the debt.

3) Those who were not dissuaded from going would likely feel it necessary to take on lengthy hours in part time jobs to try and keep the use of their loan to a minimum, in the process likely damaging the final outcome of their degree.

When I applied to University, money was not a factor in my decision, having it any other way would be wrong.

Mike Baker (BBC) quotes Tony Blair who points out that USA frequently top international league tables because they are able to charge whatever price they like, but that doesn't make the approach right. Their education system, along with their health system and many others, merely results in massive inequality between those who have the means and those who don't.

Claims in Browne's report that Universities over £6000 will be 'scrutinised' is frankly laughable and is not comforting, perhaps the only positive thing in the report is the fact you don't have to pay back until you are owning over £21,000 a year. However, I still don't think this will prevent the less well off from being dissuaded, fearing starting their working life with £30000 in debt, climbing all the time as interest accrues.

True, education was singled out by the Economist as the one area in which New Labour definitely had not made a positive impact, but surely unlimited tuition fees could be a massive setback for social mobility?

I don't envy Lib Dems being whipped to within an inch of their lives on the measure, but if the final Bill remains in this form, I hope MPs have the courage to go against it (not just abstain), regardless of the risk to the coalition's future.

I've worked for Vince Cable and I am sure he will stand up against the report, time will tell where the fee ceiling will be set, but early reports are suggesting £7000 which is just too high, fingers crossed he will use his political nouse to reach a more acceptable compromise.

Apologies if that was a lot of ranting and not full of facts, I have a tendency of using this blog as a place to vent my political frustrations, I will try not to in future!

Climate Crazy

Being naturally inclined to optimisim, I am loath to write anything today since three stories which have left me feeling gloomy.... But here is an attempt anyway.

There was a time climate change was becoming something I was feeling rather sick of hearing about frankly - in my mind there was no question that we must act now to preserve not only our future but the future of those in other parts of the world who are already suffering from things like the effects of desertification.

Then something changed; a couple of actually unconnected emails from Climate Scientists at the University of East Anglia became all the amunition climate sceptics needed to excuse the human race of acting responsibly towards the environment. Given proper context these emails were nowhere near as damning as newspapers wanted to suggest, but the media ignored this and public opinion has been set back years.

Perhaps as a result, a series of disheartening stories keeps appearing:

1) Professor Lovelock - famed for his 'Gaia theories', said on the Today programme (31st March) that we cannot do anything to save our planet and so we might as well enjoy life whilst we can. He might not consider it like this, but regardless of climate change, this is fundamentally a rally call for continued reliance on oil ignoring the environmental impacts of draining our earth dry, causing animals to become extinct.

2) Jon Holmes - This was not even a story, it was part of a throwaway speech on BBC Radio Four's Now Show. His totally unbalanced and cynical account of climate change and his declaration that we should do nothing about it riled me to the point of activism. OK, so it is perhaps a rather pathetic form of activism in that it involves boycotting the Now Show as well as Holmes's 6 Music programme (which actually until this point I had become rather fond of), and also writing into the show to point out the fundamental lack of balance in what Holmes said.

3) Barack Obama - this last story was the announcement that drilling of oil will be permitted off the U.S. coast, apart from the protected area in Alaska. This was an apparent capitulation to lobbyists in return for their cooperation on a climate deal in Congress, at the cost of many miles of coastline and probably many animal species too.

Before I bore you please take this shocking stat into account before you decide not to act too: a Select Committee report has received evidence showing that up to 50,000 people die prematurely in Britain because of the effects of air pollution, that includes 8,000 in London alone. Besides the huge increase in asthma cases, such pollution has links to chronic bronchitis, heart disease and even cancer.

So, I am not asking you to subscribe to the impending doom scenario to want to act - it remains a fact however that we are using up our resources, destroying our rainforests, causing our children to die early as they inhale fumes, making life even more difficult for poor communities, killing off animal species that can never be brought back to life.
If these are not reasons to act, then I do not know what is.

David Cameron: Losing the Plot Over Gay Rights

Flustered, red faced, even confused, David Cameron in his interview with the Gay Times, intended to show the Tories have move forward on the issue on the homosexuality, but the leader made such a hash of the questions he came close to stopping the interview altogether.

David Cameron stated that he would like free votes for MEPs and MPs on matters of human rights where possible, but then stumbled when interviewer Martin Popplewell pointed out that this did not with square up with his declared commitment to homosexuality as a fundamental human right. Realising that he should have said MPs would be required to vote according to the party line, Mr. Cameron looked down at the floor and conceded:

"Do you know... can we stop for a second, I really want to answerthese questions... either can we do a TV interview or a press interview. I would almost like to start from scratch."

In the end, after a short break to compose himself, Mr. Cameron was able to carry on, however Ben Bradshaw, Labour Minister for Culture, Media and Sport wasted no time in labelling the mistake as a "gaffe".

The whole debacle started when the interviewer probed the Conservative leader on a vote in the European Parliament, in which his Conservative MEPs voted against a resolution condemning a Lithuanian law, which is widely seen as deeply homophobic.

Not only is this cited as pointing to a flawed party modernisation process, some speculate that that MEPs' vote could have been influenced by the Conservative's partners in the 'European Conservatives and Reformists' group' in the EU Parliament, a group which includes ultra-conservative parties. David Cameron received much flak for joining up with parties, like the Latvian party 'For Fatherland and Freedom' seen by most of Europe as extreme. It appears his decision to align with them will repeatedly come back to bite him.

Too hung up on a hung parliament!

(c) Liberal Democrats

Hung Parliament- the buzz word of the decade so far (okay so we've only had three months of 2010) has been discussed to death by the newspapers, to the extent that even after doing in depth interviews with just about every publication, Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg always finds next day's headline describing him as 'kingmaker' or repeating that the party will not accept cabinet positions.

Nick Clegg is in danger of becoming entirely one dimensional - even the politically engaged are unlikely to remember the four key Lib Dem policies given the obsessive attention the prospect of a Hung Parliament brings - Vince Cable even told businesses off for panicking on the Andrew Marr Show when the stock market went shaky with the prospect of an unstable government.


Strategy formulation from here on in will not be an easy, on the one hand they could consider it a bonus to receive coverage of their leader at all considering the struggle which the Lib Dems normally go through to gain enough publicity so that people at least know who the leader is. However, it would be better for Clegg to try and carve out some other policy area to champion - much like Vince has managed to do, being the politician all the broadcasters turn to on the subject of the economy.


Education could be the key - at the moment lazy journalism suggests that their policy is the same as the Tories, but actually the idea of free schools is rejected by the party. My gut feeling is that investment in education is absolutely vital to the future of this nation, if we fail to educate the future generation then our economy will suffer badly as a result - other countries are taking this view could be all the better for it. The idea of a pupil premium for disadvantaged children is promising, but he needs to go further - for example, the proposals to cut huge amounts of funding to Universities should NOT be supported by the party.


The manifesto will of course be the test in terms of more detailed policy, the televised debates could be a great wild card in his favour, but to give the party a unique selling point during the 'phoney war' before the campaign proper begins, at his Conference speech and beyond, education should be key message coming from the leader.

Commons Adventure

(c) isafmedia

Venturing off to Portcullis House in Parliament tomorrow to report on the Foreign Affairs Select Committee will be an interesting experience - Foreign Secretary David Miliband will be appearing before the committee for one thing.

Moreover, the official topics are Afghanistan and Pakistan, clearly contentious issues with a large-scale offensive in process in the former and the American use of unmanned drones in the latter.

However, it seems inevitable that the issue of security services involvement in torture allegations concerning Binyam Mohammed is bound to sneak onto the agenda, especially considering Mr. Miliband's determined fight to keep the allegations out of the final court judgement.

The Foreign Secretary's reaction to the alleged Mossad assassination of top Hamas figure Mahmoud al-Mabhouh is also likely to be a touchy subject.

I will report back with my findings as soon as possible.


**Update March 2010:

(c) Foreign and Commonwealth Office

Well, as much I enjoyed my Portcullis House jaunt it did not yield immediate revelations, however there might be one in the offing depending on the results of my Freedom of Information application (see below).

The Committee

The allegations concerning Mossad as well as torture of Binyam Mohammed were firmly off the agenda, instead Afghanistan dominated prcoeedings - the foreign secretary even pressed the committee to move on to Pakistan before they ran out of time.

Former Liberal Democrat Leader Sir Menzies (pronounced 'Ming' just in case you wondered) Campbell was pretty tough in his questioning, particularly on the subject of the Independent Election Commission of Afghanistan. Shortly before the Committee meeting, the press was reporting that President Karzai had announced the installation of three people of his own choosing on the Commission (previously composed of international, independent individuals) raising fears that the President was once again making a mockery of efforts to remove corruption from government by inserting three stooges on the election panel.

Aside: Something which worried me a bit was the fact that the vast majority of questioners were addressing subjects starting by saying 'it has appeared in the press that...', maybe I ask too much but I would prefer if more of the questions, like those of Andrew MacKinlay (Labour) seemed to be chosen as a result of their own research as to what they believe to be important.

Andrew MacKinlay raised perhaps the most intriguing question of the session of the subject of the Kajaki Dam. Mr. Miliband appeared less assured on the subject, asking to be able to write to the committee with details to make sure that he did not miss anything out. When pressed he outlined the mission as follows (parts in brackets are details I have discovered subsequently):

- In Autumn 2008, 2,500+ mainly British troops carried out an intensive mission to transport a giant turbine to Kajaki dam for the purpose of producing more electricity to the surrounding area (which at the time operated rolling black outs due to insufficient electrcity).

- The time consuming operation was successful, but to no avail as the Chinese contractor due to install the turbine pulled out (because of threats made to the lives of its employees by insurgents should they go ahead).

- As a result, in December 2009, the US (who funded the project) announced the abandonment of the mission because the supplies necessary to install the dam could not be brought to the site, and so the turbine was dissassembled.


There was according to MacKinlay an accusation that the military at this point 'took its foot off the accelerator' in the war in Afghanistan, but Mr. Miliband could not say who was responsible for the decisions that led to this unfortunate failure. I believe that there could be more to this story than meets the eye, so I have submitted a Freedom of Information request in the hope of uncovering some more information, who knows I might even get a scoop...