The 2015 General Election

[rjenkins]

Economic Left/Right: -3.13

Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.05

It's funny to see how these things change over time. I'm becoming less left wing but more libertarian as I get older it seems.

 

Based on the positions plotted for UK parties on the site, however, I'm still out of whack with most mainstream political parties.

[tonyh29]

Ed Miliband seems to be trying to draw students away from the Green vote by offering them a bribe with a reduction in tuition fees.

 

Trying to bribe young people out of their idealism has the sulphurous stink of Faust about it, and reveals Miliband as the cynical centre-right phoney we suspect him to be.

 

No one was surprised when Thatcher was bribing voters to ditch their class allegiances for the right to buy their council house, because she was obviously an adherent of Adam Smith's view of human nature, but surely a Labour leader must have different values than that, to have any credence? 

 

I was under the impression that the Universities themselves were against this move

 

but Ed sees votes in it so onto the back of the fag packet  , sorry I mean manifesto , it goes

[tonyh29]

 

Ed Miliband seems to be trying to draw students away from the Green vote by offering them a bribe with a reduction in tuition fees.

 

Trying to bribe young people out of their idealism has the sulphurous stink of Faust about it, and reveals Miliband as the cynical centre-right phoney we suspect him to be.

 

No one was surprised when Thatcher was bribing voters to ditch their class allegiances for the right to buy their council house, because she was obviously an adherent of Adam Smith's view of human nature, but surely a Labour leader must have different values than that, to have any credence? 

 

I'm sure if the tories were offering a reduction in tuituion fees you wouldn't be so cynical

 

 

 

[markavfc40]

Coming from the "ahhhhh but" master that is high praise indeed. I'd screenshot it and frame it Villaajax.

 

 

Edited February 28, 2015 by markavfc40

[chrisp65]

oh I see now, I read it as lego rocket polisher, and presumed he was having a pop at someone post on poster stylee.

Edited February 28, 2015 by chrisp65

[tonyh29]

Coming from the "ahhhhh but" master that is high praise indeed. I'd screenshot it and frame it Villaajax.

My hypocrisy jpg had worn out so I thought I'd give it a well earned holiday and go with a new image

But It's well documented the posters who moan about ahh but ... And then use exactly that argument in their replies , always a source of great amusement in my eyes ( I'm easily amused )

[villaajax]

Coming from the "ahhhhh but" master that is high praise indeed. I'd screenshot it and frame it Villaajax.

 

 

 

Have done

Anyway, it's not really one of Tony's famous 'ahh but' arguments.

[villaajax]

 

Coming from the "ahhhhh but" master that is high praise indeed. I'd screenshot it and frame it Villaajax.

My hypocrisy jpg had worn out so I thought I'd give it a well earned holiday and go with a new image

But It's well documented the posters who moan about ahh but ... And then use exactly that argument in their replies , always a source of great amusement in my eyes ( I'm easily amused )

 

 

Come to think of it, isn't that an 'ahh but' argument in itself? Can't help yourself can you

[tonyh29]

Coming from the "ahhhhh but" master that is high praise indeed. I'd screenshot it and frame it Villaajax.

My hypocrisy jpg had worn out so I thought I'd give it a well earned holiday and go with a new image

But It's well documented the posters who moan about ahh but ... And then use exactly that argument in their replies , always a source of great amusement in my eyes ( I'm easily amused )

Come to think of it, isn't that an 'ahh but' argument in itself? Can't help yourself can you

My next post will be closer to Argo

[MakemineVanilla]

It is an interesting fact that if women didn't have the vote, there wouldn't have been a Conservative government between 1945 and 1979.

 

This is surprising because as women were the biggest beneficiaries of the creation of the NHS, they as a group generally voted against it.

 

Those who analyse voting behaviour say that women prefer stability over change and that they identify more strongly with the middle-classes, compared with men.

 

Women are the majority and so taking into account the above factors, it very much looks as if, despite their pink bus campaign, Labour are likely to struggle to attract the female votes.

[mjmooney]

My mother - a working class woman - voted Conservative almost all her life. Her logic? The Tories were more 'respectable', Labour were 'common'. I think she secretly thought that voting for them somehow made her more middle class. Drove my (socialist) Dad round the bend.

[CarewsEyebrowDesigner]

So polls seem to be predicting Tories with most seats but not enough to form a government, and not enough support (Lib Dems demolished, UKIP negligible, DUP not enough) to form a coalition, whereas Labour could pull together enough thanks to the SNP's 50 seats.

 

Fun times.

[bickster]

Ed Miliband seems to be trying to draw students away from the Green vote by offering them a bribe with a reduction in tuition fees.

 

Trying to bribe young people out of their idealism has the sulphurous stink of Faust about it, and reveals Miliband as the cynical centre-right phoney we suspect him to be.

 

No one was surprised when Thatcher was bribing voters to ditch their class allegiances for the right to buy their council house, because she was obviously an adherent of Adam Smith's view of human nature, but surely a Labour leader must have different values than that, to have any credence?

 

I was under the impression that the Universities themselves were against this move

 

but Ed sees votes in it so onto the back of the fag packet  , sorry I mean manifesto , it goes

I don't really see what business it is of the Universities how their students have to pay for their education. Unless of course Universities have become businesses in the main and are concerned that making the government pay some of the vastly overpriced tuition fees might mean its less easy to put up those vastly inflated tuition fees. In other news turkeys still don't vote for xmas

And before anyone says otherwise, of course the tuition fees are vastly inflated otherwise how come a degree from a top university costs the same as a degree from scumbag towers university? How come they all charge the maximum? The universities opinion isn't particularly valid on how much money the government give to students

[mjmooney]

 

 

Ed Miliband seems to be trying to draw students away from the Green vote by offering them a bribe with a reduction in tuition fees.

 

Trying to bribe young people out of their idealism has the sulphurous stink of Faust about it, and reveals Miliband as the cynical centre-right phoney we suspect him to be.

 

No one was surprised when Thatcher was bribing voters to ditch their class allegiances for the right to buy their council house, because she was obviously an adherent of Adam Smith's view of human nature, but surely a Labour leader must have different values than that, to have any credence?

 

I was under the impression that the Universities themselves were against this move

 

but Ed sees votes in it so onto the back of the fag packet  , sorry I mean manifesto , it goes

 

I don't really see what business it is of the Universities how their students have to pay for their education. Unless of course Universities have become businesses in the main and are concerned that making the government pay some of the vastly overpriced tuition fees might mean its less easy to put up those vastly inflated tuition fees. In other news turkeys still don't vote for xmas

And before anyone says otherwise, of course the tuition fees are vastly inflated otherwise how come a degree from a top university costs the same as a degree from scumbag towers university? How come they all charge the maximum? The universities opinion isn't particularly valid on how much money the government give to students

 

 

I was party to some of the anguished debate about how much to charge. It was all mind games. The thought process went something along the lines of: "If we set fees too low it looks like we're admitting we're a second rate institution, and we'll lose applications. On the other hand, if we set them high, students might think 'Why should I pay that to go to Broadford [1], when for the same price I could go to a proper university?' Maybe we should go in just under the maximum, and hope we can undercut our local rivals?" 

 

Everybody had to declare on the same day, with a 'sealed envelope', so it was like a gigantic game of rock/paper/scissors. In the end, almost everybody went for the maximum. Total joke. 

 

[1] Names have been changed to avoid libel charges.  

[blandy]

I don't really see what business it is of the Universities how their students have to pay for their education. Unless of course Universities have become businesses in the main and are concerned that making the government pay some of the vastly overpriced tuition fees might mean its less easy to put up those vastly inflated tuition fees. In other news turkeys still don't vote for xmas

And before anyone says otherwise, of course the tuition fees are vastly inflated otherwise how come a degree from a top university costs the same as a degree from scumbag towers university? How come they all charge the maximum? The universities opinion isn't particularly valid on how much money the government give to students

Many Uni's have become businesses. As to why that is so, there are various reasons, aren't there, but mainly due to government(s)? In some respects it's good thing that for example where Uni research leads to inventions, discoveries and the like, they are able to make the benefit from that and ideally use the funds to further improve their facilities for science and engineering.

 

I think they were driven to commercialise, as a means of reducing costs to the taxpayer. And they didn't just commercialise, they often went into partnerships with Business. Again, not necessarily a bad thing - as a means of joining up the different elements of the nation it's reasonable, and it also provides a path for (say) chemistry students to go to work for ICI or Astra Zeneca or whoever, and to gain placement experience and all that.

 

The difficulty is if the situation becomes one where the Uni's are just a branch of a particular company and stop being at their core, a learning establishment.

 

In many instances the tuition fees nowhere near cover the cost of the course. Particularly with the "proper" courses in Science, medicine, Engineering and similar.

 

I do feel the current system isn't working - not only do the majority of loans never get repaid (I read it's something like 70% don't), but despite more and more people going to Uni compared to say 20 years ago, the number of British graduates in the highly skilled areas is falling away. A heck of a lot of the students in the high knowledge areas are now overseas students, meaning the UK skill base is declining and the advantages we had in Engineering for example are being exported.

 

For example there's a programme called HITEA - Highly Innovative Technology Enablers for Aerospace - which is a partenrship between industry and Academia to come up with stuff like next generation air traffic control, radars and so on - stuff that is proper innovation and technically challenging and all that. The people who came to our place last week from Liverpool Uni were (all) Chinese students there. It's totally typical, as well. In fields like Electromagnetic modelling and the like, most of the people who go to conferences and that are no longer British. We're exporting our knowledge, and much of that is down to the way it's all funded and run at Uni level.

 

Good Uni's attract people from all over the world. There are enough wealthy people to send their Kids there, and because the Unis can "make more money" from them, they get the places, and double that effect with UK people not wanting to take on debt to pay for 3 or 4 years education.

 

There needs to be a different way of paying for it. I do think the students should pay, but I think a tax is a much better way of doing it. If you are educated at a British university, then for the rest of your life, you pay a (say) 1% additional tax on your income, on all income over the (say) average wage, or (say) the living wage.

[MakemineVanilla]

Advocates of the free-market make the case that when governments give a blank cheque to universities by promising to underwrite any losses, then universities will put their fees up because they carry very little risk.

 

As a result graduates end up with massive debts they don't pay back.

 

Student debt stands at $1.2 trillion dollars in America.

 

The problem with Miliband's idea is that it looks designed so that students who take vocational degrees, which lead to higher paid jobs, will end up not only paying their own debts, but then also having to pay higher taxes to finance the lower fees of those taking degrees which do not lead to high paid employment.

[villaajax]

So polls seem to be predicting Tories with most seats but not enough to form a government, and not enough support (Lib Dems demolished, UKIP negligible, DUP not enough) to form a coalition, whereas Labour could pull together enough thanks to the SNP's 50 seats.

 

Fun times.

 

Most polls indicate a Labour lead with them having the most seats, yet short of a majority.

[bickster]

Oh and here's my political compass.

Economic Left/Right: -8.75

Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -8.51at grid thingy

Nearly bottom left corner on that graph thingy

I imagine most people are below the centre line on the Authoritarian / Libertarian axis, interestingly all the big parties are above it by some distance yet people don't seem to be aware of how all the big parties want to erode your liberties

[CarewsEyebrowDesigner]

Well it isn't terribly in depth. I'd imagine I'd be further up the axis if they asked what a government should do rather than shouldn't.

[Awol]

Econ' L/R: -4.88

Soc' Lib/Au': -3.59

Just NNE of the Green Party on the chart.

I haven't been drinking so I reckon the site is broken.

Edited March 1, 2015 by Awol