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Post by Deleted on Sept 18, 2017 17:20:25 GMT
That we would regain control of etc etc. Not that it would be new money.
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Post by racingteatray on Sept 18, 2017 17:49:16 GMT
But neither Boris nor the UK Stats chap suggested it was new money?
Boris said the UK would be better off to the tune of £350m per week because that is the amount we send to the EU each week and implied that "a lot" of such saving could be spent on the NHS.
The UK Stats chap objected to Boris making factually inaccurate statements about the amount of money that the UK would save per week and therefore have available to spend on the NHS. That's because the UK doesn't actually send the EU £350m per week. The UK's famous rebate (the one Thatcher negotiated) is removed before any money is sent to the EU and that results in a net amount of around £252m per week (latest 2016 figure) that is actually sent.
Now I grant you that £252m per week is still a lot of money. But (a) it doesn't account for the money the EU sends back to the UK, for example on farming subsidies and grants for community projects and (b) it begs the question of why Boris didn't just save himself the bother by using the correct figure. Did he really need to gild the lily by saying £350m rather than £250m?
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Post by Deleted on Sept 19, 2017 2:20:02 GMT
The figures on the news interview stated that the £350M per week was the amount that could be allocated by the government rather than money taken by the EU and then sent back for specific uses. There is a difference but basically it can be reviewed in as many ways as there are political views/parties. I do insist on any partly having real ale rather than supermarket brand lager.
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Post by johnc on Sept 19, 2017 9:12:26 GMT
Net of everything that the EU subsidises in the UK I don't expect the UK to have a massive amount more to spend after Brexit. I think it is more likely to be in the region of £10m a week than £250m or £350m.
We not only have to fund the things the EU currently fund but we also have to staff up the Border Agency significantly (2,500 to 3,000 people from what I read yesterday) and beef up lots of other departments which currently have some dependency on the EU.
I had a meeting with a client yesterday who is a professor in a Scottish University and he says the University sector are very concerned. The number of Chinese students in particular has fallen massively since Brexit as have the applications from European students - he believes that there will be a funding crisis in the University sector because they rely heavily on fees from foreign students at the moment and with student loan interest being 6.1%, they are starting to see UK students take alternative routes to obtaining qualifications and numbers are down. English Universities are likely to be even harder hit because they have fees.
There are so many unknowns in this Brexit calculation but most of the known unknowns suggest that we aren't going to be awash with cash.
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Post by michael on Sept 19, 2017 9:32:51 GMT
I have a number of concerns about Brexit but the one lesson we all need to learn pretty damn quick, and the universities in particular, is how to do more with less. The academic sector has grown fat on overseas fees and some need to be allowed to fail as a result.
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Post by johnc on Sept 19, 2017 10:11:48 GMT
The academic sector has grown fat on overseas fees and some need to be allowed to fail as a result. I don't disagree with that at all but from a purely economic viewpoint, these foreign students pay millions into the education system, the rental market and to local shops and businesses. That money then makes those businesses more profitable and pays for the salaries of well paid lecturers who also spend money in the shops and businesses.
If you cut off the influx of money from outside the UK, then you remove that money from our economy, you reduce the profits of the businesses who benefit from the students being here and you put highly paid people out of a job.
The economy of a country is like the finances of a family: if you don't have money coming in from external sources, you very quickly have a problem.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 19, 2017 12:19:05 GMT
My own experience of the university system is not good. A series of lecturers for the same subjects/topics and each flogging their own books on the subject, marking papers was on the basis of the last lecturers books rather than an agreed set of core facts. Frankly the university system has been failing for some time, from personal observation rather than outside sources. When the university system is fixed it will encourage well off students/families from overseas just as it has in the past.
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Post by racingteatray on Sept 19, 2017 18:38:55 GMT
My own experience of the university system is not good. A series of lecturers for the same subjects/topics and each flogging their own books on the subject, marking papers was on the basis of the last lecturers books rather than an agreed set of core facts. Frankly the university system has been failing for some time, from personal observation rather than outside sources. When the university system is fixed it will encourage well off students/families from overseas just as it has in the past. I should think that it would be wrong to generalise from that. It would be like saying all NHS hospitals are awful because you've had a bad experience in your local one.
I have to say mine, which admittedly was nearly 20 years ago, was great and pretty rigorous.
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Post by alf on Sept 20, 2017 8:37:12 GMT
Boris can go on about his savings as much as he likes - but given how much less sterling is worth now compared to before the Brexit vote, he would need to get a net gain of something around a quarter or a third of total government spending before we are actually quids-in. And that's not going to happen...
Also, I wish he would stop banging on about the NHS - one of the areas of government spending that has been least affected by cuts since 2008. The whole thing is just woefully populist.
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Post by Alex on Sept 20, 2017 8:50:36 GMT
My own experience of the university system is not good. A series of lecturers for the same subjects/topics and each flogging their own books on the subject, marking papers was on the basis of the last lecturers books rather than an agreed set of core facts. Frankly the university system has been failing for some time, from personal observation rather than outside sources. When the university system is fixed it will encourage well off students/families from overseas just as it has in the past. I should think that it would be wrong to generalise from that. It would be like saying all NHS hospitals are awful because you've had a bad experience in your local one.
I have to say mine, which admittedly was nearly 20 years ago, was great and pretty rigorous.
It's very course dependent and is probably being bought more into focus now university fees are so high that students, understandably, want their money's worth. When I went to Royal Holloway to read Biology the level of contact time was excellent with whole mornings of lectures 5 days a week and lab in the afternoons, as well as access to the labs for our own research projects. I knew other students who were rather smug about how they effectively had a lie in each day and just the odd lecture or seminar here and there with which to grace their presence, but the fees were only £1300/annum back then. Those same students today will rightly complain that such little contact time represents pretty poor value for their £9000 fee. Whereas my course was pretty good value (not that I'm not glad I didn't have to pay £27000 in fees over the course of my degree!). A couple of years back my wife did her PGCE at Brighton and over the course of the academic year spent perhaps 2 months max at university and the rest working for free as a teacher on her placements, yet was still charged the full £9k for her trouble. It's the same for nursing where they too face a workload providing free labour to a hospital that is so stressful and intense that they have no time or energy to take paid employment, yet they still face the full fee each year of their course. Now the government have removed access to most bursaries for both teaching and nursing and they wonder why we have a massive shortage of trainees coming through the system! Still, at least we can fill the gaps in the NHS by enticing workers from our fellow EU countries. Oh, bugger...
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Post by racingteatray on Sept 20, 2017 10:15:02 GMT
Ah, perhaps it's a Science vs Arts thing. I am also a Biology graduate and equally had the whole mornings of lectures 5 days a week and lab in the afternoons. Whereas my brethren studying eg English or History seemed to never have any lectures and seemed to spend most of their study time in the library.
I am feeling old now - in my day, there were no fees at all!
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Post by PG on Sept 20, 2017 12:33:24 GMT
Ah, perhaps it's a Science vs Arts thing. I am also a Biology graduate and equally had the whole mornings of lectures 5 days a week and lab in the afternoons. Whereas my brethren studying eg English or History seemed to never have any lectures and seemed to spend most of their study time in the library. I am feeling old now - in my day, there were no fees at all! Same here - no fees for me. Although I always had the distinct impression that undergraduates were just an unfortunate necessity to fund the academic research areas. So the minimum contact time that could be got away with, was got away with. The whole higher education system just seems bonkers to me these days. Far too many people are being conned into paying £9k per year for a shitty degree in something useless from somewhere that nobody has heard of or takes seriously. Or like Alex said, being forced to pay for a degree that is actually socially useful or was never a degree before. Utter fucking madnes. Thank you Tony Blair, yet again.....
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Post by Alex on Sept 20, 2017 12:46:58 GMT
Well it was the Tories that increased the fees, which in many ways could have been raised to £9k or higher without problem had it been done correctly and suitable caveats put in place to stop universities from applying the full fee to all courses including vocational ones such as teaching and nursing. Instead they let ex-polytechnics charge the same for a management course as Cambridge do for Maths. You'd have to be bookers to perceive both to be of equal value!
They keep trying to hide the issue behind their insistence that the new student finance system means most graduates won't pay it back. So why charge the fees then? They also penalise students based on their parents income without considering whether the parents are in any way able to support their child. In the case I heard on R4 last week, one student who came from a low income single parent household had his maintenance grant slashed because his mum found and moved in with a new partner, whose income was now being taken into account as if he should have some responsibility for his girlfriends 21 yo son. Who makes up such daft rules?
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Post by michael on Sept 20, 2017 13:09:45 GMT
Well it was the Tories that increased the fees, which in many ways could have been raised to £9k or higher without problem had it been done correctly and suitable caveats put in place to stop universities from applying the full fee to all courses including vocational ones such as teaching and nursing. Instead they let ex-polytechnics charge the same for a management course as Cambridge do for Maths. You'd have to be bookers to perceive both to be of equal value! They keep trying to hide the issue behind their insistence that the new student finance system means most graduates won't pay it back. So why charge the fees then? They also penalise students based on their parents income without considering whether the parents are in any way able to support their child. In the case I heard on R4 last week, one student who came from a low income single parent household had his maintenance grant slashed because his mum found and moved in with a new partner, whose income was now being taken into account as if he should have some responsibility for his girlfriends 21 yo son. Who makes up such daft rules? I'm glad they did raise the fees, the tax payer can't be expected to subsidise what is quite often these days a lifestyle choice. I'm all for the government incentivising certain courses like nursing etc but the truth is if someone is stupid enough to pay £27k to do a degree in community drama at an ex-poly that's their problem. And I'm all for the new finance system. Most graduates won't pay it all back, they will contribute a fair amount, however.
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Post by Alex on Sept 21, 2017 7:45:03 GMT
I sort of agree and sort of don't. It's understandable not to want to subsidise the sort of degrees that are practically hobbies, however there is a lot of benefit to society to be had from the research that universities carry out and I'm happy for my taxes to contribute towards that, even if it does mean helping these institutions get a boost in income from offering less useful degrees.
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Post by michael on Sept 21, 2017 7:59:16 GMT
Off the top of my head I can tell you where of a university that employs three people with salaries combined to cost over £250k per annum that have produced no research work in 5 years. That's one example of the rampant waste in academia up and down the country. The sector is grossly inefficient and needs major scrutiny as the waste is scandalous. The argument that all university fees should be paid for is a joke where is the money coming from to pay for this, would you be happy to pay more tax or would you prefer the money to be taken out of other funds such as 'our NHS'?
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Post by Tim on Sept 21, 2017 10:52:16 GMT
Isn't a big part of this issue the perception that employers almost demand that shiny new employees have a degree. So relative under-achievers are rushing out to try and get one no matter how shit and irrelevant it is.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 21, 2017 11:04:56 GMT
I would like to see efficiency, improvements in standards and a cap on fees so that all fees are repaid rather than taxation paying the increased fees that is suggested few will ever pay and many will pay only a portion of. Academia has for a long time been puffing itself up and looking down its noses at the rest of us. One of my beefs was my first attempt to enter was refused because the university in question had decided I had not lived in this country long enough, something verified by the grants board. I was overseas with the Army and paying UK taxes every day. I have no idea if the course would have worked out for me or even if I would still be involved but the thinking of those in the system is my point. My father was a conservative party wet dream, a working class man who knew his place in society and that was in the dirt with a wealthy persons boot on his neck. He believed that those from working class backgrounds should not be in university but instead be manual workers, perhaps getting an apprenticeship at a pinch. Perhaps the reality is more access to NCVQ where modules can be added to gain equivalency to a degree at a lower cost but these people would have to be in work while doing so. My main qualification is Operating Theatre Technician, C&G No 752. We had an exam requirement of 75% for a bare pass (I got 97% and 99% for surgical and anaesthesia modules). Could the university system cope if the emphasis was changed? I think not, they are too used to the money and I noticed that these universities always go for the maximum fees possible when increases are announced. What will these lecturers do if there is such a change in emphasis? When I first had to leave my nhs work I attended a course (management) at the university of central England, it was a NCVQ type course with work place tenure which we had to find. Most places that suggested they were interested turned out to be looking for cheap lower order management roles and no interest in the course or going in to uni for lectures (as they were jokingly called, more like a bored person putting up a few ohp pages and suggesting a book to read, buy it in the uni shop...... Those companies interested were informed by the uni that EVERYONE in the course was a university graduate and I could not find a single one.
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Post by LandieMark on Oct 18, 2017 18:57:55 GMT
I don’t really do Twitter, but do have a look occasionally.
Unbelievable!
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Post by Bob Sacamano v2.0 on Oct 18, 2017 21:46:10 GMT
Surely you can be anti EU but not anti French? More thought before tweeting perhaps?
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Post by Tim on Oct 19, 2017 8:50:17 GMT
Surely if they feel that strongly about the EU (in general) they shouldn't've been spotted boarding a ferry bound for Europe? Perhaps it would be better if they spent their holidays £s at home somewhere.
Idiots.
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Post by Big Blue on Oct 19, 2017 9:19:46 GMT
You don't need to be anti-every-European-state to be anti EU. The premise is that the centralist issue of the EU politics is the problem.
I'm also not sure about the "you needed us in 1945" issue: no one in Dresden needed the UK in 1945 and it was the Russians that secured the defeats of Vienna and Berlin as part of an allied force.
Having followed social media in each of the past three general elections and the referendum vote I can assure you all that social media comments are written solely by fuckwits and the best barometer for prospective governments as to what to do once in power is to enact policy that is the polar opposite of the views expounded on social media.
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Post by LandieMark on Oct 19, 2017 9:41:41 GMT
You don't need to be anti-every-European-state to be anti EU. The premise is that the centralist issue of the EU politics is the problem. I'm also not sure about the "you needed us in 1945" issue: no one in Dresden needed the UK in 1945 and it was the Russians that secured the defeats of Vienna and Berlin as part of an allied force. Having followed social media in each of the past three general elections and the referendum vote I can assure you all that social media comments are written solely by fuckwits and the best barometer for prospective governments as to what to do once in power is to enact policy that is the polar opposite of the views expounded on social media. Yes, I try to avoid most political stuff on social media as it only tends to raise the blood pressure. There is a lot of vitriol and hate in politics from all sides at the moment which I find unnessessary.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 19, 2017 11:15:48 GMT
I believe that politicians basically want to stir up support for their own personal agenda. It is a pointless prattling to make it seem they are doing something worthwhile. I feel sorry for those who actually take any of this seriously but the EU guys are doing exactly the same. Bless.
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Post by racingteatray on Nov 14, 2017 14:15:04 GMT
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Post by Tim on Nov 14, 2017 15:14:40 GMT
He's always struck me as a slimy, self-serving tosser and nothing he does ever seems to change that view.
I wonder what financial advice he would give to Daily Mail reading type Brexit fans who are probably going to be among the worst hit.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 14, 2017 22:16:58 GMT
I was going to ask how these idiots get away with stuff like that, then I realise they are the same sort of scumbag. They continually starch my shorts.
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Post by michael on Dec 20, 2017 16:52:22 GMT
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Post by Tim on Dec 20, 2017 16:58:05 GMT
Absolutely no chance at all. Even if normal people and business were all for it the politicians have set a process in motion and there's no way they'll go back on it, they never do.
They might, however, fudge around the edges and try to come up with something that appeases their own voters, if there's enough feedack to suggest that might be a votewinner.
I see the EU are taking some action against Poland for some judicial reforms.
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Post by PG on Dec 23, 2017 9:47:52 GMT
Agreed - probably no chance. If the EU had agreed to limit freedom of movement, then the vote would possibly have gone the other way. But as the EU keep on saying that the four "freedoms" can't be split, I don't see them changing that now.
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