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timeasmymeasure
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no subject
Date: 2010-11-13 11:25 am (UTC)Need more cool technology news! I'm looking forward to seeing what on earth FB are announcing on Monday...
no subject
Date: 2010-11-13 01:32 pm (UTC)Not that exciting really if they're right.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-13 02:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-13 01:47 pm (UTC)So what they're saying is that the Lib Dems didn't plan to renege on their deal unless they were forced to form a coalition government which they already knew they would be forced to form?
Yep, definitely completely different.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-13 02:06 pm (UTC)I can't believe that the LD MPs have now promised to both vote against _and_ abstain on the same vote. Did they not read the document before agreeing to it?
no subject
Date: 2010-11-13 02:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-13 02:45 pm (UTC)I think a lot of my friends would like a liberal-left-ish party to vote for, and there just isn't one.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-13 02:48 pm (UTC)As far as I can tell they / Clegg has a sniff of power and promptly dumped whatever he could to make himself fly higher.
I will remember the Lib Dems from now on as the party that effectively ended the (almost) free further education we had in the UK.
Given that education must be one of the biggest drivers of reducing inequality, I suspect the policy decision Clegg has gone for will have one of the worst effects on equality in society in the long term. I feel a bit like I voted for someone that looked pretty good but got someone more like the devil in return.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-13 02:51 pm (UTC)It's not ideal by any means, but I don't feel that it's the apocalypse.
The basic problem, which nobody seems to be dealing with, is the percentage of the population going to university, and the fact that its purpose has changed significantly over the last half century.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-13 03:02 pm (UTC)University fees are likely to be 9-12K a year now. Plus some debt for living expenses means that many people will end up owing 40-45K by the time they leave university. ... and those loans aren't even like the current loans, they're going to be loans with above the rate of inflation interest.
I seriously question whether I would have gone to university had it been like that when I left college. I come from what you might call a "bottom of the middle class" sort of a household. I suspect there will be a lot of people in a worse situation that simply won't go at all. While the poorest will (apparently) be protected by not having to pay fees at all, those above that protection are unlikely to go.
I agree entirely that the underlying problem is that too many people are going to university. Clegg *could* have tried to deal with that problem if he'd wanted to, but instead he sold us all down the river.
As far as I'm concerned the LibDems are liars who shouldn't be trusted at all.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-13 03:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-13 03:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-13 03:31 pm (UTC)But I don't expect them to _get_ their election commitments when they're supplying 1/4 of a coalition. So I expect compromises in their direction (raising of the level of payback to 21k, etc.), but I didn't expect them to get fees removed.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-13 03:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-13 03:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-13 03:39 pm (UTC)They should have had another solution for dealing with the cost of education, like reducing the number of people who go to university.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-13 09:57 pm (UTC)Assuming the answer is no: How do you think they should determine which policies they should be prepared to concede on for the sake of getting which other policies into the coalition agreement?
no subject
Date: 2010-11-13 09:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-13 10:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-13 10:05 pm (UTC)Why must they enter in to a coalition? If they promise to do X and being a coalition means !X then they can just as well not join the coalition and vote in parliament according to what they promised they'd do when people voted for them.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-13 10:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-13 10:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-13 10:18 pm (UTC)But you said: "If they promise to do X and being a coalition means !X then they can just as well not join the coalition". Now given any two parties will have different manifestos, forming a coalition will have to mean abandoning some manifesto commitments in favour of others. (Figuring out which are the "less important" and the "more important" bits is one of the most interesting/terrifying parts of coalition negotiations.) But it's clear that forming a coalition will have to mean !X for some X or other in the manifesto (for all concerned parties). So your quote seems to imply you think parties should never form coalitions.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-13 03:51 pm (UTC)Untrue. That's what Browne psoposed, and what would've been implemented if either Labour or Conservatives had got an overall majority.
Due to LD pressure, they're now going to be £6K with a possible rise to £9k but there're sanctions on that rise.
Forced choice, you have no other option. Browne review in full, or what the Govt has eventually proposes.
I'm really pissed off about the fees reversal of policy, but...
If I was a Lib Dem MP, I know the choice would be to announce decision to stick to pledge, and have Tories decide policy thus implement Browne in full, or negotiate a much better deal, reneging on the pledge but reducing fees down.
Browne was tol dto expect 80% cut in Uni funding, the cut is instead to be 50%, negotiated by Vince Cable.
This has been handled incredibly badly, but that forced choice is pretty much where the MPs are at. I hate the result, but I think they're right to get the reduction.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-13 03:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-13 04:02 pm (UTC)But I suspect LAbour would broadly back it or abstain if the negotiations had been different.
Willets is a canny operator, if the LDs as a group had said "we'll abstain on this", he'd have worked with LAbour and got a cross-party agreement, which is what Browne was set up to be.
Would likely have been better for the LDs politically, but worse for students. Labour has a tendency to be oppositional for its own sake, but if approached in the right way it could've made them really look bad if they'd refused a consensus approach.
LD leadership has handled it very badly, especially on the PR front, but appears to have got a better deal than I thought possible without an LD overall majority.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-13 04:00 pm (UTC)You're not referring to when Willetts said universities will only be allowed to charge fees of £9,000 in "exceptional circumstances", which he said might mean if they had high teaching costs, or if a university was offering an intensive two-year course, are you?
There's no real protection in those statements at all. At best it means that all the best universities like Oxbridge will now be effectively denied to poorer people, and even that is unlikely as if you look at the details of what they have to do to be allowed to charge more than 6K it's actually not very much at all, so we should expect greater than 6K fees to be implemented at other universities as well.
I just don't buy the whole the Lib Dems are innocent they had no choice stuff that people are saying at the moment. They had lots of choices, they could have built this in to the coalition agreement, they could have gone for alternative solutions. Hell, it's not my job to come up with what their alternatives options were - if I vote for a party that promises X and as soon as they're in power (or in this case well before they were in power) they dump policy X and go for !X instead then they're lying bastards and that's all there is to it.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-13 04:09 pm (UTC)Yes, but at what other costs?
Getting fees into the agreement as per manifesto would've require giving up a massive chunk of other stuff. That's the whole 'political capital' thing in the Guardian Alexander memo.
We don't, and can't, know what would've had to be sacrificed instead for a Tory agreement on fees.
But fees wasn't a bottom line issue as per manifesto, whcih clearly set out the four key commitments, all of which are happening to a fairly large extent.
I don't like this result. But I voted for the coalition agreement at the special conference, knowing that the coalition agreement said words to the effect of "the govt will implement Browne in full and LDs can abstain". Instead, Browne isn't being implemented in full, a better deal has been struck on this issue.
I was, and remain overall, happy with the huge number of LD policies included in the coalition agreement; it includes one I helped write.
I don't like this. But getting a better deal on this would've required giving up a lot of other stuff. What is impossible to know, because it would be a massive "what if", but it would've almost certainly been a lot less good overall.
Especially given the relative bargaining powers of the two parties. LDs lost seats at the GE. Lots of people said they were going to vote LD, then changed their mind or simply didn't turn out.
Given that, the huge amount of the LD agenda that's in the coalition agreement is impressive. What of those policies would you, personally, take out in favour of the LD policy on fees?
no subject
Date: 2010-11-13 04:14 pm (UTC)They have done the exact opposite of what they promised before the election they would do. That makes them liars. The latest information from the Guardian suggests that they didn't even fight for their election commitment.
You can argue that they wouldn't have manage to get in to power or would have got in but would have had to sacrifice something else if you like, but none of that changes the fact that they lied and did something they had COMMITTED to not do.
(edit) Everything you said in your response is irrelevant as far as I'm concerned because of the sentence that immediately followed the one you quoted where I said "Hell, it's not my job to come up with what their alternatives options were - if I vote for a party that promises X and as soon as they're in power (or in this case well before they were in power) they dump policy X and go for !X instead then they're lying bastards and that's all there is to it."
no subject
Date: 2010-11-13 04:23 pm (UTC)However, the LD manifesto was what they'd do if they won an overall majority.
They didn't.
Many LD MPs are going to vote against the increase (at least 15 have said they will, publicly), thus keeping the pledge. Many more will abstain.
So they're not breaking the pledge to the NUS that they made. Thus they didn't lie.
Doesn't make the actual acheivement, of reducing fees significantly, any less important.
I would have signed the pledge. My candidate signed the pledge. If my candidate had won, the LDs would've formed an overall majority Govt, thus this conversation would be irrelevent. Having not won, well.
Seriously, if they hadn't acted as they had and stuck to the pledge fees would be even higher. By getting the best deal on the table, they've hurt themselves a lot more.
That's what's really pissing me off, it's a no win situation.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-13 04:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-13 04:30 pm (UTC)And yes, I agree. As does Clegg.
Should be presented as "if we win, we'll do X, otherwise we'll negotiate best deal on X". Which would be fair and more honest. And also what's actually happened.
Doesn't make the damage it's caused any less, or the number of pissed off activists and members reduced. I'm pissed about the whole thing, but I'm looking at it from all sides.
They could easily, still, stick to the pledge (it's not broken yet, no vote has taken place), but that'd mean the report in full would be worse.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-13 08:43 pm (UTC)http://robhu.livejournal.com/786972.html
no subject
Date: 2010-11-13 04:30 pm (UTC)When I voted for the LDs it wasn't on the basis that they'd do what they said they'd do if the won an overall majority, and otherwise they'd do something completely different. That's complete nonsense. There was no asterisk or small print giving them a get out clause allowing them to do whatever they pleased after I'd voted for them if they wanted to form a coalition government.
No lying involved? Right so this photo of Clegg pledging to vote against any increase in tution fees is an elaborate photoshop is it?
That 15 of 57 Lib Dem MPs have said they'll vote against is IRRELEVANT. The party leader in particular will not be voting against fees, and instead spends all his time stating not that he repents of his error in supporting fee rises but that he wishes he'd never signed the pledge in the first place!
no subject
Date: 2010-11-13 08:38 pm (UTC)http://www.cam.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/finance/support.html
tells you that they already have much more generous student support for poor applicants than other universities and it's almost certain they'll increase this substantially with the higher fees.
I went to Cambridge University in 1996, I received a government grant for part of my living expenses and a small amount of non-repayable direct help from my college. I am aware of a number of people from poorer backgrounds than my own (including at least one from single mother subsisting entirely on disability benefit) who received considerable additional financial help from the university. Since then the awards have become more generous, not less.
http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/univ/cambridgebursary/
Every Cambridge student with a household income of less than £25k this year will receive an additional bursary of £3400 this year with a decreasing scale for richer students. Some 2900 students this year will receive direct financial help from the university.
I'm afraid of the situation where poor but smart children have the choice of Oxbridge or nothing, because Oxbridge can afford to have them as students but no other university can assist them enough.
Poor children are denied access to Oxbridge because they are taught badly in terrible schools, and because misguided fools like yourself discourage them from applying due to some strange believe it's only for rich kids.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-13 08:49 pm (UTC)Excuse me, where did I state that university is only for rich kids? That's utter crap - I never said that, nor do I think that. Go build your strawman somewhere else.
Oh, and I'm glad to hear that you have the belief that they'll substantially increase the bursaries. It'd be nice to be basing our view of the future on things we know rather than things we'd like to believe - and it'd also be nice to have a future were poorer students aren't dependent on possibly getting bursaries at the universities that offer them.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-14 12:06 am (UTC)The evidence of the past ten years is pretty clear, every time the costs of education to students have risen Cambridge University has increased the size and number of bursaries available, and poor students there are significantly better funded than at any other university.
At the Alumni dinner in September this year, the Master of Clare certainly made it clear that they would be maintaining access and funding for poorer students and this would be the same across the University.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10288325
In the last 5 years the University has pulled in £1bn to spend on bursaries and scholarships.
So the evidence is, it has a stated aim of providing bursaries and scholarships to poor students, it's raised over £1bn extra to do so, it's consistently been increasing the level of funding for poor but smart students for the last ten to fifteen years.
Now the situation will be much worse at most other good universities in terms of total debt taken on by students. However, the timing of the repayments is also important - under the new scheme compared to mine in 1996 where tuition was paid for by taxation, I'd have been materially better off until the age of about 30 compared with my student loan repayments, despite borrowing five or six times more money overall. I'd be much worse off in my late 30s, but in my late 30s I won't be desperate for cash and can much more easily afford the repayments.
Incidentally, the chap on the left holding the pledge in that photo was my supervision partner at Cambridge. I'm going to be very interested to see how he votes.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-14 12:12 am (UTC)As I said before... in the best case your argument indicates that at Cambridge the poorest students are going to have less of a problem (although not all students are even going to KNOW about these bursaries and we DON'T know that they will be around in the future either).
It's not necessarily going to be the case in the future, true at Oxford, or (as you said) true of any other good university. So all my criticisms still stand, even if there's the possibility that IF THEY KNOW ABOUT THEM students applying to Cambridge are going to be less affected.
If the guy on the left (Julian Huppert, who I voted for) does not vote against tuition fees I will do whatever I can to get him out of his seat.
Liar
Date: 2010-11-13 08:07 pm (UTC)