[Tubby Isaacs]

Absolutely unbelievable. You might wonder which of the two is being abusive here.

[RedSparrows]

ANTY-BRITUSH

[Youngian]

Couldn’t Penny Mourdant have found a less emotional charged issue to pose as a serious technocratic politician?

[Youngian]

This reads like a tick box composition of everything the Tories despise

Ministers could limit student numbers on lower-earning arts degrees in England
The government is considering new plans to limit the number of students studying creative arts and other degrees with lower salary returns as part of its spending review negotiations, the Guardian has learned.

With outstanding student loans reaching £140bn last year, the Treasury is understood to be keen to reduce the number of students in England studying courses producing lower salaries and therefore less likely to pay back their loans. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2 ... rt-degrees

[Bones McCoy]

This reads like a tick box composition of everything the Tories despise

Ministers could limit student numbers on lower-earning arts degrees in England
The government is considering new plans to limit the number of students studying creative arts and other degrees with lower salary returns as part of its spending review negotiations, the Guardian has learned.

With outstanding student loans reaching £140bn last year, the Treasury is understood to be keen to reduce the number of students in England studying courses producing lower salaries and therefore less likely to pay back their loans. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2 ... rt-degrees

Not a jot of realisation that jacking fees up to 9K and funding it through loans might have created a bigger liability than the old system of grants.

[Youngian]

Didn’t George Osborne admit the proposal to hike fees to 9K was just bogus negotiating collateral with the Lib Dems? And couldn’t believe his luck when Clegg didn’t even raise it as an issue.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Not a jot of realisation that jacking fees up to 9K and funding it through loans might have created a bigger liability than the old system of grants.

It's not about economics, it's about ideology.

[Andy McDandy]

My understanding was that the old system (which I was one of the last to benefit from) was based on the understanding that funding higher education was an investment in society - we pay for people to go to university and become doctors, architects, librarians, teachers and a load of other things because when they graduate, their skills will serve us all. And on another level, the same for apprenticeships. Whatever the rights or wrongs of Blair's push for more people to go into HE, all I get from the government since 2010 is, as Malcolm says, ideological. University for a gilded elite, the sort of people who'd prefer a place to go to Toby Young than to a smart kid from a council estate.

[Tubby Isaacs]

My understanding was that the old system (which I was one of the last to benefit from) was based on the understanding that funding higher education was an investment in society - we pay for people to go to university and become doctors, architects, librarians, teachers and a load of other things because when they graduate, their skills will serve us all. And on another level, the same for apprenticeships. Whatever the rights or wrongs of Blair's push for more people to go into HE, all I get from the government since 2010 is, as Malcolm says, ideological. University for a gilded elite, the sort of people who'd prefer a place to go to Toby Young than to a smart kid from a council estate.

Blair's push was right, and accepted by the Cameron governments. Of course, Cable held the brief and could offer some sort of protection to universities, but had Cameron seen them as a fundamental battle ground, he'd have stuck in somebody like John Hayes to fuck Cable about. Instead, Cable had David Willets, who is pretty sensible. Then he put Jo Johnson in the job, also a sensible one, and May kept him on, despite her being more interested in vocational training than Cameron, and replaced him with Chris Skidmore, again relatively sensible.

It's only really Alex Johnson who's leveraged university to culture war properly. He had an odd phase where he put Jo Johnson back in, but he walked out.

[Youngian]

Heard John Hayes as a new skills minister give a speech at Congress House in 2010 on apprenticeships and the virtues of trade union participation. Most pro union speech I’d ever heard from a Tory MP and delegates assumed he was hangover from the Heath era. Looking back on it, Cable must have signed it off. Hayes would have had us all locked away given a chance.

[Crabcakes]

Apparently people at Westminster have been sounding out local councils about increasing restrictions. Rumour has it some form of lockdown (probably localised) being announced in 2 weeks...

[mattomac]

I wonder what they will call the lockdown this time.

[davidjay]

I wonder what they will call the lockdown this time.

Operation Save Santa.

[Boiler]

Don't give them ideas...

[Cyclist]

Nothing to see here. Move along.

The UK government has awarded a new £347m Covid-19 testing contract to Randox, the Tory-linked private healthcare company whose testing kits had to be recalled over the summer because of concerns about contamination.

The deal is a six-month extension of an existing contract and was agreed without other companies being invited to bid. It means the health secretary, Matt Hancock, has now approved transfers of nearly half a billion pounds in taxpayer funds to the Northern Ireland-based company since the pandemic began...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... d-contract

Just business, you know.

The disclosure raises fresh questions about Paterson’s continuing work for Randox, and the efficacy of the code of conduct for MPs, which is supposed to limit their work as paid lobbyists and regulate access to ministers.

“Legislators must not also be lobbyists,” said a spokesperson for the campaign group Transparency International.

The Green party MP Caroline Lucas said: “We urgently need an independent inquiry into where public money is going as many firms who have benefited seem to have links to the Tory party or individual ministers.

“The lack of transparency around Covid-related contracts is a scandal. At the very least, ministers owe MPs an explanation, and we are still not getting one.”..

Don't worry, be happy.

[RedSparrows]

Trying their best!!!!

That family at no. 4 are all cheaters and chancers, the scum!!

[Tubby Isaacs]

Paterson's pals have suddenly discovered a system "not fit for purpose". They're trying to turn the vote to confirm the report (which should be a formality) into a free vote.

A heavyweight jurist gets involved.

Iain Duncan Smith said the investigators’ report “shows this system is completely broken and has been for some time”. The former Conservative party leader told the Guardian: “The more I read the report, the more I became concerned and it backed up my view that we should abandon this process and go for a quasi-judicial one with QCs and judges.

“It’s currently a very bad process that doesn’t know if it’s a prosecutor or just an investigator and it gives MPs no chance of appeal. It is deeply unfair; it’s time that we reset this and brought it to a quasi-judicial process.”

Funny, nobody seemed confused by the process before. What's "quasi judicial" anyway? Sounds like he wants it done in court.

[Cyclist]

The sort of court where the judges are told the verdict in advance.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Star Chamber?

[Cyclist]

I was thinking of jumping marsupials actually. "On our side = innocent. Lab, Lib Dem, Green, SNP, Plaid Cymru etc = guilty".

Just like their Austrian poster-boy used to do.