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Riots on the streets of London

Elind said:
And if the kitty is going empty? They should stand by them how?

Did you miss the little suggestion that comes under the heading of financial accounting?
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I'm not so sure the financial arguement for raising tuition fees is perfectly viable. Sure, the UK needs to at least keep up with other rich countries' education standards, but i'm not sure I understand the pressing need to have the most expensive public universities in the world.
 
Here's the thread about the Higher Education review that produced the policy, incidentally.

It's one of a few prominent policy initiatives that are progressive in a redistributional sense (relative to the status quo) but which nonetheless produces wrong-headed ire from left and right.
 
Francesca R said:
Sure. The party that pledged to scrap fees changed its mind.
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Snigger. All that such 'changes of mind' are going to do is create even more mistrust and distance between the people and their representatives, and thus be damaging to the democratic system as a whole.

If I enter your home based on the promise that I'll paint your dining room white, and when you get home from work I've painted it orange, you'd probably be unimpressed at my defence that I'd simply 'changed my mind'.
You'd then have every right to call me a liar, tell me to **** off, and never employ me again.
 
Francesca R said:
Here's the thread about the Higher Education review that produced the policy, incidentally.

It's one of a few prominent policy initiatives that are progressive in a redistributional sense (relative to the status quo) but which nonetheless produces wrong-headed ire from left and right.
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What makes the policy more progressive than the previous one?
 
richardm said:
Incidentally, the riot is now over; police declared Millbank to be a lecture and the place was cleared of students within ten minutes.
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The whole thing is a disgrace it would never have happened when I was a student. We would have caught the protest bus from the student union then on arrival would have hit the pubs in the west end or done the Monopoly pub crawl. No-one would have actually attended the rally.
 
stokes234 said:
What makes the policy more progressive than the previous one?
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Less transfer of income from non-graduates to graduates (who end up, on average, 50% richer).

Zero tuition fees are, conversely, more regressive than the present (Labour implemented) regime.
 
plumjam said:
Snigger. All that such 'changes of mind' are going to do is create even more mistrust and distance between the people and their representatives, and thus be damaging to the democratic system as a whole.
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Perhaps true. I will feel a bit sorry for the LibDems if their fall in popularity becomes permanent (not least because I voted for them), but it was a silly pledge to have made because neither the Tories nor Labour would have granted it to them IMO.

ETA--In other words, no LibDem voter should really be surprised that any scenario with the party in power would almost inevitably involve losing that pledge.
 
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Francesca R said:
Less transfer of income from non-graduates to graduates (who end up, on average, 50% richer).

Zero tuition fees are, conversely, more regressive than the present (Labour implemented) regime.
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That's a particularly reductionist view. You left out the part where the non-graduates benefit hugely from having a large supply of graduates in their country. You also extrapolated from 50% higher wages to 50% richer which fails to take into account graded income tax, but I see your point. We had the same debate in a previous thread so I won't press the issue, I just wanted to hear your reasoning.
 
Francesca R said:
Perhaps true. I will feel a bit sorry for the LibDems if their fall in popularity becomes permanent (not least because I voted for them), but it was a silly pledge to have made because neither the Tories nor Labour would have granted it to them IMO.

ETA--In other words, no LibDem voter should really be surprised that any scenario with the party in power would almost inevitably involve losing that pledge.
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Which of the libdem pledges have they been able to keep?
 
stokes234 said:
That's a particularly reductionist view. You left out the part where the non-graduates benefit hugely from having a large supply of graduates in their country.
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Sure its reductionist (what analysis isn't?). But I think you'd be hard pushed to show that the benefit you mention is worth more to the non-graduate than the benefit of higher individual earning power is worth to the graduate.

So based on (i) relative benefit received and (ii) ability to pay, the cost should be mostly borne by the graduate. This is all fully consistent with distributional equity.

You also extrapolated from 50% higher wages to 50% richer which fails to take into account graded income tax, but I see your point.
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Progressive tax rates would be the same under any of the policy alternatives (absent the brief flirtation with graduate-only tax) so this falls out of the comparison.
 
Francesca R said:
Perhaps true. I will feel a bit sorry for the LibDems if their fall in popularity becomes permanent (not least because I voted for them), but it was a silly pledge to have made because neither the Tories nor Labour would have granted it to them IMO.

ETA--In other words, no LibDem voter should really be surprised that any scenario with the party in power would almost inevitably involve losing that pledge.
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So pre-election pledges, policies, manifestos are essentially worthless once the election has taken place.

In a round-about way, what the rioters are doing is attempting to make such things not worthless, and thereby retain some public trust in the democratic process. IMO they should be applauded.
 
plumjam said:
So pre-election pledges, policies, manifestos are essentially worthless once the election has taken place.
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That's a particularly reductionist view . . .

In a round-about way, what the rioters are doing is attempting to make such things not worthless, and thereby retain some public trust in the democratic process. IMO they should be applauded.
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Good to know where you stand. (In Spain, right?)
 
Francesca R said:
Sure its reductionist (what analysis isn't?). But I think you'd be hard pushed to show that the benefit you mention is worth more to the non-graduate than the benefit of higher individual earning power is worth to the graduate.

So based on (i) relative benefit received and (ii) ability to pay, the cost should be mostly borne by the graduate. This is all fully consistent with distributional equity.
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Well, it would be an extremely complex equation, but other factors that should be taken into account are the increased equality that results from increased social mobility, that itself results from potential income being unrelated to economic background. Lower tuition fees prevent economic background being a factor in university attendance and university choice, because (however irrational you claim it is), poorer people are less inclined to accept debt that richer people. Since increased equality is linked with lower crime rates and higher levels of happiness, you can argue that in this way, lower tuition fees benefit non-graduates.

Francesca R said:
Progressive tax rates would be the same under any of the policy alternatives (absent the brief flirtation with graduate-only tax) so this falls out of the comparison.
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It doesn't "fall out of the comparison" because there was no comparison between different tuition fee levels. You said that having a 50% higher wage makes you 50% richer, which was wrong, and I was pointing that out.
 
Francesca R said:
That's a particularly reductionist view . . .
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Maybe you're confusing me with a previous interlocutor.

Good to know where you stand. (In Spain, right?)
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Why would that have anything to do with anything?
And, not that it matters, but not only am I a British citizen, who will be returning to the UK, I also have nephews who, if this policy takes hold, will have to live with decades of indebtedness and interest payments in their adult lives.

But, being a City type, I'm sure that's all grist to your mill, debt and interest being what your ilk live on and grow rich from.
See, this is not just about education, it is about the financial powers-that-be trying to get about half of the future population of the UK even further mired in their debt/interest systems.

My name's still Ben Elton, goodnight.
 
It would be easier to sympathise if I didn't know the kind of people who do this. Self-righteous middle class Lib Dem voters (why no smashing up of Lib Dem HQ?) who compare Israel to an apartheid state. Overgeneralisation? Perhaps, but I'd bet plenty on a substantial amount of that number being as I described. Protests aren't what they used to be. Where are the kind of people who marched for civil rights in the states? Why has the suit been replaced by clothes deliberately bought in the North Lanes? Their cause is worthy, but their PR is just terrible. Part of the reason the cause of Socialism has stagnated in this country is because it has been seen as Galloway socialism: noisy, unpleasent, rude. Attlee Socialism needs to be restored. Briefcases, civil expression, respect.
 
The problem with organising middling to large public demos, like this one, is that there exists a small group of parasites who attach themselves to such demos with the specific objective of causing this type of trouble which gets more headlines and column inches than the actual demo itself. Those involved are well organised and have their own agenda and ideology in which this type of action makes sense. To most of the rest of us it just plays into the hands of the establishment and sets back whatever cause the demo was about.

Steve
 
stokes234 said:
Well, it would be an extremely complex equation, but other factors that should be taken into account are the increased equality that results from increased social mobility, that itself results from potential income being unrelated to economic background. Lower tuition fees prevent economic background being a factor in university attendance and university choice, because (however irrational you claim it is), poorer people are less inclined to accept debt that richer people.
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Adequately covered in the other thread, I think.

Since increased equality is linked with lower crime rates and higher levels of happiness, you can argue that in this way, lower tuition fees benefit non-graduates
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This sounds like a reference to the informative but nonetheless challengable "Spirit Level" analysis that powers the Equality Trust. Here is a related thread, it's getting too off-topic here IMO.

It doesn't "fall out of the comparison" because there was no comparison between different tuition fee levels. You said that having a 50% higher wage makes you 50% richer, which was wrong, and I was pointing that out.
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You are correct, my bad. (Although student loan interest is at least partly tax deductible)
 
It would be easier to sympathise if I didn't know the kind of people who do this. Self-righteous middle class Lib Dem voters (why no smashing up of Lib Dem HQ?) who compare Israel to an apartheid state. Overgeneralisation? Perhaps, but I'd bet plenty on a substantial amount of that number being as I described. Protests aren't what they used to be. Where are the kind of people who marched for civil rights in the states? Why has the suit been replaced by clothes deliberately bought in the North Lanes? Their cause is worthy, but their PR is just terrible. Part of the reason the cause of Socialism has stagnated in this country is because it has been seen as Galloway socialism: noisy, unpleasent, rude. Attlee Socialism needs to be restored. Briefcases, civil expression, respect.
 
Undesired Walrus said:
Their cause is worthy, but their PR is just terrible. Part of the reason the cause of Socialism has stagnated in this country is because it has been seen as Galloway socialism: noisy, unpleasent, rude. Attlee Socialism needs to be restored. Briefcases, civil expression, respect.
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Part of the problem there is the media bias, though. The right wing is supported by rupert murdoch and other tycoons, while the left never organised well enough to have it's own paper or news channel. The only candidates that could have afforded a paper on the left are the trade unions, and that's just never worked out. As a result, the biggest papers in the country can scream about militant trade unions and raging asylum seekers sweeping over the land, and massively play up gaffes from george galloway types, with no equal response.

There's the guardian, but it's largely centrist and has little interest in the PR war.
 
Francesca R said:
Adequately covered in the other thread, I think.

This sounds like a reference to the informative but nonetheless challengable "Spirit Level" analysis that powers the Equality Trust. Here is a related thread, it's getting too off-topic here IMO.

You are correct, my bad. (Although student loan interest is at least partly tax deductible)
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Interesting - i'll give it a read, thanks.
 
andyandy said:
Is violent protest acceptable? Short of people being injured (which i don't think has been the case...) i would tend to thinking yes in this case. The betrayal of an entire generation - why shouldn't that provoke resistance?
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I didn't know that you were such a fan of fascism (or whatever you would like to call the triumph of violence over democratic government).

While there is freedom of speech and fair elections then there is no excuse for trying to sway government policies through force. Have you even considered the precedent that this would set? "Don't like a particular policy, just storm a building and destroy it! As long as not too many people are hurt than it's all good!"

I have voted Tory in some elections that Labour won but it would never have occured to me that a valid response to Labour policies that I disagreed with was riot or destruction. It always seemed to me that voting against them, speaking against them, etc were the mature democratic responses. which brings me onto my last point...

In a democracy you have to be mature enough to accept that sometimes your preferred party will not be in power. That means accepting that for the next 4 years or so the hated Tories/Labour/Republicans/Democrats/whatever are the legitimate government and that they will, within legal and constitutional boundaries, pursue policies that you disagree with. Well, tough. You have the right to disagree/voice protest/petition/vote against/etc but if you refuse to accept the validity of other points of view and attempt to sway things by violence then perhaps you should try and find a one-party state that coincides with your views and emigrate there.

If you're still not with me, try answering this; would angry US right wingers be justified in engaging in violent protest against the policies of the Obama presidency? (Hint; the answer is no, and that is coming from someone who is not an Obama supporter. Sometimes you have to be big enough to respect the fact that someone you disagree won the election and now they have a chance to implement their vision - just as you would expect their side to return the favour when your side next wins an election).
 
Francesca R said:
So based on (i) relative benefit received and (ii) ability to pay, the cost should be mostly borne by the graduate. This is all fully consistent with distributional equity.
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I suspect most of the cost is born by the graduate, but to think that non graduates do not benefit from the graduates, that they likely would not have a job without, is to ignore the social benefit to all of an educated population.
 
So that's the Workfare sorted out, create policies that make people take to the streets and unfortunately riot, then get the work shy scroungers to clean up the mess.
 
Thunder said:
i fail to see how violence achieves anything, especially when protesting simple civil matters.

in fact, it usually works against your cause.

folks used violence to protest integration. imagine if the govt. just backed down in the face of violence.
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It worked in the case of the Poll Tax.
 
WildCat said:
They are? There are no longer free elections in the UK?

In a democracy, you don't always get your way. You have to live with that, and hope your point of view carrys over in the next election. You don't get to break and destroy things like a child throwing a temper tantrum.
Do you really want to live in a country where policy is determined not by majority opinion, but by who is the most violent?
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Ironic considering your home country and the way the opposition party acted after the last election there.
 
Elind said:
I suspect most of the cost is born by the graduate
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Not under present arrangements. The average cost of tuition nationwide (England) is £7,300 per year according to HEFCE (stat courtesy of Channel 4), and students pay a flat rate of £3,290 with the rest being paid by the state. Plus loans to students currently have a zero real interest rate and repayments don't kick in below a £15,000 graduate income. Therefore the government pays more than half, on average.

Regardless of whether this was true or not, a change in the direction of graduates paying more (than they do now) is a distributionally progressive one.

to think that non graduates do not benefit from the graduates, that they likely would not have a job without, is to ignore the social benefit to all of an educated population.
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Completely agree (not that anyone is ignoring that)
 
If student fees resulted in a reduction of the demand for university places, then I can see some point in not increasing them. This has certainly not been the case in Australia. It's almost universally accepted that students should contribute to the cost of a tertiary education (and the higher wages which come with this education) when they can afford to do so.
 
Francesca R said:
Not under present arrangements. The average cost of tuition nationwide (England) is £7,300 per year according to HEFCE (stat courtesy of Channel 4), and students pay a flat rate of £3,290 with the rest being paid by the state. Plus loans to students currently have a zero real interest rate and repayments don't kick in below a £15,000 graduate income. Therefore the government pays more than half, on average.

Regardless of whether this was true or not, a change in the direction of graduates paying more (than they do now) is a distributionally progressive one.

Completely agree (not that anyone is ignoring that)
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Francesca, what with the fractional reserve lending system...
(feel free to correct me on the details, you being economically educated and employed).. which I currently understand to be roughly 10 to 1 (i.e. if you take out a 1,000 pound loan that gives the bank the right to create roughly 10,000 pounds).. then what is all this talk of yours about figures taken out and to be paid back, when you must surely know that the whole thing is about extending the debt multiplier to students due to the mortgage market and the credit card market having been pretty much exhausted as far as exploitative banking greed goes?

Any UK citizen could see the progressive logic, having lived with mortgage madness, and credit-card madness... and then the economic crisis, and then the City speculators (your mates) looking around for the next ruse to exploit the general working populace by trying to impose more debt and interest upon them.
 
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I like the way anyone doing anything violent was instantly surrounded by cameras. I've heard of the surveillance society but this was getting ridiculous.
 
The Central Scrutinizer said:
Sounds like some bored trust kiddies. They'll find something else to be outraged about next week.
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Like I said, my daughter was marching. (She's fine, by the way - didn't get anywhere near the nasty stuff.) I wouldn't exactly describe her as a "bored trust kiddie", more a concerned young lady who's got a large student debt of her own to deal with and doesn't like the idea that the ones following her will have to pay more than three times as much.

Dave
 
Francesca R said:
Presumably for you, 113 injured including 45 police are a price well worth paying?

Even Militant Tendency condemned the riots, and claimed--much more sensibly--that the non-payment campaign killed the tax.

Try not to post such concentrated sewage. :rolleyes:
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I was against the Poll Tax from the day it was introduced early into my country by a right wing nutjob who my country did not vote for. If it took a load of english thugs to help get rid of it by smashing the english capital then that made it even more sweet.

Some people like to riot. I don't. Try not to fall into the sewage you post.

ETA I dont think you read right down that page either.
 
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Dave Rogers said:
Like I said, my daughter was marching. (She's fine, by the way - didn't get anywhere near the nasty stuff.) I wouldn't exactly describe her as a "bored trust kiddie", more a concerned young lady who's got a large student debt of her own to deal with and doesn't like the idea that the ones following her will have to pay more than three times as much.

Dave
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Who does she think should pay? Non-graduates? High earners (mostly graduates)? What if those groups don't feel like paying and go on a riot?

Who ends up paying if both sides are rioting? The ones who caused the most damage?

Is this anyway for a democracy to decide things? Why can't people accept that losing an election has consequences?

Better luck at the next election!
 
funk de fino said:
I dont think you read right down that page either.
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Like this bit near the bottom?

The Fed had never advocated rioting or looting as a means of defeating the poll tax - only mass non-payment would achieve this
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. . . And blaming the police is a standard tactic to avoid actually having to blame the mob or ever imply that violence was to be "applauded".
 
Giz said:
Who does she think should pay? Non-graduates? High earners (mostly graduates)? What if those groups don't feel like paying and go on a riot?

Who ends up paying if both sides are rioting? The ones who caused the most damage?

Is this anyway for a democracy to decide things?
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Um well yes. I think you mean representative democracy.

Why can't people accept that losing an election has consequences?

Better luck at the next election!
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Next election? Why should there be one of those? The ruling collition has the legal power to abolish them. Sure people might riot but it appears you would oppose that.
 
funk de fino said:
I was against the Poll Tax from the day it was introduced early into my country by a right wing nutjob who my country did not vote for. If it took a load of english thugs to help get rid of it by smashing the english capital then that made it even more sweet.
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So you deny the democratic legitimacy of the UK government? It is an oppressive foreign power and the use of force to resist its policies can be justified?
 
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