General Chat

I think if anything is going to bring London to its knees it'll be the weather.

I'm glad they're marching. It might just make the government think twice, hopefully. You know the government that consists of all those politicians who went to university for free who now want to charge todays generation for the same thing. Maybe, in order to help reduce this deficit, they should back date these tuition fees and pay for going to university themselves.

I'm proud to say my son and his girlfriend were demonstrating in Birmingham yesterday. Both are graduates but went to support future generations of students. If I wasn't still getting over a virus I'd have been there with them.

No violence at all and lots of cheers of support from members of the public as they marched through the city. I even saw them on TV.

I cannot believe you are comparing British students to Hitler.

They want to stop the traffic for a day. I think Hitler's aspirations were somewhat different.

Gwynne

It's been said many times before, but all that it takes for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing.

I remember (just) when I had the energy to march. Now I just "march" from the comfort of my settee, and am proud of the next generation who won't take this rubbish lying down.

Sue x

OAPs marched in protest and went to prison rather than pay Thatcher's poll tax... the government had to ditch it, sometimes it is the only way to make your voice heard.

I'm not surprised that young people feel as if they've been sold down the river. Because they have.

Maybe their voices get highjacked by "rent a mob", but afford them the respect of appreciating their views.

Getting a decent education shouldn't equate to starting out in life with a debt of many thousands of pounds.

Sue x

I admire the students. There are so many people who whinge and whine about things but do nothing to change what it is they're whinging about. At least they are attempting to do something. As for writing to their MPs that won't get them anywhere, they, and the issue, would just be ignored.

I do feel there is beginning to be an undercurrent of thought ( largely encouraged by the worst tabloids) that going to University is some kind of 'jolly' that is one long holiday between school and getting a 'proper job', that the vast majority of students do not slog and pass exams in order to make something of their lives and the lives of others also .

I'm a great believer in any case that education...at any age and level should be of good quality and accessible to all, not just because those who use it 'wisely' will be high tax payers in the future...but because the education they get will 'broaden the mind' which can only be a good thing imo.

We may all wish to condemn any violence by so called anarchist groups apparently hijacking peaceful demonstrations.

However it is important to take heed of the underlying lessons for us all in this.Don't ignore the political crisis that there is in this country today.We have all the major political parties of all shades who have simply sold out to the real scourge of this country today;Focus
Groups and so called Think Tanks.

Regards
William Russell Jones.

I'll have to figure out those figures, RR -- but I just got some work I have to do. ;)

When I left school, I was making $75 a week ... and paying $75 a month in student loan!

I'm sorry, Rita, but you obviously have some sort of bee in your bonnet that no amount of fact or logic is going to dislodge.

"The tax payer is paying for all these things that includes so called peacefull marches ."

Taxpayers are paying for so-called peaceful marches?

No. Taxpayers are paying for damage done by a tiny minority of people present at the scene of the peaceful marches.

Taxpayers should maybe get onto their local politicians to find out why police are so ineffective at identifying and dealing with the people causing the damage. That's what some taxpayers did in Canada after the G20 fiasco here this summer. I've mentioned before that large sections of downtown Toronto were trashed by the Black Bloc here. The police response was to round up dozens of entirely innocent people and hold them under inhumane conditions (no food or water) for hours or more. At least your police don't seem to have done that.

What are "all these things that includes so called peacefull marches"?

I hope you're not suggesting that because taxpayers are funding some portion of post-secondary education, students are living on taxpayer time and accountable to taxpayers for what they do with their time.

If you're an OAP receiving a public pension, do the taxpayers get to decide what you do with your time? tell you not to write letters to the editor or post on internet forums?


"They are lucky to have the chance to go to a university many were unable to get in."

And people once said that about hospitals, I guess.

Then people decided that getting into a hospital shouldn't depend on having money, or there being enough hospital beds. Hospitals should be for the sick, on a sickest-first basis.

Just as universities should be for students, on a best marks-first basis. Not on a richest parents-first basis.

We're all lucky to have many chances we have -- to go to primary school, to see doctors, to have the fire department show up if our house is burning, to have roads to drive on and all the other things taxes pay for.

If they turned the street you're living on into a toll road, would you protest? I'll bet you think the taxpayers should pay to pave your road and clear the snow from it, and pick up the household garbage from it ...

How that works in practice

"How much you have to repay

If you earn less than the threshold or thresholds that apply to you, you don’t have to make any repayments.

Your student loan repayments will be nine per cent of anything you earn over the relevant threshold. Remember that this isn't the same as nine per cent of your total income - you only make repayments on what you earn above the threshold.

Repayment example one: Jane

Jane pays her Income Tax on her wages through Pay As You Earn (PAYE). She earns £1,500 a month - £250 over the repayment threshold of £1,250 per month.

•Jane's repayments will be nine per cent of £250: £22 a month "

Currently it stands like this

"How much you need to earn before repayments start
The repayment threshold for student loans, before deductions, is currently:

•£15,000 a year
This is equivalent to:

•£1,250 per month or
•£288 per week
If your income exceeds these amounts, you will be required to make repayments. In most cases, these repayments are collected automatically through the tax system.


Student loan repayments are made in one of three different ways, according to what type of employment situation you are in:

•PAYE (Pay As You Earn): if you are employed, student loan deductions are made automatically from your salary
•Self Assessment: if you are self-employed, or a combination of employed and self-employed, you will be responsible for calculating and making your own repayments
•overseas: if you work or are planning to work abroad, you will be required to make a repayment arrangement with the Student Loans Company" <<<< NB This answers an earlier query.

RR -- that isn't loan forgiveness, I assume, it's just payment deferral? You don't have to start paying back if you're low-income, but you do still have to pay back later?

Picking on non-wealthy students ... interesting strategy. I guess they know how little sympathy the great British taxpayer will have for university students. ;)

sorry left a bit off...

"With a vote on lifting the current £3,000 fees cap due before Christmas, Mr Denham said Parliament must not be "railroaded" into making a hasty decision.

He said there was still much in the way of detail to be worked out and it was important, for example, to know whether there would be a statutory commitment to uprate the fee cap in line with earnings every five years, as recommended by Lord Browne's higher education spending review."

To reply to Janey re paying back student loans

"Graduates could be forced to pay off their student loans even if they are on the minimum wage, the shadow business secretary claimed during a debate on plans to rise tuition fees.

Unless the proposed £21,000 threshold for repayments is increased along with earnings, in 2022 the lowest earners will still have to start paying back their loans, John Denham said."

I for one have no secret agenda,all I believe in is justice and fairness for all,which means that a child that lives in a council house in my street has the same opportunity to an education as those that go to Eton.If it means demonstrations on the streets I'm with them every single step of the way.

Regards
William Russell Jones.

"with these young people they are like sheep.,just following without any idea why they are doing it.?"

Why would you say that, Rita? Were you a sheep? Was I a sheep? Why would you say that young people out trying to protect their ability to have a successful future, to better themselves, as all parents supposedly want for their children, are behaving like sheep? No idea why they're doing it? What sense does that make?

Are you just referring to the violent ones? Why can't we get it through to you that these are Two Different Things?

The students protesting the government policy -- the broken promise -- are, for the vast majority of them, not breaking anything and not burning anything. And not wanting anyone among them to be doing that.


"People think they have the right to everything nowadays and they dont stop to think that it is the taxpayer who is financing their education."

Guinevere has just pointed out, as I did some time back -- people with university educations overwhelmingly pay far more taxes during their lifetimes than people without.

They get an education, they get good jobs or start businesses, they pay taxes. More taxes than they would have paid if they had not got their educations. Their parents pay taxes, their grandparents paid taxes.

Who are these taxpayers financing their eduation? The same ones whose children might have the opportunity to go to university if tuition fees aren't priced out of their range, and they don't have to assume crippling debt it will take them decades to pay off?

They don't have to pay back loans if they have low-paid jobs? I'd doubt that, but maybe somebody can tell us. I might think they'd get a break on interest accumulation or some such. Free loan, I wouldn't think.

Why shouldn't a post-secondary education be a right? Why should it be just for the rich? Are hospitals and fire departments and secondary schools just for the rich? They used to be, didn't they? Somebody must have protested, I think ...

Edit

This was in response to a post that has "disappeared".

I think they hope that most people are intelligent enough to see that the trouble makers are, on the whole, not students. I certainly don't tar them with the same brush as the anarchists who hijack many demos, not just student ones.

I've paid back far more in tax than the country ever paid for for my student years, as has my husband and most of our friends, and most students still do. But now they are expected to carry the additional burden of fees.

You say they are forced to accept lower paid jobs. Yet they are still expected to pay back thousands in fees, that hardly seems fair, does it?

As I said, if we all just sat back and let the goverment ride roughshod over our rights most men and all women wouldn't have the right to vote. Peaceful protest is part of the British way of life and the vast majority of the students were non-violent and spoke out against the violent few.

This government knows that the children of the rich will still be able to go to university, with no worries about the eventual debts, but what about the children of the low-paid or the unemployed? They have a right to an education without being saddled with crippling debts in their twenties.

The fact that a few go abroad to find work is a different issue entirely.

Gwynne

I don't know if it was in the tabloids...I suspect not!

But in the free 'Metro' I picked up on the bus is a photo of a schoolgirl ...who with others made a 'daisy chain shield' around an abondoned police van to prevent protesters overturning it.... "she said later " I was just trying to get across to them that the cause that we're here for today isn't about "I hate the police....and i want to destroy everything they represent".

As the headline says "The other face of the student protests"...

I was at school when I went on my first demo and both my parents were very proud that I cared enough to get involved.

I've been "involved" ever since and agree with what Janey has said. We went/go out for a peaceful demonstration and accept no responsibility for the behaviour of others. My son is no longer a student but if he were one I'd be proud that he cared enough to go onto the streets to exercise his right to peaceful protest.

I applaud my grandmother's generation for marching for the right to vote.

If we all sat at home and didn't want to be any trouble we'd still be living in tied cottages in the dark ages and doffing our caps to the gentry.

I'm glad that the students are giving the government a hard time. And proud of the vast majority who are doing it with good humour and peaceful intentions.

Gwynne