Tag Archives: Labour

November 23, 2010 · 6:17 pm

The question Aaron Porter refuses to answer

 

Aaron Porter

Aaron Porter, the NUS President has consistently failed to answer one question.  This one question remains the elephant in the room for the NUS, and will continue to leave them open to accusations of politicising tuition fees until it is answered. The question…”Is the proposed package of student tuition fees fairer than the current system?”

 

I suspect, the reason that Aaron will not (or cannot) answer this question is because the answer is simply yes.  The system being proposed is fairer than what we currently have.  How can this be I hear you cry, when the newspapers are filled with accusations of £9,000 a year tuition fees.  Lets run through some of the positives in the package that Aaron seems so unwilling to talk about (when despite them having such a massive impact on student’s lives).

1) No part-time student will pay up front to go to university. For the first time in decades, up-front charges for part-time students will be scrapped.  Part-time students currently make up about 40% of the student population and are essentially discriminated against.  This will end under the new package.

2) The repayment on Student loans will be shifted away from the current system towards a weighted system that takes into account you’re to pay.  At the moment, everyone earning £15,000 starts paying back the same, regardless of their income.  The new proposal will lift the figure where you start to pay back your loan from £15,000 to £21,000.  This means, if you earn less than 21,000 and stay there you pay back nothing! It also means that if you lose your job or take a sabbatical, your repayments are frozen.  Equally, if after 30 years you still have out standing debt, it gets written off.  This means that if you do not benefit financially from university, you do not lose out financially.

Graduates who DO earn over 21,000 will start to repay their loans at a rate of 9% of their earnings above 21,000.  This means, that repayment, per month will be lower for all students than the current scheme.  As your income increases, so the interest rate on the loan increases (in a similar fashion to staggered income tax levels).  In balance, this means the lowest earning 25% of graduates will pay back LESS than they currently do, and the top 30% of earners will pay back more than they borrow.

3) Support for living costs will increase for families earning up to 45,000.  Extra money is being put into grants for living costs and an extra loan will be made available to these students.  It is an improvement again on the current system.

4) The headline £9,000 a year will be in a minority of cases.  If a university wants to charge more than £6,000 they will have to meet targets to ensure they attract a more diverse range of students, specifically students from poorer backgrounds.  In the UK, our university education system still excludes the poor.  This is something that we should be ashamed about.  Less than a fifth of the poorest quarter of our society make it to university.  This package will create a National Scholarship Programme for students on low incomes – offering the first years tuition free.  There will be a greater emphasis put on the university to work with poorer schools to appeal to their students.

Do I think this system that is being proposed is fair? No! Do I think it is fairer than the current system? Yes! Why can’t Aaron Porter say this? Sadly, I suspect that Aaron Porter’s membership to the Labour Party might well be clouding his judgement on this issue. He seems incapable of criticising New Labour (who had an election pledge to scrap tuition fees and then went back on it despite having a massive majority).

His union has started a campaign to target some of the most progressive MP’s in Parliament. An example is Sarah Teather (The one who established the all party group on Guantanamo Bay, was found to be spotlessly clean in the expenses scandal and was one of the fiercest opponents to the war in Iraq).  How can Aaron Porter honestly believe “decapitating” (his word not mine) an MP like Sarah is a good thing for students? It again, makes a mockery of student politics presenting students as incapable of thinking about anything other than this one issue.  It undermines students and does NOT represent them.

It is, in my opinion, time Aaron Porter started playing grown up politics and working with the Lib-Dems who are a junior partner in a coalition government and are committed to working for a fairer system.  The Lib-Dems in government have made it fairer but we are still left in a hugely unfair system.  It is about time the NUS slipped a little subtlety into their arguments.

 

5 Comments

Filed under Economics, Politics

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

April 27, 2010 · 11:56 am

Some Questions that all candidates should be able to answer but will probably shy away from

Hold your candidates to account and learn from the Paxman!

Have you been watching the TV leaders debates, been to local hustings or tried to contact your local parliamentary candidate? Are you, like me, a little fed up with the unbelievably low standard of questioning that these individuals face? Too often I have heard questions like “What do you think about immigration?” or “I’m worried about schools, what are you going to do about it”? These sorts of questions just gives these trained politicians a chance to fill up the 5 minuets response with well-practiced spin.  If you want to get to the heart of what your MP will be doing, try following these golden rules and ask some of these questions:

Golden rules:

  • Quote something that their party leadership has said or done (or even better, something they have done…for example voting records – see theyworkforyou.com).
  • Make it local…take a national issue and relate it to whats happening locally (eg is there a new nuclear power plant planned for near where you live?)
  • Keep hold of the microphone…let them finish and then point out they have not answered your question (which they probably will not have)…re-ask it in a simplified form and if necessary “do a Paxman” on them.

For a Tory ask:

  • Do you think its acceptable for your party to be in coalition with “anti-Semitic, xenophobic homophobes” (in the words of MacMillan Scott) in the European Parliament? If you do, because they share your belief that Europe should not be a “federal Europe”, can you explain why you will not sit with Nick Griffin MEP who also shares this view?
  • Does you or your party still consider it acceptable for people to be discriminated against on the grounds of their sexuality? If you do not, will you champion a move to get your party to apologies for Chris Graylings insensitive remarks and ask for his removal from his current post?
  • Can you guarantee your party will adopt policies to reach a 90% reduction in Green Houses Gases by 2050? If you can, could you outline how you plan to make such massive savings?

For a Labour candidate ask:

  • In light of the new generation of nuclear power plants planning to be built by your government, can you explain to me what will happen to the issue of waste? Assuming you have an answer to that, could you explain to me why it has not been made public?
  • Why are you pushing ahead with a biometric database using fingerprints, when fingerprinting is widely recognised as being inferior and less reliable to eye scans? Is your party putting money ahead of public safety?
  • Will you apologise to the families and friends of the hundreds of thousands of service men and civilians who have died in Afghanistan and Iraq?

For a Lib-Dem candidate ask:

  • In light of the economic melt down in Greece, would you still advocate Britain joining the Euro?
  • Do you support the EU’s drive to further its energy relationship with countries such as Iran, Turkmenistan and Nigeria, some of the worst human rights violators in the world? Should the EU put principles above its energy security?
  • What are the economic conditions that are needed for you to implement your previous commitment to scrap tuition fees? Do we face a danger that this might be placed on a back burner?

These are just a few questions plucked out of the dark…research your candidates and hold them to account.

2 Comments

Filed under Politics

Tagged as , , , , ,

April 21, 2010 · 6:02 pm

Conservativism and change? A contradiction in terms?

Watch this video and try to work out what Cameron’s conservatives stand for!

Everybody loves the word “change”.  Apparently some chap over the pond used it for a bit and it worked rather well.  I must insist however, that the two main parties qualify why they are using it.  Labour, must do this because they have been in power for 13 years and so by suggesting we need change, they are slightly knocking their own record; and the Conservatives because “conservativism” and “change”  is an oxymoron.

Andrew Heywood comments that conservativism can be defined as “a fear of change”.  He goes onto say “The desire to resist change may be the recurrent theme within conservativism, but what distinguishes conservatives from other supporters of rival political creeds is the distinctive way they up-hold this position” (“Political Ideologies” pp 71-72).

It struck me as strange that the Tory HQ thought it was a good idea to go full speed ahead with an advertising slogan that is essentially oxymoronic.  Why would they suggest that a Conservative vote, was a vote for change?

There has been a widely quoted race for the middle ground by the Tories, Lib-dems and Labour that has made a mockery of the term change.  It is ironic then, that it is at this election, where the parties are so closely aligned on so many issues that the term “change” has become such a buzz word!

On the doorsteps I have come across Ex-Labour voters who no longer feel as though Labour has any ideology.  Robert Cook in his memoirs (The point of departure) commented that politics without ideology is always going to be short-term.  With New Labours second stint in power, no one apart from Giddens is still talking about the “Third way” any more.  New Labour has no ideology.  Equally, what does the re-branded Cameron Conservatives stand for (Are they one-nation conservatives, neo-liberal or what)?

Ironically the neo-liberal wing of conservativsm changed the face of world in the 80’s and 90’s with a drive towards mass globalisation.  Yet, as New Labour increasingly adopted this neo-liberal economic approach, few could see the ideological direction the Conservatives could head in.  They advocate change, but to what? The electorate, at least in part, is beginning to see through these grey parties similarities.  Equally ideologically speaking, we can see the Liberals swaying to the limits of different understandings of liberalism (from the neo to the classical).

The three main political parties are in a blur.  I do not believe that ideology is dead; I think politicians are ignoring it.  It is about time that we as the electorate, state that ideologies should play the central role in politics it deserves. I am fed up with air brushed politics, fake smiles and popularity chasing!

1 Comment

Filed under Politics

Tagged as , , , ,

January 27, 2010 · 5:08 pm

Martin Whiteside – The First Green MP for Stroud?

Martin Whiteside, Green Party Parliamentary Candidate for Stroud.

Stroud has been a marginal seat now for as long as I can remember.  At the last election, Neil Carmichael (the Tory candidate that has now lost the last few elections for the Conservatives) ordered two re-counts of the papers.  In the end he lost to David Drew (the Labour and Co-operative candidate) by a difference of just 0.6% of the vote.  So with New Labour’s slow self-destruction, many people from my home shire are rightly worried that we might end up with Mr Carmichael representing us. 

With a Tory County Council and District Council, it is highly questionable whether Stroud would benefit from more of the same with a Tory MP.  I tried to find out if Carmichael represented something new within the Conservatives; well judge for yourself: http://neilcarmichael.co.uk/about.  As far as I can tell, it essentially says nothing. Stroud needs now, more than ever a fresh vibrant approach. 

Both nationally and locally, the Conservatives and Labour have put me off politics.  I find it hard work and dull to follow their increasingly blurring statements.  This is why I believe that voting Green makes sense.  Some people see it as a wasted vote (“he will never get in anyway”).  I think, it’s a wasted vote if you end up voting for someone (or a party) that you disagree with on really fundamental issues. 

I could vote Labour (David Drew) at the next election, but then I would be throwing my vote behind a party that has started illegal wars, increased tuition fees and have caused more chaos with our finances that any other post WW2 government. 

I could vote Conservative (Carmichael), but then I would be showing support to a party who is happy to sit in political alliances with other parties who support the death penalty and are openly homophobic.  I would be tacitly saying, that it is OK (and successful) for politicians to act and behave in the same smarmy way that Mr Cameron does.  I would be saying good bye to public spending on vital services.  I do not want to do this! I want to vote for what I believe in, both locally and nationally.

The Greens, are the only party who have always been opposed to the war in Iraq and Afghanistan (see http://younggreens.greenparty.org.uk/AboutUs/Policy/WaronIraq). They are the only party with a real economic policy that tackles the core of the economic crisis (see http://www.greennewdealgroup.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/The_Cuts_Wont_Work.pdf).  They are the only party who have a real progressive social policy, that will work to reduce inequalities (see http://younggreens.greenparty.org.uk/AboutUs/Policy/CitizensIncome). 

This combined with a candidate that I know and trust, means that on 6th May Martin Whiteside (http://www.glosgreenparty.org.uk/content/view/12/69/), the Greens candidate will be getting my vote.  I hope he gets yours too. 

Join the Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=268102979503&ref=nf

Leave a comment

Filed under Politics

Tagged as , , , , , , ,