Tuition fees, remember?

It’s been so long.

Do you remember this? On Wednesday 28th April 2010, Nick Clegg began a final push for students to vote for the LibDems.

“Labour and the Conservatives have been trying to keep tuition fees out of this election campaign.

“It’s because they don’t want to come clean with you about what they’re planning.

The BBC’s idea of a balanced panel

David Dimbleby, former Bullingdon Boy, as chair. When are they going to invite him to retire?

Four men, two women. All white. All wealthy. All but two went to private schools: all but two got a degree at Oxford.

On the left, more or less:

The Labour: Harriet Harman. Privately educated at St Paul’s Girls’ School and at the University of York back when tuition fees weren’t a consideration and maintenance grants were even enough to live on. Became a lawyer and then a Labour MP in 1982, and has been a Minister either in the Shadow Cabinet or in government since 1992. (And tried to exempt MP expenses from the Freedom of Information Act.)

The Comedian Steven Coogan. Born and brought up in Rochdale. The only person on the panel who neither went to a private school nor to Oxford University. Now reputed to have earned personal wealth of £5 million.

On the right, besides David Dimbleby:

The Conservative: Jacob Rees-Mogg. His wife Helena de Chair is the only living grandchild of Peter Wentworth-Fitzwilliam, Viscount Milton (1910 – 1948), only son of the 7th Earl Fitzwilliam: Helena’s mother inherited approximately £45m from her father on his death. Besides his wife’s wealth (they were married in 2007) Jacob Rees-Mogg is a hedge-fund manager and the son of Baron Rees-Mogg, former editor of The Times and life peer: the Baron Rees-Mogg was educated at Godalming and Balliol College, Oxford, the Hon. Jacob was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Oxford. Were either of them members of the Bullingdon Club? They’re not listed as such anywhere. His sons of course could be: the de Chair money would put them into the qualifying category if they weren’t already there.

The Sustainable Livestock Bill 2010-12 aimed

to reduce the environmental impacts of livestock production in the UK. It would also amend the way agricultural subsidies are used to make them more environmentally friendly. It includes a duty to give consideration to supporting sustainable practices and consumption through public procurement of livestock produce.

The Bill also aims to reduce rainforest deforestation by reducing the use of soya meal in animal feed in the UK. It would do this by placing a duty on the Secretary of State to ensure the sustainability of livestock, and to give consideration to issues such as public procurement and agricultural subsidy reform.

The Bill was proposed by Robert Flello, Labour MP for Stoke on Trent: Jacob Rees-Mogg killed it with a fillibuster. What a charming fellow, eh? He’s also tried to shut down a spoof Twitter account for making fun of him and once plagiarised an article from The Sun. I’m sure his nanny loves him.

The LibDem: Danny Alexander. Educated at Scottish state schools in the Highlands, and at St Anne’s College, Oxford – back in the days before tuition fees: he may even remember when students still got grants. (I wonder if he’d honestly admit that £27,000 would have been an intimidating debt for him in 1990?) Talked a good deal on Question Time about how they were making rich people pay more taxes. Slightly forgot to mention that by telling the House of Commons his London flat was his second home, he got to claim the mortgage interest and furnishings and repairs on MP expenses: then when he sold the flat in June 2007 for £300,000, he didn’t pay capital gains tax because he told the Inland Revenue that flat was his main home. Enthusiastic about cutting more and more away from supporting the poorest and most vulnerable.

[Danny Alexander] bought a flat in London in 1999. After being elected an MP in 2005, he declared the property as his second home to the parliamentary authorities and claimed expenses. He claimed more than £37,000 in expenses for the flat – and carried out some work to the property at taxpayers’ expense shortly before selling it in June 2007 for £300,000.

He did not break any rules, but used a tax loophole that allows the continued designation of a property as the main home for three years even after the purchase of another house – in Alexander’s case in Scotland – which has become the principal residence. It did not stop him from telling Commons authorities that the London property was his second home, for which he claimed not only for the mortgage but also for minor capital improvements, the Telegraph reported.

The Other Woman Because It Looks Bad To Have Only One Kirstie Allsopp. Claimed on Question Time to have gone to a state school: she actually went to ten schools, including Bedales and St Clotilde’s, neither of which are state schools. She’s the oldest child of Charles Henry Allsopp, 6th Baron Hindlip, former chairman of Christie’s. When Allsopp suggested that the “Bank of Mum and Dad” should fund their children’s house purchases, she was speaking from experience:

Her parents lent her £30,000 to buy her first property in Battersea, but she lays claim to an upbringing devoid of too many frills. Both sets of grandparents managed to spend “quite considerable fortunes” before they died, so Allsopp’s parents “didn’t inherit anything and had to earn their living. They certainly didn’t have enough money to give any to us; although they helped all four of us buy flats. You put a roof over your child’s head if you can possibly afford to do so, but that is where it all stops.”

The first Baron Hindlip was a 1886 creation for Sir Henry Allsopp, head of the brewing firm of Samuel Allsopp & Sons in Staffordshire, and Tory MP. Sir Henry’s son (portrait of his wife) also became a Tory MP: his grandson was a Unionist Whip in the House of Lords: and his great-grandson, Kirstie Allsopp’s grandfather, the fifth Baron, was a Deputy Lieutenant of Wiltshire. Kirstie Allsopp is very much part of the web of privilege.

[Update: Commenter Stubben says “@Gareth Snell, that is a picture of Hindlip Hall which has been West Mercia Police HQ since 1967, 4 years before Kirstie Allsopp was born.” Swift check through Google Images says Stubben is right about this at least.]

No wonder Kirsty Allsopp opposes a mansion tax. This is her father’s home. Great Location, Location, Location.#bbcqt twitter.com/gareth_snell/s…

— Gareth Snell (@gareth_snell) September 27, 2012

So that’s the BBC’s idea of “balance”. Two more or less on the left – one wealthy man, one powerful woman. Three on the right: two inheritors of privilege, one grabber of privilege.

No trade union representatives: no one with even close to an average income: the only person with a working-class background was Steve Coogan, who hasn’t had to worry about the price of a pint of milk in years.

Can we see some balance, please? BBC Complaints

When are we going to see Mark Serwotka back on Question Time? Why not have a trade union representative every time? What do you reckon the chances are of Kelvin MacKenzie being invited back before any trade union leader?

Our constitution, July 2012: Social rights

1. Enhanced constitutional rights (b) Social rights (right to universal healthcare, education)

The right to work, and to be paid for your work, is a radical demand in the UK at the moment (see Economic Rights) also A day’s work for a day’s pay:

How is it that wanting a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work has become a left-wing, radical/revolutionary value? Iain Duncan Smith notoriously called Cait Reilly “snooty” for expecting to be paid to work in Poundland – though he himself continued to draw his MP’s salary and expenses during the six months he took off work in 2009 to care for his wife when she had breast cancer.

Social rights are good for the individual, but they’re also good for the general welfare.

Article 25: (1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
(2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

Healthcare: what you need, when you need it, free at point of access

Honey, I shrunk the economy

Benedict Brogan argues in his Telegraph blog:

Persistent doubts about the men at the top distract us from assessing the more subtle work of this Government, and from answering the most vital question: what will Britain look like by the time Mr Cameron submits himself for re-election in 2015?

By “persistent doubts”, Brogan means the idea people have got that David Cameron and George Osborne and the rest of the Cabinet of millionaires are “arrogant dilettantes with too much money and no idea of what the squeezed middle is going through”. You know, the kind of men who have never had to think twice about the cost of a dozen grand cru wines and who never lunched by buying a hot pasty and eating it on the run. The kind of men who expect to spend £40,000 a year on their son’s secondary school education regard it as a feature, not a bug, that university education means students whose parents weren’t rich enough to afford Eton will leave university £60,000 in debt.

Slave labour is inefficient

One of the most consistent complaints that slave overseers make about their unpaid labourers is that they are lazy and inefficient workers. This is usually put down to a failing in the character of the slave. Sometimes it is argued that if the business making use of the slaves is itself efficient and well-run, the slave labour will be efficient and profitable. Specific examples of this argument have been refuted.

Workfare is not (yet) slave labour. Chris Grayling is right to argue that if someone has been on the dole for 12 months, then it can only help to have 8 weeks of work experience.

The scheme is designed to get young, unemployed people into the workplace for up to eight weeks of work experience. One of the young people you interview says: “I was basically doing what a normal member of staff does”, but the placements are not long enough to be a replacement for permanent staff. However, they are long enough for a jobseeker to impress an employer and, at the very least, to leave with a good reference and some practical experience.

Grayling goes on to adjure “let’s not be snobbish about this – plenty of people have started on the bottom rung and climbed their way to the top”.

Blaming Scotland for the tuition fees

I oppose tuition fees and always have. None of the people currently in power had to pay tuition fees for their degree (most of them benefited from the maintenance grants abolished by the last Tory government). Access to further education should depend on ability to learn, not ability to pay.

Further, as George Eaton pointed out in the New Statesman in March 2011:

they will put more universities at risk of bankruptcy. The decision to cut the teaching budget by 80 per cent – including the entire budget for arts and humanities – and introduce a system in which money follows the student, means that universities will be left to sink or swim according to the whims of the market.

I disagreed with tuition fees as a matter of principle when they were less than £2000 a year – I disagree with them still more strongly now the coalition government has raised them to £9000 a year.

But the class action that Phil Shiner proposes to bring against the Scottish government is futile and wrong-headed. Shiner says: “This is a vision of an elitist society dressed up in the language of the big society. The fees system in the UK is deeply discriminatory. This goes to the heart of everything I hold dear.”

He’s right about that. But it’s no sort of use blaming the Scottish government for that – it’s the Tories and LibDems currently in power in Westminister who have decided that English and Welsh students shall pay fees of up to £9000. (Though Welsh students get their fees supported by a bursary from the Welsh government.)

Holding the Scots – or any of our political parties – to blame for a policy instituted at Westminster under Labour, and continued and expanded from Westminister by the Tories and LibDems, is vindictive and futile.

The Scottish government cannot be held responsible for the fees that the coalition government at Westminister have decided to impose on English and Welsh students.