RIP Sir Patrick Moore

[Bob Eager]

The point is that it didn't put her off university.

[Bob Eager]

FE courses (up to the age of 19, as long as you've started it by then) often still are.

[Bob Eager]

On 30 grand a year, the payback is only about 17 quid a week.

[Clive George]

The maintenance grant was around for years - finally disappearing in favour of loans at the beginning of the 90s. And yes, that was intended to cover living expenses, and it could be made to do so.

However you'd get more cash from working, so there probably was the temptation for some to encourage offspring to work, because that would ease the family finances a bit - the wage would cover more than the basic living expenses the maintenance grant covered.

So you're wrong, living expenses were covered. But there were probably still financial reasons for poor families to not go to uni.

[F]

Make that deux, trois...

[John Williamson]

In 1972-5, I got a grant which was more than my salary as a trainee surveyor would have been, as well as free tuition. The grant paid my living expenses during term-time, and I could either sign on or work during the holidays. Everyone I knew had the same deal.

If my parents had been richer, they would have been expected to contribute to my living expenses, but tuition would still have been free.

[Steve Firth]

That sword has two edges. Since you were not involved personally of all the disputes that you are disputing then all you are doing is repeating union propaganda.

Having been an unwilling union member in the past, I know how they work. Since my mother was a TGWU shop steward I know a lot about the internal politics of unions.

Name them.

[harry]

=A0 London SW

You have your living expenses in or out of education.

[Dave Liquorice]

In broad terms those that get useful, FSVO "useful", degrees will be on =

better salary.

Yes, the payback rate is very low and doesn't kick in at all untill you =

are on a reasonable salary and if you haven't managed to pay it off in a= number of years (20 30 somthing like that) it's written off anyway. So you could get your =A327,000 Student Loan, piss it all against the wall,= never earn enough and never pay any of it back...

[charles]

when we married, my wife was still a student and was in receipt of a maintenance grant - but it was based on her father's salary. So when he got a pay rise, our income dropped ;-(

[djc]

It's a Graduate Tax in all but name

[Andy Champ]

I think we're up to cinq, or perhaps six.

The drive for poor families wasn't the cost of the education, it was the loss of an income for the non-working child. Now? My nephew skipped Uni because of the fees.

Andy

[Bob Eager]

30 years.

Wheer do you get £27,000 from? That's just the loan for fees. Then there's the (partly) means tested maintenance loan - typically £3,000 a year.

[tony sayer]

In article , Dave Plowman (News) scribeth thus

Well I've never worked for a company that had a union or indeed there was very little evidence of one..

But there are well run companies .. and piss poor run ones.

A well run company doesn't "need" a Union there only really needed when the management is piss poor and bad..

But as that accounts for a lot of them;!.....

[Another John]

(except the Japanese?) They suffered two (three, counting the aftermath of WW1) unimaginable trauma: the Nazi dictatorship, and then being crushed to rubble in 1945. They have a sense of national purpose that we can only dream of in this country; the suffocating, silent, insidious dictatorship of "The Establishment" has ruled this country for centuries: we missed our chance in 1784 if you ask me!

John

Oh and Harry: you said

*That* was The Bastard Thatcher: she (and her millionaire chums) took human failings, such as selfishness and greed, and turned them into "virtues", by creating a world of devil-take-the-hindmost -- sharpest elbows at the trough, etc. When people like Scargill popped up, she and her chums couldn't believe their luck. Scargill and Thatcher needed each other: all the rest of us needed neither of them.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Depends what you mean by 'best'. IIRC, they are more comprehensive in linking parts of the country etc than anywhere else in Europe. If they were restricted to merely linking major population centres they would likely cost rather less.

[polygonum]

Except that HS2, which seems designed expressly to do only that linking of major population centres looks a good candidate for becoming the most expensive railway line in the UK. Quite possibly whether you consider cost absolute, cost to government, cost to passengers, or anything else!

[Tim Streater]

HS2 is just a willy-waving exercise.

[Tim Streater]

You mean as in: "Come back Dr Beeching, all is forgiven"? Prolly right.

[Steve Firth]

Would you likme to try jerking that knee just half an inch higher? It might well take out your front teeth.

That pleasant chap Reginald D Hunter was on the televisual appliance yesterday evening. He made some very interesting points about Thatcher, about how he disliked her until he actually found out some information about her and her politics. Then he realised that she may have been wrong about some things, as all human beings are, but that unlike the morass of grey wet little men who preceded and followed her at least she was fighting for principles that she believed in.

As he said she did a lot for women, as some lefty women claim that Madonna did a lot for woment. The difference was that Thatcher believed in something more than money and didn't wiggle her ass to get to where she was.

I disagreed with a lot of Thatcher's policies at the time, however looking back on it, I was the one in the wrong. She was right, budgets need to balance, you can't pay yourself more than you are earning and government should be as small as possible.