Now incorporating The Sudbury Hill Harrow and Wherever End Times

Wednesday, December 03, 2003

Letters

Top-up fees - what a load of fuss over nothing!


All these scare stories about students leaving University with debts for life - what a load of bosh! Surely it is very clear that Daddy and Mummy will pay those amounts for all but the terribly wretched. As for those, they can always apply to the authorities under whatever Poor Law pertains, for state support. It's so simple, I'm surprised the vast majority of people in the country can't see it. That in itself is a testament to the dismal inadequacy of such places as the "Ball's Pond Road University," as referred to by the spokesman for the Higher Charges Campaign on Newsnight on BBC2 last night. Surely people who attend such temples of ignorance cannot be expected to pay the amounts (soon to be) demanded by good universities? The cheapo places will be there for them, and let's not forget they will be in a lot of debt either way - as they are at present. The government already gives larger amounts to the best universities and always will, which nobody minds, but what we are trying to establish is that people who are able to pay more should be able in some way to differentiate themselves from people who can pay less. We're fed up with all the hopelessly vulgar people flooding the best universities, to the extent that it is now a matter of chance whether a public school applicant is chosen over a bog-standard school supplicant. Surely all this is obvious to the vast majority of the people?

H. C. J. O. K. De B-F, OBE, Brondesbury

2 comments:

Comments 2003-2004 said...

___________________________

Live simply. Simply live.

If I had my time again I would learn a trade. I have studied all my life. It is a copout. It is not living.

People should make things that other people want, that improve the lot of other people's brief span on this rock. If learning in the West was somehow directed at strengthening the intellect and the emotions there would be a point but that isn't its function. It's function is to test gullibility and to monitor the ability to sit still for 18 years without rebelling whilst simultaneously absorbing indoctrination and teaching modules that don't equip one for a creative fulfilling life.

To add a mountain of debt to that, to be paid back throughout a lifetime is dispiriting. It's all arse-backwards. The human creature needs a fundamental rethink about what life on earth should be, and sending 50% of people to spend 4 dreary years studying stuff which at that age they are not interested in anyway, but are doing in order to pass exams in order to graduate to the managerial class is pathetic.

Resist. Live simply. Simply live.

Bertrand Am Byth DSO (Cross and Bar), B.A (hons) MFA, Ph.d, RCFRCS et al

Post by : Bertrand Am Byth (webcacheh12a.cache.pol.co.uk / )


___________________________



And you sir I should flog until you damn well bleed for your carelessness with apostrophes. If one thing makes me sputter into my Relish it is seeing apostrophes being infiltrated into words which shouldn't have them from words which should.

Post by : Bufton Tufton (webcacheh12a.cache.pol.co.uk / )


___________________________

what does vast mean?

I've often wondered what vast means - can anyone help me? I'm one of the silent minority, by the way, of those who believe in ... oh damn, I've forgotten what it was I was going to say. Carry on.

Post by : Major Jenkins (host81-128-134-155.in-addr.btopenworld.com / )


___________________________

Relatively Vast and the Vast of Devastation

I am getting vast enjoyment watching Howard kick Blair round the Commons. It is the best show in town. Yesterday's Grammar School Boy versus Public School Fop was a classic. Oh how I laughed. Any creature significantly smaller than me and capable of thinking about thinking would have thought "Oh what a vast cavern, measureless to me, is that person's mouth when it is guffawing at PMs Questions.

Hope that helps.

Hail!

Post by : Brian Boru (webcacheh11a.cache.pol.co.uk / )


___________________________

Comments 2003-2004 said...





Maybe this is being put forward as a pretext for calling a snap election. As I was saying earlier, I think they will want to "cut and run" next year. Blair loses the vote on tuition fees, takes it to the people, does another three years then steps down to let Brown fight it out in the mud with the other would-be leaders.

Post by : Feargal (host81-128-134-155.in-addr.btopenworld.com / )


___________________________



According to unnamed "Downing Street sources" cited on Thursday by Andrew Neil, Blair is disgusted at opposition to his version of what top-up fees should consist of and is ready to walk out if he loses the vote.

It's odd that this may be his poll tax moment when it should definitely have been his dishonesty in taking the country to war in defiance of the UN that should have put paid to him. Much as I'd like and hope to see him go for having been such a two-faced control freak prick and major disappointment I don't see anyone of any calibre waiting in the wings either. Nevertheless, good riddance if he goes. He is the author of his own misfortunes. Lone parent premium abolition, the Frank Dobson/Ken Livingstone fiasco, the railway mess, the Welsh assembly leadership manipulation, Peter Foster, targets, NHS queue fiddling, the spinning, the lying, the pretence of working for peace whilst preparing for war, and so on and so on. Lest we forget.

Post by : Mal Castro (webcacheh12a.cache.pol.co.uk / )


___________________________



They say the numbers signing the motion opposing the fees increased again after he said he was putting his leadership on the line. His position is about as secure as Michael Jackson's reputation.

Post by : Feargal (host81-128-134-155.in-addr.btopenworld.com / )


___________________________



He broke even his own supporters hearts with his indecent haste and complicity in deceit over Iraq. They are like spurned lovers. they want to hurt him and make him suffer as he hurt them and made them suffer. And they don't want leading into a future where the rule of law gives way to lobbing a petrol bomb through Bobby Abdul's window. What they fear and Blair is blithely ignorant of is that once that is seen as the way to settle the future they will lob a petrol bomb through our window.

Tough on petrol bombs, tough on the causes of petrol bombs. When you can gut an old x-ray machine and render parts of cities uninhabitable by tying a couple of sticks of dynamite round the innards you have to wake up to the fact that gunboat diplomacy in the days of assymetrical warfare no longer wins the day.

Post by : Mal Castro (webcacheh08b.cache.pol.co.uk / )


___________________________



"If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for laws; it invites every man to become a law unto himself."

Brandeis

Post by : Justice Brandeis (webcacheh06a.cache.pol.co.uk / )



___________________________