Ed Miliband makes a very obvious pass at Vince
David Blackburn 6:05pm
Not exactly on the ball are they? It took nearly six hours for a Labour leadership
contender to try to resuscitate Vince Cable's graduate tax, which lapsed into seizure following reports that Lord Browne will recommend a tuition fee hike instead. Ed Miliband, in Mephistophelean
mood, has appealed to Vince Cable,
offering to replace tuition fees with a graduate tax.
‘You’re welcome to each other,’ will be the retort of most Tories. But Miliband’s pass is significant. The coalition agreement promised to wait for the Browne Review. But the agreement is no longer sacrosanct. With both eyes on his wavering fans, Cable has reintroduced tuition fees, the Lib Dem’s discarded bugbear, under the superficial pretext that there must be mature and wide-ranging debate about absolutely everything. Labour is far too adept not to exploit the coalition’s very obvious split over university funding.
Labour will dig in for a long campaign of attrition: every Lib Dem MP in the last parliament signed a petition calling for their abolition. Compromise is the nature of coalition, but compromise is not found in unworkable solutions.
Previous
Percy
September 7th, 2010 6:20pm Report this commentWhere did you get that picture of Edwina from? He looks particularly gormless in that one.
sophie
September 7th, 2010 6:21pm Report this commentYou're probably in luck. David Miliband supports fees and will side with the Tories over the lib dems on the question of removing the cap and moving to a system of variable fees.
John Moss
September 7th, 2010 7:40pm Report this commentVOUCHERS!
Give every 18 year old £18k in vouchers to cash in on university fees or training within five years of turning 18. Let the Universities charge what they like.
Next!
Robert Pay
September 7th, 2010 7:51pm Report this commentPrince Edward wants more money from graduates...actually they get it if the graduates do well. DUH!
The real problem with the UK is that its ability to earn money has been massively compromised by the rush to the bottom to make everyone more "equal" by giving them the letters BA behind their name (or BSc. if it applies to bogus sciences like sociology or media studies.
Robert Pay
September 7th, 2010 7:52pm Report this commentJohn - this is a brilliant idea!
Nick
September 7th, 2010 8:06pm Report this commentPlease get rid of that Saab advert. It ruins the Coffee House for anyone who doesn't have superfast broadband.
Dorothy Wilson
September 7th, 2010 8:15pm Report this commentA longer term solution would be to stop paying Child Benefit to the parent and, instead, invest it in an interest bearing account in the name of the child. The money would then be available to the child at the age of 18 to pay for - and only for - university or higher education or to fund an apprenticeship.
An added benefit to this scheme is that it might just curtail the number of feckless single women who have numerous children in the knowledge that the state [ie the taxpayer] will provide money to support them.
TrevorsDen
September 7th, 2010 9:43pm Report this commentDorothy the child would have starved to death before reaching 18 or be crippled by rickets.
TrevorsDen
September 7th, 2010 9:59pm Report this commentLabour in their 2010 manifesto said they would wait for the Lord Browne report before deciding on tuition fees, so we must assume that they would have acquiesced with the report - otherwise why wait.
So now they are saying they will go against the report.
Cheap opportunism.
Interestingly they also promised - in Point 42, page 76 - 'Referenda, held on the same day, for moving to the Alternative Vote for the House of Commons and to a democratic and accountable second chamber.'
Two referenda 'held on the same day' - now all of a sudden two votes on the same day is one too many.
Its not clear to me that Cable is not doing a good job, therefore why should Tories want to push him into the arms of Labour? The nice problem we have, sadly, is that we do not have any money. Only Ed Balls has loads of money.
David Bouvier
September 8th, 2010 9:58am Report this comment"TrevorsDen" - the objection is to combining a referendum with a election - especially where it will not national and uniform - not combining two referenda.
HJ
September 8th, 2010 10:13am Report this commentRobert Pay -
I was incredulous when you said that they give a BSc for Media Studies. I thought you must have made it up.
However, it turns out that you're absolutely correct, astonishing as it may seem.
Carol Hodge
September 8th, 2010 11:38am Report this commentHave we gone back 60 years to the War, all the lights being turned off, no money for the our Schools, cut after cut, who is running Briton let me guess THE CONSERVATIVES.
we might as well be back 60 years with what they want to do to us, we are not people to them we are numbers just numbers,
Men Have Gone to the Moon, we are in the 20th centuary the mobile phone the technolagey we have and we can not put our Schools right, can you please ask Mr Cameron who has just had a beautifull little girl when she is old enough to go to school would he send her to our school with no heat falling apart what is going on in our country will some tell me please.Yes we have got to have cuts we all know that but over a 14 years not straight away, we have homes and children to look after, its just gone mad God Help Us
Carol Birmingham.
Paddy
September 8th, 2010 5:36pm Report this commentNick: Agree entirely.
I keep writing to the Spectator about this and getting no reply.
I thought it was the conference advert.
Paddy
September 8th, 2010 5:40pm Report this commentCarol Hodge: Agree entirely.
But this time the enemy was the Labour government and not Hitler.
Noel C
September 8th, 2010 11:28pm Report this commentHJ - I also had to google "BSc Media Studies" in order to believe it, as a consequence I found this complete drivel on Brunel University's website
"This degree aims to provide you with a mature, critical and sociologically-informed understanding of the place of the mdeia in today's society, with a particular focus on the new communication and information technologies." (sic).
Back to top