Cameron: "Cuts will change our way of life"

[lifetime fan]

The Lib Dems as a political party had one goal - to show that coalition governments can work, in the hope of getting a vote on electoral reform, in the hope that it would go through, in the hope that they would then be in the powerful position of being the middle party in future split elections and therefore able to participate in a lot of future governments.

 

Unfortunately they completely misunderstood the people who vote for them.

 

'A miserable compromise'.

[xerxes]

The Lib Dems as a political party had one goal - to show that coalition governments can work, in the hope of getting a vote on electoral reform, in the hope that it would go through, in the hope that they would then be in the powerful position of being the middle party in future split elections and therefore able to participate in a lot of future governments.

 

Unfortunately they completely misunderstood the people who vote for them.

I think your first para is a good summary of things.

 

I think your second para is harsh. They were, and are, in uncharted territory. Parties which are never in power always have an ebb and flow of support and predicting how things might have been for them if they were not in Coalition is by no means easy. Their big misjudgement was on PR, it does not have popular support. That suggests that if they had chosen to back a minority government, they might also have been wiped out by an electorate fed up of a small party trying to dictate policy.

[TheBitch]

50 MPs oppose tuition fees. 500 support them. Do the math.

  

On the tripling of tuition fees;

 

The vote was 323 votes to 302. 

 

21 LD voted against the government

8   LD did not vote

27 LD voted with the government

 

By my maths 323 -302 = 21, which is less than the 27 principled LD MP's who voted for the good of the country.

 

They did not even need to vote against something they are were totally opposed to, if only they had been brave enough to not vote at all the government would have lost.

 

  

Now I might be hungover here, SD, but did you lie to me, because these figures don't look the same.

[General Dryness]

  

Now I might be hungover here, SD, but did you lie to me, because these figures don't look the same.

 

Hey, you did the math. Did you remember to carry the one?

[General Dryness]

No.words

 

With a long thick penis, who needs words? Thats why Nightcat talks such utter shit. He's not used to having to talk. Just unravels his wanger to win an argument.

[TheBitch]

Hey, you did the math. Did you remember to carry the one?

I did the math in good faith, I carried the one and I feel that he's shoved that one right up me.

[General Dryness]

I did the math in good faith, I carried the one and I feel that he's shoved that one right up me.

 

Never trust a politician who tells you to do the math. The figures are more than likely bent.

[TheBitch]

Never trust a politician who tells you to do the math. The figures are more than likely bent.

Lesson well and truly learned.

[Bobby Hundreds]

So they have just found a billion pounds to improve intelligence and defence capabilities. Awesome. Make lives hell for the people whose lives are more likely to be hell anyway in this country by cutting funding to services that improve their way of life and spend it on ways to defend this new way of life from people whose life you made worse by forcing our way of life upon them. Uh.

 

Wonder how many people in positions of influence have links to the arms industry if someone was to dig deep enough.

[stringvest]

50 MPs oppose tuition fees. 500 support them. Do the math.

 

I can't, as I can't afford the education.  Is it Hannover?

 

EDIT.  I see this lame joke, or something quite like it, may have been done before.

 

Still, doesn't usually stop me. 

[Strontium]

 

Now I might be hungover here, SD, but did you lie to me, because these figures don't look the same.

Let me help you out.

 

Most of the MPs who voted against tuition fees actually support tuition fees, they merely voted against this particular implementation of them. Predominantly for political purposes.

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

Unlike lots of Lib Dems who, despite their pledge, voted for them for political purposes.

[Strontium]

 

Unlike lots of Lib Dems who, despite their pledge, voted for them for political purposes.

I don't think you can call pragmatically voting for the lesser of two evils a political purpose, not in the same sense as cynically voting against something so you can say you voted against it.

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

I don't think you can call pragmatically voting for the lesser of two evils a political purpose

I didn't. I said doing what was politically convenient rather than upholding the pledge was done for a political purpose.

[stringvest]

I'm right in the 'sweet spot' here, as my son will be starting uni in September and my daughter will be doing the same next year.  Several parents of other children of the same age voted LD as one of the key pledges was to do away with tuition fees.  Mention the LDs to any of these people and you can imagine what happens next.  Now of course no-one should be surprised when the party they vote for because of a single issue reneges on the pledge made on the single issue, but these people were foolish enough to believe the LDs would have some sense of moral courage and principle with regard to their wider manifesto.  

 

I could easily moan about the LDs because it's going to hit me in the pocket, but the reality is the LDs are much bigger cunts than that.  As far as the vast majority of voters in this country are concerned, they had their chance, and they blew it.  In just about the most cynical, self-preserving, cowardly manner.  That's it for them.   

[Section_31]

The tragedy of tuition fees has barely been touched upon and for me isn't even the issue of debt, it's the way it's transformed the higher education system into a business that will do absolutely anything to get young people through the door and get their money off them.

 

They entice people in even when they know they won't have the grades to make it through the first year, view them as customers and sell 'the university experience' (I.e there's a boozer down the road) rather than the quality of the course, which is often shit because they've packed the lecture hall with as many people as they can, removing the concept of seminars and small grouo tuition which was a cornerstone of university education, replaced instead with notes you can print from the internet.

 

Ask anyone who works for a uni and they'll say it's changing rapidly from academia to a cash hungry behemoth that's willing to look anywhere and do anything for money.

[Strontium]

I'm right in the 'sweet spot' here, as my son will be starting uni in September and my daughter will be doing the same next year.  Several parents of other children of the same age voted LD as one of the key pledges was to do away with tuition fees.  Mention the LDs to any of these people and you can imagine what happens next.  Now of course no-one should be surprised when the party they vote for because of a single issue reneges on the pledge made on the single issue, but these people were foolish enough to believe the LDs would have some sense of moral courage and principle with regard to their wider manifesto.  

 

I could easily moan about the LDs because it's going to hit me in the pocket, but the reality is the LDs are much bigger cunts than that.  As far as the vast majority of voters in this country are concerned, they had their chance, and they blew it.  In just about the most cynical, self-preserving, cowardly manner.  That's it for them.

How are fees going to hit you in the pocket? Your children incur the debt, not you, and they won't have to pay a penny off until they're earning 21 grand a year.

 

Also struggling to see how something buried on page 25 of a manifesto (or wherever it was) amounts to a "key pledge". Our key pledges were all on page one, and they've all been kept.

 

Do let us know how a party with less than 60 MPs could possibly get the abolition of tuition fees past Labour and the Tories, who support tuition fees. I'm really dying to see how that would have been possible.

[Skidfingers McGonical]

How are fees going to hit you in the pocket? Your children incur the debt, not you, and they won't have to pay a penny off until they're earning 21 grand a year.

 

Also struggling to see how something buried on page 25 of a manifesto (or wherever it was) amounts to a "key pledge". Our key pledges were all on page one, and they've all been kept.

 

Do let us know how a party with less than 60 MPs could possibly get the abolition of tuition fees past Labour and the Tories, who support tuition fees. I'm really dying to see how that would have been possible.

 

You don't think Stringy is going to be a decent parent and help his kids out through Uni? Do you think any parent wants their kid to go into debt for an education?

 

Nobody should be coming ou of Uni nearly £40k in debt. No way whatsoever.

 

Education should be free.

[stringvest]

I don't want my children to pay 27K for an education that should be free.

 

Regardless of what you believe where the key pledges, a large proportion of the LD voters saw this as a key pledge.  Do you really think if you'd gone into coalition with Labour, you would not have been able to abolish the tuition fees?  Of course you would.  Labour would not have dared refuse.  

[stringvest]

You don't think Stringy is going to be a decent parent and help his kids out through Uni? Do you think any parent wants their kid to go into debt for an education?

 

Nobody should be coming ou of Uni nearly £40k in debt. No way whatsoever.

 

Education should be free.

 

thank you Skidders

[Skidfingers McGonical]

thank you Skidders

It was a fluke.

[Bjornebye]

[The Guest]

The thing people always miss when defending tuition fees is the fact that it's a ticking timebomb waiting to go off.  Nobody gives a shit about that though because it will be the next generations problem.  Everyone is going to uni and getting saddled with around 40K of debt that a lot of them will never pay back.  What happens when it gets written off or they retire?  There will be a big fucking black hole there.

 

The Govt uses University to boost the economy.  It's basically encouraging as many people to go to uni as they can because you've then got all these consumers who don't need full time jobs and are getting cheap loans to spend.  It's a very short term view of things to say the least.

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

The coalition on the national debt: We can't shackle our children with debt. It's not fair to mortgage their future.

 

The coalition on education: Well... You get the idea.

[Strontium]

You don't think Stringy is going to be a decent parent and help his kids out through Uni? Do you think any parent wants their kid to go into debt for an education?

But how much they pay back in the end depends on what they earn after graduating. It's pointless paying any back upfront, because you may very well end up paying over the odds. Your kid may never earn enough to even begin paying back their student loan. They don't need to pay a penny back until they're earning 21 grand a year.

 

Nobody should be coming ou of Uni nearly £40k in debt. No way whatsoever.

 

Education should be free.

 

It's never going to be free free. Someone has to pay for it.

 

You're also wrong to see it as a debt. Because you don't pay a penny back until you're earning £21k, it operates like a tax.

 

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/students/should-i-get-student-loan

 

No parents HAVE TO borrow for tuition fees - the fees aren't for parents to pay for. First-time undergraduates get them paid for them by the Student Loans Company, and only repay if they earn enough after graduation. (If you're saying "but I don't want my kids to be in debt", please read It's more like an extra tax not a loan in our Student Loans Mythbusting guide).