moosebreath

Well this whole debate seems to have been sparked by the negative reaction to me saying that we live in a country where opportunities for improving one's prospects are in abundance. From that I inferred that those people reacting negatively considered there to be not so many opportunities around.

I don't see why £7k shouldn't be a survivable income. Certainly thousands of students manage it each year. If you've had kids then maybe it could get tricky and you'll have to use the other sources of funding which are available. Still no reason why you can't do it even aftee you've made the decision to have kids and presumably accepted the financial constraints they will impose. Why shouldn't university be state funded? Because I don't see any benefit to me paying for someone who got all D's at a-level to go and study something completely pointless like liberal arts. If you want to do it and are willing to pay for it, go for it. If you expect me to pay for it, I want something in return. For the best and brightest, people who should be going to university, we have bursaries and scholarships.

Pre-paid benefits cards are a good idea but will probably just be traded. I prefer the idea of rations. Just a package of food and essential goods like milk, bread, cheese, liver, some beans, butter, a few oranges, soap and toothpaste. No money, no choice, just the essential safety net that the welfare state was meant to provide.

Lol, no, her income is £20k, of which she can spend £12k or what have you on childcare. Plainly, it is still income. I agree that education can also be about simply bettering yourself, and if you're capable and willing to pay for it, go for it. If you expect other people to pay for so you can have kids and a nice house as well, I think it's perfectly reasonable for the people paying for it to expect a return in the form of a measurably more productive member of society. If you don't think this is how most people see it, go look for a charity that will pay for you to indulge your self improvement whims for four years, there must be loads of them around no?

I'm not, but given the clear anti-tory bias on here I think it's worth pointing out the major contributions that labour made to some of the more negative aspects of modern life in the UK. There's plenty more than just their ludicrous university policy to go yet.

So you only count income as income if it doesn't have to be spent on something? Lol wow, that's a new one. You were saying that going into education as a single mother was impossible due to childcare costs, I pointed out that if you go into education as a single mother you get childcare paid for through childcare grants. Simple as that. You can also get tuition fees paid for and maintenance loans and grants plus extras for certain situations, then potential for bursaries, awards and so on. I know people who left low paid full time work to go back to uni and ended up considerably better off as a full time student not working at all than they were before. Plenty of money is available for people of all ages and situations who want to improve their prospects. You've not said much else here. On the 50% of kids going to uni thing, how has that worked out then? You lot all seem pretty keen to get across how bad things are out there, why is that the case then if labour's children were all supposed to be such well rounded and capable people having each been given a degree for ticking boxes?

Sounds like a successful guy who has taken full advantage of the opportunities afforded to him. Good on him, flying in the face of all this negativity. Pushing 50% of kids through uni when not nearly 50% of jobs require a degree is lunacy. Totally agree that there are other factors to consider. We're lucky to live in a country where those options are available. I'm not the one pretending that we live in a completely hopeless country where nobody has any opportunity to make a success of themselves, remember?

If he was that smart he would have chosen a career path where he knew there was enough demand to provide adequate numbers of jobs. I do agree that a lot of degrees do not provide enough relevant direct entry jobs. You can blame the tories for that if you want, but we all know that it was labour who pushed the absurd idea that 50% of kids should go to uni, when it was plainly obvious that a lot of them would have been much better off doing something like learning a trade. It was labour who caused the imbalance that now leads to young people graduating in largely worthless subjects and finding themselves unable to get a relevant job. Meanwhile those smart enough to realise that if most people are getting generic academic degrees there was going to be skills shortages in trades and more vocational subjects are now reaping the rewards of their foresight.

"A lot of students" - again, where's your source? Seems really common on this website for people to make claims on quantity without any back up. Of course it would make a difference. We import no end of skilled labour. No need to do that if people made more informed choices based on where there is actual demand.

Source?

Like I said, if the figures are fiddled, why aren't labour all over it? The students working in call centres are the ones who made bad study choices.

Well employment figures are put together by an independent body. If the tories were somehow managing to 'massage' the figures, don't you think Labour would be all over it? So why aren't they? I do believe that if a youngster, or indeed someone of any age, possesses the necessary desire and determination and makes good career decisions which take them into areas with sufficient demand for labour then they will find opportunities in abundance.

I'm talking about childcare grants provided to students specifically, as we were discussing how to finance education. Yes the amount changes depending on the number of children involved.

It would go to her bank account for her to use to pay for childcare. Paying for childcare is what the childcare grant is for. I've no idea where you've got £70k from. She would certainly have some 'debt' but it is repaid effectively as a graduate tax on earnings over £21k which means it can effectively be forgotten about. There are no possible scenarios whereby somebody takes out student loans and has to repay the 'debt' without also enjoying a good salary. Keep the excuses coming, by all means, they'll just keep getting batted away.

Childcare Grants are worth £260 per week if you've got two kids. That on top of an approx £7k maintenence loan would give her an annual tax free income of more than £20k. Plus whatever other benefits she is no doubt already on. Problem solved.

What's a "sizeable chunk"? Do you have a source that explains that a bit more thoroughly? No doubt some skilled people have found that their skill set is no longer in so much demand. Those people should be retraining, or ideally should have retrained before it was too late. Constant development is what it's all about. All you've got to do is show a bit of initiative and take advantage of the unprecedented level of opportunities for learning and development that we all now have access to.

No such schemes? Education is available to everyone in this country. It can be funded by loans that you don't pay back until you're earning a decent wage. It's available via a range of methods such as evening classes, distance learning, online learning etc. If you start by showing the minimum initiative required to be proactive about your development, you'll find training schemes on offer in abundance.

A very small number of financial institutions were nationalised, some major institutions did collapse, others were given temporary access to public money. That was a much larger and more complex situation than we're talking about here. Allowing banks to fail would have caused a serious level of social unrest, so they had to be protected. It's backwards, in terms of efficiency, but protecting them was the least worst option available.

Because I don't feel sorry for people who refuse to take advantage of the unprecedented level of opportunities for training and development that the modern world offers? Sue me, Peter. If you can't be bothered to do anything with your life, why do you deserve sympathy when you get next to nothing in return?

I don't accept that at all, no. I assumed you were probably referring to the nationalisation of some banks during the financial crisis, which was a totally different situation and so irrelevant to this.

Low paid jobs for low skilled people. That's not a problem for anyone who is prepared to learn a skill. If you're not, you reap what you sow. Dividends are absolutely dependent on product performance, your point there is bordering on the absurd.

Whittington sales in white goods, televisions, smartphone controlled heating... Phones4u did none of that. Vodafone and EE obviously planned to take on the stores, what's wrong with that?

Nothing directly, but I'm sure I'll benefit from slightly better value mobile phone deals, and like most of us who save into a pension, I'm an investor in British business so I have an interest in seeing an efficient and competitive market where companies can make good profits, pay good dividends and show healthy growth.

The rant from the guy who admitted he knew nothing about finance or business? Seemed like pure speculation to me. Anyway, I've not said I condone predatory business practices like that, I don't, I'm saying that the failure of the business was purely due to the same market forces that we rely on to provide us opportunities to purchase goods and services at good value, and therefore we need to look at the bigger picture rather than just seeing "job losses" and immediately getting changed into our most aggressive victim complex costumes.

Unless you've got some inside information, no you don't.