Cliches of 2010 #5

"Students should engage in the democratic vote instead of protesting".

But that's what they did!

The majority of students voted LibDem at the last general election. According to a YouGov poll published in May (see here), a stunning 45 per cent of the student vote went to the Liberals, making Nick Clegg and Vince Cable's party the firm favourite in campuses up and down the country.

And that's why students and perspective students are fuming. They think all democratic doors have been slammed in their faces. When Tony Blair u-turned on tuition fees in 2003-04, students turned out in droves to support the only mainstream party that still actively campaigned to scrap university fees.

Now that the LibDems too humiliated millions who cast their vote in good faith, it's hardly surprising that many no longer see any point in the democratic process. Cue the repeated protests. Cue the anger.

And they get even angrier when they hear patronising sermons that Thursday's vote in the Commons is true democracy in action. That's the will of the majority and "put up or shut up".

However, what is democratic in passing bills thanks to the same MPs who - only months before - asked for a mandate to do the exact opposite once in office, I'll leave it to you to work out. I can't get my head round it.

PREVIOUS CLICHES:
#4 "Society benefits from extreme wealth at the top".
#3 "There are jobs out there if you really want one".
#2 "The Royal Family brings in tourism revenue".
#1 "Iain Duncan Smith is a kind and honourable man".

Research says tuition fees scheme unfeasible

If the Coalition were so convinced their new tuition fees package was so fair, why are they rushing to introduce last minute sweeteners?

In an interview published yesterday by the Independent on Sunday, Deputy PM Nick Clegg reiterated the fable that the government's plan to hike tuition fees up to £9000 are "brave and bold and [a] socially progressive thing to do".

But if it was so socially progressive - which the LibDems claimed from the off - why is the Coalition feeling the urge to announce a last minute £150m scholarship fund to cover first year's tuition fees for less well-off students?

Either way Clegg didn't explain how poorer students will manage to make it to their A-levels, let alone university, given that the Coalition is proudly scrapping the EMA (Education Maintenace Allowance) for all students aged 16 to 19.

It's also interesting how the Tories' latest recruit keeps drawing specific examples of how much better off certain students will be with the new higher education scheme, while also steering well clear of explaining that in 60-65% of the cases students will be worse off - as recently highlighted by a number of studies.

The strongest indictment of the Coalition's ineptitude, however, comes from the fiscal side of things.

After both the Higher Education Policy Institute and the Institute for Fiscal Studies raised objections to the feasibility of the Coalition's proposals, a new study by consultancy firm London Economics adds that on top of impacting "adversely on social mobility and participation", the government's plans "will have to be covered by huge increases in borrowing to fund much larger student loans".

The report reiterates the point we made last Saturday: the Coalition's plans will not save the taxpayer a single penny. Quite the opposite. The Government will have "to borrow £10.7 billion to fund student loans in 2015/16 compared to the £4.1 billion it borrowed in 2010/11. If the Government’s plans are voted through, they will add a whopping £13 billion to public sector net debt by 2015/16".

"The plans are really a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul", was the comment of Pam Tatlow, Chief Executive of university think tank Million+.

The risks of a system replicating a miniature-style financial crash within a few years' time are obvious. Researchers explain how huge chunks of future graduates will never repay the full whack, many entering the 30-year write-off period with tens of thousands of pounds still outstanding.

In the summer of 2009, it had already been noted that "out of 1.4million graduates who started university in 1998 or later, 49 per cent were earning too little to pay back their student loans".

As regards tuition fees, 43 per cent of the most recent crop of graduates had not reached the current repayment threshold of £15,000, leading to the "doubling in five years" of outstanding student debt.

With the Coalition's new regime of trebled tuition fees and a higher threshold, the implosion of the whole further education system doesn't look unlikely.

Three questions for LibDem MPs

As MPs prepare to vote on raising tuition fees up to £9000 a year, three straightforward facts appear to have eluded Coalition ministers.

In a style so eerily reminiscent of the worst of Blairite disciples, their pitch has consisted of either repeating a mantra (that the new fees are "fair") or playing with semantics, which is generally the resort of the desperate.

But if only they could just clarify three questions:

1) The Coalition claims tuition fees have to be raised now and by this much because it would reduce public spending. They are repeatedly arguing that prior to the general election they "didn't know quite what the state of public finances were" and that the deficit needs sorting out and quick .

For the sake of the argument, let's just say we believe them. Let's assume that the LibDems were so inept that they truly thought state coffers were 9000 times worse off than expected.

The fact is we won't be seeing any of the new hiked-up graduates until at least 2016. Even assuming that they all miraculously land a £40k job each straightaway, it will be years before the benefits of their repayment scheme is felt.

And guess where the money is going to come in from in the meantime? The state, of course. So how would the new tuition fees regime help towards the public deficit?

2) The Coalition are making a big deal out of the fact that the new repayment threshold will be set at £21000 which, they argue, is fairer than the current £15,000.

But they forget a simple fact. At the very best, people will start repaying in 2016. Realistically, much later on and, in any case, for much longer. So if you consider the expected growth of wages, the threshold may actually not be much of an improvement on the current £15,000.

3) Clegg claimed that the tuition fees protests are going to "damage" the situation and have the effect of "deterring the poor" from applying to university.

Now Clegg. This is not Jonestown where you expect believers to follow you blindly at every turn without even a bellyache.

You can't for years make "scrap tuition fees" one of your flagship policies, ask for hundreds of thousands of votes on that basis and then - the moment you change your mind overnight - seriously expect that everybody will just go "oh alright then", drink the kool aid and follow you blindly.

Fair enough you just wanted to grab as many votes as possible with no shame, but at least show some dignity now. Appreciate that people are harbouring all sorts of feelings towards you and your sect-- ranging from slightly puzzled to outright pissed off.

And either way. How are those protests going to "deter" the poor? You didn't have a problem when your party kicked up a fuss until the other day, did you? Wasn't your opposition to Tony Blair's hike also likely to "damage" the situation?

"It is simply wrong to penalise people who want to make the best of themselves by saddling them with enormous mortgage-style debts from the day they graduate, especially when we know the root of the current economic crisis was too much debt. And it's clear that people from disadvantaged backgrounds are far more likely to be put off going to university if it costs them tens of thousands of pounds".

Your words, Clegg, January 2010. Just do the decent thing and resign.

"Why should I pay for their university?..."

An attempt at debunking right-wing logic

You hear a lot of it these days: "why should the bus driver/waiter/street cleaner be compelled to pay for the improvements in someone's life chances that his further education will bring?".

Apply the same logic to any other aspect of life:

- Why should I pay towards the NHS bill of someone who broke their leg on a ski trip while I lead a safe life?
- Why should I contribute to the expenses of a serial fry-up eater who's just had a triple heart bypass surgery?
- Why should I pay for rail subsidies if I never ever use trains?
- Why should I pay for street cleaning so that those lowlife kids can chuck their rubbish down anywhere they like?
- Why should I fund the Citizens Advice Bureau if I'm never going to use it?
- Why should I subsidise someone else's free childcare when I don't have any kids myself?...

"Each for himself and god for us all", right?

New generation

Are the 18-25s of today displaying jaffas like we never did?

I don't know about you but, throughout my teens and then my twenties, it became common to hear references about our generation being one of the most passive and apathetic in history.

We grew up in the shadows of our predecessors from the 1960s and 1970s: student protests, growing social conscience, "counter-culture" and "rebellious" music --- whether a myth or not, young people making a stand were all generally perceived as something in retro pastel colour schemes.

Even in the 1980s, when I was a child, the telly kept showing footage of large CND marches, the miners' strike, rallies against Section 28 or the poll tax.

And, yes, popular culture in the 80s may have turned into a big fat mainstream bloater, but it was at least offset by a dedicated number of 'indie' bands proudly wearing their politics and opinions on their sleeves (think The Housemartins, The Smiths, Paul Weller etc).

And then there was us. We came of age [I hate the expression] in the 1990s and the early noughties and, except for loud but marginalised movements like anti-globalisation groups and a few others, we really developed a reputation as a spectacularly placid, apathetic and generally uninterested generation.

I lost count of articles and opinion columns relating the general consensus to "unprecedented political stability", the "death of ideology" and "we-re-all-middle-class-now".

It was the peak of Blairite/Clintonite optimism, "everything-is-postmodern", "we're-all-freelancers-now", and "don't-be-a-pedantic-leftie-this-bubble-will-never-burst".

Even in popular culture, the term 'indie' ended up amounting to all but a succession of wishy washy bands characterised by vintage clothes, vaguely "retro" hairdos and lots of articles about nothing in particular on the NME and Melody Maker. Very little, however, to piss people off, go against the grain or leave a factual cultural mark.

With the exception of the politicised few, my generation just couldn't be bothered. Just think about it. When grants were abolished and university tuition fees first introduced in 1997, there was hardly a whimper of protest to greet them.

And while you obviously can't judge an entire generation on the sole basis of the amount of protests generated by the cost of higher education, hands up if you didn't have to rub your eyes when you saw today's headlines and footage of students staging occupations at several universities along with dozens of mass walkouts taking place at schools and colleges up and down the country.

It is further proof that the 10 November demo wasn't a one-off. And for all the snotty claptrap of "middle class tantrums" (read the excellent Mark Steel today on the subject) or trivials analyses of "anarchists hijacking protest", widespread discontent now appears to be here to stay.

Perhaps it's just that the new Tory government is behaving in more antagonistic fashion. Perhaps the chicken came home to roost and years of growing insecurity and widening social gap are finally starting to unravel.

Perhaps there's only as long until enough people can tolerate the size of too few binging and too many surviving on hot air. Or perhaps, like Ed Miliband said recently, "for some people the gap between the dreams that seem to be on offer and their ability to realise them is wider than it's ever been before".

Whatever the reason, and no matter where you stand, this new generation is showing some jaffas like most of us never did.

Why party politics is a pathetic joke

The three main parties have switched policy on tuition fees more often than tennis players swapping ends at the end of every game.

Wherever you stand on tuition fees, the recent debate said an awful lot about the world of party politics. And if you think this sounds like a bit of a swiping statement, just take a look at a few simple facts.

No matter which major party you look at, what you have staring at you in the face is politicking and opportunism of the worst kind.

It's a joy to behold when LibDem MPs and activists alike turn overnight into staunch defenders of the brand new Super-Expensive Higher Education system. The very same people who for years (and until the other day) were ranting against fee-paying universities as if it would mean the Apocalypse.

Read this BBC report from 2003. Look at the bit where the LibDems education spokesman slams the Labour government for the "nonsensical notion that all graduates suddenly become high earners". And then this: "Saddling students with a mortgage-style 20-year debt creates a huge disincentive for higher education". It's going to be "mortgage-style debts", is what the Lib-Dems shouted til the other day.

Not only that. The LibDems were also warning of the dangers of "[the] market [being] introduced into higher education". "Top-ups wil deter students", they protested.

Today Clegg & co would tell you it's not ideal, but it's ok. "You don't have to pay up front" must be one of their most quoted statements in defense of the new system.

Except that's exactly how the Labour government sold a very similar policy to parliament a few years back.

"[The students] will make a fair contribution to the cost but only after graduation, through the tax system, on the basis of ability to pay", said Tony Blair in a speech in January 2004, adding that "[tuition fees] do not penalise the ordinary taxpayer".

Now you hear Harriet Harman attacking Coalition plans to "dump the cost on to students". Which is amazing, because while she was in government and Labour was doing exactly the same, her colleague and then-Higher Education Minister Alan Johnson defended trebling tuition fees. "I just reject the notion that working-class kids are more debt averse than youngsters from other backgrounds", he told the Independent.

And when you read what Charles Clarke mumbled about "growing pressure on public budgets", you could be excused for thinking it was one of the current ConDem ministers talking. "There is no alternative", sentenced Charles Clarke. Just like what David Cameron said the other day.

Which leads us to the Tories. Back when Labour trebled tuition fees, they were frothing at the mouth. "Have the Tories become Old Labour?" wondered a BBC report in 2004, with reference to the Conservatives' proposal "to abolish tuition fees"!

Back in 2003, then-Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith pledged that all university tuition fees would be abolished under a future Conservative government, condemning them as "a tax on learning". Seriously.

A year later, then-Shadow Education Secretary Damian Green called for tuition fees to be scrapped altogether. "This would help students avoid the burden of long-term debt which deters increasing numbers of poorer students from applying to university", he said.

In opposition, current Coalition Minister Kenneth Clarke said "It is the ordinary student from the ordinary family [...]who will carry the burden of tens of thousands of pounds-worth of debt [...] Does [the Labour government] seriously expect that that will have no effect at all on the willingness of such people to go in for the more expensive courses in higher education?".

Well, apparently not. According to his current government colleague and fellow Tory Michael Gove, "[higher fees] won't put off students". Fancy that.

It really must take some stomach to still put up with it. How do you do tribalism? How can anyone keep up with all the somersaulting without getting a headache or feeling at least an inkling of nausea?

How can anyone still happily believe and justify either of the three parties while they engage in their pathetic exercise of swapping ends in the style of tennis players at the end of every game?

Because the truth is theirs is a world were both principles and respect for voters mean absolutely nothing. And tuition fees are just an example. The hopes of ordinary people can be trampled over and their good faith abused whenever and wherever convenient.

Which is why the non-voting contingent has just recruited a new follower.

The cost of University: a comparative look

Sending a kid to university abroad has never been cheaper.

With tuition fees in the UK set to reach £9000 a year, the cost of Higher Education (already high by EU standards) is going to be the most prohibitive in Western Europe. Let's take a look.

Although in France admission to universities is extremely selective, most universities are almost free (€174 a year), the exception being some private Business Schools or the ultra-prestigious Grandes Ecoles which can exceed €12,900 a year. However, 26% of all HE students (generally from low income families) receive generous bursaries (see this and this).

Students in Germany have to fork out €100-200 per semester. There are penalties (as in tuition fees as such) for students who don't complete their courses on time (see this)

In the Netherlands, undergraduates under the age of 30 are required to pay €1620 a year.

In Sweden, all universities are completely free for all EU students. There is only a registration fee of around €30 Euros per semester (see here).

The same system is in place in Norway, although the registration fee is slightly higher (€50 per semester).

In Denmark, university courses are completely free for all EU students, while in Spain the system at state universities is more complex.

Aside from an annual registration fee of up to €20 a year and a number of ancillary costs (i.e. various paperwork and certificates that will not exceed a total of €200 anyway), students are charged "per credit", that is to say, more or less, for every module they study. A single credit will not exceed €16. However, students will be charged an extra 25% if they're re-sitting and an extra 70% on their third attempt. On average the total annual cost of university fees will range between €800 and €1,000.

source: http://www.studyineurope.eu

Related articles: Student protests: are you surprised?; and Top-up fees. Forking out £3,000

Student protests: are you surprised?

The history of Tory governments is packed with social unrest. They just can't help it: antagonising entire categories of people is part of their philosophy.

Fifty thousand people took to the streets yesterday to protest against the Coalition's plans to treble university tuition fees to £9,000, by far the most expensive Higher Education system in Europe.

The rally was the biggest student demo in over a decade, double the size of even the most optimistic predictions, no wonder the police was caught unprepared.

Now, a lot can be said about how a violent minority stole the limelight as some demonstrators stormed into the Conservative Party's HQs. But that would be a convenient distraction, a textbook case of political red herrings conveniently thrown in. We'd be wasting time handing centre stage to a bunch of impulsive ejits with anger management issues (a tiny fraction of the protesters) while dodging a discussion over what really is at stake here.

Because the facts are clear. In line with history, whenever you get a government whose favourite pastime is to constantly antagonise entire categories of people (public sector workers, benefit recipients, the unemployed, students...and that's just the first five months of the ConDems in power), tension is bound to skyrocket.

We feared this was going to happen. The history of Conservative governments is packed with social unrest. From race riots to lenghty and bitter strikes, from the poll tax through sexual discrimination and prison protests: if a government is driven by rampant ideology and a sense of self-righteousness no matter the consequences, some people will inevitably lose their patience.

Which is why, like Sunny Hundal wrote on Liberal Conspiracy, many suspect yesterday's "student protests were only the beginning of a tidal wave". There's only as far as the Tories and their Libservative lapdogs can stretch it before tempers begin to flare.

In the case of the tuition fees protest, frustration is going through the roof as one of the Coalition partners actively campaigned to abolish tuition fees. Not to keep them the same. Not to raise them as little as possible. Certainly not to treble them and certainly not within a few months from the election. This is the crux of the matter.

The Tories may be to blame but at least they never promised to do otherwise. Unless you're a total wally, you should know where the Tories stand on social ruthlessness.

What grates the most is how Nick Clegg and what remains of his party managed to mangle every single bit of trust the electorate had placed upon them. The LibDems had signed public pledges. Their MPs were happily being photographed holding idiotic smiles and a scrap-tuition-fees placard while standing side by side with ordinary voters.

Already betrayed by Blair's New Labour, the LibDems were the only hope students had left. Yet they discarded their pledge quicker than a tissue at the height of hayfever season.

You could have asked anybody throughtout the last decade "Can you name at least two things the LibDems stand for?" and 99% would have pointed to scrapping tuition fees as one of their flagship policies.

You can only take people for a ride to a certain extent without triggering a pissed off response.

When people like Vince Cable go on TV mouthing off that "[with the new fees] 30 per cent of graduates would pay less from their lifetime earnings than they do now", how thick does he think people are? Surely he can do the basic maths and work out that -even if he was telling the truth- if 30 per cent pay less, 70 per cent would pay more, right?

When Ministers say that a new repayment threshold set at £21,000 is more progressive than the current one at £15,000, can they not see that that is scant consolation? The chunk that people will have to pay off now will be three times as much and millions of people will have their income automatically reduced for 30 years. And that's on top of paying tax. For the next generation, in many cases university will be more expensive than their parents' mortgages.

How's that for "capping aspiration", one of the right-wingers favourite set phrases?

Related posts: The cost of university: a comparative look.

When pictures speak louder than words

Click here and here to read Nick Clegg's December 2009 "pledges" to phase out and then scrap tuition fees.

Click here to read Vince Cable yesterday proposing tuition fees to go up to £7000 a year.

Steve Richards: "A U-turn that will wreck public trust".

Youth unemployment: German lessons

Youth unemployment data across the EU suggest that countries with more developed apprenticeship policies have minimised the worst effects of the downturn.

In Britain, 17.9% of those below the age of 25 are unemployed. True, some countries are faring even worse. The percentage is 21.5 per cent in Ireland while, in Spain, the jobless amount amongst the young has now reached a staggering 42.6 per cent.

Countries like Denmark and Germany, however, show a different picture - with the unemployment rate amongst the under-25s standing at 8.9 and 10.5 respectively.

Of course, there is no obvious reason for this disparity. However, Germany has long been known as a country placing apprenticeships at the core of its education system.

The German system is a model for youth work contracts. It is called 'the dual system'. Once completed compulsory education, either at 16 or 19, a worker can start an apprenticeship at a company which can last between 2 and 3 and 1/2 years. During this period, for two days a week, the apprentice will have to learn the theoretical background at a vocational school known as Berufsschule.

The precise skills and theory taught on German apprenticeships are strictly regulated. The employer is responsible for the entire education programme.

There are aroud 350 trades to choose from: anything from accountant to builder or from medical worker to baker.

About two thirds of young people who finish school decide to begin an apprenticeship every year.

The fact that the contract is really an 'apprenticeship' doesn't mean that the worker has no rights. Unlike other countries such as Italy, contracts designed to help the young are not misused to maximise profits out of unprotected workers. The company is required to pick up the social security costs as well as unemployment insurance and pension entitlements.

What varies is the salary. For instance, an apprentice metal worker in the Baden-Wurtemberg region will earn around 810 Euros a month during his first year, €861 in his second, €937 in the third and €988 in his fourth. His counterpart in Berlin will probably take home €100 less each month.

This can partly explain why there is a lower percentage of university students in Germany when compared to other Western countries, but there is a much lower percentage of people entering the German labour market with no qualifications. This seems to have protected, at least partially, German workers and job seekers from the worst effects of the downturn.

Britain, instead was hit on two fronts.

One one side, the 1980s and 1990s saw a sharp decrease in the number of apprenticeships which was only reversed through increased investment since 1997. The number of learners of all ages starting on the Apprenticeships programme has more than doubled from around 75,000 to around 180,000 today.

On the other side, the Labour government was guilty of placing unrealistic expectations on the University system. You may remember the old Blairite obsession with having 50% of people in Higher Education by 2010. It was never going to be economically sustainable, which is why the Government is now -very shyly- trying to support graduate internship positions.

At the moment, it's not going very well. Out of 725,000 unemployed 18-24 Britons, there are 3,400 graduate internship positions, only 47% of which are paid.

Be nice to shop assistants

You may think you're religious, well-brought up, very liberal, or simply a very nice person. There's only one way to find out.

You may have heard about the allegations of Prime Minister Gordon Brown's bullying of his staff.

Yesterday's Observer referred to "abusive behaviour and volcanic eruptions of foul temper" as it reproduced extracts from journalist Andrew Rawnsley's new book.

Apparently, the culture at No.10 is/was one of rage, fear and paranoia, with many members of staff -even at the lowest level- victims of bullying from Prime Ministerial circles. According to National Bullying Helpline boss Christine Pratt, "three or four people" from Gordon Brown's office had contacted the charity in recent years.

Now. For the sake of balance, we must also remind you that Andrew Rawnsley has a new book to flog and that, as one of the most senior Observer columnists, he may have been given ample backing by his own paper. It's also true that Peter Mandelson has said that Brown is no bully and that he is simply "demanding of people".

However, and here I pick up on an excellent point made by Neil Robertson at The Bleeding Heart Show, whether it counts semantically as "bullying" or not, nobody should routinely shout at staff - at any level, in any organisation. Not even the Prime Minister. It doesn't matter if he's stressed. He should ask the earthlings in his office how they feel.

Neil writes:

"Over the years, I’ve developed a completely arbitrary but generally quite reliable method for measuring a person’s moral worth. Where some people might totter up a person’s good deeds, charitable giving, political beliefs or religion, mine is far more straightforward: Are you nice to shop assistants?".

For years, I had the misfortune (or maybe the fortune) of working as a barman, waiter, receptionist. These are amongst the lowest paid, most repetitive, least rewarding jobs in the country. You're supposed to be efficient, nice, polite, smiley, professional, obedient, aware, meticulous, patient, punctual, on the ball and sympathetic for the minimum wage or little more. You're supposed to give up most week-ends and bank holidays. While excellent for social observation and developing misanthropy, those jobs offer no incentive whatsoever .

Truth is, most people haven't seen what life is like on the other side of the counter, desk or till. It may not be their fault, but they're simply not aware of the difference a smile or an understanding customer can make. Most don't even think you're a disposable piece of shit who's taking stick for something you're not responsible for. It simply doesn't cross their mind.

You can think you're religious, well-brought up, very liberal, or simply a very nice person. But it's on those occasions that, like Neil says, "your moral worth" comes across.

Politics, in those cases, counts jackshit.

This is simply my personal experience, but allow me to say that the nicest, most humane, most understanding manager I've ever worked with was actually an old school arch-Tory, a pub landlord. We used to have lots of political chats and debates during dead afternoons and evenings behind the bar and, politically, we agreed on nothing. But he never ever patronised anyone and would always ask you, not tell you, to do stuff. In my dysfunctional book, he will always remain the most left-wing manager I've ever had, even though his heroes were Margaret Thatcher and William Hague.

On the other side, I remember once I was working as a receptionist at a Museum somewhere. Not a particularly bad job, but you know, hardly glamorous Mick Jagger material. There comes a self-professed "staunch socialist", "friend of the people", "left-wing" fifty-something senior lecturer I had the misfortune of meeting during my time at University of Birmingham (apparently he's no longer there now, he fucked off to another continent).

I greet, but there's no 'hi', 'hello', 'good morning' in response. Nowt. He looks at me, chuckles and then says "god you've made a career for yourself since university" and he starts laughing and off he goes, walking in with his wife and two mates. My fellow receptionist who was with me looked dumbfounded: "who's that prick?" she asks me. "My old lecturer at Uni. He's a socialist", I answer.

A plea to the Left: ditch the pompous language!

The Left's most important challenge: attracting activists and MPs that don't stem from the inner circle of academia, research and "think tanks".

One thing at the back of my mind has been bugging me for a while.

It was brought back to the fore by a paper called Culture and Society, Then and Now that I recently attempted to read/decipher. Published not long ago in the New Left Review journal, it was written by a critical theorist called Francis Mulhern.

In itself the paper contains a number of interesting thoughts and analyses from a leftist perspective. One, for instance, is Mulhern's critique of 'multiculturalism' as a sort of fig leaf for the liberal establishment to deflect from fundamental questions about class and inequality. This is, however, a summary. A very crude summary of an incredibly complex piece.

Which begs the question: the revolting, inaccessible, superelitist way so many people on the Left insist on writing/speaking, effectively putting off a massive pool of people with a potential to find both hope and political inspiration in certain ideas.

I apologise for picking on Mulhern's piece, but it's the perfect example of the tons of stuff on the Left written in the arsiest, most arcane, incomprehensible, "ivory tower" sort of fashion.

Am I being populistic and pig ignorant and tabloid-esque? Ok then, you tell me: why else would you pepper your article/analysis/paper with spectacularly convoluted paragraphs right from the off? To what ends? What possible benefit is there aside from displaying narcissistic, self-loving, self-referential tendencies that are so reminiscent of my old University lecturers? What purpose does it serve but to remain a futile exercise for the few?

Laying down your concepts properly and avoiding lazy language doesn't mean you have to
test the readers' patience as they go through each paragraph six times trying to make sense of what they're reading. That is, if they don't pack it in within a minute.

Last week, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a programme by David Runciman about the Left's incapacity to speak to ordinary people. Referring to the US in particular, Runciman explained that this is why the Right often wins the argument - in recent decades, "right-wing politics has become a vehicle for channelling [...] popular anger against intellectual snobs".

According to author Thomas Frank, many voters who are repulsed by the patronising liberal language believe that, by voting Right, they're going "to strike a blow against elitism". Of course though, the end result is "like a French Revolution in reverse in which the workers come pouring down the street screaming more power to the aristocracy". Which is why ridiculously pompous posturing needs to be ditched asap.

This is a challenge that the Left is losing and -at least in part- it explains why Labour and the Left (in Britain as well as elsewhere) are increasingly failing to attract activists and, in turn, MPs that don't stem from middle class professionals and the shrinking inner circle of academia, research and "think tanks".

Just think about it: there are precious few current Labour MPs of working or even low/middle class background. More worringly, none of them is a spring chicken anymore.

"Middle class and jobless"

The Channel 4 programme on the practical realities of trying to find work, even when armed with a degree or a glowing CV.

Last week's Dispatches focused on one of the apparent surprises of the credit crunch: middle-class unemployment.

Cue a striking parade of marketing and human resources managers who grew accustomed to a life of £80k a year (or more) and who now have to re-adjust their standards of living: second homes in France, fancy BMWs, kids at public schools. Some of that will have to give.

The recession is hitting those former high-fliers in the face, along with the ugly discovery that you can send off hundreds of application forms in six months and still end up empty handed. The loss of self-confidence gradually takes over and insecurity grows.

Dispatches revealed that an estimated 750,000 middle-class victims of the crisis are not registered unemployed. Whether it's fear of stigma or initial reliance on decent redundancy payments, the fact is the government's unemployment figures don't take into account what is a massive (and growing) contingent - a theme that will crop up again in the programme.

Which begs to the most depressing part. Watching this episode of Dispatches reminded me in fact of a book that came out two years ago called Fantasy Island. Written by Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson, it explained why most of Tony Blair's rhetoric while in power was based purely on cloud-cuckoo land.

For instance, New Labour's glaze-eyed obsession with cajoling 50 per cent of school leavers to go to university was part of Tony Blair's ability to sell weaknesses as strenghts. Remember those proclaims that top-up fees were worth trebling because a degree was "a passport to a brighter future"?

Well, like most things based on illusion and denial, sooner or later the chickens come home to roost and, with the crisis, along came the time to mop up the mess.

Forget the above mentioned "high fliers". There's ordinary people like Adam, with a Business degree who left him £17,000 in the red, whose lack of success in finding work results in a commission-only door-to-door sales job for Dogs Trust. "At this rate, he won't even make the money to cover his fare home" says the narrator.

There's a guy with an MA whose only chance is to sell pizzas at Domino's. And with over-qualified people taking up low skilled jobs, those without qualifications are sidelined even further.

Dispatches revealed how the class of 2009 is now facing the worst job prospects ever. The number of people with a piece of paper that says "degree" has doubled in the last fifteen years. The last two years alone have seen an extra 50,000 graduates coming out of university while vacancies dropped by 20 per cent.

300,000 people graduated in July and the number is set to increase to 320,000 in 2010, a huge blow to an already mangled job market. As Martin Birchall, a researcher interviewed by Dispatches, put it: "This is a tidal wave of graduate talent coming out of university all hungry for jobs and opportunities".

A few months ago the government announced it was on top of things and paraded a new internship scheme called "Graduate Talent Pool". They announced an initial 7,500 internship positions available, aiming at a total of 15,000. As Dispatches shows, however, only 2,000 have been advertised so far and half of them are unpaid internships.

Most striking, however, is that whoever takes up an offer, even an unpaid one, is removed from the official unemployment figures. Paired with the above mentioned unregistered jobseekers, it means that the 7,9% unemployment rate announced by the Office for National Statistics in September is a very conservative estimate.

Referring to Britain's bizarre approach to Higher Education, Martin Birchall said on the programme: "We're raising people's expectations unrealistically. We're asking them to make a huge financial commitment to go to university and yet we don't have the right number of jobs in place in the end to sustain this enormous graduate workforce".

[Also see "Help the Graduates" and
"CBI: Science not a real subject"]

They want higher fees

Universities are looking at banks for inspiration. They want more dough.

According to the BBC today, "many universities in England and Wales want a sharp increase in tuition fees". They're starting to sound like the banks. By the look of it, £3000 is not enough already. Five years after the massive debate over the increasing cost of university (that was won courtesy of the ever zealous Labour Party whips), it looks like we're at it again. And if David Lammy, the current Education minister, says "there's an important debate to be had", then it means the government have already made up their mind.

Yet if the law of supply and demand was to be applied, given how far degrees (don't) get you these days, the cost of higher education should be going down, not up.

The National Union of Students (NUS) have launched a campaign for "an alternative higher education funding system for England", stating that charging students even higher fees would plunge them "into over £32,000 of debt". Not an ideal situation, with a recession galloping.

Also on top-up fees: "Forking out £3,000".

Degrees not worth a New Labour promise

The Blair government sold top-up fees with the illusion that a policy of higher education binge would pay off. The National intern scheme is a little step to right years of wrong.

When you think of the Blair years, the airy-fairy soundbites of 'knowledge economy', '21st century nation', 'wealth creation' and 'things can only get better' all spring to mind. Amongst the worst legacies of the years of delusion (1997-2007) you can safely include £3000-a-year tuition fees and an army of people with degrees worth nothing.

Tony Blair's words that a degree guarantees a better paid job have remained etched in history. Labour's policies of turning universities into degree-factories completely overlooked some obvious facts. Back in 2000, a study by the Centre for Economic Performance was already showing that "a third of workers" were "over-qualified". The government kept banging on that "going to university remains a very worthwhile investment" and top-up fees were brought in.

Nobody in the high ranks of the Labour party told Blair about the meaning of the word 'saturation'. Yet it's a simple fact. Take a law graduate, for instance: Britain has roughly the same amount of courts and court cases as it did thirty years ago, but the number of people holding a BA in law are probably ten times, maybe more, as many as back then. This is how the system clogs up. Thousands of those graduates will have to shelve their plans and look for the nearest call centre for work.
And now we're reaping the harvest. The papers are suddenly full of surveys and headlines about "Labour's graduates" who "aren't getting jobs", "Is there any point going to university", "Graduates struggling to get on the career ladder", and "A third of Brit graduates not employing their degrees". "Are degrees worth the paper they're printed on?" asked the Independent a few months ago, while Alex Betteridge, an Oxford graduate, recently wrote on Liberal Conspiracy:

"I can’t get a job. I haven’t been able to get a job for six months, and was recently rejected for work as a domestic cleaner at a London university, despite meeting the qualifications and having done the same job elsewhere".

At last, the world's cottoned on.

The trend had been obvious for a while, magically concealed by an economy still pretending to function on a binge of fake optimism and credit cards. When I graduated in 2002, and landed an admin job after hundreds of unsuccessful attempts, the most shocking aspect was the educational divide. Each and every one of the newest recruits at my workplace, the same generation as me, was a bunch of graduates in English, law, art, illustration, politics, history etc who could not find a more appropriate job for shit, no matter how hard they tried. Our older colleagues had needed GCSEs to manage exactly the same position as us. They were in disbelief at the sight of graduates stuck in a dead-end job whose requirements had to do with further education the same as tennis has to do with teamplay.

It's about time, therefore, that the government decided something had to be done. It may not be enough, but their National internship scheme is at least a sign that they're trying to right the wrongs of Blair's badly thought-out policies. At the Daily Mail, they can cry it's "a war on the middle classes" for all they like, but if banks can be saved from collapsing with billions of public money, then surely there is no harm in the government offering Britain's future generations a little help.

Help the graduates

With the value of degrees deteriorating, the government is launching a new scheme

Since higher education became a mass phenomenon, the plight of graduates was never going to grab the front pages. Middle class kids maxing out their credit card on pub crawls are neither tabloid material nor Polly Toynbee stuff. And yet the army of young people whose Law, History or English degree granted them an agency job at a call centre has simply been swelling up relentlessly. Which turned Tony Blair's u-turn on tuition fees even more irritating as he sold it to the public with the delusional notion that a degree grants you a headstart in life.

Except that degrees have become the equivalent of what GSCEs were to the previous generation. Not to mention the increasing number of graduates who have their application rejected on the grounds of being 'over qualified', or with 'expectations too high' and 'little hands-on experience'.

It looks like the Government has finally cottoned on. According to the Telegraph, a "National intern scheme to help graduates through the recession" has been announced, "in a bid to find posts for the 400,000 students due to graduate from universities this summer. The Guardian calls it "Generation crunch", referring to a recent labour market survey showing "unemployment growing fastest among 18-24-year-olds". "Unemployment for young adults was 597,000 in the three months to October 2008", they add, "up 55,000 from the three months to July 2008".

Top-up fees. Forking out £3,000

Chances are that the recruits of the past 8 or 9 years have degrees for jobs that in the past would have simply required apprenticeships, GCSEs or A-Levels.

Right when every analyst insists that this country is getting overridden with "virtual money", loans, credit cards and mortgages, the government insures that extra chunks of citizens begin their working life with a mini-mortgage to buy out their "education".

The actual reasons behind tuition fees rising up to £3,000 are a miserable lie. Blair tells us that "the debt will be a good investment as graduates tend to secure better paid jobs"...Yet he doesn’t tell you that his judgement is deliberately based on the pre-1990s situation.

In fact, if we just consider the intake of graduates of the last 10 to 15 years, the percentage of those who end up earning significantly better decreases dramatically. Unlike 20 years ago, a degree no longer automatically guarantees a better start in working life (with a few exceptions, Oxbridge or a select type of courses).

The notion of getting 50% of people into Higher Education sounds great and, as per usual, Blair ensures it follows a misleading narrative. In her book An Honourable Deception, former Cabinet-member Clare Short explains that, since the 90s, the number of people going to University has consistently increased anyway, making the government’s fuss over the 50% target the more inexplicable.

More pressing, instead, is the quality that comes with it. How many graduates from '97 (the year tuition fees were brought in) onwards have been scrambling through casual jobs, low-pay, call centres and the lot? Just look at where you work. Chances are that the recruits of the past 8 or 9 years have degrees for jobs that in the past would have simply required apprenticeships, GCSEs or A-Levels.

So why is it NOT progressive to say that, given the congested state of University and the sharp devaluation of degrees, an apprenticeship system should be reinvented? And that doesn’t mean to say "we need more plumbers", for god's sake.

Many would rather have less people in Higher Education, provided that the selection was much stricter and based on merit – and not ability to pay- so that University would be truly affordable for those who really deserve a place. As it now stands, ridiculously easy access has turned Universities into degree factories.

It is true that for more people within the lowest income bracket University will now be free. Yet the greatest proportion of students will always come from lower-middle class and middle-class families and the burden on them will be too bad, especially those with more children.

Some people object to the idea of paying tax to finance free higher education: "why should people who don't go to University pay for those middle-class spoilt brats who do?"...

But if that becomes the yardstick of society then where do you draw the line? One may argue that they don't have kids and don’t intend to have any...why should their tax go towards childcare or primary schools? Similarly, those who don’t eat sweets may wonder why they should finance dentists’ bills on behalf of the greedy bastards who do. Or how about non-smokers seeing a chunk of their NHS tax wasted on smokers and related diseases? And you can go on forever. Do you honestly fancy a society that works that way?

Whatever your stance on the subject, given that New Labour so blatantly did the opposite of what they had promised in their 2001 manifesto, the next time Blair comes preaching about people getting disillusioned and apathetic, please do blow a raspberry.