Huguenot

Never quite sure with girls whether they actually want a solution, or they just want to talk about it. Best and least offensive solution is the statue game. When they start eating, tip the wink to your mates, throw a shape and hold it. No harsh words need to be exchanged, but it makes the transgressor very self-conscious. That's what you want really, to make the spatter sluncher aware of their impact on other people. If you just want to vent, well, I guess pooing on their keyboard will drive them out.

That's a misdirection Brendan, if future student you (meaning 'one') weren't paying your student loan, your income tax would be higher. The net difference is minimal, and it would be paid by people who were poorer than you and didn't get the benefits of a universtity education. Now that's unfair. Especially as those poorer than you that didn't get a university education are still paying some of your education costs anyway.

During the development process, large parts of ED were punted out to builders in approximately 15m wide blocks. In places like what is now Crawthew Grove this means that every 3 houses were built to a similar floor plan, but with slightly different trimmings. Hence you can look up and see designs on original door and window lintels that differ every three houses. Not only this, but each block of three houses had a different street name.. "Rose Terrace", "Honeysuckle Rise" Just after the turn of the 20th century it was getting really quite daft, so all these terraces were renamed as one - Crawthew Grove in that case. The whole of the East and West sides of Oakhurst Grove were made out of two adjacent back gardens. The original manor house of the East side is the one on the corner of East Dulwich Road opposite what used to be a fish and chip shop. If they haven't pulled it down recently. I suspect that the multiple names of the houses on the Gardens were down to the same thing.

There were comparatively fewer HE students under the old system SMG, so you may not have noticed. However, if you aim to open the opportunity and quality to MORE students - some 50% of all 18-24 yr olds - there comes a massive increase in cost which requires a system rethink. Either you do as some recommend - which is to limit university to either the wealthiest and most academically achieving - or you try and increase opportunity whilst sensibly and pragmatically addressing the extra cost. As I said, the system doesn't reduce government HE spending, instead it makes sure that the burden for additional spending is carrried by those graduates who benefit most. The irony is that to campaign against these changes means it's actually today's students that are campaigning to reduce the opportunity for future children.

The 'general public' is still paying a larger proportion of the cost of HE, the student is only being asked to pay a proportion of it. Only those earning over 100k per year are expected to pay off their complete loan, and even then it won't cover the cost of their degree. Regarding the 300 quid example from Brendan, the point about consumption is that it's discretionary, whereas tax on the general population is not. If the additional contribution doesn't come from the student, then income tax goes up. Far better that a graduate on 60k a year misses out on a new dress, than the 50% of the population who will never benefit from a university education should miss out on an annual holiday or healthcare because of an unsustainable income tax hike. This completely misses out all the other benefits of linking payments directly to the HE institution, rather than putting it through the whims of government.

Specially for Brendad - at 25,000pa you'd have to pay the princely sum of 30 quid a month. If you think you'd prefer to be a lorry driver instead of a well qualified graduate with long term prospects for the sake of paying 30 quid a month at 25k pa, then that advice is surely yours to offer to young adults when growing up. I understand your anxiety, but I dont' think they're proportionate. I don't know whether that's because someone hasn't worked hard enough to explain, or because you're just not listening. :(

No addditional capital is required under a finance arrangement, the system is expected to increase the number of students in HE whilst not increasing government expenditure. HE insitutions may invest against future earnings if they wish. Only 20% of students are expect to pay the debt in full, and tutition fees only represent 35% of a university's expenditure - so a substantial amount of the investment in student education still comes from elsewhere. And only a fraction of grads earning over 100k will ever repay their fees in full. So under the new systems students will still only be paying on average 20% to 30% of the costs of the benefits they reap. Your point about children being dragged through the muck is hopelessly incorrect. In 1980 only 300,000 students were at University, now nearly 2,000,000 are. That's 1,700,000 who didn't have a chance under the old system. Nobody is taking anything away from our children. If you think an additional 1,700,000 children in University is a hopeless failure, then there's not much helping you. The system has to change. The NUS know that, Labour know that, Lib Dems and Tories know that. We need to improve education, make it more widely available to a great proportion of our society, and make it more globally competitive. We need to offer more choice to students, and we need to do that at levels of income tax the British people find acceptable and sustainable. The proposal means that people earning over 60,000 quid a year are still paying less than 300 quid a month. Please, dear Brenda, get this in perspective. If you think that's smug and self-congratulatory then you're off your head - instead it's balanced, ambitious, and places the burden of cost at the feet of those who most benefit.

Direct from the Browne Report (cross-party):

Ha ha, just had a complete brown-out for around 3 mins.

I'm not sure at all how many people that are campaigning on either side actually know what they're campaigning for... It's another great example supporting recommendations against government by referendum or mob rule. Nothing about people being stupid, just that they refuse to inform themselves, revel in ignorance, and leap to judgement even if it's against their own interests.

I bet computedshorty knows where the Dulwich Cino was...

I narrowed my problems down to the routing options my ISP were choosing.

A graduate tax is administered through the income tax regime and is remitted to government. The government will then choose to how to expend it. It may not include spending it on higher education, or if it does, may not actually be on the institution that educated you, and will not reflect the quality of the education you received. Most likely it will be a fixed amount per student. No incentive for quality teaching or competitive advancement. There is no graduate tax currently proposed in the UK that proposes the tax will be ended once the fees are paid off. Current UK proposals suggest an open ended graduate tax that is proportionate to your earnings not to your cost of education. Higher earning grads will pay for the education of grads that don't meet the earning threshold to repay. Conversely a student loan arrangement lies with an independent financial body, is limited to the cost of your education plus interest, and will be paid directly to the institution that educated you. This is similar to the arrangement in Sweden. In Sweden repayment is linked to your income, this is why people confuse it with a 'tax'. However, it's not a tax, it's a loan.

What on earth has this thread got to do with immigration?

I reckon the protesters aren't accountancy and finance undergrads, they'll be in professions unlikely to attract substantial salaries in the future. They'll see a graduate tax as a transfer of the cost of their three year holiday to the swots that they already hate, and a continuation of their free ride. So much less protest, but actually more unfair.

A loan is a loan charliecharlie, a graduate income tax is something else. Your use of Sweden as an example is misplaced - critics of graduate tax would prefer to emulate Sweden. Yes the SLC can pursue repayment as with any other debt, that's why critics of graduate income tax point out that the SLC approach works, but the graduate tax doesn't. The SLC doesn't keep tabs on your earnings overseas, you make a voluntary assessment annually. Like any other debt you can be pursued anywhere in the world to repay it, and pay interest when you defer. There is no proposal in the graduate tax that would limit total repayments. In fact higher earners are expected to continue to pay well after their own fees have been reimbursed, as they are paying the fees for people who didn't generate sufficient income after graduating. The comparison with the Australia and Swedish models is incorrect. Critics of graduate tax would prefer to emulate the models in these two countries. Neither of these systems operate graduate taxes, they operate student loans where the repayment is linked to income. However, once the debt is paid, it's paid. The NUS and other proponents of a graduate tax in the UK say the tax is open-ended, and in fact the system doesn't work unless as many people overpay as there are those whose low income means they cannot pay.

I don't think it's workable nashoi. The British government wouldn't have any facility to check overseas earnings. It would have to be self-declared and people would declare themselves under the threshold. So you'd have to make it a fixed payment - which would have to be calculated according to education costs. That's the very system that people are claiming is unfair (I don't think it is). Either way, it still incentivises the most suuceesful and capable people to move overseas - because it would be cheaper than a graduate tax. As for the passport tax, that's silly. You can't take people's nationality away from them - particularly over something as trivial as a graduate tax. The UK is a modern progressive democratic state, not East Germany in the 50s. It's also counter-productive. The diaspora are incredibly important to Britain's economic success by supporting British overseas interests. Introducing laws which disenfranchise them doesn't make sense.

There are several reasons the graduate tax doesn't work: The link between the cost of the education and the fee/tax paid is broken. Some graudates will be making vast overpayments for their education that are demonstrably unfair. The prospect of overpaying for education if they are successful creates a disincentive for talented people to study in the UK - they'll pay less overall if they study overseas. We lose our brightest talents. It encourages well qualified graduates to leave the country. It discourages competition and quality from Universities because the fund is centrally administered on a per student basis, not on a quality basis. It creates problems with EU students who are entitled to be educated in the UK, but couldn't be taxed in the UK. It requires massive upfront investment by the Government because the system wouldn't be earning revenue at a 'mature' state for 25 years. Government has never been able to ring fence tax revenues for their original purpose (think National Insurance). If this tax went to Government it's highly likely that it'll get spent on whatever passing fad appeals to the electorate, not on Higher Education. It provides no benefit to low earners, who wouldn't be paying their loan back on either system. All in all a Graduate Tax just won't do. People have to stop with the idea that they can take money from wealthy successful people to indulge the whims of others.

*If you want a woman to claim that you 'held her down' during sex, go on top* RosieH, I don't think anyone knows what happened. All people know is what they were told. Both women boasted about their sexual conquest after the event on email, text or twitter. Ardin actually went back and deleted her self-congratulating tweets hours before rocking up at the police station. She didn't know about caching. Whatever she thinks, that makes her a liar and a manipulator. I appreciate that she may have been so distressed by the situation that lying may have been part of her coping strategy, but you can't make law on the basis that when your chief witness says something, they actually mean something else. There's no doubt that Ardin was the chief initiator in this prosecution, she phoned the first girl and 'persuaded' her to lodge a complaint. The first girl contends that Assange deliberately broke the condom. It may be true, but there'll be no justice if she's found to have imagined the truth. As with all normal people, I'm devastated that the conviction rate for rape is so low. However if resolving it means altering the burden of proof so that an accused man is found guilty unless proven innocent, I think that's an outrage. Particularly if, as in this case, the chief prosectuion witness is a liar.

I'm not arguing they're not intelligent, I'm arguing that they've got day jobs to do which means they're unlikely to be as well informed as your professional diplomat. Start sharing the inside story with them, and they're going to expect to have influence on events. They'll be basing their decisions on half baked news stories, popular prejudice, greed, high falutin' principles etc. etc. In fact the country is more likely to be run on the basis of extremist points of view - because they're the ones rioting when things don't go their way. Take California as an example, by giving the people the right to vote on taxation issues, they ended up in a situation where the population kept voting for tax cuts whilst only approving spending rises. As a result the world's fourth largest economy is bankrupt. That wasn't bright, it's popular politics.

Oh, and... here's that estimable 'righteous' tome known by many pious moralists as 'The Bible' Matthew 25:15 And to one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one; to each according to his ability. And he went abroad at once. Five talents was about 100 years average salary. Seems to me Jesus reckons clever blokes deserve to keep more cash, and disproportionately, and well beyond their ability to spend it. ;-)

I don't think it's fair to call the UK's progessive taxation principle a 'moral' one. A 'moral' tax is a poll tax - where each individual pays for the goods and services he/she receives from the state. Since we all have equal opportunity for health, education, welfare and defence under the state, in terms of moral obligation all should pay equally. Taxing one person $10m a year and the next one $800 on the grounds that he's a bit skint isn't 'moral', it's convenient. "From each according to their abilites.. etc." wasn't promoted as a 'moral' ethic, and it didn't even apply to tax - it was actually about labour. Progressive taxation is enlightened self-interest, but it's still an act of charity. Stompy footed righteous protestors are simply, and self-indulgently, biting the hands that feed them. Something about looking in the mirror or casting stones springs to mind. I'm all for progresssive taxation BTW, I just don't think we should pretend it's moral.

Gosh, so many things panging around! I saw Julian Assange on telly, and I thought he sounded like a bit of a prat who dressed up smug self-absorption in words he'd read off a pamphlet in a smoky student cellar. Bit of a prat, but I'd still have a beer with him. The Swedish case is a 'technical' assault. It assumes that a woman who consented to sex with a condom did not necessarily consent if the condom split. However, to be found guilty or not depends on mens rea (intent), and this is why the first girl changed her accusation of rape to 'deliberately splitting the condom'. There is no doubt in my mind that this accusation is vexatious and revisionist (they changed their stories). Whether the motive is hatred of men, injury from scorn, or the CIA I have no idea. The leaks didn't tell us anything we didn't know already. Diplomatically they're painful, but these are professionals after all. We rely as a society on 'little white lies' (oh, I'm so pleased to see you!), and it shouldn't be surprising that these are needed in international politics too. In that sense 'absolute transparency' creates dysfunction. However, I don't think there are any deaths that could be directly attributed to Prince Andrew calling the French a bunch of poofters. If the yanks deliberately leaked this then it was a poor calculation. They've made themselves look like incompetents, and right wing politicians seeking execution make the country look like it's run by slack-jawed members of the KKK. I don't think absolute transparency is an appropriate and practical way to govern. I would if I thought public opinion was based on informed debate and healthy rationalism. However, the pervasiveness of climate change denial and homeopathy tells me the public far prefer to be bloody minded and purposefully ignorant. They're easily swayed by self-advancing dickheads, even if it disadvantages themselves. I know for a fact that absolute transparency is rubbish for negotiation. A good negotiation needs to look like a win:win, but it's important that both sides walk away thinking they 'win' more than the other. That's human nature. To deny it is to be in thrall to some sort of 'Platonic' human being. Sadly the philosopher-king was an abstract dream. As entertainment, Wikileaks has been marvellous.

concita, it depends what sort of pension you're on. A lot of the comments above are accuarate, but the law did change in 2006 regarding occupational pension schemes. This includes final salary or average salary schemes. If you're in a personal pension scheme, or stakeholder pension scheme, you don't have anything to hang your hat on. Details here

With all due respect Dickensman, the lack of reinvestment in sea power wasn't due to politicians being bought out by foreign interests, but because UK voters wanted tax cuts and cheap petrol. I often see posters commenting on the UK political system as if it were the US one - but it's not. The normal level of corruption in UK politics is small time expenses fraud. When larger scale corruption takes place it's rarely for the financial benefit of self-interested UK politicians, but the corruption of overseas politicians for British interests.