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Made in gb
Regular Dakkanaut




Herzlos wrote:
 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

If the bullets start flying in Eastern Europe, us and the French will be on Brussels' speed dial list, and you can bet your mortgage that Juncker will get whiplash from u-turning on his views of Britain.

Brussels pen pushers won't stop Russian aggression with red tape.

It'll be the cold steel of NATO i.e us, the French, and the Yanks.


And that's why the EU is trying to reduce reliance on unreliable allies (us and the Yanks). How are we going to be useful in Eastern Europe with an aircraft carrier with no aircraft?
Will we really pull a Trump and only agree to help if we get paid? How is Junckers view of Britain going to change? He seems to already like the UK, but has no intentions of violating the EU principles to give us a free ride.


you are going to have to explain this one. What it looks like, is you've used a pointless comparison to score points without thinking it through. The deployment of aircraft carriers would be utterly useless in this respect. We have one of the most capable, flexible and reliable armed forces in the world. Second only to the US. To call us unreliable is so wrong it verges on insulting.

   
Made in jp
[MOD]
Anti-piracy Officer






Somewhere in south-central England.

It depends how you see these things.

The influence we get over Poland by both being members of the EU is different to the influence we get by both being members of NATO.

Within the EU both nations co-operate constantly on many different projects ranging from standards to the EU Bank to Euratom to Europol, and so on.

In NATO both nations co-operate on military preparedness under the leadership of the USA.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
An example would be the European City of Culture. While in the EU, we can help Poland get City of Culture for somewhere like Bydgoszcz or Włocławek. In NATO we can help do some tank training exercises.

Of course, by leaving the EU we do not lose our ability to co-operate on the tank training.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/12/11 16:37:05


I'm writing a load of fiction. My latest story starts here... This is the index of all the stories...

We're not very big on official rules. Rules lead to people looking for loopholes. What's here is about it. 
   
Made in il
Inspiring Icon Bearer




 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
I'm opposed to EU Military Integration.
Europe does not need us because Putin is not going to invade.


That, and that Europe on its own spends several times the Russian defence spending. Just a little optimisation and it's done.

Putin is a trumped up bogeyman that the EU is exploiting to justify more empire building projects (expanding EU influence into the Ukraine, establishing an EU military).



So what does that make of NATO? Should it be dismantled?




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Thebiggesthat wrote:
Herzlos wrote:
 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

If the bullets start flying in Eastern Europe, us and the French will be on Brussels' speed dial list, and you can bet your mortgage that Juncker will get whiplash from u-turning on his views of Britain.

Brussels pen pushers won't stop Russian aggression with red tape.

It'll be the cold steel of NATO i.e us, the French, and the Yanks.


And that's why the EU is trying to reduce reliance on unreliable allies (us and the Yanks). How are we going to be useful in Eastern Europe with an aircraft carrier with no aircraft?
Will we really pull a Trump and only agree to help if we get paid? How is Junckers view of Britain going to change? He seems to already like the UK, but has no intentions of violating the EU principles to give us a free ride.


you are going to have to explain this one. What it looks like, is you've used a pointless comparison to score points without thinking it through. The deployment of aircraft carriers would be utterly useless in this respect. We have one of the most capable, flexible and reliable armed forces in the world. Second only to the US. To call us unreliable is so wrong it verges on insulting.



Not unreliable in the operational level, unreliable in the sense the UK has tried to use security and defence cooperation as a bargaining chip. Same as the Trump noises about everyone in NATO not pulling their weight.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/12/11 17:11:21


 
   
Made in gb
Ultramarine Librarian with Freaky Familiar





jouso wrote:
So what does that make of NATO? Should it be dismantled?


It should have been dismantled in 1991.



   
Made in gb
Calculating Commissar




Frostgrave

Thebiggesthat wrote:
Herzlos wrote:
 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

If the bullets start flying in Eastern Europe, us and the French will be on Brussels' speed dial list, and you can bet your mortgage that Juncker will get whiplash from u-turning on his views of Britain.

Brussels pen pushers won't stop Russian aggression with red tape.

It'll be the cold steel of NATO i.e us, the French, and the Yanks.


And that's why the EU is trying to reduce reliance on unreliable allies (us and the Yanks). How are we going to be useful in Eastern Europe with an aircraft carrier with no aircraft?
Will we really pull a Trump and only agree to help if we get paid? How is Junckers view of Britain going to change? He seems to already like the UK, but has no intentions of violating the EU principles to give us a free ride.


you are going to have to explain this one. What it looks like, is you've used a pointless comparison to score points without thinking it through. The deployment of aircraft carriers would be utterly useless in this respect. We have one of the most capable, flexible and reliable armed forces in the world. Second only to the US. To call us unreliable is so wrong it verges on insulting.



Didn't we just get a new carrier with no aircraft due to budget?

I meant unreliable in a uk government using it as a bargaining chip, though I've heard plenty of horror stories of unsuitable kit and chronic underfunding.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Kilkrazy wrote:
If students were not paying tuition and hall fees, they would not have so much need for weekend/summer jobs.


Exactly. And might get better grades / experience out of it. I know my education suffered from working evenings/nights/weekends

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/12/11 17:55:47


 
   
Made in gb
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If students were not paying tuition and residence hall fees, they probably would not be getting the publicly funded Student maintenance loans that they currently get, and so they'd still need to work to support themselves in their food, equipment, travel costs etc.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/12/11 18:12:32


 
   
Made in gb
Calculating Commissar




Frostgrave

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
If students were not paying tuition and residence hall fees, they probably would not be getting the publicly funded Student maintenance loans that they currently get, and so they'd still need to work to support themselves in their food, equipment, travel costs etc.


I'm' not so sure; the maintenance payments are theoretically to provide everything. The payments would just go down to cover what students still needed to spend.
   
Made in gb
Drakhun





Herzlos wrote:
 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
If students were not paying tuition and residence hall fees, they probably would not be getting the publicly funded Student maintenance loans that they currently get, and so they'd still need to work to support themselves in their food, equipment, travel costs etc.


I'm' not so sure; the maintenance payments are theoretically to provide everything. The payments would just go down to cover what students still needed to spend.


Theoretically. When my missus was at Kent, after accommodation she had about 50 quid left a month for everything else.

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bouncingboredom wrote:
Whirlwind wrote:Our guidance basically limits how flammable materials can be but doesn't prescribe how to undertake those tests or ban materials outright. Hence it is left to industry to determine what is appropriate and reasonable. The were warnings before on this but the government delayed updating the rules.

It is also unreasonable to blame local councils. They have to procure services and have to decide in that procurement what standards to meet. However you cannot expect a procurement manager to know whether government guidance is suitable or not. That is not their expertise. As such the procurements will state that "they must meet the generals standards set out in X". If the bidding companies provide evidence that they meet those standards then I am not exactly sure what you are expecting them to do. They haven't decided to allow proposals that breach UK rules, quite the opposite, but they can't be expected to know the in's and outs of whether there are weaknesses in the tests. That is why we have standards so everyone doesn't have to be an expert in everything.

We have to be a little bit careful about what we say as this is part of an ongoing investigation. Suffice to say that there is a British standard for cladding in this use and the cladding in question did not meet that standard. It is alleged that the council knew this was this case but proceeded anyway in order to save money.


That's not correct at all. The cladding did meet the standards when it was put on the building. We had this discussion before and the fire safety certificate was both provided to show that it met the appropriate safety standards (but not the EU safety standards) previously if you cared to search. What you are confusing is that these materials after they have been put on the buildings became more flammable than the standard lab tests reported. It appears that according to studies that the reason they failed is because weathering of the material by water results in the water acting like an accelerant and hence igniting the material faster. Ironically it could have been the fire services own attempts to control the blaze that actually resulted in the inferno (not that they were in any way to blame or to know this).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-berkshire-41466281

This goes for the Council. Because it met the safety regulations in place and the appropriate standards they chose a cheaper material. Yes a rock based material would have not ignited, but neither the Council, the fire brigade and even the management company are likely to be at blame because by default they met the standards and they all relied on the standards that were in place. The standards failed because they failed to consider the real world situation (rather like testing cars in a lab in perfect conditions).


"Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. " - V

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[MOD]
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Somewhere in south-central England.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
If students were not paying tuition and residence hall fees, they probably would not be getting the publicly funded Student maintenance loans that they currently get, and so they'd still need to work to support themselves in their food, equipment, travel costs etc.


In the "good old days" when I went to medical school, the early 1980s, you got a means tested grant which for most people covered the hall fees and some extras (books, travel.) Tuition was free.

OTOH far fewer places were available. If the government thinks it's a good idea for more people to go to university, they might perhaps consider helping to pay for it.

No-one thinks its weird for the government to pay for infrastructure like roads and railways. They benefit the entire nation, even people who don't directly use them. it's the same with education.

I'm writing a load of fiction. My latest story starts here... This is the index of all the stories...

We're not very big on official rules. Rules lead to people looking for loopholes. What's here is about it. 
   
Made in gb
Tough-as-Nails Ork Boy



UK

Apology's for the wall of text, been at work all day and trying to catch up.


NinthMusketeer wrote:The problem with the argument of the binman paying for education is that he doesn't. His taxes are a drop in the bucket. The ones raking in millions a year? It's the taxes on them that pays for education of the binman's kid. That's how it really works, which is why the wealthy are so desperate to get away from that. And when the wealthy are screwing over everyone else to benefit themselves, crashing the economy for everyone seems like a reasonable chance to take because most of everyone already lives there.

Except there's a fairly finite amount of money you can squeeze out of the rich (especially the super rich), which has been proven time and again. These are people with the ability to spend large amounts of money in order to avoid paying enormous amounts of tax. Though they pay a lot of income tax, the portion isn't quite as big as some people think. Their National Insurance and VAT contributions are also somewhat more muted, though still significant. This is why Gordon Brown became famous for his vast array of "stealth taxes", an avenue that has been eagerly embraced by the Conservatives, because taxes on things like fuel and beer are much harder to evade. When more tax income is required, it's never just a case of saying "let's stick another 5% on the rich". That works as a vote attracting policy, but as a revenue raiser it's not great. What normally ends up happening is a hike in something like VAT (now at 20% thanks to our allegedly tax opposed conservative overlords), a tax which falls disproportionately on the poor. Make no mistake, the rich are not going to pay for universal education. Everyone else is.

nfe wrote:Yep. I'll cheerfully pay an extra £20 a month for anyone to study anything. I earn less that binmen. Additionally, a tiered system that makes value judgements about the worthiness of research fields is not helpful. People are excited about interdisciplinary research projects for a reason. All research has merit and frequent contributions are made across fields. Currently there's a lot of cross pollination between urban developmers, environmental scientists, human geographers, and archaeologists, for example.

All research having merit is a somewhat bold statement (pick up virtually any exercise science paper...). But I'm not sure of your reasoning behind the above statement? In a free market the research fields will find their desired funding according to how useful/required they are. The problems start when the state intervenes and tells universities what they should be funding.

According to your arbitrary criteria.

Not an arbitrary criteria. It has been a common problem for several years now of their being an oversupply of certain qualifications, such as criminal pathology and related subjects vs the number of actual jobs available in these fields. Psychology is normally in the top ten of most popular degree courses taken, but the number of actual jobs in a related field at the other end is again somewhat limited.

Not at undergrad it isn't. It's about getting a vague background in a subject whilst learning how to conduct analysis and research in a given field. Some people get more than that, of course, but that's what's in it for the majority, and that's its purpose as conceived by nigh-on everyone teaching in anything but the most vocational courses - which frequently fail to get people jobs anyway, the predictability of the job market being what it is (people are working on that predictability, but paying any attention to it doesn't really for the current capitalist model, and they struggle to get sufficient funding for outreach and impact).

That tends to be more true for certain subjects in the humanities branch than others. Law for example is about delving into the world of how the UK legal system works. Coming out the other end, the graduate should have a much better understanding of the subject than your average joe. Part of the problem facing university grads has been that many of the courses available are not specific enough to their subject and the bearer as such is not quite as advanced in the subject as would be hoped. In the "hard" sciences something will have gone horribly wrong if you come out the other side of 3 years of training with just a vague background in a subject.

Talking past the point doesn't really move the conversation anywhere useful.

I was trying to point out to you that Harvard is a very expensive fee paying university, yet it also has world class research facilities and uses some of its income to fund bright students from poor backgrounds, things that people seem oddly to believe would not happen if you uncapped uni fees and removed most state support for applicants.

Kilkrazy wrote:To be honest, if kindergarten, primary and secondary school are free because it benefits the nation to educate the people, why should the same principle not apply to university?

Your average household cannot afford to pay for that many years worth of education for a kid. Once you get to university level a couple of things have now happened. 1) the prospective student is about to embark on a very narrow band of education. The utility of giving them a general education no longer exists. 2) It's a much shorter period, and they themselves are now capable of carrying the financial burden. 3) The pool of people looking to go to uni has shrunk dramatically since the secondary level. The people embarking on this next course stand to gain a significant competitve advantage in the future labour force. They should pay for this advantage themselves.


2. To marketise the higher education system on the theory that marketising things is always good. Apart from this being automatic rubbish, it isn't working anyway because University of West London and University of Oxford both charge the same for their courses, because it is capped by the government, and there is no market. I also fundamentally disagree that education should be like buying fish. It concerns peoples' lives and the life of the whole country.

So you're arguing that the proof marketising education isn't working is because we haven't done it yet and that hasn't worked? That's a very odd conclusion to come to. It's not really like buying fish though is it. It's like buying a house. It's something that people think about for several years before they do it. Perhaps if there wasn't so much pressure for people to immediately go from a-levels to a degree we'd get more mature students having a go, maybe a few years after they've left school but before having a family.

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:Does it make sense that they can't now go back into education without incurring crippling debt? You say Uni isn't for everyone. And you're right, it's not. But that decision shouldn't boil down to 'can I afford this' - ever. I'd far rather thousands drop out in their first few months that a single student miss out on achieving their potential.

Except that they don't start repaying it until they're earning almost double the minimum wage, at which point the annual repayments are less than a quarter of what some people pay in monthly mortgage repayments. And if they don't pay it off in a certain time period it's written off. And the whole thing is secured by the government. By any definition it's the complete opposite of crippling debt, as it represents some of the most generous lending terms you can find in the modern world.

Whirlwind wrote:
That's not correct at all. The cladding did meet the standards when it was put on the building. We had this discussion before and the fire safety certificate was both provided to show that it met the appropriate safety standards (but not the EU safety standards) previously if you cared to search. What you are confusing is that these materials after they have been put on the buildings became more flammable than the standard lab tests reported. It appears that according to studies that the reason they failed is because weathering of the material by water results in the water acting like an accelerant and hence igniting the material faster. Ironically it could have been the fire services own attempts to control the blaze that actually resulted in the inferno (not that they were in any way to blame or to know this).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-berkshire-41466281

This goes for the Council. Because it met the safety regulations in place and the appropriate standards they chose a cheaper material. Yes a rock based material would have not ignited, but neither the Council, the fire brigade and even the management company are likely to be at blame because by default they met the standards and they all relied on the standards that were in place. The standards failed because they failed to consider the real world situation (rather like testing cars in a lab in perfect conditions).


As I said earlier, and reiterate now, we should very careful about talking about this incident as it is the subject of a current police investigation. As such I'll stick only to something that is public knowledge and that is that the company that produces some of the materials used in the cladding have gone on record as saying that their material was never tested in the application used at Grenfell and “would be very surprised if such a system … would ever pass the appropriate British Standard 8414 large-scale test”. Further they added that the product in question "do not meet the limited combustibility requirements” of building regulations guidance.

If you mention second edition 40k I will find you, and I will bore you to tears talking about how "things were better in my day, let me tell ya..." Might even do it if you mention 4th/5th/6th WHFB 
   
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Bristol

 welshhoppo wrote:
Herzlos wrote:
 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
If students were not paying tuition and residence hall fees, they probably would not be getting the publicly funded Student maintenance loans that they currently get, and so they'd still need to work to support themselves in their food, equipment, travel costs etc.


I'm' not so sure; the maintenance payments are theoretically to provide everything. The payments would just go down to cover what students still needed to spend.


Theoretically. When my missus was at Kent, after accommodation she had about 50 quid left a month for everything else.


The loan I got never covered my accommodation when I was in student halls, let alone food, textbooks etc. on top of that.

The Laws of Thermodynamics:
1) You cannot win. 2) You cannot break even. 3) You cannot stop playing the game.

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 A Town Called Malus wrote:
 welshhoppo wrote:
Herzlos wrote:
 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
If students were not paying tuition and residence hall fees, they probably would not be getting the publicly funded Student maintenance loans that they currently get, and so they'd still need to work to support themselves in their food, equipment, travel costs etc.


I'm' not so sure; the maintenance payments are theoretically to provide everything. The payments would just go down to cover what students still needed to spend.


Theoretically. When my missus was at Kent, after accommodation she had about 50 quid left a month for everything else.


The loan I got never covered my accommodation when I was in student halls, let alone food, textbooks etc. on top of that.


I studied at Teesside (Middlesbrough), and besides £20 a week from my parents to help with food, I coped just fine on my Student Loan. So I imagine it varies wildly depending on location.

To be fair though I had zero social life, bought very few textbooks of my own and spent no more than £50 a year on alcohol.
   
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 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
jouso wrote:
So what does that make of NATO? Should it be dismantled?


It should have been dismantled in 1991.



We agree on something for a change. Refreshing
   
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jouso wrote:
 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
jouso wrote:
So what does that make of NATO? Should it be dismantled?


It should have been dismantled in 1991.



We agree on something for a change. Refreshing






I consider NATO to be a self justifying organisation.

  • It's Raison d'etre was to counter the threat of the Soviet Union/Warsaw Pact Bloc.

  • When that Raison d'etre ceased to exist, it should have been dismantled.

  • Instead, NATO expanded its influence and territory Eastwards up to the borders of the Russian Federation

  • This naturally makes the modern day Russian Government nervous, so they continually engage in sabre rattling

  • This reaction to NATO expansionism therefore "justifies" NATO's expansionism and continued existence.


  • Its why we're engaging in Proxy Wars in Ukraine and elsewhere once again, we never relinquished our Cold War mentality and belligerence towards Russia. Russia should have been invited to join the European Union, or at least the Single Market.

    We did it for our former enemy Germany, why not Russia?

       
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    Bristol

    But those eastern european countries all applied to join NATO. They were not forced or pressured into joining by NATO itself.

    This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/12/12 08:32:29


    The Laws of Thermodynamics:
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    Catskills in NYS

     Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:


    Its why we're engaging in Proxy Wars in Ukraine and elsewhere once again, we never relinquished our Cold War mentality and belligerence towards Russia. Russia should have been invited to join the European Union, or at least the Single Market.

    We did it for our former enemy Germany, why not Russia?


    The would imply Russia giving up it's cold war mentality and belligerence towards NATO countries as well, which never happened.

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    Herzlos wrote:

    Didn't we just get a new carrier with no aircraft due to budget?


    With what looks like antiqued windows as the core OS. Albeit probably modified but not sure how much help that is. That or the OS used in at least part of ship looks eerily close to out of date windows


    Automatically Appended Next Post:
    bouncingboredom wrote:

    Except there's a fairly finite amount of money you can squeeze out of the rich (especially the super rich), which has been proven time and again. These are people with the ability to spend large amounts of money in order to avoid paying enormous amounts of tax. Though they pay a lot of income tax, the portion isn't quite as big as some people think. Their National Insurance and VAT contributions are also somewhat more muted, though still significant. This is why Gordon Brown became famous for his vast array of "stealth taxes", an avenue that has been eagerly embraced by the Conservatives, because taxes on things like fuel and beer are much harder to evade. When more tax income is required, it's never just a case of saying "let's stick another 5% on the rich". That works as a vote attracting policy, but as a revenue raiser it's not great. What normally ends up happening is a hike in something like VAT (now at 20% thanks to our allegedly tax opposed conservative overlords), a tax which falls disproportionately on the poor. Make no mistake, the rich are not going to pay for universal education. Everyone else is.


    Yeah the "make rich pay more" gets tossed popularly in Finland too. Of course rich being less in numbers means though that while individually they possess lots of wealth it's still not that much. I read article that calculated that if you put up income of all what would be considered here rich and put them 100% tax rate AND enforced it(ie the guys would literally get not one cent on their own. Poorer than unemployed in effect!) this would still not fix goverment's budget.

    And good luck getting anybody to accept 100% tax rate Not to mention rich people are the ones that can more easily simply leave the country and avoid taxes to that country more easily than common worker.

    This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/12/12 09:59:41


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    tneva82 wrote:
    Herzlos wrote:

    Didn't we just get a new carrier with no aircraft due to budget?


    With what looks like antiqued windows as the core OS. Albeit probably modified but not sure how much help that is. That or the OS used in at least part of ship looks eerily close to out of date windows

    The new aircraft carriers are running on a custom OS. Windows for warships was last being used in 2013. Although it’s not a bad thing. The ships are not connected to a network, the version of windows they are using is pretty heavily customised, very well understood, stable and UI is not a big issue in a military context.


    Automatically Appended Next Post:
    bouncingboredom wrote:

    Except there's a fairly finite amount of money you can squeeze out of the rich (especially the super rich), which has been proven time and again. These are people with the ability to spend large amounts of money in order to avoid paying enormous amounts of tax. Though they pay a lot of income tax, the portion isn't quite as big as some people think. Their National Insurance and VAT contributions are also somewhat more muted, though still significant. This is why Gordon Brown became famous for his vast array of "stealth taxes", an avenue that has been eagerly embraced by the Conservatives, because taxes on things like fuel and beer are much harder to evade. When more tax income is required, it's never just a case of saying "let's stick another 5% on the rich". That works as a vote attracting policy, but as a revenue raiser it's not great. What normally ends up happening is a hike in something like VAT (now at 20% thanks to our allegedly tax opposed conservative overlords), a tax which falls disproportionately on the poor. Make no mistake, the rich are not going to pay for universal education. Everyone else is.


    Yeah the "make rich pay more" gets tossed popularly in Finland too. Of course rich being less in numbers means though that while individually they possess lots of wealth it's still not that much. I read article that calculated that if you put up income of all what would be considered here rich and put them 100% tax rate AND enforced it(ie the guys would literally get not one cent on their own. Poorer than unemployed in effect!) this would still not fix goverment's budget.

    And good luck getting anybody to accept 100% tax rate Not to mention rich people are the ones that can more easily simply leave the country and avoid taxes to that country more easily than common worker.


    But the wealthy like to remind us how they contribute some massive share of the tax and pay for most things the government does. The exact share depends on the country. Anyway, in first world countries wealth inequality is far more of an issue. The UK and he US have a huge issue with wealth inequality. It is a major cause of social and economic problems. Finland is one of the more equitable countries. In the UK and US some of the very wealthy leaving would not be a bad thing. Part of our housing crisis is down to a small number of people owning a large amount of housing. Major apartment developments in London set up sales offices in Russia and China. Wealthy people use these are investments, often leaving the flats empty for years, with blocks half full, and just sit on them watching the value go up and up.

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     Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
     A Town Called Malus wrote:
     welshhoppo wrote:
    Herzlos wrote:
     Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
    If students were not paying tuition and residence hall fees, they probably would not be getting the publicly funded Student maintenance loans that they currently get, and so they'd still need to work to support themselves in their food, equipment, travel costs etc.


    I'm' not so sure; the maintenance payments are theoretically to provide everything. The payments would just go down to cover what students still needed to spend.


    Theoretically. When my missus was at Kent, after accommodation she had about 50 quid left a month for everything else.


    The loan I got never covered my accommodation when I was in student halls, let alone food, textbooks etc. on top of that.


    I studied at Teesside (Middlesbrough), and besides £20 a week from my parents to help with food, I coped just fine on my Student Loan. So I imagine it varies wildly depending on location.

    To be fair though I had zero social life, bought very few textbooks of my own and spent no more than £50 a year on alcohol.


    Yeah, Kent was extremely expensive. But Elliot was built by a guy who designed prisons and it certainly looked like one. And sleeping on the floor was horrid.



    Also, I would like to say happy 200th page! Somehow we made it this far without the thread being banned like the US politics, and apart from a few heated moments, no one has really been banned from it either!

    Britain, paving the way since 1066!

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    Bristol

     welshhoppo wrote:


    Yeah, Kent was extremely expensive. But Elliot was built by a guy who designed prisons and it certainly looked like one. And sleeping on the floor was horrid.



    Also, I would like to say happy 200th page! Somehow we made it this far without the thread being banned like the US politics, and apart from a few heated moments, no one has really been banned from it either!

    Britain, paving the way since 1066!


    Eliot and Rutherford were horrible

    I can remember one time trying to get out of Eliot after an exam. We ended up wandering through a narrow corridor, no windows and the lights flickering, walking past doors with names such as "Sexuality Research". Then we got to what seemed like an empty security office and finally a door to the outside world.

    It was exactly like a horror film

    This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/12/12 11:47:54


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    Somewhere in south-central England.

    With regards to the tax contribution of the rich, the UK did not use to have a serious finance problem. It has developed while the tax rates on the rich and in particular on business have been reduced over the past generation.

    The doubling of the national debt since 2007 was largely caused by the government bailing out the banks. Private businesses were saved from bankruptcy by tax payers' money.

    From this perspective, while I acknowledge that demands have increased (e.g. housing benefit, paid to private landlords) I believe that low taxation is part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

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    Indeed. The whole private landlords getting council money is pretty much just a scam, and one easily avoided by investing in social housing stock.

    One only needs so much as cursory glance at the growing gap between the haves and have nots to see that something is desperately wrong with the current model.

       
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    Somewhere in south-central England.

     Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
    Indeed. The whole private landlords getting council money is pretty much just a scam, and one easily avoided by investing in social housing stock.

    One only needs so much as cursory glance at the growing gap between the haves and have nots to see that something is desperately wrong with the current model.


    This is what has led to Trumpism, the Brexit vote, and the revival of the hard left.

    Vast numbers of people no longer believe in neo-liberal market capitalism because it hasn't worked for them.

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    Frostgrave

     Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
    Indeed. The whole private landlords getting council money is pretty much just a scam, and one easily avoided by investing in social housing stock.


    That really gaks me off. If private companies / individuals can make a fortune from council rents, then why can't the council? Why aren't the council buying/building up the housing stock and renting it out at a profit?
       
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    Somewhere in south-central England.

    Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea have had to allocate nearly £300 million to buy houses for the people made homeless from the Grenfell disaster.

    It makes the £500,000 they saved by a cheapo cladding job and no sprinkler system look quite the false economy.

    To say nothing of the 71 who died.

    To answer your question, because of a generation of governments who believed that the free market is automatically superior to any community or social effort, local councils are not allowed to buy or build new council housing stock.

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    It’s disgusting how the rich are able to buy up entire apartment blocks to hoard for profit whilst the rest of us struggle to find homes. I like to think that I’m a free market capitalist but this cannot be allowed to continue.
       
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    Herzlos wrote:
     Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
    Indeed. The whole private landlords getting council money is pretty much just a scam, and one easily avoided by investing in social housing stock.


    That really gaks me off. If private companies / individuals can make a fortune from council rents, then why can't the council? Why aren't the council buying/building up the housing stock and renting it out at a profit?


    Because it is illegal for Councils to make a profit. They can only ever cover their overheads and costs. This all came about because of the pre1980s and 1990s Tory government (no surprise there) where they effectively forced Councils to dump anything that was profitable into the private sector.

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    Its the big issue.

    We just need a load more houses on the market. Maybe bring in a law that means that if a house isn't lived in for X amount of time it gets forced to be sold?

    Doesn't stop people from buying up entire estates and then renting them though.

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    Just need to build more social housing stock for new tenants, and tax second home and Buy-To-Let empires out the backside of next week.

    It would also help massively if those currently struggling to save a deposit and that just stopped.

    Why bust your hump now to buy your Starter Bijou Matchbox property, when you know it's massively overpriced and it's just a matter of time until the bubble bursts, and you're trapped in negative equity....

       
     
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