#69

Ah ok, I don’t know the ins and outs of the system. I probably shouldn’t have said it was progressive, but I do think it could have been worse, in that people earning bellow a certain amount effectively will never have to pay it back, and I thought the interest rate varied according to earnings?

#70

yep, think the alternative vote referendum displayed that pretty well

#71

Yeah, that was tragic in hindsight. AV was a compromise at best, but still an improvement (that would have enabled further improvements down the line).

That said, I put FPTP as my no.2 in that vote, so at least I got something.

1 Like
#72

Yes but when those limits failed it was implicit that they couldn’t be met without leaving the EU. This wasn’t a ploy (IMO) to force the referendum, rather just to deflect the bad publicity for this failure to something else out of their hands.

#73

Sure, but I think what Marckee is (quite reasonably) getting at is they shouldn’t have set an arbitrary target (why 100,000? Why not 50,000 or 150,000?) that they should always have known they couldn’t meet. Obviously the Tories did it for electoral reasons, but the Lib Dems then signed up to and enabled that in government. Once done, it was inevitable that it was going to fail and the Tories were hardly going to take the fall for the failure - the EU was an obvious direction to deflect the blame towards.

I’m perhaps slightly more ambivalent about that specific myself, but there was certainly a certain amount of stoking the fire that went on under the coalition government.

#74

They did know they couldn’t meet it. And they knew they would be able to blame the EU for that.

#75

Which is my point.

#76

Ah so you were agreeing with me all along.

No apology needed. Cheers :smiley:

#77

Yes, you’re right… some people don’t actually pay anything at all if they’re below the earning threshold. I was only thinking about those who pay significant amounts of the loan and forgot that some people won’t pay anything or very much.

The interest rate varies according to inflation (it’s the same for everyone), but the amount paid back each month varies with earnings (basically, the more you earn, the more you pay each month). The issue is that it clears the debt quite quickly for high earners with a small amount of gross interest whereas a moderate earner will be paying a smaller amount over 30 (or 35? I forget now) years - because they’re paying off less each month and the interest mounts up over time, they’re charged more interest and pay off a larger total sum than the person who cleared their loan quickly, but arguably could have afforded to pay more of their income and benefited more from their education.

It’s perhaps not as regressive as I first said, but it is still a regressive system when set against something like a graduate tax.

#78

I’m perfectly happy wasting my vote on the Greens, cheers.

#79

  1. Went into coalition with Labour in Scotland in 1999 & 2003. Fair enough. Made sense. Nae bother. But… they wouldn’t go into coalition with the SNP in 2007, despite having very similar manifestos, solely because they shat themselves at the notion of the possibility of an independence referendum ever happening and wanted to stop that in its tracks. So shrewd.

  2. After refusing to continue in government in a coalition in 2007 they happily shacked up with the Conservatives in 2010, but backtracked on tuition fees and utterly fucked up the voting reform opportunity with the miserable little compromise of the AV referendum. So very shrewd.

  3. Didn’t hear a squeak from them about their apparent belief in federalism before or during the 2014 indyref campaign. They just blindly tucked in behind Lab & Con and got punished accordingly. So very ruddy shrewd.

  4. In the referendum on the EU they were an irrelevance when they should have been cheerleading strongly and visibly. But they weren’t, because of their total impotence after imploding due to 1, 2 and 3. So very ruddy bloody shrewd.

In a roundabout way they’ve done as much in recent years as any other party to undermine public faith in a) democracy, and b) the UK.

So fuck 'em three times sideways.

I voted LD in 1997 and 2001 (and would have in 2005 if I hadn’t unexpectedly been in a plane when polling stations closed). Won’t be doing that again in the foreseeable future. Pricks.

The Politics Bar (POST election thread)
#80

Will this show a reply link? I suspect not.

#81

Will this show a reply link? I suspect so.

#82

No but I was instantly alerted when you typed both those posts (which was a bit weird tbh, this is nothing like the old place), so something works.

#83

It’s okay. I’ve solved the problem of replies seeming not to be working properly. It’s designed that way.

Note: this reply will not show a reply link to the post I’m replying to.

#84

well what you just then spooked me out

#85

Glad to have helped.

#86

But that’s a little bit like saying you’d never vote Labour again because Tony Blair once led it.

#87

Decided to do another poll as the other one made me look quite right-wing.

  • I wouldn’t mind a Labour-led coalition with the Lib Dems involved
  • I hate the Lib Dems so much I would actually rather see the Tories win the next election

0 voters

Show results
#88

Fucked that up as I edited it