Lord Browne puts students in the brown stuff

Lord Browne of BP safety costs slashing fame (Gulf of Mexico anyone), has published his report into University funding. He recommends the removal of the cap on fees which will lead to the cost of most courses sailing past £5k and up beyond £10k.

I find this issue quite difficult. As a teenager my parents didn't have a dime and therefore I had my tuition fees paid for - my year was the first to experience them in 1998 despite Blair's manifesto pledge to the contrary. Herein lies the problem.

Students from the bottom of the socio-economic pile (like yooful me) will get everything paid for - quite rightly too as a good education is the only way to encourage social mobility. Wealthy families will be annoyed at having to pay more, but will in the end be able to afford the fees & little Hugo and Tamsin will still be able to attend a prestigious and now expensive University.

Those in the middle will be hit hardest. The family which struggles along on a middling income - neither comfortably wealthy nor uncomfortably poor. It is these teenagers who will be put off by the size of the student debt they are going to incur. £30k for a 3 year course plus living costs could easily see a student starting their working life with a £50k debt. Mine was £12k without tuition fees.

Yes the debt will be at a cheap interest rate vs market rate - but these are scary numbers. Many graduates earn considerably more over their lifetime than non-graduates. This means that they already contribute more to the tax take thereby paying back their fees & more.

It is probably correct that students should pay more for their education. But putting £50k of debt round the neck of a 21 year old is not right. How about abolishing the Stalin-esque target of 50% of all students in University - target government funding & focus instead on a smaller cohort being educated to a higher level.

It is unjustifiable to spread the limited funds available across multiple Universities offering courses in the equivalent of under-water basket weaving to students with a D at A-Level.

Lets give this a go again

Lets give this blogging thing a go again. Been 2 years since my last post. Just a few things have happened in that time - Coalition government, first black president of the USA, another England world cup disaster, and Mrs Rover gave birth to little Ms Rover.
Plenty to talk about, unless I can't be arsed again and flounce off.

Boris should scrap 2012

Instead of saying that the 2012 London Olympics will be on budget and 'cosier' than Beijing, Boris should just scrap the entire debacle.

£9bn for a 2 week jamboree with plenty of politicians and dignitaries with their noses in the trough.

Not even Boris has the cojones to cancel it or scale it back. It is a nonsense spending £9bn when we are in a financial mess.

Sports no-one cares about and no-one will care about in the future except for when some obscure obsessive wins a gold at under-water basket weaving.

Build schools and hospitals, or try buying our troops weapons and equipment that works - typical self-serving MPs & Lords, an Olympics for their egos, not for London.

FTSE down 7.85%

Worst single day since 1987 stock market crash.

The MPC has to cut rates at the next meeting. But given the disconnect between libor and the base rate, it might not be enough.

Hang onto your hats and your hard cash - we still haven't reached the bottom.

The Mandy returns

Like Lazarus, Peter Mandelson has risen from the dead.... for the third time!! Has there ever been an example of someone returning to the Cabinet after resigning not once, but twice for corruption!

I can't quite work out whether it is a bad political move or a really bad political move. The Left hate him as the Goebbels to Blair & founder of New Labour. Everyone else hates him because he was at the forefront of the spin & deceit culture heralded & honed by New Labour.

At least he can bring his Brazilian boyfriend over to London safe in the knowledge that now Sir Ian Blair has resigned, a young (rent) boy from Brazil can ride the tube without having his brains blown out.

With Campbell, Mandelson, Whelan and Draper all back on board, Brown is going back to the old spin meisters.

He is wasting his time as he is proper fooked and no amount of spin is going to help him.

Back to the 70s.... don't say i didn't warn you

The Times front page makes grim reading

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article4860551.ece

4 day week at Ford, manufacturing output through the floor, warnings about power blackouts this winter, coal back in fashion (albeit 'clean' coal to salve the enviro-loons), Russia flexing its muscles, a ridicuously inexperienced Carter-esque President about to take power in the US..... back to the 70s indeed.

Oh well, at least we aren't bust like in 1976 going cap in hand to the IMF (well not quite yet), and that nice Mr Gay Gordo assure us he has paid the national debt down - honest guv..........

Net Debt £545bn
Northern Rock £87bn (save the geordie jobs for our friends in the north)
B&B £40bn (not even Santander would touch it)
Public Sector Pensions £1,000bn (poor old hard done to work shy public sector)
Future PFI payments £110bn - (even Enron would cringe at this off-balance sheet trick)

Grand Total £1,782bn

or £67,327 per household in the UK oooops. And the US Congress got shitty about a mere $700bn of bail-out ($5,000 per household)!

the next scapegoat

After railing at greedy bankers and traders the politicians are now after fair-value accounting. May sound dull, but this is one way for banks to manipulate their results & deceive investors.

Sarkozy, the EU, and even David Cameron have started criticising fair value rules saying that they have made the current credit crisis worse.

Errr, no. The fair value rules ensure that businesses, in particular banks, value their positions at the prevailing market rates. This allows investors to see the true p&l on a position.

Without fv rule, the banks know their real prices, competitors can work out the real prices, but investors are left in the dark.

This is just a diversion tactic to try and shift some blame for the current fiasco.