Gonzo McFee posted:

Nothing has to come of it. It's just the stick they're going to keep beating the Labour party with regardless of who's in charge.

HopperUK posted:

I'm starting to come up on the 25 year limit and the student loan companies have started sending me letters asking me if I'd like to make lump sum payments? Maybe? To reduce the interest? Please?

Lol no thanks lads I'll defer again if it's all the same to you

kecske posted:

subscribe to fudge imo

Gonzo McFee posted:

There's also the problem of so many entry level jobs in the UK demanding that you have a degree and experience that would immediately disqualify half the senior staff from even applying today. To do the photocopying you need a BA honours in a relevant field while everyone ten to twenty years older than you got their job by turning up and showing some basic competency. Then everything changed to digital and you've got people who can't even work a spreadsheet demanding that you know how to work all the MS applications.

Today's youth are expected to be better qualified for shitter pay and none of the opportunities that it used to bring for jobs you could pick up in a month of actual training.

Jose posted:

i didn't realise richard desmond is actually jewish

ThomasPaine posted:

I find it almost inexplicable that labour's strategists haven't worked this out already and realised that they need to call out smears firmly and aggressively rather than looking like a rabbit in the headlights every time it happens, bad press be damned.

The media doesn't have to be 'on side' to benefit you if you know how to play it.

kingturnip posted:

Thing is, any specific incident won't get traction in the media unless it's related to a person or policy that the Labour Melts want to get rid of.
So if a leftist MP says something, it'll be big news. If a centrist says the same thing, it'll be ignored except by the Twitter morons who didn't get the memo.

Jaeluni Asjil posted:

And probably neither did Steve Reed.

big scary monsters posted:

I was surprised to get a letter a few years back saying that my student loan had been sold to a different company. I believe a whole tranche of them were at some time under Cameron. Nothing changed in terms of the loan agreement for me, but presumably it means the Student Loan Company has already got a lump sum for it and whether I ever pay another penny or not it's just some private debt collectors who'll care.

That made me wonder what portion of the loans are still held by the government owned SLC and if the fact a bunch have been sold into private hands makes a future government forgiving all the debt more or less plausible/expensive.

bump_fn posted:

Ash Crimson posted:

I hope mine arrives soon, i want to eat my weekly allotment of calories in a single day

ThomasPaine posted:

I wonder if this is all a deliberate strategy to discourage working class kids from getting higher education!

ThomasPaine posted:

Lol how stupid would you have to be to buy SLC debt expecting to even make half your money back

ThomasPaine posted:

Lol how stupid would you have to be to buy SLC debt expecting to even make half your money back

Camrath posted:

Did you order for the July cook (which is being started today) or the previous one? If it’s the latter, drop me a pm or email with your details and I’ll see what the situation is; one package took three weeks to travel a couple of miles, and one (that I know of) is still lost-in-transit.

If it’s the former, don’t worry, everything is on schedule

bump_fn posted:

Bobstar posted:

This is creeping upwards too. Neither my wife or I have degrees. My wife snuck into her current job based on "or X years experience", while my qualifications and CV make people in the theatre industry go "ooh" and every other industry go "I don't understand...", and most other jobs we could do demand a degree.

Even in technical theatre it's now the norm to go to drama school, which wasn't really a thing 15-20 years ago. At least you get trained to do a job though, and normally they charge normal uni fees, while the acting courses often charge a lot more.

Jose posted:

the problem starmer has here is that the press still hate labour and he's promised a zero tolerance apporach so they absolutely can use it to bash him


probably but still a loving stupid thing to tweet out but then when you've been on the crusading side of things you probably assume you're safe because you're a loving moron like all of the labour right

ThomasPaine posted:

Lol how stupid would you have to be to buy SLC debt expecting to even make half your money back

stev posted:

They must buy it dirt cheap, surely?

Communist Thoughts posted:

I know its not worth saying but it seems insanely racist to me to claim critique of a billionaire is anti-Semitic

ThomasPaine posted:

They're such a liability I'd want to be paid for taking them

ThomasPaine posted:

They're such a liability I'd want to be paid for taking them

quote:

he taxpayer was ripped off by the sale of the student loan book, a Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report has found.

The Treasury’s rush to reduce debt is “short sighted” and risks public assets being sold off “at any price”, it added.

When the Government sold the student loan book in 2017, it had a face value of £3.5 billion but was sold for £1.7 billion, which is a return of only 48p in the £1.

According to the PAC, the deal was did not represent value for money for public sector finances in the long term. It pointed out that according to the Government's own analysis, if it had held on to the loans it would have recouped the £1.7 billion sale price in just eight years.

“We did not expect government to recover the face value of the loans as repayments rely on people’s earnings, which means there is no realistic prospect of them all being repaid in full,” the report said.

“But we do expect the Treasury and the Department for Education (DfE) to get the best possible deal on behalf of the taxpayer. In this case, government received too little in return for what it gave up."

The Committee said that Treasury risks accepting too low a price for public assets due to their willingness to accept offers from investors if they exceed government’s theoretical “opportunity cost” of holding on to them.

“The government’s objective to reduce ‘public sector net debt’, as with previous asset sales, runs the risk of being prepared to sell at any price," they said.

All undergraduates are given a taxpayer backed loan, administered by the Student Loans Company, to pay their tuition fees.

They pay it back as a percentage of their income after the graduate and if they have not paid it back after a period of time, the loan is written off altogether.

The sale last February was the first of a four-year programme of sales of loans issued before 2012, when university tuition fees were raised to £9,000.

According to the PAC, the deal did not represent value for money for public sector finances in the long term
According to the PAC, the deal did not represent value for money for public sector finances in the long term
The report also criticised the transparency of the deal, in particular, the refusal to disclose the identity of the investors on the basis that it may weaken the Government’s hand in future negotiations.

“It is too easy to fall back on that as an excuse not to reveal information where there appears to be no public interest reason to prevent disclosure,” the report said.

“Government should be transparent about who is investing in the loans and potentially profiting from public assets”.

The PAC said that the DfE should “at a minimum” disclose publicly the number and type of investors, and should seek permission from all investors to release their names.

In future sales, there must be a presumption to release investor names, unless there is an “evidenced and quantified risk” to value for money in doing so.

“Government will need to learn quickly from the weaknesses of this sale if it is to secure the best deal for taxpayers in future,” said Meg Hillier MP, chair of the PAC.

“When public assets are gone, they’re gone – in the case of this first student loans sale, for too little return.” She said it is “troubling” that the Government would have recouped the £1.7 billion sale price within eight years.

“Decisions on asset sales must fully consider value for money but I am not convinced that this transaction, with its narrow and short-term objective of reducing public sector net debt, is fully compatible with that principle,” Ms Hillier added.

A Government spokesperson said: “We are confident that we achieved value for money for taxpayers from the first sale of student loans", adding: "We received more for the loans than the value to Government of retaining them, further strengthening the public finances."

Communist Thoughts posted:

I know its not worth saying but it seems insanely racist to me to claim critique of a billionaire is anti-Semitic

Not So Fast posted:

It's the basic problem that a lot of our anti-elite language was also used to attack Jewish people unfairly, and we still use that language now without knowing that.

The people highlighting this rarely intend to actually inform people though, it's usually just "why didn't you know about this obscure trope, you must be a anti-semitic bigot"

Guavanaut posted:

Pubs are open, have some beer mats.

Communist Thoughts posted:

Maybe I'm dumb but I also have absolutely no idea who is and isn't Jewish or how to tell and never knew I was meant to.

Communist Thoughts posted:

Maybe I'm dumb but I also have absolutely no idea who is and isn't Jewish or how to tell and never knew I was meant to.

Jose posted:

I see jk Rowling has had a severe normal one about trans people again

Jose posted:

I see jk Rowling has had a severe normal one about trans people again

Jose posted:

I see jk Rowling has had a severe normal one about trans people again