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bustin keaton posted:I've tried to stay out of the day-to-day Labour stuff since the election, not for any more honourable reason than "the end of last year was loving depressing and I need a break". But just to vent for one second: after years of rightly complaining about dickheads like John Mann weaponising anti-semitism claims for purely factional purposes, got to admit it's kind of depressing to now see people on the left doing the same thing. Agreed, bit shortsighted of the labour left to join the Tories in criticising other bits of their own party I'd say. But accelerationism seems to be the order of the day among some unfortunately.
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Jul 6, 2020 18:06
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Gonzo McFee posted:Honestly we're so lucky that indoor toilets are so normalised that they don't even enter into imagination or we'd be hearing about marketing communal toilets in new buy to let slums. He's still listing it everywhere as 'each unit has access to a bathroom, patio and kitchenette,' which is technically accurate (each room has the right to use the shared bathroom, patio and kitchenette), but incredibly loving misleading. I'm pretty sure there have been a couple of guests who just left after hearing him wandering round the house (he's staying there during quarantine) coughing his guts out (heavy weed smoker) before the government closed anything down.
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Jul 6, 2020 18:08
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If they don't want to be criticized maybe they should use their big sensible room temperature brains to become immune to criticism. I don't see why you shouldn't criticize someone who doesn't stand for anything you want just because they wear a red rosette. Also accelerationism implies a long term motive other than just making people I think are assholes miserable. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 18:13 on Jul 6, 2020 |
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Jul 6, 2020 18:10
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OwlFancier posted:That seems weird because the majority of the work on a ship isn't driving it, it's keeping everything on board running so that it can be driven as opposed to sinking or exploding or drifting aimlessly and then sinking or exploding.
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Jul 6, 2020 18:11
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Guavanaut posted:Self engineering ship. Pretty sure there have been many science fiction books written about why that is a bad idea.
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Jul 6, 2020 18:12
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forkboy84 posted:Can't say I really feel much for the middle class getting rogered here when so often is the extremely bourgeois older middle class folk who so often lust for the policies that most hurt the working class. 'older middle class' people aren't paying tuition fees because they didn't exist back in the day, though. I mean I'm 43, not that old, and I never paid a penny in tuition fees.
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Jul 6, 2020 18:16
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feedmegin posted:I mean I'm 43, not that old, I'm afraid there's no easy way to break this to you, but I've some bad news…
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Jul 6, 2020 18:24
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ronya posted:Indeed, not very long ago we saw the party of labour today rally mainly around tuition fees and rail subsidies, both of which are massively skewed toward the upper middle class. The future is one where the middle class is mainly convinced it is the true working class and is baffled, even outraged, that anyone might deny it, I would think. In a services-led economy this is literally true, tho. We can discuss the material differences that are brought about by your homelife and hometown, whether you rent or mortgage, whether you have familial access to the nepotostic ecosystem of white-collar London and so on, but we do live in a services-led national economy with ever-diminishing localities where productive labour holds out. Unless the unions fancy unilaterally seizing factories on a permanent basis ala Petrokjemica I'm not sure I see a way out of this situation that can be achieved on a national level - which means that tuition fees and public transport are working class concerns, because escalating education requirements and the breakdown of local economies are the pattern of our current era and extremely relevant to those who exist by renting their labour. Am I missing something here?
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Jul 6, 2020 18:24
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Yea. The current system is that a graduate on 28k pays a 41% marginal tax rate (20% tax + 12% NI + 9% student loan) while a older graduate on 80k pays only 42% (40% tax + 2% NI) - a unfair and unequal sharing of the tax burden if there ever was one. Ronya is right that this is a concern of the middle classes more than the working class - you have to be earning above median income for this to come into effect - but to borrow a phrase from America, it's a big blow to the aspirational classes - the people (and their parents) who want to do better and improve theur situations but see the system to do so being slammed shut.
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Jul 6, 2020 18:26
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OwlFancier posted:If they don't want to be criticized maybe they should use their big sensible room temperature brains to become immune to criticism. I don't see why you shouldn't criticize someone who doesn't stand for anything you want just because they wear a red rosette. Agreed. Also the whole "oh we're zero tolerance except now... for reasons" is a frustrating position for Labour to be in. It makes the whole firing of RLB seem suspect (although some viewed it as suspect before now) since she wasn't even the one who said the objectionable part. If Keir wants to be a zero tolerance leader with firm principles, then he should stand by that.
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Jul 6, 2020 18:29
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bustin keaton posted:I've tried to stay out of the day-to-day Labour stuff since the election, not for any more honourable reason than "the end of last year was loving depressing and I need a break". But just to vent for one second: after years of rightly complaining about dickheads like John Mann weaponising anti-semitism claims for purely factional purposes, got to admit it's kind of depressing to now see people on the left doing the same thing. What's the alternative though? Allow this poo poo to be used as a weapon against the left while the right does literally whatever it wants? I don't care if Reed is sacked for the record, I just want Starmer to acknowledge the hypocrisy of the situation rather than make whimpering justifications every time this happens for the next five years. If he'd taken a harder stance against this nonsense to begin with he'd still have some (begrudging) support from the left of the party. Now he's rightfully a laughing stock.
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Jul 6, 2020 18:31
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The leftwing anti-racist position is pointing out that neither of them did anything anti-semitic and that this just further exposes the fact that the rightwing doesn't actually care about bigotry except as a weapon against the left. Demanding Reeves and Reed face the same consequences as RLB is just illustrating the difference that the right wing treats you based on how useful you are to them, not to any of the relevant matters on hand. Socialism continues to be the only reliable ally against racism as liberalism will sell your community out for the right price and conservatives and reactionaries openly hate you.
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Jul 6, 2020 19:03
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Nothingtoseehere posted:but to borrow a phrase from America, it's a big blow to the aspirational classes - the people (and their parents) who want to do better and improve theur situations but see the system to do so being slammed shut. Is this a bad thing? it's a ridiculously popular policy with no drawbacks, and we could use education reform as an excuse to cast MBEs and other parasite degrees into a furnance alongside every single university VC. e; clarity. Spangly A fucked around with this message at 19:14 on Jul 6, 2020 |
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Jul 6, 2020 19:05
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jaete posted:What does "de-register" mean here, given that the UK has no system whatsoever to know who exists and where? You didn't tell the student loan wankers inc that you moved? Basically. I set my address to my mums. Told student loans that and redirected all my bank stuff there. When I came back I just changed it over as if I was moving here from hers.
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Jul 6, 2020 19:18
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I'm used to being sort of depressed or in poo poo situations or surrounded by poo poo people, but for the first time in a long time I'm happy. All things considered, this has been a great year for me and I feel in a much better position to deal with stuff that would have hosed me up usually. It's a funny state to be in as I'm not bothered about it going or coming to an end, I'm just happy to have had a run of good luck - the only thing that does bother me are the people around me who are miserable and being unable to help them as they don't want to talk about it or are so depressed they don't want to do anything. Not that I have some miraculous secret to being happy, but I definitely have the emotional capacity to be there for them - though I hope they find their own ways anyway. Bit of a pointless post really. But if you've been depressed (or just 'alright') for a while, it gets better 
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Jul 6, 2020 19:29
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justcola posted:I'm used to being sort of depressed or in poo poo situations or surrounded by poo poo people, but for the first time in a long time I'm happy. All things considered, this has been a great year for me and I feel in a much better position to deal with stuff that would have hosed me up usually. It's a good post. 
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Jul 6, 2020 19:37
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It's certainly nice to hear you're doing well, and also good that you have a better reaction than me because nothing annoys me more when I'm doing well than other people still being depressed. Something something you abhor most that which reminds you of yourself.
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Jul 6, 2020 19:38
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Spangly A posted:In a services-led economy this is literally true, tho. We can discuss the material differences that are brought about by your homelife and hometown, whether you rent or mortgage, whether you have familial access to the nepotostic ecosystem of white-collar London and so on, but we do live in a services-led national economy with ever-diminishing localities where productive labour holds out. Unless the unions fancy unilaterally seizing factories on a permanent basis ala Petrokjemica I'm not sure I see a way out of this situation that can be achieved on a national level - which means that tuition fees and public transport are working class concerns, because escalating education requirements and the breakdown of local economies are the pattern of our current era and extremely relevant to those who exist by renting their labour. Am I missing something here? No, not really. This is the divergence between "working class" defined in a social-relations-in-the-means-of-production sense and "working class" defined in the household income distribution net tax payers/net tax receivers sense. Guavanaut's cited paper speaks in terms of the latter, and so does not track with the former. The income band where one sells labour for labour wages has moved upward (as has the band where one is dependent on redistribution). As GA Cohen: quote:The communist impression of the working class was that its members Indeed, as pointed out initially, the whole song and dance with tuition fees goes to elaborate effort to ensure that low earners will not pay for tuition. And under a tax-funded system, the high-income earners pay for it anyway. Effectively tuition fees exist to ensure that the middle pay for the expansion of higher education to cover that middle income band - to pay out of their future productivity when moving themselves from group #4 to group #2 - whilst the lower third of earners will have had, generally speaking, other barriers besides fees barring a tertiary education regardless. As schemes for improving the Condition of the Working Class in England (and Wales) go, Education Education Education was always a narrowly targeted grand project Nothingtoseehere posted:Yea. The current system is that a graduate on 28k pays a 41% marginal tax rate (20% tax + 12% NI + 9% student loan) while a older graduate on 80k pays only 42% (40% tax + 2% NI) - a unfair and unequal sharing of the tax burden if there ever was one. Ronya is right that this is a concern of the middle classes more than the working class - you have to be earning above median income for this to come into effect - but to borrow a phrase from America, it's a big blow to the aspirational classes - the people (and their parents) who want to do better and improve theur situations but see the system to do so being slammed shut. The middle class band was - especially in the 1990s - supportive of fees rather than middle-income taxes to pay for the expansion of higher ed. But any pay-as-you-earn system just opts into a personally higher income tax regardless. It's a middle-class desire to hold other members of the class accountable for their higher education... at least, until the fee became much bigger, even for courses with less return over the graduate's lifetime. The future is probably copying the Australian equilibrium of variable fees and then vigorously subsidizing particular students. (hot take time: a major cause is inequality - specifically inter-HEI inequality. Oxbridge spends much more per student and can also charge dramatically more than the fee cap. It has a huge earnings premium so why not. Many smaller institutions (especially those targetting the very marginal breakdown-of-local-economies demand for graduates in niche vocations) could stand to charge much less. Nobody seem to want to poke this particular bear...) Spangly A posted:Is this a bad thing? it's a ridiculously popular policy with no drawbacks, and we could use education reform as an excuse to cast MBEs and other parasite degrees into a furnance alongside every single university VC. it's an opportunity cost thing - in the costings free tuition as a line item costs more than the entire free social care promise; it is the single biggest expense in itself, even with dodgy assumptions to reduce the sticker shock one could imagine other ridiculously popular policies in there for £13.6bn in annual couch change realistically, of course, the party demographic would still have demanded free tuition. It is after all a party drawn from the middle class. ronya fucked around with this message at 20:00 on Jul 6, 2020 |
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Jul 6, 2020 19:53
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GA Cohen posted:The communist impression of the working class was that its members But this is precisely what I mean when talking about a way out of the situation - a services led economy is not, by definition, dominated by productive labour. Fully automated luxury gay space communism is, unfortunately, incredibly relevant, if the mental and economic stresses of alienation from one's own labour have been usurped by newer, worse ones of alienation from all productive labour. You've had good sources on the challenges of sustaining a liberal society from various stresses but I'm, obviously, of the strong opinion that this is both impossible and undesirable. Have you read much on the theory of socialist service-led economies? in the proper sense, not 1980s sweden. Have you read Badiou? His idea of juxtaposing the middle class (encompassing the native-born of a developed wealthy society, with access to a varying majority of priveleges that come with life in such a society) with the migratory proletariat feels relevant. Certainly, they amount to 2, 3 and 4, and their numbers globally dwarf all other classes. We live in a global society, but if I could work out how we possibly do something about that I'd not be posting on a forum. ronya posted:
MMT money printer go brr, comrade. It is not remotely difficult to solve the accumulation of wealth within an academic context, if you have already set out to do so in other areas of society. All the practical sciences, for example, demand enormous investments in labour - the army of productive workers needed to build and maintain their equipment, the research and development of said equipment, the wages of academics and support staff, all generate an enormous velocity of currency capable of keeping the 2%-botherers happy, should they ever be told to discard their praxiomatic bullshit. The british university environment has enormous potential to be run as a left-democratic-socialist institution if the will was there inside a social-democratic mixed economy. The accomodation, food halls, demand for productive labour, various communities and societies, all the pieces are there. I brought up Petrokjemica from knowing it through Desert of Post Socialism and then speaking to friends from the constituent states of former-yugoslavia about the student-union alliances. I spoke to someone at an orbital gig some time ago, who ran refugee accomodation services during the Debout, and they shared some exciting and promising experiences of that. Certainly enough to warrant a trial sans the embargo and gendarmerie brutality. All inside a machine that produces scientific and cultural value. It might be a hard sell, to the public and the BoE, but we live in an world of hard sells. Yeah, I'd call it couch change. Either the economic benefit more than repays the investments or our species has died from climate change. Spangly A fucked around with this message at 20:30 on Jul 6, 2020 |
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Jul 6, 2020 20:25
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ah... right, I forgot that you an advocate of the most-jobs-are-actually-Graeberian-bullshit-jobs thesis. fwiw, even Graeber does not go that far; he modestly settles for about 40% Let me say that this perspective starts from a rather different worldview and basis than my earlier remarks... not sure there is scope for useful engagement on the conclusions rather than the framework
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Jul 6, 2020 20:48
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feedmegin posted:'older middle class' people aren't paying tuition fees because they didn't exist back in the day, though. I mean I'm 43, not that old, and I never paid a penny in tuition fees. God, this is true. It happened when I was still in school, I should remember that tuition fees weren't always a thing. Oh well, just another reason on top of everything else to hate old booj scum. This is a very embarrassing thing to get wrong.
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Jul 6, 2020 21:01
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I am a few years younger than that and only had the 1K a year tuition fees, and even that seemed harsh considering they'd been free just a couple of years before. But given what came later, I can't complain.
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Jul 6, 2020 21:09
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The fact that tuition fees exist at all is classic boomer ladder-pulling. My wife already paid her load off because scots students in scotland pay very little in the way of fees. Like I said I've not had a statement in years but I assume I still owe about 10k. I've not earned enough to pay back for two or three years.
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Jul 6, 2020 21:11
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Gonzo McFee posted:Does anyone know any good books about the Slum Clearances? Just had a horrible thought about what life would be like if we hadn't gotten to indoor plumbing by the time neoliberalism fully took hold and the indoor toilet being described as a communist plot. I can't speak to its quality or content directly because it's been sitting on my shelf for a year making me feel bad for not reading it yet, but a quick check of the contents page suggests that Municipal Dreams: the rise and fall of council housing by John Boughton might cover some of the stuff you want ( e.g. chapter 5 is titled "Get these people out of the slums: 1956-68"). From what I recall when I bought it in a surge of well meaningness, it was well reviewed, and it does look genuinely interesting from a quick skim. Plus it's published by thread favourite Verso, who deserve your support because they publish all kinds of great stuff. If you shoot me a PM I can lend it to you if you want.
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Jul 6, 2020 21:13
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Marmaduke! posted:I am a few years younger than that and only had the 1K a year tuition fees, and even that seemed harsh considering they'd been free just a couple of years before. But given what came later, I can't complain. I was the last year of the old 'grant' system thankfully. My two younger brothers got lumbered with loans 5 times mine. One is still paying it off. Still remember Labour going '£1000 a year is only the maximum universities can claim. Most courses will never reach that!'. Then instantly every university wanted £1000 per year per course. happyhippy fucked around with this message at 21:19 on Jul 6, 2020 |
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Jul 6, 2020 21:17
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ronya posted:ah... right, I forgot that you an advocate of the most-jobs-are-actually-Graeberian-bullshit-jobs thesis. fwiw, even Graeber does not go that far; he modestly settles for about 40% Did I say that? I thought I was pretty clear. Printing money does not necessarily cause inflation, we have opportunities in universities to move enormous amounts without it ever accumulating, and then there's the first admission that a services-led economy must be alienated from the productive labour that sustains it. Most of it happens elsewhere. That's part of being a service economy. Think of it not as most-jobs-are-actually-graeberian-bullshit-jobs, but most-non-graeberian-bullshit-jobs-in-western-economies-are-not-actually-performed-in-the-west. Didn't you have opinions about Kerala along these lines?
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Jul 6, 2020 21:19
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thespaceinvader posted:The fact that tuition fees exist at all is classic boomer ladder-pulling. So yes, tuition is paid by the state so all your loans are are for cost of living. But it does limit your choices significantly, there's 15 universities in Scotland. And the UHI barely counts. loving Inverness College was a disaster when I went there. Not that I'm still bitter 18 years later or anything. Outwith a few exceptions depending on course the only universities that would do much on your CV are St Andrews, Glasgow, Aberdeen & Edinburgh. It'd be cool to be able to go to university in somewhere like UCL or Exeter or Sheffield or Birmingham or Manchester without worrying about the cost of the whole thing but here's where you are. Just another bit of the divide between Scotland & rUK I guess.
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Jul 6, 2020 21:28
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It's a graduate tax in all but name, innit.
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Jul 6, 2020 21:43
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happyhippy posted:I was the last year of the old 'grant' system thankfully. My two younger brothers got lumbered with loans 5 times mine. One is still paying it off. My 2 years at "real" uni were under 1k system. When I started drama school it was after the 3k "top-up fees" (remember that term?) came in, but they were only charging £1500 for some reason. Second year (of two) rolls around, and they go "ah, yes, it's gone up to £3k this year", and we went "er, no", and that worked somehow. My non-UK loan terms are a bit painful though - start paying back 2 years after graduation, to the bank, to be paid of over ten years. Not sure if what happens if you can't pay it. Interest rate is like 0.02% though, which is nice
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Jul 6, 2020 21:44
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The SLC send me a nice letter every so often to let me know they've made my loan number go bigger.
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Jul 6, 2020 21:46
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WhatEvil posted:It's a graduate tax in all but name, innit. Well, kinda. You can always get the worst of both worlds and take out the loan and then drop out of uni.
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Jul 6, 2020 21:48
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bustin keaton posted:I've tried to stay out of the day-to-day Labour stuff since the election, not for any more honourable reason than "the end of last year was loving depressing and I need a break". But just to vent for one second: after years of rightly complaining about dickheads like John Mann weaponising anti-semitism claims for purely factional purposes, got to admit it's kind of depressing to now see people on the left doing the same thing. Yeah I definitely understand pointing out hypocrisy but ultimately it just reinforces the tactic and the tactic ultimately only helps the right wing. The only way forward is to delegitimise fake anti-bigotry, you can actively oppose bigotry without acquiescing to obviously insincere actors making illogical points just because they're utilising the language of anti-bigotry. Even the most stereotypical SJW isn't as hysterical and shrill as the UK establishment can be it's inherently a losing battle to play that game. It sucks but some people somewhere have got to be willing to make themselves pariahs and push back against this poo poo, otherwise it's going to be Maxine Peake throwing RLB under the bus forever.
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Jul 6, 2020 21:49
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lol https://twitter.com/cnni/status/1280092649559597057?s=20
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Jul 6, 2020 22:04
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forkboy84 posted:So yes, tuition is paid by the state so all your loans are are for cost of living. But it does limit your choices significantly, there's 15 universities in Scotland. And the UHI barely counts. loving Inverness College was a disaster when I went there. Not that I'm still bitter 18 years later or anything. Outwith a few exceptions depending on course the only universities that would do much on your CV are St Andrews, Glasgow, Aberdeen & Edinburgh. It'd be cool to be able to go to university in somewhere like UCL or Exeter or Sheffield or Birmingham or Manchester without worrying about the cost of the whole thing but here's where you are. Just another bit of the divide between Scotland & rUK I guess. You're right but Strathy and Dundee are also pretty well regarded in certain areas too these days. It's still dumb that Scottish students are limited to Scotland if they want free tuition. I assume SAAS cover tuition fees for those moving to England on a similar model to the SLC?
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Jul 6, 2020 22:14
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Octolady posted:I just got accepted for a conversion Masters in software dev so I just hope my Uni can stay afloat for the 2 years it takes for me to qualify, fingers crossed! Bit late, but congrats!
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Jul 6, 2020 22:25
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Sounds to me like those lazy Spaniards need to pull their fingers out. Clearly, those antibodies aren't developing themselves
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Jul 6, 2020 22:37
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It's gonna be weird when most of the world has eradicated the disease and they build a big wall around the UK and US.
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Jul 6, 2020 22:39
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ThomasPaine posted:You're right but Strathy and Dundee are also pretty well regarded in certain areas too these days. It's still dumb that Scottish students are limited to Scotland if they want free tuition. I assume SAAS cover tuition fees for those moving to England on a similar model to the SLC? You get a loan but your fees aren't covered. IIRC (started uni 13 years ago) the loan was from the SLC - at least that's who sent me summaries.
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Jul 6, 2020 22:40
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ThomasPaine posted:You're right but Strathy and Dundee are also pretty well regarded in certain areas too these days. It's still dumb that Scottish students are limited to Scotland if they want free tuition. I assume SAAS cover tuition fees for those moving to England on a similar model to the SLC? Aye, I was specifically thinking of Strathclyde when I said exceptions, coz I know Strathclyde is extremely it for Chemical Engineering & presumably some other hard sciences. And doesn't Glasgow Caley have a good rep for something like forensics or some discipline along those lines? I suppose the choice isn't bad for a country Scotland's size but I dunno, St Andrews is basically Scottish Oxbridge/Durham as far as a rep for having a snooty student base goes, so for most people that really drops the places you can even consider (I know when my sister was applying to uni my uncle, who was the first in the family to attend uni & went to St Andrews, strongly suggested she didn't follow on his footsteps because he loving hated it). Oh well, not like the English seem in any real fuss to change this.
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Jul 6, 2020 22:47
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Bobstar posted:My 2 years at "real" uni were under 1k system. When I started drama school it was after the 3k "top-up fees" (remember that term?) came in, but they were only charging £1500 for some reason. Second year (of two) rolls around, and they go "ah, yes, it's gone up to £3k this year", and we went "er, no", and that worked somehow. If anyone ever doubts that "slippery slope" is a real thing in politics, tuition fees are the number 1 go-to example. I don't know how many years they were free, but the time it took them to snowball from 1k to 3k to 9k was incredible. There's probably people out there who believed they'd go to 1k and then rise only slightly over the years, and those people probably also believed in the £350 million a week for Brexit.
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Jul 6, 2020 22:49
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