Resist them at all costs

So the Russell Group of top univeristies thinks that paying £3,225 a year is one of the most generous settlements for students in the world and that the threshold for repaying the debt at the end should be lowered from its current £15,0000 earning a year? This is among a number of proposals which will eventually lead to only the richest and the very, very brightest (on scholarships) having a tertiary education. The great unwashed can fester as servants downstairs. The talk is that there will be a shortfall of £1 billion over the next three years, but you can be sure that after three years, anything locked into position will not be reversed. Such argument is a front for them to campaign to do what they like. Only recently Lord Patten of Minted Ivory Tower said that the cap on tuition fees should be lifted and any price should be charged. Maybe the Russell Group is right about 80% of the world in terms of its wonderfully grand largesse, but I hardly thinks it wants to compare itself with places that barely have secondary education, let alone university centres of learning. Maybe it should look closer to home to see how generous the settlement is, not just in western and central Europe, but in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, where not only do you not pay fees but you get grants to help you along (which is why it is such a joke that the Students Loan Company is in Glasgow). It is only the elites in Scrooge-like England that has yet to have this epiphany (or rather they've had it and then changed their minds). The Russell Group's ideas about helping the UK taxpayer is the same con about rail subsidies being phased out. If you want people to better themselves or choose the train over the car, then to retreat to bleating about taxes which affect individuals undermines in many ways the sense of a community spirit - 'it's what I can get out of it and screw everyone else'. That should be the Russell Group's motto.