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• The working from home thread: tips and advice

  in COVID-19 • 2 months, 1 week

  

  Reyooz.com was recommended by friends for secondhand office kit - looks ok, but I've never used it.

  Bought an Orangebox G64 several years ago from Andrews Office Furniture on Old St - was very happy with being able to try the chair out, with the service, and with both the chair itself and the price.

  (That said, I've just paid John Lewis for an ex-display Aeron ...)

• New Year clothes clearout - Carharrt, Levis, Nike, Berghaus, Rapha etc...

  in Miscellany • 2 months, 2 weeks

  

  PMing re DA, Rapha, Kin

• The fall of the Tory party

  in Miscellaneous and Meaningless • 2 months, 2 weeks

  

  Apposite from the Telegraph - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/202­3/01/01/rishi-sunak-shelves-big-bang-chi­ldcare-reforms/

• The fall of the Tory party

  in Miscellaneous and Meaningless • 2 months, 2 weeks

  

  The figure is closer to 5% in Germany

  Yeah, well, they remember how well kirche, kuche, kinder worked out last time

• The fall of the Tory party

  in Miscellaneous and Meaningless • 2 months, 2 weeks

  

  I think the problem with this is that it totally sidesteps any concept of cost-benefit analysis wrt education.

  Do you need to be particularly forensic about it? If it's a matter of principle - that each person should be enabled to have the opportunity to explore their potential, especially if you're drawing education broadly - I don't think you do need to reduce it to a straight cost/benefit.

• The fall of the Tory party

  in Miscellaneous and Meaningless • 2 months, 2 weeks

  

  The argument about paying higher tax rates is OK, but that still means 60% of the benefits of HE are accruing to the individual.

  It's pretty narrow to suggest that the only benefits of HE are financial.

  If I become an accountant or a civil servant or a lawyer, there's a pretty damn big benefit to society in me helping to enable a functional system of corporate audits, or a competent government executive, or an effective justice system.

  (Not that we necessarily have any of those at the moment, of course, because decent education might be necessary to enable them, but it's certainly not sufficient.)

• The fall of the Tory party

  in Miscellaneous and Meaningless • 2 months, 2 weeks

  

  I think the grants went after the LIB Dem Coalition finished.

  I fortunately got a grant for my tuition fees 2005-2008 at the time it was about £1500 a year normally.
  A few years later my sister was paying £9k a year.

  I was well out of university by then (no grant, but only because of parental means testing, but I could take out a loan if I wanted), but remember the furore that did for Clegg: the LibDems had promised to abolish tuition fees, but then, seduced by office rather than power, they supported the rise to £9k a year.

• The fall of the Tory party

  in Miscellaneous and Meaningless • 2 months, 2 weeks

  

  There's also the cultural thing of not valuing 'education' that isn't recognised by academic certificates, whether that's degrees or A-levels/Highers, and often not valuing professions that aren't seen as academic or at least built on book learning - accountants tend to be perceived as in some way superior to engineers, none of this Herr Doktor Ingenieur for us, thank you.

  Funding - I'd take it all from general taxation. If you've done a degree and parlayed it into a well paying job, you'll be paying more tax; if you're in a less well-paying job then either there's a direct social value from how you're using your education (teacher? nurse? artist?), or there's an indirect value simply from the fact that you've had an opportunity to study, learn and think.

  But we definitely need to find a way of revaluing paths that are not traditionally academic.

• The fall of the Tory party

  in Miscellaneous and Meaningless • 2 months, 2 weeks

  

  Blair came in and just abolished the grant completely.

  I think that was part of the idea of getting more folk to go to university by expanding loans rather than a means to exclude: I suppose it's part of the idea that individuals should be able to invest in their own future, rather than the dangerously subversive notion that as a nation we might consider education as an investment in the country's future.

  The move to tuition fees that went along with it was based on a study/report (Dearing, according to Wikipedia) - no idea what the terms of reference were though.

• The fall of the Tory party

  in Miscellaneous and Meaningless • 2 months, 2 weeks

  

  Student grants had been on their way out (means tested on parental income) since the 80s, and student loans came in from 1990/91 - under Thatcher, not even Major.