Well, I hope my Thatcherite peers feel suitably proud of themselves today - that's if they can muster up the human capacity to feel anything much past entirely malleable and complacent.
Cunts.
Looks like a triple whammy in the budget cuts for the poor, female students.
Obviously, being at Edinburgh University, there are those of you waiting to hop into Daddy's job (or Daddy's friends), with the luxury of taking a year or several out every now and then to go and do your 'starving Africans' bit or drink your university career away from the comfort of a George Street penthouse...
...Meanwhile back in the real world; those of us who have begged, borrowed or stolen our way out of poverty and who's families (single parent) have sacrificed their own happiness to give us a chance at higher education, well we're rapidly watching the rug pulled in our wake as a means by which to throw us into an economy where there are no jobs waiting and our hypothetical children are utterly screwed.
[Dear NHS, have fun dealing with that peak in tween to twenty-something suicide rates.]
The removal of a cap on University fees is simply the beginning of a chain reaction, a vicious circle which Cameron (high in his ivory fucking tower) really hasn't thought through all that thoroughly.
Let me break it down for you:
1) Removal of cap on fees - they increase to £6000-12,000 per year - funding for poor kids would be £3000 loan + £3000 grant...anybody else see the problem here?
2) You are now automatically denied entry to anywhere of academic merit and even the polytechnic of shit all else to do will cripple you with fee's leaving *dun dun dun* NO money to live on.
3) We now have the poor (getting poorer) but happily fenced off into two categories: a) Confined to their home cities and b) Unable to do anything bar the work that actually isn't there in the first place.
4) As a result, anybody with a sense of self-preservation will just go on the sodding Dole.
5) BUT, that's suffering cuts too - there will be an imposition of time limits, payment delays and the obvious decrease in the money you are being given anyway - all as a means by which to force people into non-existent jobs.
6) We now have a country divided in nigh on Victorian standards.
7) So you're (hypothetically) a poor, uneducated mother who has also had their Health in Pregnancy Grant, the Sure Start Maternity Grant and Child Benefit frozen - you're going to force your kids to study hard, sacrifice what little you have and push them into higher education.
8) Yet, what's this? The removal of a cap on fees...
You see?
[Before you go quoting the BBC news page at me, which is disturbingly supportive of this move if we go by the rules of counterweight journalism, Scotland are taking it into 'serious consideration' too.]
Cunts.
Looks like a triple whammy in the budget cuts for the poor, female students.
Obviously, being at Edinburgh University, there are those of you waiting to hop into Daddy's job (or Daddy's friends), with the luxury of taking a year or several out every now and then to go and do your 'starving Africans' bit or drink your university career away from the comfort of a George Street penthouse...
...Meanwhile back in the real world; those of us who have begged, borrowed or stolen our way out of poverty and who's families (single parent) have sacrificed their own happiness to give us a chance at higher education, well we're rapidly watching the rug pulled in our wake as a means by which to throw us into an economy where there are no jobs waiting and our hypothetical children are utterly screwed.
[Dear NHS, have fun dealing with that peak in tween to twenty-something suicide rates.]
The removal of a cap on University fees is simply the beginning of a chain reaction, a vicious circle which Cameron (high in his ivory fucking tower) really hasn't thought through all that thoroughly.
Let me break it down for you:
1) Removal of cap on fees - they increase to £6000-12,000 per year - funding for poor kids would be £3000 loan + £3000 grant...anybody else see the problem here?
2) You are now automatically denied entry to anywhere of academic merit and even the polytechnic of shit all else to do will cripple you with fee's leaving *dun dun dun* NO money to live on.
3) We now have the poor (getting poorer) but happily fenced off into two categories: a) Confined to their home cities and b) Unable to do anything bar the work that actually isn't there in the first place.
4) As a result, anybody with a sense of self-preservation will just go on the sodding Dole.
5) BUT, that's suffering cuts too - there will be an imposition of time limits, payment delays and the obvious decrease in the money you are being given anyway - all as a means by which to force people into non-existent jobs.
6) We now have a country divided in nigh on Victorian standards.
7) So you're (hypothetically) a poor, uneducated mother who has also had their Health in Pregnancy Grant, the Sure Start Maternity Grant and Child Benefit frozen - you're going to force your kids to study hard, sacrifice what little you have and push them into higher education.
8) Yet, what's this? The removal of a cap on fees...
You see?
[Before you go quoting the BBC news page at me, which is disturbingly supportive of this move if we go by the rules of counterweight journalism, Scotland are taking it into 'serious consideration' too.]
I mean, yes, I breathed a sigh of relief this morning when I realised I've bypassed these cuts - I'm in higher education, the knob-jockeys can't really touch me, but I'm also strikingly aware that very little awaits me at the end of this four year stint.
I genuinely feel guilty...FUCKING GUILTY for wanting to have a family because this is no world to bring children into - the Tories, in one fell swoop, have disempowered, disenfranchised and in some respects (re: procreational guilt) defeminised sub-working class women and we're all just assuming the position and yelling 'Ooh, Sir, take me again!'
Why?
I for one have reached the stage where, in my mind, there is only one course of action - get up and make a massive nuisance of myself.
For a reclamation of the right to protest, an actual step towards gender equality and the vague hope that we can force the Tories out of power - I am willing to take whatever the bastards can throw at me - be it a criminal record or actual projectiles.
Are you in?
Annie.
<3
My issue with the lifting of the fees cap is multi-layered:
ReplyDelete1) The universities with reputations will not only be able to select on academic ability but also on financial stability, welcome to an academic maelstrom where only the very old money and the frighteningly nouveau riche get to send their children to any institution worth a dime.
2) Those without the capital to back an onslaught on a venerable institution will fork over the hard earned cash (and future cash) in order to be in with a fighting chance at a less prestigious institution.
3) Employers STILL wont have enough jobs, so they'll employ the grads from the top-bracket institutions on the basis that they're a) better at getting into places and b) carry the cachet of wherever they've come from.
4) The millions of psychology/art history/media studies graduates from the local poly-equivalent will go back to their entry-level summer job and continue to moulder.
5) We'll all be forced to emigrate to Greece, where things will be incrementally better than they are here....
Apols for potentially awful syntax and spelling, I've driven 400 odd miles today and it feels like my head is full of actual BEES.
Chook. xx
Thank you for engaging with this so thoroughly, I completely agree.
ReplyDeleteIt's distressing to think that some subjects will be 'cherry picked' to continue receiving funding whilst others simply flounder and die.
We're producing a conveyor belt system of education for a dying economy - I'd much rather be unemployed but free to study whatever I want (theoretically, if I had the cash) than unfulfilled and still unemployed.
When's the next flight to Greece?
;p
<3
So... I might have just written an impassioned response to this, but I might also have had a keyboard-spazz and deleted it all. I might need a smoke, I might be back to attempt to re-splerg down all my nefarious thoughts.
ReplyDeleteChook xx