NOT OXBRIDGE MATERIAL.....

I was amused earlier today when a local Lib Dem tried to have a go at me on Twitter by asking where I went to University.
Amused is probably not the word. Sickened, definitely, by the attempted, ill-judged sneer and the total quiescence with which the Liberal Democrats have colluded in the most disgusting destruction ever of the life chances of thousands of young people.
A tiny cohort of working-class kids get to Oxbridge. As I pointed out, in so much as I could in 140 words, I was one of them at a time when higher education was free.
Even so, I remember my mother worrying whether we could afford the cost of food and accommodation - how we would manage and hiw I would manage surrounded by students from vastly more privileged backgrounds. . But as someone forced to leave school at 14 in the 1930's she was determined I would get to Cambridge - the first in my family EVER to go to university
There would be no question of that now. None at all. Nor, probably, of a university place anywhere else for children like me. But let's forget Oxbridge for a minute.
The very idea that fees of £6000 a year - for starters - everywhere - are "fair" is obscene, Orwellian doublespeak and utterly disgusting.
The £9000 which Oxbridge and other elite universities will charge closes the door for thousands of kids but is chickenfeed to those who pay £20,000 plus per year for public school education.
I am listening on PM to Vince Cable defend this indefensible policy with a breathtaking pomposity and pusillanimity which I hope will motivate Lib dems across the country to tear up their Party cards and join next week's demo in London against a rise in tuition fees which all Lib dem MPs publicly pledged they would fight.
Yes, New Labour opened the door to this wholesale betrayal by allowing tuition fees in the first place, That was six years ago.
At the time, dozens of Labour MPs rebelled against the Govt line and did their best to stop it. Aided, one recalls, by the Conservatives . How times change.
Cable talks of the "national interest." The only "interest" the Lib Dems are supporting is self-interest. They will righlty be punished soundly at the next election.
Tragically, a generation is going to be punished because of their wilful abandonment of every principle of fairness and decency.
Ed Miliband is right. This Government is one of "broken promises." Labour must now promise a fair policy on education and fight on behalf of those who will protest next week.
And those who now fear they will never get the chance to get to university in the first place.

INACCESSIBLE IVORY TOWERS

It's sad to learn that the richest teenagers are still seven times more likely to go to a top university than those from the poorest backgrounds.
As the Russell Group, the elite band which distinguishes itself from the newer universities, prepares to hike up tuition fees even further, this is bad news for our education system and even worse news for youngsters.
My niece is currently teaching English in Barcelona after four years at Lancaster University - and a good degree. This week she received her outstanding bill for tuition fees - £15,000 plus interest.
Because of the debts accrued by any other route, her younger brother chose to stay at home with mum and dad and attend nearby Salford University. He gets a bursary, and supplements his income with other work.
In a few years' time, I'm sure they will both have decent jobs and incomes. Even so, their parents have made huge sacrifices. Some kids just aren't that lucky.
One of Labour's biggest disappointments was its backing for tuition fees - as predicted, the cap is now set to be scrapped and the way clear for a return to the kinds of inequalities not seen since before the Second World War. The Parliamentary generation which most recently benefited from free university education ( mine) should be ashamed for letting our children - and theirs - down,

SCRAP TUITION FEES!

Way back in the Dark Ages I was a university student. In those days, young people from socially disadvantaged backgrounds got full maintenance grants. Which meant more than enough to pay for accommodation and food and also to buy books, clothes, beers and all the other nuts and bolts of student life. As I recollect, my final year grant was something like £400 a term.
Almost 30 years on, the Govt is trumpeting the news that maintenance grants are to be made available to more students. Fine. But it's the "princely sum" of £2800 a year which is about £900 a term. I have a niece at uni ( who doesn't qualify for the grant as her parents are just over the threshold) and her accommodation alone is something like £700.00 a term. So how can that be enough?
I don't mean to be churlish. An extra £400million is being made available and the bar raised from £18,000 to £25,000 to qualify for grants Welcome news, yes. But Minister John Denham concedes this will affect only FOUR per cent of the nation's students. Tuition fees won't be affected either though students starting in 2008 will be "entitled" to a holiday from their repayments of up to five years once they graduate. It's just not enough.
Let's have equity on this and scrap tuition fees completely. As they already have been scrapped for students in Scotland. And then let's have a look at the huge albatross of student loans and how we stop more generations being saddled with debt.