Gordon Brown and the\" Bigoted women\" quote

[The L J Monk]

Story in the Standard speculating that Brown misheard the word 'flocking' for 'f**king', thereby causing him to mistakenly think the woman was being a bigot.

Also a mention that a local Labour Councillor reckons 90% of folk in Rochdale haven't a clue what \"bigoted\" means, and thought Brown had called her something like \"bigheaded\".

[BillyStubbsTears]

big fat yorkshire pudding wrote:

BillyStubbsTears wrote:

big fat yorkshire pudding wrote:

Am I the only one who thinks maybe she has a point?  I spend a lot of time with foreign students.  These students are favoured because they bring in more money.  Next year university places will drop at my uni, the number of EU and non-EU students will increase.  Just look at courses like medicine.  Full of foreigners.  Is that because they're more intelligent, or because foreigners pay for medicine and UK students don't?

And some of these foreign students thoughts on towns like Doncaster are not nice at all.  About time we looked after our own for a change.

Want the hard truth? Sounds illogical but it's 100% true. The overseas students do NOT take the place of our home students. The foreign students actually subsidise our home students. They pay FAR more than the average cost per student. If we cut back on foreign student numbers, one of three things happens:

1) Taxes go up to cover the gap
2) Student fees go up to cover the gap
3) Student places for home students go DOWN because many universities (or at least Departments) will become financially unviable and close.

That is the fact I'm trying to make why are foreign students paying money getting preferential treatment?  That surely is not right?  These are students who in some cases can't speak English and sometimes don't even bother to do work as they know they'll get a decent grade for doing not alot (the uni's can't afford to kick them out).  Maybe if universities stopped wasting money on things, we wouldn't be in this situation.

I have some figures here about the number of foreign students who disappear on arrival in the UK too.  But I can't show them to anyone, I'd be breaking the law.

Y'know, I have a generally optimistic outlook on the future, but every time I have an exchange of views with you, I come away wondering if that outlook of mine is hopelessly naive if you are an example of what we are turning out these days.

I'm afraid, once again, you are dressing up ignorance, hearsay and gossip as fact. You are unable, or unwilling to make a rational argument, or draw sensible conclusions based on facts.

1) You will NOT be breaking the law if you put up facts on here. You would be breaking the law if you used those facts in a particular way to incite racial hatred. Two entirely different things.

2) Certainly, some people abuse the process by using higher education visas as a way of entering them country, then vanish. What has that got to do with the overwhelming majority who are hard-working, dilligent, intelligent? Do you ban all overseas students because some abuse the system? By that logic, you'd ban all pubs because some people get pissed up and disturb the peace. Or you'd ban all cars because some people speed.

3) I've worked as a university academic, so I know what I'm talking about here. Universities now, by and large, adopt an anonymous marking process. Academics don't know the name of the student whose work they are marking, and they also don't know the names of the students when they have final results meetings to decide who passes/fails. It is simply WRONG to say that the background, language, race, creed or level of fees has ANY influence on results. Wrong. Period. I've sat in on many, many examiners' meetings where issues of student progression are debated, and every single one has been scrupulously fair and honest.


PS: What are the \"things\" that Universities waste money on? In my experience, University academic staff are among some of the hardest working people I have ever met. Students don't understand a fraction of what they do, or the hours that they put in. If the academics I know were truly paid for the hours that they put in, or for the ability they have, university prices would be far, far higher than they are. You'll not agree with that, I'm sure, but one of us actually has some experience of what they are talking about here.