Calling Rigo and BFYP

[Muttley]

MrFrost wrote:

Its funny what the human mind makes you type when you are having at the same time a conversation with your missus about who is going to the co-op to get some milk.

must be a common conversation in your house as its about the 4th time you've made the same mistake

or maybe your accountant is pulling a fast one on you making you pay this new \"co-operation tax\" and trousering the proceeds himself  

[MrFrost]

Muttley wrote:

MrFrost wrote:

Its funny what the human mind makes you type when you are having at the same time a conversation with your missus about who is going to the co-op to get some milk.

must be a common conversation in your house as its about the 4th time you've made the same mistake

or maybe your accountant is pulling a fast one on you making you pay this new \"co-operation tax\" and trousering the proceeds himself  

Your right.
Actually, i'm unemployed. A work shy tosser. I still live with my mum.

[Viking Don]

Are you ever wrong Frosty? You do come across as a bit of a prick. Do you want me to back that up with factual evidence? I bet you do, you prick.

[MrFrost]

How easy is name calling when your sat smug behind a computer screen.
I'm not saying i'm right or wrong. My gripe is being abused, mocked and spoken down to because I have different views to the majority.

[Viking Don]

Tell me where you are and I'll come and call you a prick to yer face.

It's not smug, it's you mate. You're an idiot.

[MrFrost]

So now we turn to border line threats Well done sunshine. Quite the tough guy aren't you?

[Viking Don]

It's not a threat idiot boy. You make out that I'm smug behind a 'computer screen' as you call them. I'm saying that I'll call you an idiot in person, face to face.

You can decide for yourself whether I'm tough or not, but that's hardly the point is it idiot boy?

You might find you fancy your chances after all...

[MrFrost]

Just reading a few of your posts, the majority seem to throw abuse at TWD. Is that your main reason for visiting the forum, to throw abuse or namecall people you don't agree with.
I actually respect other people's opinions. You will see that if you actually can be bothered to read through my posts.
You bring nothing to the debate pal, other than intending to mock. So kindly, jog on.

[Viking Don]

What fcuking debate are you on about pal? Who do you intend to mock when you're critising everything Rovers? JR? SoD?

You're a prick, everyone knows it and laughs at you in the street.

[MrFrost]

Viking Don wrote:

What fcuking debate are you on about pal? Who do you intend to mock when you're critising everything Rovers? JR? SoD?

You're a prick, everyone knows it and laughs at you in the street.

That proves how simple you are. There are pages of debates on here. Or couldn't you grasp that? I personally haven't noticed anyone laughing at me in the street. Perhaps you could enlighten me as to when/where this has happened and who has done it?

[Pintolager]

Mr Frost, a word of advice - don't bite....ignore others!!

[Viking Don]

You're hilarious mate. You want people to laugh in front of you and tell you you're a t**t!

Let me let you into a (nomore)secret. I know who you are, and everyone thinks you're a prick. The fact that you actually want me to point out people in the street laughing at you makes me pizz myself. You're my new favourite.

[MrFrost]

Pintolager wrote:

Mr Frost, a word of advice - don't bite....ignore others!!

Cheers  

[Viking Don]

Oi Lee.... LEAVE IT!  

[Pintolager]

Viking Don wrote:

Oi Lee.... LEAVE IT!  

    oh ok Hamish!

[MrFrost]

Viking Don wrote:

You're hilarious mate. You want people to laugh in front of you and tell you you're a t**t!

Let me let you into a (nomore)secret. I know who you are, and everyone thinks you're a prick. The fact that you actually want me to point out people in the street laughing at you makes me pizz myself. You're my new favourite.

You know so much about me, yet I know so little about you. Come on, who are you? Or would you like to keep your anonymity?

[Viking Don]

Quite a few know who I am mate. Wanna meet? No threats or owt, just name-calling.

[MrFrost]

Viking Don wrote:

Quite a few know who I am mate. Wanna meet? No threats or owt, just name-calling.

I suppose a few do know who you are. I'd be surprised if they didn't. Although I just question your assumption that everyone thinks i'm a prick and laughs at me in the street. Define everyone......

[Viking Don]

Define EVERYONE? I don't know any group axioms that will cover that one I'm afraid.

Look Frosty, I'm starting to almost like you because of your insolence. Keep it up.

[MrFrost]

Viking Don wrote:

Define EVERYONE? I don't know any group axioms that will cover that one I'm afraid.

Look Frosty, I'm starting to almost like you because of your insolence. Keep it up.

So if you know who I am, you can tell me my full name, where I live, my kids name etc etc?
I must have really done something bad to you for you to pick on me like this  

[Viking Don]

I wouldn't do that on here, neither would I pick on you specifically, Christ there's always TWDick to pick faults with if I fancy a bit of non-banter.

Hey, you're up after 0:00 so it's not all bad, I'm usually nice to the ones that stay up! I apologise if anything came over as a threat, twas not intented as. Just banter mate.

[big fat yorkshire pudding]

First point, I don't actually object to student fees, everybody who requires a service etc should have to pay for it, I've never objected to that.

Second point, I was quite smug when this was announced, I spent ages banging on about how people hadn't read the Lib Dem ideas on student fees that they were responsible for.  Even the NUS sent e-mails begging students to vote Lib Dem to abolish fees when it was blatantly obvious that this was the system they favoured.

I'm in a minority in a way.  This system could work out to be better than the system we have now (which does not work and is clearly unsustainable, the interest on my loan is around £60 per month and the total debt from 4 years at uni is now around £28,000).  That figure is ludicrous, I don't think anyone can deny that, I'll be surprised if I earn that in one year within the next 10 years let alone pay it back at the rates they desire.

Overall, university has to be funded but the focus is on research at universities.  The last system was supposed to encourage people from poorer backgrounds like us in Donny, when in fact it's making it much harder.  Just look at student accomodation as one example.  A first year at Sheffield uni would use up 90% of their maintenance for one year on the rent of their accomodation - are you telling me that attracts those from poorer backgrounds?  It clearly does not.

[BillyStubbsTears]

This is a very, very difficult topic and your post gets to the nub of the problem BFYP.

The old system of grants was utterly unsustainable. It was designed for an era when only 5-6% of 18 year olds went to University. It was utterly iniquitous, in that the majority of those who DID go to University and received grants/free tuition, were from middle class backgrounds. So, effectively, it was a huge free subsidy to the middle classes, paid for by everyone else in society.

Despite what the flat-earthers will have you believe, we desperately do need to educate more young people to degree level. It's not some sort of rarified privilege, going to University, that should be rationed to a tiny proportion of high achievers (as was the case a generation or two ago). In those days, the UK paid its way by the vast majority of its workers doing relatively unskilled, unthininking manual work.

That's not the case any more. If we are going to be successful in a world economy, we need well educated designers, managers, innovators, entrepreneurs. In short - THINKERS. For the rest of our lifetimes at least, the process of simple, low-added cost labour jobs moving from the West to less developed areas will continue. China, India, and eventually, Africa will provide that labour pool, and they will effectively do the work that our working classes used to do. WE will earn our money by, for example, having the ideas that are then out sourced to other places to be made. Or by offering high end design/consultancy/service skills to other countries as they develop their infrastructure.

What manufacturing stays in this country will increasingly involve hi-tech, high-complexity, hi-cost, hi-quality aspects, (such as what Forgemasters were trying to do before the Government shafted them).

All of these things require a better educated workforce.

So it is crucial that we raise the standard and the expectation of education and type of work for all levels in our society. Getting to the point where going to University is the expectation rather than the exception is the key way to do this.

How you fund that is the $64million question. Personally, as someone who went to University n the free tuition era, I feel very uncomfortable with my generation telling kids today that THEY have to pay for their own education. It smacks of downright hypocrisy. I personally would be delighted to vote for higher taxes to pay for free (or cheaper) higher education. But that's no longer the country we live in. Thatcher changed the terms of the argument and we now live in a country where low taxes are seen as a birthright. Overall, I'd agree that a Graduate Tax is probably the fairest solution - you pay back into society according to how successful you are, not at a fixed flat rate. That, to me, is the essence of a fair approach to taxation.

As for your comments on research, I understand that attitude coming from somene who has only experienced higher edcuation from a students' angle, but I'm afraid it misses the point. Research is VITAL, at the leading Universities at least, for a number of reasons.

1) It funds the Universities - fees would have to be a hell of a lot higher if Universities were not allowed to do research that brings in very, very large amounts of money.
2) Encouraging high-level academic research has been shown time and time again to be vital in maintaining and developing the economic competitiveness of economies. The nerdy, socially inadequate Prof working on some obscure theoretical research might be the person who saves the world. A mate of mine who is an academic at Sheffield is a perfect example of this. His research work was on a highly theoretical and esoteric field, with no obvious practical relevance. Then one day he presented some of his results to an audience that included a hard-headed practical engineer who realised that what he was describing could be used to solve a particular engineering problem. Between them, they developed a commercial software tool which is now used in engineering offices across the world (and costs a fortune to buy).
3) If you don't encourage (in fact, EXPECT) academics to do high level research, you store up two big problems. Firstly, your University educators will very quickly get divorced from the cutting edge, and so they will lose their relevance. And secondly, you will not attract the very best intellects into Universities, meaning that your University teachers will be the second raters. No brilliant thinker is going to go into a job that requires him to teach 30 hours a week, 45 weeks a year, when they could double their salary and work on far more rewarding technical problems at Universities in other countries.

[Lytham Rover]

an interesting debate aprt from page 2 that sounded like a playground

it seems that to sum up the real feature of what is being said is that investment works

if you invest in the right places with the right people at the right time you will reap the rewards

and it doesnt matter whether or not that is private or state funded you will only reap what you sow

so is the Football Association watching?

[BobG]

The trouble is Frosty, it's almost invariably you who begins the name calling. Take a few mimnutes to go back to the start of a few of these recent threads. The evidence is there - right in front of you.

So don't come all holier than thou mate. It really does make you look even more like a bloke who shoots from the hip without any ability to actually stop for a minute, never mind think.

BobG

[BobG]

MrFrost wrote:

I actually respect other people's opinions. You will see that if you actually can be bothered to read through my posts.

That has got to be just the biggest laugh of the year! Do you ever actually read what you write? It appears not. You are one of the most aggressive and abusive posters on this forum. You are the guy who sends menacing PM's to posters you don't agree with. You are the guy who is so blind he can't recognise an olive branch offered by someone who disagrees with just about everything you post - instead choosing to post more abuse.

Come on Mr Frost! FFS, I'm trying to help you here. You don't half make it fcuking difficult though.

BobG

[BillyStubbsTears]

More tensions in the coalition today. After Vince Cable suggests what is probably the fairest realistic way of funding Universities - a gradute tax - he has been slapped down by other Govt Ministers. Looks like the Tories are going out of their way to marginalise Cable, who was always closer to Labour than to the Tories anyway.

And yet more examples of the Tories showing their true colours. According to the BBC website, \"Ministers are understood to believe it would be unfair for high-earning graduates to pay back more than the cost of their degree. As one source put it, this would be seen as turning successful graduates into \"milch cows\" to subsidise the system.\"

Which, when interpreted means that they don't want the poor little rich kids who get fast tracked into their £1million jobs in the city thanks to Daddy's friends after they leave University to have to pay a bit more to subsidise the kid from the council estate who goes into nursing or social work after leaving University.

I'd forgotten just how bare-facedly protective of their own the Tories were. There's no subtlty or pretence about it. They just come straight out with comments like this, and expect the rest of us just to nod our heads and say, \"Yep, that sounds fair.\" This feels like a reversion to real politics. It's about asking yourself whether you think that people should put back into society at a rate proportional to their success, or whether the most successful should be able to pull up the rope ladder behind them.

[Filo]

The coalition will be lucky to last 12 months, either way the big losers in it all will be the Lib Dems when they get cast back into the political wilderness. It took years for the rank and file members of the Lib Dems to get to nearly becoming a challenging force to the big 2, all that sold down the river by rent boy Clegg, who then shits on his constituents by withdrawing the forgemasters deal. Clegg has thrown all that away for 5 minutes of glory!

[big fat yorkshire pudding]

BillyStubbsTears wrote:

More tensions in the coalition today. After Vince Cable suggests what is probably the fairest realistic way of funding Universities - a gradute tax - he has been slapped down by other Govt Ministers. Looks like the Tories are going out of their way to marginalise Cable, who was always closer to Labour than to the Tories anyway.

And yet more examples of the Tories showing their true colours. According to the BBC website, \"Ministers are understood to believe it would be unfair for high-earning graduates to pay back more than the cost of their degree. As one source put it, this would be seen as turning successful graduates into \"milch cows\" to subsidise the system.\"

Which, when interpreted means that they don't want the poor little rich kids who get fast tracked into their £1million jobs in the city thanks to Daddy's friends after they leave University to have to pay a bit more to subsidise the kid from the council estate who goes into nursing or social work after leaving University.

I'd forgotten just how bare-facedly protective of their own the Tories were. There's no subtlty or pretence about it. They just come straight out with comments like this, and expect the rest of us just to nod our heads and say, \"Yep, that sounds fair.\" This feels like a reversion to real politics. It's about asking yourself whether you think that people should put back into society at a rate proportional to their success, or whether the most successful should be able to pull up the rope ladder behind them.

More likely that they realise most of us graduates can't find a job anyway.  I have my graduation ceremony on Friday but right now it feels like the 4 years meant little in terms of lifetime progression but lots in terms of debt.

[coventryrover]

Surely there must be some way where all university costs are paid for in a fair way.  The tax seems to be the fairest, though it should be stopped once each student has paid back their loans.  Surely it is simple, no?

I was a lucky one, first in family to go to Uni and had a full grant.  I certainly agree that we need to increase the amount of young people to a degree level.