To start a thread inspired by, but not about, indyref?

[StatisticallyChallenged]

In the run up to the Scottish Independence Referendum, we had some fabulous, spirited, enlightening and enthusiastic debates on this board. I know I learned a lot from talking with so many politically aware people, and a few people have suggested that we start a thread to try and continue some of the best parts of the discussions.

So this is a thread for us to discuss what we feel is wrong with our country, some possible solutions and how we can do something about it. It's not a thread for debating independence, justifying our votes or for recriminations and anger; more somewhere to chat about some of the underlying issues such as our constitution/political structure, welfare, social justice and equality which concerned people on both sides of the independence debate. I'm also not proposing this as an exclusively Scottish debate although I suspect it will be dominated by us, as many of these are UK-wide issues.

So, what needs to change? How can we make our individual countries and union better?

The SNP merged colleges and cut college places. This affects students of more vocational occupations and those who require access courses to get to uni. Disproportionately hitting students from deprived backgrounds.

The other thing about 'free' tuition is that obviously students still take out loans for living expenses, and a lot of uni courses up here are 4 years. The repayment terms on these loans are less generous, so you can have the situation that Scottish graduates earning a career average of £22,000p/a, may end up repaying their whole loan at about £18-22,000 while English graduates who paid fees as well earning a similar amount only pay off £2,700 before it is written off.

It's all in the repayment terms. English graduates only end up paying more if they are really benefiting from their degree and earning £28,500 plus (career average).

More info here Scotland's Free Tuition Scam

I still don't understand why Scotland didn't take the Welsh approach of funding Scottish students wherever they studied, which would mean that they didn't have to fund EU students at Scottish universities and not have that terribly mean situation of discriminating against English students particularly.

Both I (living in Scotland, studied in England) and my cousin (living in England, studied in Scotland) had to pay fees of some sort.

SNP wouldn't want to pay into English university system Spirited.

Thank you for those answers on fees. Food for thought.

I too think the Tories have leapt on the WL question for party advantage and want to push through their 'solution' asap, before the election.

But, oh, how feeble Ed Balls' delivery was of what should have been the great roll-out of the Labour party's economic plan.
Gordon Brown has raised the standard for speech-making but Balls was just plain bad.

I think that's probably true bardar but I think it's probably wrong as a basic principle.

I would agree.

It's all in the repayment terms. English graduates only end up paying more if they are really benefiting from their degree and earning £28,500 plus (career average).

Spiritedwolf, thanks for that link, I finally understand what a family member has been trying to explain to me for 2 years.

Yep, for clarification its "only end up paying more than Scots if they are really benefiting..." not only pay more than the figure I stated, obviously it's a sliding scale.

It's not BTW that I think that free education isn't a great ideal, it's that if you do it at the expense of college places, or reduce funding to universities, it isn't as great a policy as it sounds.

Its like the SNP council tax freeze. It's nice for people's bills not to go up, but they haven't funded it so councils need to cut services rather than have the choice to protect them. And they've also doubled the coalition's LA cuts, completely hamstringing councils. Then when councils cut things people like and they complain to their MSPs, they get told that its the fault of Westminster that there are cuts and a matter for the local authority which things to cut as if they had no effect on LAs at all.

And of course, people are only too willing to believe them that it's all Westminster's fault and the Scottish gov are powerless to do anything about it, so independence is the answer.

One power that I think the Scottish gov ought to have (not sure if it does), is to create additional council tax bands at the top and apply increases/decreases differently. So you could lower council tax for the first two bands, freeze it for the next two and increase it a little for those above that.

The thing to bear in mind, even about the YouGov poll is that even that poll was predicting Yes 46% No 54%, as the final result was 44.7% Yes 55.3% No, even more people voted No in the actual vote. So the actual percentages in the age groups voting no must have been higher.

I don't know what the Ashcroft poll was predicting overall, but it might also have a similar adjustment needing to be made.

Wrong thread

Weren't they going to replace council tax with a local income tax? Agree re more bands.

I'm just pondering... If you could concentrate on making improvements in one area, what would it be? I'm thinking for me it's possibly social housing. We need more and cheaper accommodation.

Housing is what I would target first.

A big increase in the housing stock would help to slow the rise in house prices and immediately cut the cost of housing benefit going straight to private landlords.
The saving in benefit could fund the building programme but, as a former Parish Councillor, I know that funding for affordable housing was one of the first things that was withdrawn after the 2010 election to the detriment of local builders and the families that had been identified as being in need.

I am grateful for the clarification on tuition fees.
My DD embarked on 6 year medical degree after the last General Election and we really didn't see how we could afford it so free tuition in Scotland provoked a knee-jerk resentment in me which I now see was quite wrong.

I am grateful for the clarification on tuition fees. My DD embarked on 6 year medical degree after the last General Election and we really didn't see how we could afford it so free tuition in Scotland provoked a knee-jerk resentment in me which I now see was quite wrong.

I really appreciated that article and those explanations too. Like you I thought the free tuition fees were incredibly unfair. A family member tried repeatedly to explain to me that it was nowhere near as clear cut as I thought it was, but I never "got" his explanations. I understand it now. Finally.

Agreed Unitarian. It would have such a big knock on impact on so many other areas - benefit spending would reduce, there wouldn't be such a desperate rush to buy so you had a stable home, in work poverty would be improved...I'd probably try to avoid building massive estates, 60s style - but if I were prime minister (hahahahahaha) it would be pretty high up the spending priority list. Actually, I'd support the Scottish Govt adding a couple of pence to income tax to fund it too, as I think it would be very worth it in the long run (obviously that would need to be balanced for lower earners but...)

"Free tuition" and "frozen council tax" were/are vote bait - as is 'more affordable childcare' and 'free personal care' (don't get me started on that one… ) - all these slick sound bites hide more more complex truths and it makes me angry and dispirited that people would vote for one party or another because of election promises.

They do hide so much in reality don't they.

It doesn't have to be big estates though. We identified several smallish plots where two or three affordable homes could be built in amongst older village housing.
It's not only young couples that need new homes. There are older people who want to stay in the community and need a small house or flat with neighbours and family nearby.

In truth, a lot of these issues ARE v complex and not explainable in a sound bite, so why insult our intelligence by pretending they are??

Health care is close to my heart (I am a HCP) and I wish there was a single politician out there who'd have the gut to stand up and say "There is a limited pot of money. We can not always do the best for every individual, but we are striving to do the best we can for the most number of people". That is not ideal, but it's the truth. And it give such a fantastic level of health care for so many people that pretending you could change anything by setting 'target' (without the resources to meet them) and punishing 'failing' trusts just amounts to window dressing. I like the NHS because of its underlying ethos of treating everybody to the same standard, irrespective of their income/creed/colour/social standing. I suppose I am a socialist at heart - not a Socialist, just a socialist .

I tend to look at this from a rural perspective. Affordable houses means families with children to keep the schools alive, the shop open, the buses running..........

Has anybody seen this? - scroll down to the table halfway down. This was published by an American think tank.

I think lots of small developments would be better - avoids some of the social problems that sadly tend to go hand in hand with huge swathes of social housing.

Yy to more sustainable housing - both privately owned (and affordable) and council owned.
There could also be more of a concept of protected tenancies i.e. allowing longterm tenants a degree of security by knowing they cannot be made homeless on a whim of their landlord.

My gran in Germany is a landlord - the same family have lived in her house for 50+ years. It is much more acceptable for people to rent all their lives in other countries.

That table is really interesting given how "awful" the NHS is made out to be.

Agreed PacificDogwood - I know some insurance/pension companies were looking at direct investment in rental properties due to the need for higher yields backing things like annuities. I think it's done in other countries. But maybe there is something which could be done with big companies rather than individual landlords offering longer/protected tenancies? They'd be more able to do so than individuals...

Large scale building of new homes means a long hard look at school provision in an area.

I would see a national programme of house building as an opportunity to do something about education and the inequalities which we not only STILL have but which seem to me to be getting worse.