Westministers: Happy New Year?

[RedToothBrush]

And so we enter a New Year full of hope that things might just be about to recover from our national nervous breakdown... or perhaps not.

As we have Damien Green ejected from his role as Deputy PM over allegations of inappropriate conduct towards woman and use of porn at the end of last year, 2018 sees a bright new progressive dawn with the appointment to the role of universities regulator of Toby Young. A man who has deleted 20,000 tweets including many which are inappropriate and offensive to women, is a fan of eugenics and hates the working class and disabled.

Meanwhile the NHS is facing a crisis which is totally unexpected to the government and couldn't possibly have been planned for by a man who has over seen it for over five years. Which naturally bodes really well for Brexit planning.

We are apparently planning to join the TPP. Never mind geopolitics we can move the UK to the Pacific region.

We still are not ready for trade talks because the Cabinet can not agree on anything. Not that it sounds like they have actually discussed anything along these lines yet.

Rumours are that the Cabinet - including arch leavers such as Gove - are leaning towards supporting May and a softer option, despite the disgust of Johnson, who once again is the subject of malicious chatter about his sacking in a forthcoming Cabinet Reshuffle.

There is talk of further Tory Party war with the revelation that membership of the party has dropped to a core of just 70,000 hardline authoritarian men, most of whom are over 60. Tory HQ now wants to (perhaps with some good reason to prevent the loons) rewrite the constitution and limit the power of local associations to select candidates. The Tory party is now lining up to be a power struggle between internal authoritarians, who don't like democracy voices or structure.

Meanwhile the Labour Party membership now apparently overwhelmingly looks upon staying in the customs union and single market favourably and is in favour of a second referendum. In opposition to the leadership who are utterly committed to Hard Brexit. Much to the annoyance of Lord Adonis who is pitching a fit about government corruption and incompetence and being accused of being elite because he going skiing. Unlike of prominent Leavers who are in touch with the working class.

And finally Nigel Farage has got a meeting with Barnier. Farage, unlike Clegg, Clarke and Adonis, will not be accused by the Right Wing Press of undermining the government's negotiating position because...

It appears that we are in for another year of Brexit nonsense then.

We've not even heard mention of Gibraltar yet.

So Trump has chickened out from coming. [[https://news.sky.com/story/donald-trump-abandons-plans-to-open-new-us-embassy-in-london-11204052]]

Link again
news.sky.com/story/donald-trump-abandons-plans-to-open-new-us-embassy-in-london-11204052

BiglyBadgers hoping your DH continues to recover.
Interesting to hear about 'deferment' of loans. Good luck with your exams!

math (some googling later) I see there is a link between the Pioneer fund and the gathering.

I remain a bit troubled by the narrative that otherwise decent and honest academics get turned by dodgy money. Not just here -you see it in the context of research funding from the military, oil companies and even the EU: a number of posts on here claiming that universities and academics are pro-EU because EU funding made them that way. In the case of the current kerfuffle it seems to me rather more likely that the odious prejudice came first. There are plenty of racists and bigots in academia -no sector of society is immune.

otherwise decent and honest academics get turned by dodgy money
Didn't one university's academics who questioned climate change skeptics get quickly 'shut down' a few years ago?

Interesting to hear about 'deferment' of loans.

I just realised when I out that I was thinking about DHs loan and his is really old. I think the rules around this might have changed for new loans. I'll need to check! Sorry, early in the morning!

Yeah, Bigly the Student Loans agency's now sold on loans, and varied the terms of contracts signed by children. Illegal and unethical (if we had those in england) on many counts.

Repayment thresholds are different depending on when you took them out. It sounds from the use of deferment like your DH is the 90s version bigly, so the threshold is about 28k. For the late 90s-2012 ones it's just under 18k, then for the post 2012 it's 21k. I think the rise was because the amounts owed became much bigger post 2012.

So a newly qualified nurse working FT would be repaying. Not a colossal amount, but it's inevitably going to put some people off.

I have hunted across the websites and can't find any info on deferment despite the fact I know DH does it every year, so it is possible at least for plan 1 loans.

I did come across this planned change to thresholds though from April, which I had missed somehow, putting it up to 25k for plan 2 loans. As a newly qualified nurse earns around 22k rising to 28k (many will never leave this band) a nurse can easily go her whole career never reaching the threshold for repayment if she works part-time and only be making a small payment if full time.
www.slc.co.uk/students-and-customers/loan-repayment/interest-rate-and-threshold-changes/threshold-changes.aspx

I appreciate that this does not take away the psychological element of knowing it is there, but it is something for people to think about. I already have one loan so a second one I will never pay off just doesn't seem like a real thing to me. I think it would be a terrible shame if people are missing out on the opportunity to be in a job they want and be financially better off because of a fear of a loan that in practical terms will have no impact on them.

NOTE: I am absolutely not defending student loans and think they should be scrapped. Particularly for essential job specific qualifications like nursing where we have a massive shortfall.

Red If your friend is on MN and wants to PM me I would be happy to help her work through what she is entitled to.

So a newly qualified nurse working FT would be repaying. Not a colossal amount, but it's inevitably going to put some people off.

True, but if your only other option is working as a carer on minimum wage then you are still going to be much better off. And if you would be working part-time due to childcare you won't pay anything back.

I'm not saying the loan isn't putting people off. It absolutely is! But I think the complexity of the process and the difficulty in navigating other funding options means people aren't understand the real impact for them. If they did it might not out them off as much.

Again, I stress this is not a defense of student loans, just a wish for more people to be able to study nursing even though we are in this shitty situation when we have them.

Can you work part time as a nurse when newly out of uni?

I'm not saying that university won't still be a financially worthwhile choice in many cases. It will. It's just that the debt is still going to have some effect on some people, logically or otherwise.

I understand it is getting more common and certainly when I spoke to students about it before I joined the course they knew of newly qualified nurses who had part time roles. I imagine some trusts are more family friendly than others, but I think it is becoming a big thing to allow more flexible working to try and reduce turn over.

Besides newly qualified you won't be over the 25k even full time until your get further up the banding.

It will. It's just that the debt is still going to have some effect on some people, logically or otherwise.

I think, or at least I hope, I made it clear I agree with you that is definitely the case. The massive drop in student numbers this year is clear evidence of this.

mrsh, Mrsr and bigly

I have the old mortgage style loans (graduated 2000) and my payback is based on national graduate average - I think that's the £28k figure ATM. Have had very big fights with the two companies who now own my loans over various issues with my data. But that's a different story.

I'm certainly a believer in part time work. Being in one of the less well renumerated areas of the legal profession, having had kids early ish and worked primarily part time, I've not paid much of mine back at all.

This is going to be especially relevant for people who have partners- there are areas of the country where 2 x 20.5k would give a reasonable lifestyle. We might well see more people deliberately seeking to remain below the threshold.

Hadn't heard about the 25k. Agree that's significant.

twitter.com/Nigel_Farage/status/951400764697653248

"Maybe, just maybe, we should have a second referendum on EU membership. It would kill off the issue for a generation once and for all."

Wasn't that what the 2016 referendum was meant to do ?

Perhaps old Nige should change careers and get into predicting the end of the world for us

James Crisp
‏*@JamesCrisp6*
Spoke to one EU diplomat this morning about prospect of second #Brexit referendum.

His pithy response?

"Do what the F* you want but stop dicking around. We're moving forward and would appreciate some clarity on the matter"

Damn. I’m quite annoyed about Trump chickening out. I had been stockpiling tomatoes 🍅 in readiness. I see he’s blaming it on Obama.

I wonder if the "second referendum" hogwash is not for domestic consumption, but to try and rattle the EU ? No, I don't really see it either, but then I don't have the mind of a Brexiteer.

Give us what we want now ! or we'll .... have another referendum !!!!

???????

(For you, Tommy, ze war is over .... )

I think DS may have hit the nail on the head when he said that with Assange popping up again, Farage was feeling a bit untalked about in a Wildean sense.