Westminstenders: PreGrades (Minority Report comes to the UK)

[RedToothBrush]

In Aug 2020, London, DC's prototype 'PreGrades' launched from the education department stops plebs before they go to university, reducing the social mobility rate to zero percent. Social mobility is predicted using specialized mutated humans, called "Teachers", who "predict" grades by marking shit lots of course work and exams over a period of years. Would-be social climbers are knocked down in a computer algorithm which distorts reality and hits the disadvantaged hardest. Central government is on the verge of adopting the controversial program nationwide by applying it in all departments from the DWP, the Home Office, the Department of Health and the Department of Justice to predict benefit fraud, getting sick asylum seeking and crime before it occurs.

DC's vision of the future is based on excellence being genetically ingrained into the elite but he must sell this vision to the unsuspecting public in a series of public votes which rely on the idea of the 'undeserving'. Little do they know that they too will be the victims of this plan until a mysterious bug appears and only the wealthy and well connected are able to get hold of adequate PPE and they are no longer able to buy bog roll nor retire to Spain as they had previously and endless queues for pizza form near Kent.

It is a completely different mindset when you have experienced grinding poverty and social exclusion, that the comfortable mc can never understand
I'll tell that to my young friend
And to the other kids from round here who can read the student loan agreement.

When you have experienced that degree of poverty, you don't believe promises that things will work out ok

When your family and ffriends continually criticise "ideas above your station" i.e. Uni
when they talk about missing 3 years of pay in a job,
that is very difficult to overcome

I doubt if we can agree on that, because you have not experienced what I have lived through

Teachers do not reach those most deprived of aspiration and social support,
only the poor who have been encouraged by family and friends

listening I would not have given a fuck what the loan agreement said
because I would not have taken out a loan

It would have been against everything In has learned so far

I doubt if we can agree on that, because you have not experienced what I have lived through
No, I have never been truly poor
but by golly I know people who have
and they do not think the way you predict.
Everybody reacts differently
and attitudes to debt have changed a LOT in the last 50 years

On principle, what is the objection to returning to a benefits-level grant to poorer students to go to Uni ?

What is it that horrifies English and Americans so much about paying to give opportunities to poorer people ?

The UK has drifted so far away from the Welfare State & support for the poor brought in by the 1945 government

On principle, what is the objection to returning to a benefits-level grant to poorer students to go to Uni ?
None
but it would require a complete overhaul of the tax system.
There are more important priorities
like food
and health
and education to 18

Listening My family are STILL not going to Uni. I'm the only one (on my dad's side)
he was one of 14 and they have all had kids and grandkids
I can't think of any who have gone

Funny, Germany and France manage to find money for free Uni, as well as food & housing

The UK used to as well, before Blair started pulling up the ladder
He must have changed the tax system, so it is not set in stone

it's about choices that a country makes - to reduce public spending (from about 43% to 36% of GDP ?)

I don't accept those miserly choices, which of course is why I ended up emigrating

Incidentally, my family are all very aggressive Brexiters, who keep saying how they voted against the "mc elite"

• they've no positive reasons at all for Brexit, just anger The younger generation are in dead end jobs; they and their parents are very bitter

Take away opportunities and those at the bottom will vote to fuck you up too

Merkel is likely to let the "Kuzarbeit" scheme - where the state subsidises part-time working - run for 2 years instead of the original one year

This would bring us to around the end of the recession, if it is as short and V-shaped as predicted
and would save many jobs

I wonder if the UK government will extend furlough from October ?
Otherwise I've read of 1-2 million jobs at risk

Another aspect to disadvantage is also people who are sick or disabled. Or single parents or carers who aren’t necessarily on the breadline but can’t afford to take on debt due to their responsibilities.

These situations all impact earning potential and thus willingness to take on debt.

If you earn so little that you never have to pay any back and it gets written off after 30 years ok. But if you earn just enough to have to pay some back, but not enough to be comfortable, and the debt impacts your already tight income, and it’s touch and go to get a mortgage anyway - you may well think twice.

It annoys me that even OU charges fees.The whole raison d’etre of the OU is to facilitate access to HE for people for whom conventional uni was not possible.

The largest part of the costs to the taxpayer of the student loans system is the usurious rate of interest.

The large % of loans predicted to remain unpaid result in the taxpayer having to meet those costs - providing student loans company with an unjustified return - simply setting interest rates equal to bank rate would save most of the 100billion that Corbyn's promise was alleged to cost.

(Given the way the government has changed loan rates and repayment conditions retrospectively then any loan agreement is meaningless.)

Again - we already have a graduate tax - higher rate taxes.

I'm with @BigChocFrenzy on this one.
I would never have taken a large student loan, I was already teetering about taking the deal the Army offered me to fund my course.
When I got on course at Uni no one else had spent any time with an Army recruitment program.
I was one of only two state school pupils on my course. DH was on a more balanced course but he didn't know anyone with this army offer in his English MC area.
I don't think it was coincidence that the WC Scots area was targeted with funding offers, weeks away etc.

That linked article about the corona virus is written by “Tyler Durden”. I didn’t read on after I saw that.

Boatyard
As per Google - its the name they use when their staff want to write anonymously
like Economist articles never have author names

Parents and teachers have lost faith in Gavin Williamson, government told

Gosh, I'm shocked
.... that parents and teachers ever had any faith in him

www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/aug/18/parents-and-teachers-have-lost-faith-gavin-williamson-government-warned

"we already have a graduate tax - higher rate taxes."

Exactly, however you acquire your higher income, it should be taxed at the higher rate

Although I would like to see more of a switch from taxing income to taxing wealth, capital and assets
especially a land tax on additional properties you don't live in
and IHT with the same rates as income tax - since none of it was earned by the recipient and inheritance is the greatest driver of the wealth divide,

Gavin is desperately trying to shift the blame onto the heads of Ofqual.

I would never have been allowed to go to Uni if it incurred the level of debt that it does today. My father would have muttered something about pie in the sky and academic snobbery and told me to get a real job. At the time we all did what my father said if we didn’t want things thrown around. I could still never take on that level of debt now. Having it as a mortgage makes me nervous and we didn’t take out as much as we could, secured it on one wage only and are overpaying. Maybe it’s generational, maybe poverty, but it’s not unusual. It’s also quite well known that the mature student numbers absolutely crashed when tuition fees went up. Perhaps it’s about having no trust in a system that basically abandons working people and treats them with total contempt.

and onto teachers
and onto .... anyone not in the government

Incidentally, following what BCF said about expecting anger if you exploit people, if we were given choices over where our taxes were spent, the one thing mine would Not go towards us pensions. I have paid enough for those in rent.

The Fail looks out for blood over the exams fiasco, another very aggressive front page

I'd cancel Trident, reverse the tax cutsfor the rich and spend the money on the young, especially the less well off ones

@Pepperwort

I would never have been allowed to go to Uni if it incurred the level of debt that it does today. My father would have muttered something about pie in the sky and academic snobbery and told me to get a real job. At the time we all did what my father said if we didn’t want things thrown around. I could still never take on that level of debt now. Having it as a mortgage makes me nervous and we didn’t take out as much as we could, secured it on one wage only and are overpaying. Maybe it’s generational, maybe poverty, but it’s not unusual. It’s also quite well known that the mature student numbers absolutely crashed when tuition fees went up. Perhaps it’s about having no trust in a system that basically abandons working people and treats them with total contempt.

Prior to the 80s and the credit boom, debt was really frowned on. In the 70s people had one car, if that, paid for it outright and kept it for years. We all wore clothes until they fell apart, and fixed stuff when it broke.

Credit has become more and more normalised and inviting young people to take on big debts early in their lives legitimises it further.

So I agree debt aversion is partly generational - but also partly personality - I just don’t like it. Other than a mortgage, which like was not to the fullest amount possible, I’ve never been in debt. One of my sister’s though has a completely different approach.

I think mature students are more likely to have responsibilities (kids) and mortgages and don’t want to increase their debt. Plus being an older graduate - your job prospects are more uncertain.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/haulage-row-causes-brexit-roadbump-t5whrwqlm?utmmedium=Social&utmm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1597793606