Could the Lord and the Count be King Makers in Uxbridge?

You have a very old fashioned view of students. Rag week now is quite a serious fund raising activity not a piss up.

Students have massive debts to think of and are ripped off at every opportunity, especially accommodation. They are becoming very aware of what’s coming their way when their studies are over. They have seen what inaction brings.

Dismiss them at your peril.

Like “the North” I seriously doubt they will be voting Conservative. They have seen what years of Tory rule has brought and none of it has been in their favour. I don’t think they share your view of Labour’s proposals either. Whether you are right or wrong is neither here nor there, they have been promised reforms in things like the rental market and affordable housing and bugger all happens. They see the state of education and the NHS, I had a begging letter from Bristol Eye Hospital just today, and they want that sorted.

The young have a strong sense of “fairness” and they don’t see any of that in Tory policies. Above all they are extremely resentful of the generation that had it all and are now denying them a chance to have it too, the same generation that dismisses them as snowflakes. There’s a certain type of person they see as cheerleaders; Pale, Male and Stale and they see benches of them in Parliament and many “reasonable” people on the right packing it in. High profile women giving it up doubly so. The inflammatory language and dog whistling doesn’t go down well either.

We’ll see.

The academic problems caused by Brexit feature large in Brunel’s prospectus, and in consequence the views that will be imparted to students. A ‘Stop Brexit’ by ensuring that Duplicitous Boris does not get a majority will feature large in the fare that they get. Yes a small number may be juvenile enough to vote for a funny name, but the Student Union rag has a quite different message – in fact their banner headline says ‘Your Vote Matters!’

[edit] While I agree that some ‘degrees’ are in previously HND subjects (e.g Hair dressing management), the more demanding courses at Brunel vastly outweigh those I would categorize as lightweight.  Based on hiring Brunel graduate Engineers in the past, although they tended to be more mature students, their degrees were of value and they generally had significant work experience built into them. I would not lump them in with the general mill of students.

Wheels-Of-Fire wrote:

Same as BL. I am 52 and just one person in my year went on to university, his parents were both teachers. At NO TIME have I come close to being able to buy my own home, 3 times my salary has alway equalled one third of a shoe box even though it has been above the NATIONAL average since I was 24.

That surprises me mate – I got my first mortgage at 20 – in greater London – and was a telephone engineer. They lent me WAY more than my 3x my wages at the time (John Charcoal Mortgage Brokers) on the strength of overtime. I was even encouraged to borrow 105% (I did 95%) so that I could get on with “making the place my own”.

Universities are almost exclusively left-wing (not just in the UK) – what the NUS have done (I’m actually a member having done a number of correspondence courses) is mobilise a much bigger percentage of students, which is in turn now a much bigger percentage of the population.  To be fair to the NUS they are all about “voting” and not “who to vote for” in the (very many) emails they send me.  Most students wont vote Tory – and in fact most people I know didn’t until it felt like they themselves would be materially better off. I might be but haven’t and won”t do it (Rosindell is my MP – makes the decision easier).

Ed P wrote:

[edit] While I agree that some ‘degrees’ are in previously HND subjects (e.g Hair dressing management), the more demanding courses at Brunel vastly outweigh those I would categorize as lightweight.  Based on hiring Brunel graduate Engineers in the past, although they tended to be more mature students, their degrees were of value and they generally had significant work experience built into them. I would not lump them in with the general mill of students.

You’re not wrong there, Ed. My son went to Brunel for his Computer Science degree back in 2004. His was a 3 year course, with an option of a 4-year course with a year of work experience after year 2 of study. Despite the fact that he was also doing PAT testing and Network cabling, he also learned a whole lot of other stuff, but just as importantly, about working.

He also learned that you ‘get out what you put in’ when we answered his question about ‘how we would help him through his Uni years’ by taking out a Sunday license and handing over the Flower Stall and stock to him to earn his own money.

He hates the current shambles Parliament is in, has seen the downturn of big company Projects that he could have picked up work from, and holds the uncertainty of Brexit responsible. He won’t vote either Tory or Labour this time round, so is likely to go LibDems. He thinks the whole “Get Brexit Done” has become – and likely always was – just Manifesto fluff and/or verbal diarrhoea.

Many of us here are parents and grandparents with young people either in work or at University. We are exposed to the views of those young people and I suggest that we are all at least fairly intelligent and caring enough about their future, to make sure that they get the best advice in order to let their intelligence and judgement flourish.

I am aware that Commie Corbyn is launching this manifesto in order to appeal to a young audience, but I think he has misjudged the young. Most of them will be intelligent and concerned enough to see through the attempts to grab from business and give to what Corbyn sees as the poor and disadvantaged.

I just consider two young people here: my eldest grandson (25) and his sister (14). He had every expectation of making it to Uni, but his Asperger’s was then so severe that he would not have been happy there. Aston accepted him, but he decided to stick with his college and a tutor who took him through all Microsoft and Cisco qualifications there, with just two students. He made it, was accepted by a very good local company and is now, after 7 years, No.2 to the boss. That post and working out on various sites, has given him confidence that Uni would have possibly killed at birth. His sister is a little different: just as intelligent, but no Asperger’s, therefore socialises well. Tutored by big brother in IT but not yet certain of her path between several subjects. Knows that she wants to go to Uni, in whatever path she takes I believe she will gain a place and achieve something great. A’s and A*’s in everything at her Grammar school.

Grandson thinks Corbyn is a dangerous idiot who does not realise that ‘the best businesses in Britain are the ones that produce wealth and progress for the nation’. (His own words) His sister thinks both Corbyn and Johnson are idiots, likes Jo Swinson “a bit” and thinks Brexit was “just plain daft”. Nigel Farage is “another idiot, always has a pint in his hand, talks like someone in the Muppet’s Christmas movie” Yes, she is 14, but has her own views and in 4 years she will vote, but what will be left for her and her friends?

Never, ever, disregard and disrespect the intelligence of the young. That has been happening for far too long. Whatever comes from this election, I hope they get the better future that they deserve.

Not arguing with any of that BL. I had a pretty rough childhood, left home at 13, returned by police, went to sea at 16, pit at 18, Army at 19. At 8 I was working paper rounds, by 11 I had 3 rounds and a butcher shop delivery job, with sometimes a Sunday cleaning the shop. I used to say that my first ‘proper’ job (at sea) meant a pay cut!

But today’s kids are mostly not subject to that kind of background, not many have to work as kids. Except my lad, now 51 and my daughter, 49. He biked it to his uncle’s smallholding at 12 every weekend to work, often in summer holidays. He was and is dyslexic and his mum was told at a parents’ evening that he would never amount to anything. I met that teacher at the supermarket and told her the fault was with the educator, not the educated. Daughter was a supervisor in a dry cleaning, workwear and hotel linen cleaning business at 18: hot, hard work. Now her brother is head of ‘Janitorial Services’ (Caretaking) at an Academy that controls 3 schools. His sister is a “one to one” teacher to problem children and a good one, judging by the gifts she gets from parents and home made cards from her children. She has been attacked by kids in class, the same ones now greet her in the street.

My youngest grandson is also dyslexic, even more than his dad. He is 21 now, but at 13 he was taking Work Experience at an engineering company one, then two days a week. He wanted to be an Electrician and worked his butt off at Grimsby Institute for 3 years. 2 months before he was due to pass, the government (Gove) decided all Further Education kids would have to pass English and maths exams at GCSE standard. Maths he does in his trick brain, English he cannot write although he can read well and types well. His tutor kept putting him in for exam retakes, but the system stopped that. So a lad who would have been a good leccy is now working at Fantasy Island in Skeg, maintaining the rides. Or rather, he was, until FI stopped for the season. can someone explain how that does him or the country any good whatsoever? From your own post:

” For me education has been used by successive governments as a statistical tool to brag about educational advances and to keep the dole numbers down. ” You hit that nail squarely on the head, mate. Every bloody government has to poke education with a sharp stick every single year, just to see if it is still alive. Public schoolboys who get pushed through their qualifications and never have to pay back a penny in tuition fees, wtf do they know? It makes me angry, as you can probably tell.

Assuming we do get an exit bill passed Ed then we ARE going to have to NEGOTIATE with the EU, this is somewhat different to following their dictates.

The process may well take years but I don’t see any need to wrap everything up in one big deal. A series of mini deals would be much easier to agree and it can be done that way because we WILL just continue as we are until we get some new deals.

Dave Rice wrote:

No we won’t continue as we are until we get some new deals, there is a transition period and that expires. After that it’s No Deal and all the pain that goes with it if nothing has been sorted.

+1

Like it or lump it we will be bound by the WTO rules. Unless we can agree with the EU over pass-throughs of their trade deals we finish up with nothing agreed, and WTO on everything, and hundreds of thousands of people in industry out of their jobs. BoJo and his Moggite ilk will not care as they will make billions by short-selling our industries.

I must admit I have not read Borris’s new deal, I just read the bit that said the backstop was gone, but I am lead to believe that it is the same as Mrs May’s deal.