Spot the difference
Tens of thousands of English university students are still waiting for their tuition fee and top-up fee loans from the British government’s English student loans quango, the Student Loans Company.
Meanwhile, the Scottish government has announced a £30m bonus for the Scottish university grants system which will mean an increase in the grants given to 75,000 Scottish students.
English university students are already at a massive disadvantage compared to Scottish students because they leave university with thousands of pounds of debts whereas Scottish students leave debt free having been subsidised with all that lovely English money the Scottish Chancellor sends home.
This oh so familiar cock up has echoes of the annual farming subsidy farce that leaves thousands of English famers waiting for a year or more for their subsidies and attracts millions of pounds in fines from the EU. Like the rural payments agency which consistently messes up the payment of subsidies to English farmers, the Student Loans company is a quango set up by and answerable to British government ministers and ultimately the MP for the Scottish constituency of Kirkcaldy & Cowdenbeath, Gordon Brown. Contrast this with the equivalent Scottish quangos that are answerable to Scottish ministers elected by and accountable to Scottish voters.
Discrimination, incompetence and disinterest by theose in charge will continue to blight England while we are without a government elected by, for and accountable to English voters.
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Unless these students make a fuss about it, they and English farmers deserve everything they get
October 29th, 2009 at 9:58 amI understand that the Student Loans Company is, surprisingly enough, based in Scotland and is the only ‘Scottish’ asset that Brown is proposing to sell off to the private sector. Once privatised, presumably the SLC will remain in Scotland to provide jobs.
October 29th, 2009 at 11:04 amIt is another example, as you rightly say, of what happens ‘while we are without a government elected by, for and accountable to English voters’. We should make more of that phrase, which is at the core of any democaracy, in our publicity and in dealings with those who seek to preserve the status quo.
I agree with Gadgie. If you act like a doormat, get ready to be walked all over.
The English students and English farmers deserve everything they get (or don’t get)!
November 1st, 2009 at 1:17 pmPersonally, I don’t think that tuition fees will ever be abolished in England, the population is too high, however I think that financial aid would be a good start. But the main thing I seek from an English Parliament is to regain the supressed identity.
November 3rd, 2009 at 1:57 pmThe UK population was even higher than England’s, (before Scots MPs swung the vote for English kids to suffer an education tax), yet we all enjoyed free tertiary education.
Is this the old, “England’s too big to enjoy the fruits of its own taxes”?
November 3rd, 2009 at 4:32 pmGadgie/Terry.
Your comments apply equally to every English man/women across our country, not only students and farmers.
England is a door mat for every evil MP at Westminster, and how do we protest..whinge on blogs like this and all similar blogs, and yes it includes no hopers like me as well, as Mrs LBB keeps telling me, if that’s how you feel get off your backside and do something about it.
Perhaps someone can enlighten me.
November 4th, 2009 at 12:39 amLBB I am doing something about it. I spend many hours a day doing something about it, but my frustration rises when I address a group of students or a Rotary meeting (most of whom are farmers around here) and they shrug their shoulders and mutter something about not wanting to harm the Union.
We’ve long campaigned for the NUS and NFU to stand up for English students/farmers and they’re just not interested.
My sympathy is at absolute zero.
November 4th, 2009 at 3:19 pmTerry,
The NUS and NFU are not interested in England – it is all by design. Their unwritten rules will not allow England to be represented in any way. It’s a conspiracy, nothing less. Only civil war will bring about an English Parliament, the UK establishment is too deliberately too stobborn to do anything about the WLQ.
November 5th, 2009 at 11:58 amthat puts the NFU and the NUS in the same boat as UKIP, the BNP, and the Conservative Party. if the Scots vote for independence, this Saint Andrew’s Day, that will leave the English with no other option, but to have a parliament. no need for civil war.
The Young Wessex League
November 6th, 2009 at 1:10 pm“Zeaxe; owre land and volc”