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Lockdowns

Bob McC said:
It’s Barmey.
Indeed as Martin Lewis says calling it a loan was stupid.
It should have been called a student tax whereby you pay 9% above a certain threshold for X years for your university education because that is in effect what it is.
The govt can’t even sell the latest tranche of student loans to private companies no matter how they try because of these figures.
I’m convinced it would cost less to the exchequer to just abandon the student loans system, all the required infrastructure, the student loans company, the cost of chasing non payers and just go back to free Higher education.
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Totally irrational, in terms of sheer expenditure. But has the benefits of keeping the money out of the deficit count, and getting young people used to being in debt.
 
Joe Hutch said:
Universities want to have it both ways; to be independent from government whilst at the same time being dependent on the government for survival. The shift from block grants via funding councils (theoretically arms-length bodies) to income from students as the main source of funding was only going to work as long as that income kept flowing.

Several institutions were already teetering on the brink of bankruptcy even before COVID; the killer punch for many, if not most HEIs will be the loss of income from overseas students paying full-whack for tuition.

All this is in addition to the Ponzi-type nature of student loans, with ever-decreasing numbers of graduates reaching the level of salary at which repayments kick in (and many loans will have to be written-off after 25 years).
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It’s a basket case. And personally I don’t think the people making the decisions - senior management - give a rat’s ass about even appearing independent from government. Everything they do is designed at least partly to signal total compliance with government demands. That’s how you get the top jobs (assigned by business-dominated boards) and the prospect of honours upon retirement.
 
Bob McC said:
Sensible numbers being?
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If 80% of the loans will never be repaid, it strikes me that 20% of the current numbers sounds sensible and sustainable. How would this compare with the numbers attending say, 25 years ago?
 
Ponty said:
If 80% of the loans will never be repaid, it strikes me that 20% of the current numbers sounds sensible and sustainable. How would this compare with the numbers attending say, 25 years ago?
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That would be sensible if universities existed solely as part of the credit industry.
 
Ponty said:
If 80% of the loans will never be repaid, it strikes me that 20% of the current numbers sounds sensible and sustainable. How would this compare with the numbers attending say, 25 years ago?
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To have any realistic chance of paying your post 2012 loan off given normal career progression it has been calculated you would need to start on circa £45K on graduation.

now what do you think?
 
Ponty said:
If 80% of the loans will never be repaid, it strikes me that 20% of the current numbers sounds sensible and sustainable. How would this compare with the numbers attending say, 25 years ago?
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In 1995 the student loan was a mortgage type loan.
It too had a threshold.
The current threshold is over £30000 a year.
Earn less than that not a penny is paid back.
You can defer each year you are under that threshold.
You repay for 25 years or until you reach the age of 50 if you were under 40 when you graduated.
The company that bought this loan book off the govt are so desperate to get something out of it they have offered outstanding graduates to write their debt off for a payment of 20% of what is owed.
For most graduates it makes no sense to even do that.
 
Bob McC said:
To have any realistic chance of paying your post 2012 loan off given normal career progression it has been calculated you would need to start on circa £45K on graduation.

now what do you think?
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I think we need to go further back in time! It seems kids are effectively being sold false expectations which will never materialise for the vast majority. Wasn’t the explosion in numbers of students originally to keep unemployment figures down?
 
A well educated populace, capable of making judgements based on sound principles and fact has never been more important.
It isn’t all about money despite what the Daily Heil tells us.
 
Seanm said:
It’s a basket case. And personally I don’t think the people making the decisions - senior management - give a rat’s ass about even appearing independent from government. Everything they do is designed at least partly to signal total compliance with government demands. That’s how you get the top jobs (assigned by business-dominated boards) and the prospect of honours upon retirement.
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Well, yes. Theoretically, I guess Oxford and Cambridge could manage without any government funding, but precious few others, so senior management need to not tread on too many toes, and pay attention to the broad hints coming from government about, for example, the balance between STEM and humanities.

The real danger point comes when government dictates what can and what can't be taught; Trump has said that the US needs to switch to 'patriotic education', and we're probably only a few years away from similar sentiments being expressed here.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...tewashing-us-history-with-patriotic-education

'Speaking at a conference in Washington DC on Thursday, the president announced a new national commission to promote “patriotic education” and counter the “decades of leftwing indoctrination” to which he claims US schoolchildren have been subjected. “Our youth will be taught to love America,” he said.'
 
You do need some graduates who are studying for reasons other than high salaries, so a reduction of about 50% is better.
Far more vocational training is needed. Far to many graduate jobs are going to vanish in the near future with AI
 
  • Based on data from 191,779 American patients, people with a vitamin D level of at least 55 ng/mL (138 nmol/L) had a 47% lower SARS-CoV-2 positivity rate compared to those with a level below 20 ng/mL (50 nmol/L)
  • Based on data from 7,807 Israelis, those with a vitamin D level above 30 ng/mL (75 nmol/L) had a 58% to 59% lower risk of testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 compared to those with a vitamin D level below 29 ng/mL (74 nmol/L)
  • Having a vitamin D level below 30 ng/mL also approximately doubles your risk of being hospitalized with COVID-19, Israeli researchers found
  • Spanish researchers found giving hospitalized COVID-19 patients supplemental calcifediol (a vitamin D3 analog) in addition to standard of care lowered ICU admissions from 50% to 2% and eliminated deaths
  • An August 2020 study found patients who had a vitamin D level below 12 ng/mL (30 nmol/L) had a 6.12 times higher risk of severe disease requiring invasive mechanical ventilation, and a 14.7 times higher risk of death compared to those with a vitamin D level above 12 ng/mL
I mentioned this back in March and was shot down in flames, now there is far more evidence to support it.

For god's sake sake don't include the Dr Mercola link.

https://articles.mercola.com/sites/...1HL&cid=20200928Z2&mid=DM667089&rid=974544210

Well @Mullardman quoted from The Sun. so I assume all options are now open.

Don't forget your Vit K2 to prevent arterial calcification though :eek:
 
Yes, I quoted from the Sun but I think the article had the gist of Prof Heneghan's views... which I was reporting.. not necessarily agreeing with.

As for Vit. D. Quite apart from the fact that I spend as much time kitless in the Sun as I can... I have also purchased Vit D supplements to see me through the Winter.

I don't actualy know if they will do me good.. but I doubt they'll do any harm.

Any port in a storm.. as they say.
 
My 91 YO. mother is provided with Vit D.and Folic Acid (Vit B9) by the NHS.

The NHS prescribing vitamins was unheard of 10 years ago.

'Medical science' will earn £ trillions from a vaccine, how much appetite do you think they have to investigate the effects of vitamins, or more accurately the human immune system.
Vitamin D. is available for peanuts and cannot be patented.

What has allowed the human race to become the predominant species on the planet ?,largely the evolution of our immune system IMO.

Though some might argue that our learned ability to switch from a 0 to 1 and back has provided a greater degree of advancement than by optimising our immune systems.
 
misterdog said:
What has allowed the human race to become the predominant species on the planet ?,largely the evolution of our immune system IMO.
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I think it might be a mistake to assume that we are the 'predominant' species. We cannot get rid of Bacteria, Viruses, Rats, Mice, Cockroaches, Mosquitos etc.

We are very good at eliminating other Higher Mammals by simply destroying their habitat.

Since OUR habitat is good ol' Mother Earth..which we are destroying rapidly.. I suspect out dominance may be short lived.. in the scheme of things.

We are also pretty good at wiping out assorted 'habitat specific' creatures..from insects upwards...

I don't think our immune system has much to do with it above the individual level. It seems pretty plain that even the worst Pandemics have so far only wiped out a small percentage of us.

We don't need Pandemics. We just need to carry on wrecking our own life support. Being dominant.. we are far better at it than the other mere creatures.
 
Mullardman said:
We cannot get rid of Bacteria, Viruses, Rats, Mice, Cockroaches, Mosquitos etc.
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Though so far, these have failed to wipe us out due to our robust immune system which has evolved over thousands of years.
Herd immunity is part of this process of evolution.

Whilst man - kind has eliminated thousands of species in our quest for greater global domination, or stupidity.
Take bees for example, without them we have no pollinators for our food crops.
No food - ooops.

Perhaps we are not so great as we wish to think we are.
 
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