DEM not gonna CON dis NATION: Rolling UK politics in the short-lived Cleggeron era

I've heard criticisms of it from the left: The poorest parents need that money NOW, to buy shoes with, not when the kid's 18 and able to pay his or her own way anyway. And that it's a big giveaway to banks - they're only allowed to make 1% commission on these investment accounts but add up lots of little 1%s and that's a hefty chunk of change.

OK, that's fair enough.

It just seemed all along like a cosmetic scheme that wd have next to no impact on the people it was alleged to be targetting.

the take-up of CTFs is owt to go by

Three quarters of all new parents. That's pretty good.

Well like anything it's got good and bad points. I think on balance I'd like to see that money invested directly into higher education, which is surely the biggest need at age 18.

i.e. if the idea is to allow less well-off children to have some of the same options that well-off children do upon reaching the age of majority, those options pretty much all have to do with higher education so go ahead and fund that directly.

at the moment, i wld guess that most CTFs have lost value rather than gained any, tho' of course that might be different in ten years time.

those options pretty much all have to do with higher education

Those options used to have a lot to do with the prospect of meaningful long-term employment. I agree that HE funding is effed up but more kids going to Uni is no more a solution to poverty than giving them a £500 demob present for their 18th birthdays. "Education Education Education" is partly what was wrong about Blair/Brown's gov.

The CTF will pay out significantly more than £500.

(Assuming you contribute regularly)

i wld love to know the proportion of CTS that have never had more than the initial £250 voucher paid into them (my guess wld be, a lot)

Yeah :(

You get another £250 top-up at age eight or something. (Though no one with a CTF has a kid that old yet, I don't think)

"As the chancellor indicated, we will pass legislation to end child trust fund payments and this will save £320m in 2010 and 2011, rising to £520m in 2011-12.

Isn't this really a piddling amount to be saving, considering how many people had invested in the scheme?

And isn't the CTF precisely the sort of thing that the Conservatives are always saying should be done, i.e. "personal savings accounts" where YOU get to spend your money the way YOU want etc (plus a giveaway to the banks)?

Just seems weird, on both an ideology and a policy level.

Still unclear what happens to the actual accounts. I guess they still exist, just with no govt matching funds. I wonder - will parents still be limited to contributing £1200 per year?

In addition, £1.165bn of savings will be made in local government by reducing grants to councils.

Ah, welcome to your new, higher council tax..

They're freezing council tax as well, I thought…

They can do that?

i.e. if the idea is to allow less well-off children to have some of the same options that well-off children do upon reaching the age of majority, those options pretty much all have to do with higher education so go ahead and fund that directly.

― The Clegg Effect (Tracer Hand), Monday, May 24, 2010 10:54 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

i think you're kind of pretty much 'where you're going to be' aged 18. new labour (rightly imo) said the real determining time in life was earlier. trust fund kind of odd way of redistributing wealth. (and it wasn't even means tested right? middle-class kids also get it?)

They can do that?

What override local democracy when it suits them? In spite of all that rhetoric about tackling Big Government and giving power back to the people? That's what Tories do in government, on past experience. Big Society, Little Democracy.

yeah, CTF was not means-tested at all, open to all parents regardless of income etc

I thought poorer families got £500?

That's right.

lol i have my first mp twitter follower

Is it Shapps? He's a bit of a spammer.

What is this on the radio? Is it Breezy Light-Hearted Soliloquy Day already?

Harriet Harman's speech was pretty good, I thought.

I forget, is she one of the people ILX really really hates?

Even David Cameron's seemed agreeable. Maybe it's the weather

ok but I look at the pictures and there's george osborne, love-in over

I misread that as live-in lover

http://timesonline.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/09/29/george_osborne.jpg

hahahahaha

^ caption

http://i45.tinypic.com/30c8zy9.jpg

"If parents get to run schools and patients get to run hospitals, who gets to run the asylums?"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/10159448.stm

This is bullshit.

Yes.

New academies set up under the proposed legislation would be able to be managed by outside companies.

Something tells me they wouldn't be the guild schools of the 21st century.

90 percent of Head Teachers shdn't be in charge of the school footie team never mind an organisation with 100+ staff and 1000+ pupils.

Srsly, schools wd be better off with admin/management qualified managers and the Head Teacher responsible only for the teacher-y stuff.

You wouldn't see Arry Redknapp working under no administrator iss not nachooroll

That's cos an administrator might query the expenses claims, amirite?

Also the idea that the best state schools will immediately be able to become academies, therefore pay more to attract the best teachers, will only make the playing field even less level than it is already. And that's without bringing in the question of who will provide additional funding to the academy and what agenda they might want to impose in return.

This is what we're ushering in? http://www.tes.co.uk/jobDetailsGold_schoolInfo.aspx?ac=2808541

Labour introduced a lot of "thin end of the wedge" private sector involvement over its second and third terms, it should have been screamingly obvious to them that it would make it easy for the Tories to accelerate it when they got back in. That said, not sure how much daylight there is between the Blairites and the Tories on this issue.

Half a slice of fuck all iirc

New Labour policy always seemed to be "let's make every school a grammar school and everybody can be middle class via the magic of education" which is dumbass on any number of levels.

corporate is corporate is corporate - rosette colour appears not to matter in the service of capitalism.

I'm trying to find stuff about schools run by corporations through history, having some vague idea that some philanthropic industrialist of the Victorian era must *surely* have set one up, but it seems even Cadbury's didn't build schools - the job was taken on by the "independent" Bournville Village Trust. 21st Century = naked capitalism, argh.

The Church qualify?