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Guess what though…I just go to work, work my bollocks off for not much more than you call ‘nothing’, provide for my family, enjoy things when I’m able to afford to do so and do it all with a smile on my face.
The virtues of the poor may be readily admitted, and are much to be regretted. We are often told that the poor are grateful for [their lot]. Some of them are, no doubt, but the best amongst the poor are never grateful. They are ungrateful, discontented, disobedient, and rebellious. They are quite right to be so.
Why should they be grateful for the crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table? They should be seated at the board.
Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty. But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less. For a town or country labourer to practise thrift would be absolutely immoral. Man should not be ready to show that he can live like a badly-fed animal. He should decline to live like that…..No: a poor man who is ungrateful, unthrifty, discontented, and rebellious, is probably a real personality, and has much in him. He is at any rate a healthy protest.
As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them, of course, but one cannot possibly admire them. They have made private terms with the enemy, and sold their birthright for very bad pottage. They must also be extraordinarily stupid.
Oscar WildeThat piece there makes me think of the programme ‘The Secret Millionaire’ don’t ask me why, it just does.
It mostly shows the kind of poor people who aren’t materialistic and motivated by money, but are far happier with their lives than the Millionaire in the programme.
That’s real life and speaks volumes to someone like me, just a humble, poor man trying to be happy in life.
Poor piece of quoting there aswell Pete, you’ve made max look the poor man and not me.
Poor piece of quoting there aswell Pete, you’ve made max look the poor man and not me.
Zammo, why do you associate not being poor with being materialistic? (it’s not the first time you’ve mentioned it)
For me, not being poor and fortunately me and mrs now aren’t it’s about the quality of life it can bring not the quantity of processions.
For example, we both drive Corsas (£35 year road tax btw) and I will keep my until it dies a death on the M4 or somewhere, if fact my last car did just that it had 180,000 on the clock. We have one telly (no sky) in our house, a new one which we had to buy after the Digital Switchover – a standard £130 job from Sainsburys and we will keep that until it stops working. We have a brand new bed and mattress which wasn’t cheap (£1300 I think) but the last one we had for 13 years and the new will probable see me out.
But, the point is we haven’t got to worry any of the above, so when my car does go kappt I can go and get another one. When we had to buy a new telly (if we choose too) we could and the same when we needed a new bed.
Also, if during this cold period we want to wack the heating right up we can do so without worry about the gas bill and surely anybody working 40 hours a week in this country should be able to do the same rather than have to penny pinch on the shopping every week.
Btw, interesting that you mention Secret Millionaire because like that other programme Undercover Boss the one feature that comes from those programmes, above all else, is just how honest, decent & hardworking the ‘ordinary’ people in this country are and it’s these very people that have built the wealth of this country.
A wealth were 90% is ‘owned’ by less than 10% of the population.
Zamorston, I come from a poor (ish) background. Mining town, wiped out by the Tories in 1985.
I went to University partly because I showed sufficient talent when I was a kid, but mainly because it was affordable. I got a full grant and tuition fees paid. There is no record anywhere in my entire family of anyone going to University up till that point. That’s two Anglo-Irish families with multiple offspring (with multiple offspring.) I was the first to go. Source of great pride to everyone – including my friends in the town, none of whom went.
When I left with a degree in 1985, I owed approximately £200.
Fast forward the same situation thirty years on and I’m going to leave owing £35,000. Faced with that, I’m just not going. I’m going to learn a trade and go to Open University later. What a shame.
I’m not going to write how the country benefited from my education, Zamorston – but it did, quite substantially. It easily got the money it invested in me back.
And how bitter are people? I worked bloody hard to get my degree and all I read now is how bone idle students are, how undeserving, how feckless. When did we as a country get so bitter and resentful of others?
Pete, that’s a point very well made and you definitely sound like my kind of man. I don’t know where I get that way of thinking from, maybe putting 2 and 2 together and coming up with 5.
The Wife likes the ‘named’ stuff, she drives an Audi, while I drive and Astra. I was reluctant to get that aswell to be honest, I wanted to keep my old x reg renault clio, a damn fine car and never ever used to let me down, a hell of a lot cheaper to run aswell.
We have an ancient tv though, the old widescreens, plasmas etc…just don’t float my boat at all. I’m by no means well off either, but knowing of family and friends and other people you see around I wouldn’t say I was poor either, just a hard worker who just gets by.
Max, again points very well made, I can certainly see where you’re coming from, but can also see it from the other side and understand where some people may feel bitter. I don’t think hard times and a bad recession help at all.
When there’s so many people struggling to make ends meet they will find anyone they can to blame. The government are on an absolute hiding to nothing with the mess the country is in financially IMO.
Anyway, I’ve just got back from my weekly shop at Asda and have done it again and come in under budget spending £49.95! Got some nice meals to look forward to again this week but unfortunately no Crisps, Chocolate or Alcohol. Just hoping to strike with my AW lucky 15 tomorrow and I may be able to call and get some goodies to watch x-factor with and not have to sit there in hat, gloves and scarf!
I don’t really think that it’s the tuition fees themselves that are the problem. The liberals made a pledge during the election not to raise them, for them to go and raise them after making that pledge makes a mockery of having an election imo.
They are making our parliamentary democracy look like even more of a fiasco than it actually is.
The fees wont rise in Scotland thankfully.
The Libs are getting the pish ripped right out of them by the tories atm. I think there will be another general election soon.
For a start, people who go to uni usually end up in the higher tax bracket and are probably paying for someone elses tutition as they work.
Secondly, I’m sure it wouldn’t matter as much if it were more fair. People in scottland pay no fees and yet we are also paying for their education. I feel this is unfair, if they made them pay then our fee’s may not have to go up so much. But it seems that the university students in England are paying for them aswell.
I don’t agree that students should blame the lib dems though – its hardly their fault they only make up a small ammount of the government and can be easily out voted not to mention they are ruled by the tories. It would be really hard for them to speak out as the tories and labour take up so many seats.
I think all classes of people should be given a chance to show their full potential, not just rich people. Everyone should have access to education that is affordable if they really do whan to learn and better themselves. Think of all the academic poor people, will they never be able to get a degree due to the ammount of money it will cost them?
But providing they do get a job after they will be in a higher tax bracket and paying for other peoples university fees and grants its a circle of support. Surely it makes more sense for us to be paying for eduction and encouraging people to better themselves than encouraging them to end up on benefits. Who would you rather pay for? Fred who is doing a degree or Bob whos producing more children than he or the country can afford claiming benefits?
And all the socialists who don’t like to see the poor worker subsidising the wealthy, answer me this: why should the taxes of the binman and the barista or the toilet janitor help subsidise the tertiary education of those who will reap a finacial benefit from it (in theory) in their later years?
.Simple. Because everyone, from barista and binman to barrister and bank managers, is going to need doctors, lawyers, teachers, pharmacologists etc etc, one way or another.
We’re all in this life together and I’m happy for my taxes to contribute to those who are going to help me in the future.
Old Applejack states…
Simple. Because everyone, from barista and binman to barrister and bank managers, is going to need doctors, lawyers, teachers, pharmacologists etc etc, one way or another.
That would be the answer IF doctors, lawyers, teachers, pharmacologists etc. didn’t get paid for their work. As they do, (and handsomely) then there’s no reason why anyone else should have some of their taxes taken to pay for their tertiary education so that they can obtain these high earnings. The reward for the use of their knowledge, (some of it obtained at University) for our good comes in their pay packet.
Burning Riffs asserts…
I think all classes of people should be given a chance to show their full potential, not just rich people. Everyone should have access to education that is affordable if they really do whan to learn and better themselves.
And I agree, and the fees proposal put forward by the coalition is no bar to this.
It’s not the proposed fees repayment strategy that is a bar to "poor" bright kids taking up a University place, it’s the knee-jerk, un-thought-through, panic-inducing garbage spouted by the NUS activists, Socialist Worker up-for-an-anti-(tory) protest anytime, anywhere, mass-media coverage that will deter these youngsters from applying for Uni place.
Any rational analysis of the proposals will show these histrionic pratts that talk of pricing working class kids out of tertiary education is simply nonsensical hyperbole.
Burning Riffs adds…Think of all the academic poor people, will they never be able to get a degree due to the ammount of money it will cost them?
Nonsense. If they don’t earn an adequate wage after university (£21k), they pay nowt back. Is that unfair?
They won’t pay interest on the loan until they earn over £40k (I believe) and then only at 3%. Is that unfair?
They are faced with a choice. Go to Uni and repay the debt only when you’re earning enough, go to university and pay nothing if you never get a well-paid job, or let all this nonsense undermine your opportunity to get a degree beacuse you’ve been mis-informed by the those too lazy, too thick, ot too politically motivated to tell you the truth. University debts in the UK and under these proposals are NOT a financial millstone for evermore. Only 5 0r 6 countries in Europe have free university education (and I include Scotland in that), but then those countries don’t have 35% plus of schooleavers going to university. In the USA, university fees ARE much larger and in countries like South Africa, it’ll cost approx £27k PER ANNUM to go to UNi – now that is a bar to poor folks going on to Uni. And yet to listen to the rantings of protesters, some in the press and some on here, one would think we were just as bad. Get a grip.
And once again I ask, (in a more convoluted way since Old Applejack’s reply) why should the pay of the binman and the barista subsidise the University education of those destined to earn much higher wages than them thanks to that University education?
Is that fair? Is that what the socialist hot-heads want? The poor subsidising the rich?
(It’s bad enough that the English have to subsidise the Scots and the Welsh!)Isn’t the introduction and increase of university fees simply a necessary consequence of the dramatic increase in the numbers going on to further education?
A number that was allowed to grow unchecked by the previous government with – it appears to me – little thought about the large bruise it would inflict on the public finances.
Max, I’d warrant that had the same number been going on to further education when you and I were lads then good old ‘grants for all’ would have been as untenable then as they are today, looked at from the short term perspective of the bruise, anyway
Now some/many including myself (largely) would argue that the fiscal bruise inflicted by a wholly-free further education is no more than a superficial body-blow that will in the long run cause no lasting harm to the exchequer – viz the student gets a free state-funded education but as a result gets a ‘good’ job from which the return body-blow of tax revenues comes which replenishes the cost of that free education. And that is without considering the societal worth of those with degrees, mentioned by Old Applejack.
I am a fervent believer in equal access to education for all, whatever their background and means; it’s a cliche but like all good cliches is a truism that education broadens the mind, teaches tolerance by understanding and presents the individual with the priceless opportunity of choice
That said, I don’t believe further education to be a right but something that must be earnt; and that is achieved by – at the very least – above average performance at school determined for better or worse by exam results. So it does seem strange to me – and actually rather unlikely – that ever-increasing numbers of pupils are achieving ‘well above average’ exam results based on the plethora of A and B grades being dished out. If (big if) the intellect of youngsters has improved dramatically in recent years then ‘the mean of achievement’ should be raised; hence the average, and A becomes B, B becomes ‘average C’ etc
Only by a clear knowledge of who is above average will universities be able to choose those students who have earnt the right to a higher education rather than the current situation of being overloaded with a myriad applicants with seemingly top-notch qualifications who cannot possibly – and in many cases probably should not – be accomodated. And of course the converse of this is we have an army of supposedly well-to-admirably qualified school leavers who by being so qualified believe it is their right to be allowed a place at university. Too many chasing too few – if actually more than there’s ever been before – places.
For those "too many" it must be desperately disheartening to learn that your AAB or ABB is not ‘well above average enough’ to permit further education
And if we choose to believe that all those with As and Bs who have been denied a place do have a ‘right’ to further education and proceed to build new, or extend existing, universities even further to accomodate them who pays and how?
Personally I much prefer the idea of raising the school leaving-age to 18, scrapping GCSEs at 16 and introducing a modified curriculum allowing those without an intellectual or academic bent who’re currently ‘thrown on the scraheap at 16′ to pursue vocational/manual/blue-collar/’dirty-fingernail’ subjects – pre-appenticeships of sorts – in tandem with those studying the traditional academic subjects. Both/all leading to single defining ‘A level by-another-name’ exams.
Come 18 and post exams the ‘wannabe blue-collar’ is as well/badly qualified as the ‘wannabe white-collar’
The well-qualified from each go their separate ways: the former into work and paid ‘further apprenticeships’ the latter into paid ‘further education’. Both will reward the money spent on them in the long run.
Skill and learning results in wealth. For the individual and the country
Ramble ramble, it’s nice by the fire
Just read this letter in the
Sunday Telegraph
, don’t know if what the writer says is true. I can’t help wandering if it is true, why someone in the LibDems hasn’t mentioned it.
Sir EU Directive 2004/58 on “the right of citizens of the Union and their family members to move and reside freely in the European Union” is not only responsible for our inability to deport Learco Chindamo (Christopher Booker. November 28), but also the reason why we cannot offer our students taxpayer-funded education.
If we were to do so, we would also have to provide “free” education for any EU student choosing to come here, which is obviously infeasible.
That is why the Lib Dems have abandoned their manifesto pledge to abolish tuition fees: their love of the EU trumps any principles they have.
Bob Fastner
Great Missenden, BuckinghamshireDrone. I agree.
Thanks, sitting by the fire on a cold winter’s day is indeed one of life’s little pleasures
I enjoyed reading this thread.
In my opinion the Conservatives have the policy 100% correct. It is not “unfair” because of what they have created. Any issues with Scottish/Welsh students compared to English students is thanks to part devolution, which is a big waste of money, and not a direct fault of any Conservative policy.
Part devolution leaves nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales in a huge position of strength that is unbeatable. No “major” political party wants to allow Scotland or Wales to have independence, yet they can’t take devolved powers back.
Sadly, where Universities are concerned, the Conservatives have just inherited another Labour party mess that they have to clear up. Let us not forget it was Labour who introduced tuition fees in the first place. And why did they have to introduce tuition fees again? Because they created the "A grade for all" education system that fails students, universities and employers at all levels. Some things in life have to be “elitist” as they were intended for the elite. Just we live in a modern world where the term "you’re not good enough" can’t exist……
Not good enough, or not rich enough? Thick kids with rich parents will still be able to go to uni. Maybe there should be a criteria whereby no matter how rich daddy is you can’t go to uni..wonder how many would be eliminated then [although, I believe that very expensive private schools have a way of helping their pupils to get good grades by having better pupil/teacher ratios etc]. Also, there is so much talk of tuition fees, but kids will be leaving uni owing tuition fees plus their student loans. My son is still paying off his student loan and trying to buy his first house [he’s in his late twenties]. He’s an engineer, and isn’t on the astonomical wage that graduates are supposed to get. Where are the future teachers and engineers going to come from in future if they can’t afford to go to uni?
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