O/T TUITION FEES AND THE LIBERALS

[Posh]

Who was it that:
1. Plundered the Company Pensions pot?
2. Sold our Gold at a rock bottom price?
3. Poured £millions into education, diluting standards and pass marks in public examinations.
4. In the same pot as 3. above promising new schools, but building hardly any, though managing to put in place layer upon layer of useless red tape in the procurement process?

1. Labour. Double tax break removed. Fairly in my view.
2. Labour. Terrible deal.
3. Labour. Standards rose, huge improvements in education which even Tory Michael Gove acknowledged.
4. Labour. Biggest school building programme since the Victorian era and all the launch documentation was done in Lancaster. Bollocks about hardly any schools being built. As I was involved in it I can actually name about 200 off the top of my head. The total is well over 4,000 schools newly built or refurbished, including eradicating every school in Britain with an outside toilet, which the Tories left I remember 73.

[Plain Peter]

3. Labour. Standards rose, huge improvements in education which even Tory Michael Gove acknowledged.

Gove acknowleged a few things before he was put right.
Standards drop pass marks rise. Some improvement that!
They'd all get an 'A' - level in text speak, and the 5 times table.

4. Labour. Biggest school building programme since the Victorian era and all the launch documentation was done in Lancaster. Bollocks about hardly any schools being built. As I was involved in it I can actually name about 200 off the top of my head.

I'm waiting. And what about all the expensive wasteful tiers of red tape involved in the process?

The total is well over 4,000 schools newly built or refurbished, including eradicating every school in Britain with an outside toilet, which the Tories left I remember 73.

Now that is bollocks, or should it be Balls
What does refurbishment mean? Eg. a £10 noticeboard, which in real terms costs 10 times that by the time it is put up!

[marky]

Well in my neck of the woods, I could give you a very long list of schools that have either been totally rebuilt or thoroughly refurbished. I live about 500 yards from one.

[George Dawes]

4. Labour. Biggest school building programme since the Victorian era and all the launch documentation was done in Lancaster. Bollocks about hardly any schools being built. As I was involved in it I can actually name about 200 off the top of my head. The total is well over 4,000 schools newly built or refurbished, including eradicating every school in Britain with an outside toilet, which the Tories left I remember 73.

i do work for a big maintenance company, and we do a hell of a lot of work on schools and the the standard and the amount of equipment they have for sports etc and just about every kid must have a computer to sit at and learn on in the computer room i dont think i can honestly recall a tatty school i have worked on in the last 10yrs or more and left school 20rys ago now

[The Marksman]

The problem is, you've been led to believe that we've actually been living in a free-market capitalist system - we haven't. If interest rates were too low, leading to excessive lending, whose fault is that? The central banks set interest rates, not the market.

Of course that's utter nonsense. Yes central banks set interest rates but you're implying they engineered a debt bubble deliberately. The European Central Bank and the Bank of England are independent and made of the very people who form the market. Rate setting is almost as free from political influence as it has ever been. However the biggest problem with that argument is that key interest rates - LIBOR, bond and gilts rates - the rates at which companies, banks and governments borrow at are entirely set by the market.

If businesses do go bankrupt, in a free market system, they'd just fail and new business models would spring up in their place - they wouldn't be bailed out, impoverishing their parent nation. No, the problem is we haven't been living in a free market.

Of course virtually all businesses in the UK that should fail does and nobody bails it out. The only exception has been the banks and a couple of related institutions. The reason the banks get bailed out is because of the follow on impact. Firstly investment banks should have gone to the wall as they don't lend and the fallout could have been handled. However if RBS, Halifax, Northern Rock etc had been allowed to go under then they would have taken down every other bank and we would have had complete meltdown. We would have very quickly reached a state where people wouldn't believe that the piece of paper in their pocket worth about 3p and some words on was actually worth £20. Governments had no option but to bail out commercial banks.

The fundamental problem is the free market allowed a safe conservative industry to get greedy with massive bonuses for delivering higher profits whatever the risk. Virtually entirely self-regulated, they broke all the rules and designed products to allow themselves to lend more and more.

The free market screwed us all. Now it's time to make it our servant.

I'm not saying they did anything deliberately, I just think they got it wrong, political influence being irrelevant here, and that if it was a true free market system there wouldn't be a central bank. The key interest rates you talk about are set by the market from the base set by central banks.

As for complete meltdown, we'll never know. My personal opinion is that yes, a lot of banks would have failed, but the stronger ones would have stayed and new ones would have been founded to take their place. The kay problem with the economy that we have at the moment is debt - of all kinds - too much of it. If some of the banks had gone bust that debt would have been destroyed and we could have started again. Instead great measures were taken to ensure that that debt remained in some form or other and we're all paying for it.

[billybonz]

Is shrimps voices a football forum or a party political broadcast for the tories? Bring back talking about football! Also, how many millionaires are on shrimps voices because they're the only ones who'll benefit from this government!

[Christies Child]

Is shrimps voices a football forum or a party political broadcast for the tories? Bring back talking about football! Also, how many 'penny' millionaires are on shrimps voices because they're the only ones who'll benefit from this government!

I'm one but like a significant number of others, I didn't do that badly under the Labour administration.....who also had a fair number in their ranks

[Posh]

The total is well over 4,000 schools newly built or refurbished, including eradicating every school in Britain with an outside toilet, which the Tories left I remember 73.

Now that is bollocks, or should it be Balls
What does refurbishment mean? Eg. a £10 noticeboard, which in real terms costs 10 times that by the time it is put up!

Here's Kingsdale Secondary School in Southwark. Completely refurbished. In this shot the central outdoor space is now roofed over and classrooms installed bringing the whole school together.



This is the Wooldale Centre for Learning in Northamptonshire - primary, secondary, special needs, nursery and community library all on one site.

Library at night.jpg (479.88 KiB) Viewed 793 times

Oh and here's a part of my list. In brackets is the number of schools, where listed. It excludes over 200 new build Academies, over 1,000 new build and refurbished primary schools, most of the Building Schools for the Future programme to be completed and any small loca authority led projects.

Barking & Dagenham Grouped Schools (8)
Barnsley MBC Barnsley Schools (11)
Bedfordshire County Council Mid Beds Upper Schools Project (2)
Birmingham City Council Birmingham Group Schools (14)
Birmingham City Council PPP 2 (16)
Bolton MBC Castle Hill Community Learning Centre
Borough of Telford & Wrekin Hadley Learning & Jigsaw Project
Brighton and Hove Brighton & Hove - four schools
Bristol City Council Bristol City Council Schools Phase 1A
Calderdale Group schools
Cheshire County Council Ellesmere Port Schools
City of York Council York Schools
Cornwall County Council Schools 1 (29)
Cornwall County Council Schools 2 (20)
Coventry City Council Caludon Castle School
Darlington Borough Council Darlington Five Schools Project
Derby City Derby Grouped Schools
Derbyshire County Council Grouped Schools
Derbyshire County Council Schools Phase 2
Devon County Council Exeter Group Schools (6 - every secondary)
Doncaster Two secondary schools
Dorset The Sir John Colfox School
Dudley MBC Paragon Project (every secondary in Dudley rebuilt or refurbished)
East Riding of Yorkshire Bridlington Schools
East Sussex CC Group schools
Essex County Council Debden Park High School
Essex County Council Clacton Secondary Schools
Gateshead Council Gateshead Schools Project
Haringey Grouped secondary schools project
Harrow Special Schools (four new special schools)
Herefordshire Council Whitecross School
Kent County Council Swanscombe (3)
Kent County Council 6 Grouped schools
Kingston upon Hull City Council Victoria Dock Primary School
Kirklees MC Kirklees Grouped Schools (11)
Kirklees MC Special Schools
Lancashire County Council Fleetwood High School Scheme
Lancashire County Council BSF Wave1, Phase 1
Lancashire County Council BSF Wave 1, Phase 2
Leeds City Council Cardinal Heenan High School
Leeds City Council Leeds 1 (7) Schools
Leeds City Council Leeds 2 (10) Primary Schools
Leeds City Council Leeds 3 & 4 Secondary and Post 16
Leeds City Council BSF Wave 1 - Phase 1
Leeds City Council BSF Wave 1, Phase 2
Leicester City BSF Wave 1, Phase 1
Lincolnshire County Council Lincolnshire Schools Grouped Scheme
Liverpool City Council Liverpool - Speke/Garston Lifelong Learning Centre
Liverpool City Council Group Schools
London Borough of Bexley Bexly Three Schools Project
London Borough of Brent - JFS School new school
London Borough of Camden Haverstock School
London Borough Of Croydon Ashburton Learning Village
London Borough of Ealing Group schools 1
London Borough of Ealing Group schools 2
London Borough of Enfield Highlands School
London Borough of Enfield Joint Schools (with LB Newham)
London Borough of Hillingdon Barnhill School
London Borough of Islington BSF Wave 2
London Borough of Lambeth Lillian Baylis School Scheme
London Borough of Lambeth Lambeth Connected Learning project (ICT in Schools)
London Borough of Lewisham GROUPED SCHOOLS MODERNISATION PROJECT
London Borough of Lewisham BSF Wave 1, Phase 1
London Borough of Newham Group schools
London Borough of Newham Joint Schools (with Enfield)
London Borough of Richmond upon Thames London Borough of Richmond upon Thames - Primary Schools
London Borough of Tower Hamlets Group schools
London Borough of Tower Hamlets Mulberry School
London Borough of Waltham Forest Grouped Schools
London Borough of Waltham Forest Lammas School
London Borough of Waltham Forest BSF Wave1
Manchester City Council Temple Primary School
Manchester City Council Wright Robinson Sports College
Merton LBC Merton Grouped Schools Project
Newcastle upon Tyne City Council Newcastle Schools 1
Newcastle upon Tyne City Council Newcastle Schools 2
Newcastle upon Tyne City Council BSF Phase 1
Norfolk County Council Norwich Area Schools
North Tyneside Council Schools for the Future Project
North Yorkshire CC North Yorkshire Schools Project
Northamptonshire Wooldale Centre
Northamptonshire Northampton Schools Review
Nottingham City BSF Wave 2
Nottinghamshire County Council East Leake schools
Nottinghamshire County Council Bassetlaw schools
Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council Oldham Secondary Schools Project
Peterborough City Council Peterborough Secondary Schools Scheme
Plymouth Wood View Learning Community & Riverside Primary School
Portsmouth City Council Miltoncross School
Redbridge Redbridge - Oaks Park School
Redcar & Cleveland Borough Council Grouped Schools Project
Rochdale MBC Grouped Schools Project
Rotherham MBC Grouped Schools
Salford City Council Salford SEN Schools Project
Salford City Council Salford High Schools Project
Sandwell MBC Sandwell Schools
Sheffield City Council Schools Phase I
Sheffield City Council Schools Phase 2
Sheffield City Council Schools Phase 3
Sheffield City Council BSF Wave 1
Slough BC Slough Grouped Schools Contract
Solihull BSF Wave1
South Tyneside Boldon School
South Tyneside and Gateshead BSF Wave 1, Phase 1
Southampton City Council Schools
Staffordshire County Council Two schools
Stockton-on-Tees Brough Council Two schools @ Ingleby Barwick
Stoke-on-Trent Stoke Schools
Sunderland City Council Sandhill View Community Learning Centre
Swindon North Swindon project
Tameside MBC Hattersley Schools Project
Tameside MBC BSF wave 3
Torbay Council Two school rebuild
Walsall MBC St Thomas More
West Sussex County Council Crawley Schools
Wiltshire County Council 3 North Wiltshire Secondary Schools
Wirral MBC Wirral Schools'
Worcestershire County Council Bromsgrove Schools

[Plain Peter]

Nice list, but that's all it is.
Whereas...

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyyoung/100046227/education-cuts-labours-55-billion-school-buildings-programme-was-a-model-of-inefficiency/

...paints a different picture!

[The Marksman]

The "building schools for the future" project was all on tick anyway. We'll be paying for that for years, and at the end of it all we still won't own the buildings.

[George Dawes]

it's getting more common for private investors to build schools then rent & maintain them as landlords, i work a bit around the Blackpool & Fleetwood area for a building firm called Eric Wright on Schools aswell as a lot of NHS buildings they own and rent


it's cheaper and easier alternative to plan(budget) money in the short term for the government

[Plain Peter]

The "building schools for the future" project was all on tick anyway. We'll be paying for that for years, and at the end of it all we still won't own the buildings.

Excellent few words.
I'd still like to know what all the layers of mega expensive bureaucracy were all about?
Were they necessary?
How much time did these layers add to the procurement process before building was finally approved in the few instances that did eventually get underway?
How much as a % did these layers of bureaucracy add to each project?
A right load of [Ed] Balls
Don't know how anyone can defend such a diabolical mess
Perhaps Posh can provide a long list or something in defence:shock:

[Pobble]

Can anyone explain to me what this thread is all about..?
I have spent the 20 minutes reading all the postings and have not understood a word. I find great difficulty with words over four or five letters, and some of the sentences were so long it nearly lost me the will to live.
None of the people doing the posting could have been educated in Morecambe, obviously my Sandylands education was not good enough.
Please help the mentally retarded.

[Posh]

Can anyone explain to me what this thread is all about..?
I have spent the 20 minutes reading all the postings and have not understood a word. I find great difficulty with words over four or five letters, and some of the sentences were so long it nearly lost me the will to live.
None of the people doing the posting could have been educated in Morecambe, obviously my Sandylands education was not good enough.
Please help the mentally retarded.

I went to Sandylands and then Heysham High School, so using your choice of schooling to hide your inadequacies in the brain department is clear a pisspoor excuse.

[Plain Peter]

....so using your choice of schooling to hide your inadequacies in the brain department is clear a pisspoor excuse.

Bit like spinning a load of bare faced 'porky-pies'!!
The balls not in my court at the moment, or have you conceded?

[Posh]

....so using your choice of schooling to hide your inadequacies in the brain department is clear a pisspoor excuse.

Bit like spinning a load of bare faced 'porky-pies'!!
The balls not in my court at the moment, or have you conceded?

To be honest, it's not worth arguing with you. You read an article in The Daily Telegraph. Woo-hoo you win!

As usual the issue is a lot more complicated than you make out but you just try to bluster your own opinion across to the detriment of the facts.

For what it's worth here is a brief summary. Firstly I used to work for the then Department of Education and Skills over four years, in which time I helped launch the Building Schools for the Future programme, the Primary Schools Capital programme, Schools PFI, Academies building programme and structure the overall Schools Capital programme from 2000-2020.

BSF was a phenomenal idea - rebuild or completely refurbish to 21st century standard every single secondary school in England. At a cost of £2.2 billion a year over 15 years it was a massive undertaking and something the country hadn't done since the post-war Marshall Plan. It needed new ways to finance it and ensure value for money. I haven't even read the Telegraph article but I can pretty much guess what it says - LEPs crap; consultants; PFI etc. etc. And on a lot of it they would be right. The first wave of BSF schools was stupidly expensive, involved consultants and companies creaming off massive fees and took way too long to deliver. However by the time the Tories scrapped it, it was coming in to its own. Local authorities had the skills base to deliver the projects, the LEP was largely abandoned for a simpler model, the construction industry knew how to build better and deliver more quickly and architects knew what worked and what didn't. And this was all abandoned.

But BSF isn't all there is in new schools procurement. There have been thousands of new builds in the primary school sector. Four I've been to at Quarrington St Botolph in Lincolnshire, Sevenoaks in Kent, Liverpool and one in Southwark were just extraordinarily brilliant in design quality and value for money. Some Academys such as Capital City are truly inspiring buildings and have raised attainement through sheer pride in the place they work in alone.

I'll stop there though because everything is black and white to you, winner and loser, blah, blah, blah.

[Posh]

Bit like spinning a load of bare faced 'porky-pies'!!

P.S. Don't call me a liar. You wouldn't do it to my face and I know I'm not.

[Keith]

My personal opinion is that yes, a lot of banks would have failed, but the stronger ones would have stayed and new ones would have been founded to take their place. The kay problem with the economy that we have at the moment is debt - of all kinds - too much of it. If some of the banks had gone bust that debt would have been destroyed and we could have started again. Instead great measures were taken to ensure that that debt remained in some form or other and we're all paying for it.

But that is a far too simplistic. The business of the bank would cease to exist. The money invested would disappear straight away but the debt 'owned' by the bank would have been its saleable asset, so if you had a mortgage with 'Bank A', it would be sold to 'Bank B', they wouldn't just give you the deeds to your house and say you're now debt free. Likewise, your credit card debt would still be there (did you get offered the deeds to your house when National & Provincial got bought out by The Abbey or did you just get told where your nearest Abbey branch was?) However, if you actually had savings, you join the list of creditors. If the government didn't help with compensation, you may be lucky and get 20% of your money back.

So...
Some people would have their homes repossessed
Some people would lose most of their savings
Some people would get a different bank to make their payments to

Kaupthing, Singer & Friedlander (Isle of Man) was a profit making bank when Alistair Darling deliberately brought it down with the parent company. With government (Manx) support, people will eventually get about 90% of their money but, as I understand it, this could take up to seven years. So, for example, the couple where were emigrating to Australia. They sold their house in the UK and invested their money in a six month account while they searched for a property down under, suddenly have £50,000 and have to wait years for the remaining £120,000. They can't get a mortgage in Australia because they've only just moved there, so instead of a dream move, buy a house and be mortgage free, they are living in rented accommodation. Normal people screwed over by Alistair Darling? Who'd have thought it?

Incidentally, at the time of the crisis developing, the Isle of Man Government guaranteed 30% or £50,000, whichever was the greater. The Irish government "guaranteed" 100% in the event of any bank collapse. What was entirely clear was they were potentially writing cheques they couldn't possibly cash... literally.

[Posh]

Kaupthing, Singer & Friedlander (Isle of Man) was a profit making bank when Alistair Darling deliberately brought it down with the parent company. ...... They can't get a mortgage in Australia because they've only just moved there, so instead of a dream move, buy a house and be mortgage free, they are living in rented accommodation. Normal people screwed over by Alistair Darling? Who'd have thought it?

There is a degree of cant and hypocracy about all this. A load of predominantly very very wealthy people around the world are looking to maximise their savings returns and invest it an offshore tax haven where the rates are, well, too good to be true. Bank goes bust as it would whether Alistair Darling shoved the knife in or someone else. Queue loads of whinging millionaires looking for the UK government, the Manx government - anyone to bail them out.

Meanwhile Christmas hamper company, effectively a savings company, Farepak goes under depriving the poor of their meagre savings and no one comes to help. The same with foreign exchange company Crown Currency who did good deals on holiday money and bigger sums, which took loads ordinary people for life savings and holiday money http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11466272. They'll lose everything and no one gives a toss.

Bailouts have to end somewhere and for me offshore tax havens such as IOM, Guernsey, Jersey etc who make loads out of denying countries their tax share shouldn't then expect their banks to be bailed out by the countries it denis of the tax in the first place.

[Keith]

There is a degree of cant and hypocracy about all this. A load of predominantly very very wealthy people around the world are looking to maximise their savings returns and invest it an offshore tax haven where the rates are, well, too good to be true. Bank goes bust as it would whether Alistair Darling shoved the knife in or someone else. Queue loads of whinging millionaires looking for the UK government, the Manx government - anyone to bail them out...

...Bailouts have to end somewhere and for me offshore tax havens such as IOM, Guernsey, Jersey etc who make loads out of denying countries their tax share shouldn't then expect their banks to be bailed out by the countries it denis of the tax in the first place.

Not often you get things so totally inaccurate and arse about face Mike!

KSF (Isle of Man Limited) was a subsidiary bank. And it was a profitable bank. And it is the Manx Government who GAVE the bailout to people who'd lost money. It was because of the way Darling deliberately waited until the subsidiary's money was temporarily held by the parent company before he pulled the plug, that took the Manx bank down with it. The IoM Government paid hundreds of millions of pounds in compensation. Yes, much of the investment was lazy millionaires who either 'shouldn't have put all eggs in to one basket', or millionaires who did diversify, in which case, they aren't too badly hurt. But there were lots of people, like the ones I mentioned earlier, who were in the process of emigrating etc, who had placed money for a short term return. Muli-millionaire Alistair Darling cares a little bit less about them than he cares about the people who invested in the Christmas hampers and received nothing. Alistair Darling WAS the 'run on the banks'.

[mrpotatohead]

here here

anyway, tories and knife crime

[Plain Peter]

To be honest, it's not worth arguing with you. You read an article in The Daily Telegraph. Woo-hoo you win!
As usual the issue is a lot more complicated than you make out but you just try to bluster your own opinion across to the detriment of the facts.

A long list of schools is hardly facts.

BSF was a phenomenal idea - rebuild or completely refurbish to 21st century standard every single secondary school in England. At a cost of £2.2 billion a year over 15 years it was a massive undertaking and something the country hadn't done since the post-war Marshall Plan.

Impossible to achieve in the lifetime of one incompetent, fiscally corrupt Labour Government.
At least the rein is now being pulled in, and the madness stopped.

It needed new ways to finance it and ensure value for money. I haven't even read the Telegraph article but I can pretty much guess what it says - LEPs crap; consultants; PFI etc. etc. And on a lot of it they would be right. The first wave of BSF schools was stupidly expensive, involved consultants and companies creaming off massive fees and took way too long to deliver. However by the time the Tories scrapped it, it was coming in to its own.

Yep. Scrapped almost 8 (eight) years later, when the country was so deep in the mire there was little alternative!

Local authorities had the skills base to deliver the projects, the LEP was largely abandoned for a simpler model, the construction industry knew how to build better and deliver more quickly and architects knew what worked and what didn't. And this was all abandoned.

But is abandoned the right word? Is that really what's happened?

[Plain Peter]

Bit like spinning a load of bare faced 'porky-pies'!!

P.S. Don't call me a liar. You wouldn't do it to my face and I know I'm not.

I never called you a liar, you were 'spinning'.
I was after substance.
I think I may have got to you, and you provided a bit of substance.
Isn't that the way it works in SW1A all the time?
I'd like to think that the only thing I'd talk face-to-face with you about is football