The lunatics are in the hall

Originally published @ 11:00 pm, Mon 13th Dec 2010

Shocking really when you confront local Lib Dems and under pressure their line on tuition fees comes out. They're against the changes for all sorts of reasons but back them into a corner, and the new scheme is better than the existing one. Tell that to HE students and would-be HE students.

Shocking really when you confront Conservatives and under pressure their line on EMA comes out. EMA is fiddled. EMA stops people from seeking work. EMA massages the dole figures. Tell that to FE students and would-be FE students.

As it happened, student union leaders from 2 universities and an FE college had been invited to speak, but that was before they witnessed the diatribes.

Opponents grasped at any straw blowing. One was the outrage of the son of a Pink Floyd guitarist having joined the demo in London last Thursday.

Proceedings had started to become surreal. I'd anticipated needing the front cover from last Thursday's Mirror, showing Nick Clegg as Pinnochio (or Pi nick io). Having celebrated the Mirror standing with Labour when we'd lost the support of the Financial Times (oh, and the Guardian), I started to recite part of Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon".

The lunatics are in the hall; The lunatics are in the hall; (as I held up a folded copy of Thursday's newspaper) The paper holds their folded faces to the floor; (and now opening up the paper to reveal Nick Clegg as Pinnochio) And every day, the paperboy brings more.

[MISSING GRAPHIC] When Roger Walters wrote the lyrics to the "Dark Side of the Moon", he was a bit surprised to have got away with it since he regarded them as so lower sixth. But in a debate on EMA, they seemed even more appropriate.)

People enjoyed the passage. But it got more surreal again. For after a tea break, another Conservative got up to point out that the photo of Nick Clegg I'd shown was doctored.

Go figure.

-

The actual debate was on a report available at http://open.nottinghamcity.gov.uk/comm/download3.asp?dltype=inline&filename=46031/educationsupport.doc

I seconded the report and an earlier draft of my speech follows -

The recent weeks have been dramatic.

The sheer scale of debt that graduates are now expected to undertake has become tangible and traumatic.

The value of Education Maintenance Allowance has become tangible and dramatic.

The bad faith of the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats has become tangible and in stark contrast to the fresh politics that was promised.

First, the promises on EMA.

David Cameron said - “we don’t have any plans to get rid of [EMA].”

Michael Gove, went further and alleged bad faith – Labour’s “Ed Balls keeps saying that we are committed to scrapping the EMA. ... We won't.”

Second, the now infamous pledge on tuition fees signed by Nick Clegg –

“I pledge to vote against any increase in fees in the next parliament and to pressure the government to introduce a fairer alternative.”

Now the Liberal Democrats Ministers explain that their proposals are more progressive.

No wonder there have been protests.

Young Nottingham Select Committee was scrutinising on the afternoon of the disturbances at Millbank Tower.

The committee was reviewing a new approach to the curriculum, thought to be especially required for our primary schools.

The clear aim - more children from Nottingham to get a degree.

An ambition that matters beyond the value of education in itself.

To keep Britain’s place in the global economy, we need people who can handle the concepts in literacy, mathematics and science that can support the work of new manufacturers and service providers.

Such as Experian trading in data;

the games industry software, much of whose product comes from the A52 corridor,

and BioCity.

Hence Labour’s ambition to equip young people for the future.

The drive on school building renewal; the expectation tested for in school inspections; targets; financial support for 16-19 year olds; more teachers, better paid; new teaching assistants to help those who need most help; and Sure Start Children Centres to bring parents and children on.

Aspects of it of course ran against the grain. Tuition fees, introduced after an explicit mandate was obtained at the 2005 General Election.

Grants for the most in need were introduced at the same time.

Universities had been complaining that our discipline with public finance had been constraining their ability to attract enough of the right calibre of lecturers and to sustain their reputation against other universities in the world who could draw upon a wider range of funds, at a time of expansion.

Labour meanwhile was concerned that 7 million of our adults did not have Level 2 and we wanted more resource to be directed to equip the unskilled.

Hence the change. Still the universities wanted more and hence the Browne report. And what I learned on the doorstep was that it cost Labour votes.

The Conservatives stayed silent. The LibDems condemned it all and scooped up student votes.

The remarkable thing for me is not that the share of the students intending to vote Lib Dem has fallen from 45% to 15%; but that at 15%, it’s still higher than the national rating for the whole population.

Even more remarkable to read Lib Dem members writing - “Clegg’s despair is in fact a great reason to get one of those [Lib Dem] membership cards”. Get real.

Whatever Lib Dem Councillor Alex Foster’s personal pain and anguish, it won’t do for him to say publicly that Labour cares nothing for student finance when we got record numbers of students into university.

At all times, Tony Blair emphasised fees were only to fund a part of the costs of lecturing to support the expansion of places.

The revised ConDem aim tries to make up for cuts of 80% in grants to support teaching.

Meanwhile on the very day of the last week’s tuition fees debate, the ConDems announced they were to take £1.4 billion less in the banking levy. Highlighted by our own Chris Leslie MP.

And, amazingly, the government, in underwriting the huge increase in students fees, in the short and medium term, takes on more debt at a time when tackling the deficit is supposed to be the premium concern.

More money for the bankers, higher government debt and driving students to pay fees (which some can afford more than others) does make people think this is politically or ideologically driven rather than an expression of us all being in this together.

It would not surprise me now if that the findings of a Labour Party policy review is that public opinion will become so jaundiced on this that we have to revert to a more universal approach.

In the meantime, Young Nottingham will scrutinise this issue and explore how we can nevertheless get more Nottingham children qualified at degree level.

But without, even now, details about how the private sector will contribute, it will be difficult.

Neither do we want the notoriety of the changes to put students off. But without agencies like AimHigher that helped get record number of Nottingham kids to university, it will be harder still.

Nor do we want our black children put off from applying to Oxford or Cambridge, even if 21 Oxbridge colleges didn’t take any this year.

On Educational Maintenance Allowance of course, our case is much simpler. We created it.

A sign of our ambition to help young people.

The latest YPLA figures show 4,699 Nottingham students receiving EMA. A record annual increase of 512 on a record number.

And the protests are a sign of EMA being valued far more that the relatively small number of around 770 who are perhaps doing F.E. now who otherwise wouldn’t.

The ConDems are now saying that EMA is not sufficiently targeted, but I am concerned that some of these assertions may be based on surveying only sixth-formers.

And anyway, it’s many more than 770 students who see the value and social justice of the scheme.

And all I suspect will wonder why anyone withdraws applications to the scheme in less than 3 weeks from now, without explaining what can take its place.

There was a simple sixth form student protest, the week after the Millbank Tower protest, when 70 or so turned up outside The Council House, seemingly having done enough to tell people where to go and at what time, but without perhaps the political nous to have worked out who to speak to.

I think I was the only Councillor who spoke to them that day, but the demo told me loads about the care and concern that was held.

And it reminded me that it’s time to give 16 and 17 year olds the vote. How else might they express their concern?

I had wanted to say more about Labour’s ambition at the General Election, and how we stressed securing the economic recovery first and foremost. And the futility of following Ireland’s economic policies. But I am out of time.

What’s clear is that in the seven months since the election, the ambition for young people and for all the people has been lost.

We need a new direction that puts the people’s interests first.