Originally published @ 10:58 am, Sun 19th Dec 2010
Such is the vanity of the Andrew Marr Show that they started their summary of the year as the year in which the General Election had its first televised debate between the leaders. They don't mention that the debates did nothing to flush out that Nick Clegg held the views he did on tuition fees and that he had decided his own party's economic policy was wrong. Nor did it flush out David Cameron's real attitude to the size of public spending.
The Nottingham Post's Parliamentary correspondent has tried a more balanced approach in his latest column - http://www.thisisnottingham.co.uk/politics/Yes-honest-cuts/article-3015075-detail/article.html - bewailing the misrepresentative way the ConDems have announced the local government settlement. To balance his point, he attacked Gordon Brown's method of re-announcing money already announced - though our experience was if we didn't say things many times over, people didn't hear it.
The Post also picked up on the Audit Commission's letter on Nottingham City Council, saying we had to watch our reserves. Intriguing given Eric Pickles calls for councils to spend their reserves. But a tad annoying because the Post had to follow it up as a criticism. In fact the Audit Commission had 10 recommendations for the council, 4 of which we found out at Friday's Audit Committee were general recommendations. The Audit Commission should either not make such criticisms, or they should raise the concern in a more detailed way.
Meanwhile, the Young Nottingham scrutiny committee tried to explore what could be done to mitigate the impact of the loss of Education Maintenance Allowance and the trebling of tuition fees. There is a risk that such exercises mask the impact of the changes, but it transpires that even if F.E. colleges hardship funds are trebled, they will only constitute one-tenth of what was being spent on EMA. It's also clear that many students are using EMA to pay for bus and tram passes. But existing criteria for forbid claim for hardship funds on these grounds. So some things were gleaned to bring to Ministers' attention.
But on tuition fees a representative of one of the Russell Group of universities was saying how the message had to be got out there to explain how the new system will be. Well, maybe. But the Russell Group have been seeking these kind of changes for many years. You'd think the message should have worked by now, instead of triggering mass demos and a huge drop in support for a political party. As a student rep explained, trebling the fees is daunting.
Any politician who pressed on in the face of such concerns and protests would be accused of not listening.
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