Nick Clegg is using exactly the same rhetoric to justify the rise in tuition fees as he used to oppose it, writes National Union of Students president Aaron Proter.
Aaron Porter is the president of the National Union of Students (NUS)
The following are quotes from Nick Clegg during the election campaign last year:
“If we have learnt one thing from the economic crisis, it is that you can’t build a future on debt.” (The Daily Telegraph)
“[Students are] leaving university with this weight of debt around their necks.” (YouTube)
Nothing revelatory there – Nick Clegg’s u-turn on tuition fees and subsequent betrayal of his own party’s policy and of the students he courted so shamelessly is well recorded and was one of the biggest political themes of last year.
Here’s a couple more Clegg quotes:
“We are determined to foster a new model of economic growth, and a new economy – one built on enterprise and investment, not unsustainable debt.”
“This strikes me as little short of intergenerational theft. It is the equivalent of loading up our credit card with debt and then expecting our kids to pay it off.”
“The Labour Government presided over stagnating social mobility, increasing inequality, and passed on to Britain’s young people a monumental economic crisis and a deadweight of debt hung around their necks.”
The difference here is that second group of quotes come from a speech Clegg gave today whilst justifying the very deficit reducing cuts that led to the slashing of university teaching budgets and the subsequent tripling of tuition fees.
What astounds me is the temerity of using exactly the same rhetoric to justify the rise in tuition fees as he used to oppose it.
Let’s be clear – the government’s aggressive deficit reduction strategy led to 80 per cent cuts in the teaching budget for universities which led directly to the tripling of tuition fees which will lead directly to the £40,000 plus graduate debts that Nick Clegg said we could not build our future on before the election. The ‘loading up of the credit card’ was the bailing out of the banks and the ‘expecting our kids to pay it off’ is removing up to £4.2 billion from university funding.
Where Nick Clegg was adding two and two together and getting four in April last year he appears to be getting five now. He’s been saying for months that the situation has changed – apparently his speechwriters haven’t.
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24 Responses to “Clegg’s using the same rhetoric to justify fees rise as he used to oppose it”
Jill Hayward
RT @leftfootfwd: Clegg's using the same rhetoric to justify fees rise as he used to oppose it writes @AaronPorter: http://bit.ly/eNqPfI
Len Junier
RT @leftfootfwd: Clegg's using the same rhetoric to justify fees rise as he used to oppose it writes @AaronPorter: http://bit.ly/eNqPfI
13eastie
This is truly lamentable.
Shouldn’t Porter be making an *economic* case for the government to keep on borrowing insanely to maintain the illusion that education is “free”?
Rather than pontifically highlighting Nick Clegg’s electioneering fibs, which are of sentimental interest only (and then only to those stupid enough to have believed the Lib Dems in the first place).
Education is NOT free, and, just like any other service, has to be paid for by SOMEBODY.
Even assuming the government hits its targets (it won’t), it will still be borrowing £1bn / week in 2015 to meet spending commitments. At the same time, it will be paying an equivalent amount out just to cover the interest *alone* on Labour’s £1.4 tr debt. Each of these is on a par with the entire NHS budget.
Aaron needs to stop kidding himself and stop lying. The re-capitalisation of the banks was a one-off cost. It is not the cause of the current deficit, which continues to amass debt at £170bn pa. Unlike most of the spending and waste Labour that Labour termed “investment” while it ran amock, the equity and debt made available to retail banks will not be a sunk cost, but will yield a splendid return for the Exchequer.
What tax-payers like me want to know is the answers to the following:
Why should my children pay the bill for his “priceless” education if he is fundamentally opposed to paying a penny towards it himself? They have already each been allocated a £17k Labour millstone, before they have even been born. How big does Porter think this number needs to get for it to become ‘fair’ in his eyes?
Porter wants tax-payers to shaft their own children for his sake.
So where is the economic argument strong enough for us to indebt our kids for something Aaron apparently resents paying for at all himself.
This is truly lamentable.
Shouldn’t Porter be making an *economic* case for the government to keep on borrowing insanely to maintain the illusion that education is “free”?
Rather than pontifically highlighting Nick Clegg’s electioneering fibs, which are of sentimental interest only (and then only to those stupid enough to have believed the Lib Dems in the first place)?
Education is NOT free, and, just like any other service, it has to be paid for by SOMEBODY.
Even assuming the government hits its targets (it won’t), it will still be borrowing £1bn / week in 2015 to meet spending commitments. At the same time, it will be paying an equivalent amount out just to cover the interest *alone* on Labour’s £1.4 tr debt. Each of these is on a par with the entire NHS budget, to give a much-needed sense of scale.
Aaron needs to stop kidding himself and stop lying.
The re-capitalisation of the banks was a one-off cost. It is not the cause of the current deficit, which continues to amass debt at £170bn pa. Unlike most of the spending and waste Labour that Labour termed “investment” while it ran amock, the equity and debt made available to retail banks will not be a sunk cost, but will yield a splendid return for the Exchequer.
What tax-payers like me want to know is the answers to the following:
Why should my children pay the bill for his “priceless” education if he is fundamentally opposed to paying a penny towards it himself? They have already each been allocated a £17k Labour millstone, before they have even been born. How big does Porter think this number needs to get for it to become ‘fair’ in his eyes?
Porter wants tax-payers to shaft their own children for his sake.
So where is the economic argument strong enough for us to indebt our kids for something Aaron apparently resents paying for at all himself.
(And Aaron, nobody outside your dwindling ramshackle company of banner-wavers is remotely interested in Nick Clegg or your juvenile, cry-baby, tale-telling – it just makes you look silly).
(And Aaron, nobody outside your dwindling ramshackle company of banner-wavers is remotely interested in Nick Clegg or your juvenile tale-telling).
13eastie
Moderator, apologies for the double-paste, feel free to truncate/delete
CHRIS WALTON
RT @leftfootfwd: Clegg's using the same rhetoric to justify fees rise as he used to oppose it writes @AaronPorter: http://bit.ly/eNqPfI