Yet of course if a British student wanted to study in their country, they'd get shafted for the costs.What I love the most is how they're still insisting the new fee hike is "fair", when on the day of the first riots the PM is in China explaining that the reason for the hike is so that we can subsidise to cost of foreign students, especially the Chinese.
So the proposal is for saddling future students with a lifetime of debt and cutting back on the quality of their education, so that foreign students can study in the UK cheaper, then piss off back home and pay into their economy, whilst the UK gets absolutely no benefit from it except a generally lower level of education. Genius!
Ever heard of the Erasmus scheme? Whereby students in any EU country could go to any other EU country to study and still receive credit? Did you know that that student will always pay the costs of their home university, not to the host university?
So, if I paid 3k a year, and I wanted a year in, say, France, I would still have to pay 3k a year. But the cost of uni in France is only a few hundred Euros.
On the other hand, a lad from France came to study at our uni and lived in our halls of residence. He paid just a few hundred Euros, while the cost of studying in the UK was 3k at the time.
How exactly by any stretch of the word could this constitute being 'fair'. There is nothing fair about anything this government has yet done since it came into power. For that matter, no government since the late 70s-early 80s has done anything that would constitute fairness. Every single person who has ever held a position of governmental authority - local or otherwise - since 1974 should be charged with treason, while those who have held power since 1997 should be charged with treason, fraud and embezzlement.
That's a beautiful irony, isn't it? A country that could sorely benefit from that 7bil actually declines it! Probably for the purposes of political points-scoring but we'll take it.As for the supposed £7 billion all these cuts are supposed to save? Guess who's government has just prepared a £7 billion bail-out package for bankrupt Ireland?
Thankfully, the Irish refused to take it - at least there's ONE government out there looking out for the interests of the British people.
Foreign aid, the EU, the benefits system (not pensions) could all stand to be slashed. Abolish the CPS and all these environmental quangos, deny any expenses except admin/commuter costs (that would come out of their constituency budgets anyway so negate them), remove all subsidy for arts institutions - if they can't run under their own income then let 'em close! Demand the money back from the banks and instead allow the Bank of England to run personal bank accounts to outcompete the others. Bring the troops home - that'll save a few bob. Repeal huge chunks of the Health and Safety at Work Act and stop fining local councils for breaches of the DPA (that effectively amounts to fining the taxpayer).
With these savings, and more, we could afford new housing and industrial projects and subsidies to create jobs and cheaper housing (but they won't because this keeps prices artificially inflated, as does witholding huge petrol reserves). We could afford to lower taxes across the board, which would in turn make the economy spiral upwards and growth would surge.
Raising taxes and VAT will do nothing but shove people further into poverty from which they cannot escape or afford to work, end up on benefits because they don't have to pay taxes that way and it'll end up a bigger drain on state finances than it already is.