Student Finance consultation
Posted on Tuesday, December 9, 2008 at 10:49am
one response
Well you’ll be pleased to know that its my birthday today. There may be a tiny chance that I won’t get so many ageist comments from the press etc anymore, but I don’t think that will be the case! Anyway, for those of you in the Assembly today, I have chocolate cake to share if you wish to have a slice! I can’t eat it all myself….
I’m posting today to provide you with links to the consultation on student finance that was announced last week. You can see the terms of the consultation and the comments form at the bottom of this blog. I’ve had to ring the Welsh Assembly Government IT team to get a copy because the link isn’t working on the website. If you have the same problem, let me know because this may stop people from taking part in the process, and we don’t want that!
I did ask for an extension of the consultation period, because students are usually only back in University at the end of January- which doesn’t give them that much time to respond, but I’m sure if people advertise the fact that its out there, then many more will respond.
I think most people know my opinion on student fees by now, so there’s no point in me going over old ground. All I’ll say is, we are in an economic crisis largely due to the fact that people were able to build up huge amounts of personal debt. I don’t think that any government should introduce a policy that will mean that more students will incur larger sums of debt when they graduate. The ‘ipod’ generation will undoubtedly suffer more than other generations due to this economic downturn, therefore government’s should be acting in every way possible to ensure that people do not have to continue being in a cycle of debt.
Surely this crisis can teach us a few lessons, as opposed to trying to put plasters over it, and return to the system that got us in this mess in the first place? Isn’t now the time to be looking at alternative measures, a different way of working?
We have a debate on the final budget today at the National Assembly, and then I am going to the Politician of the Year awards. I missed Peter Hain’s famous speech last year, so I thought I would go this year to see what entertainment value some of the speakers can give us… Perhaps I can try and record some of it for a youtube clip….watch out…..
