Verbal

The reason fees have increased by up to 300% is that the government decided to cut the teaching grant to universities by 80%. That figure FAR exceeds cuts made anywhere else in the public sector. The reduction is so large - eliminating teaching funds to arts and humanities subjects altogether - that this is not so much a cut as a fundamental change in philosophy regarding higher education. It is a transfer from public to private. If the government wanted to argue their case for this - fine. But they haven't. They've simply glossed over it with such ludicrous platitudes as that we 'all have to make sacrifices' - with not a word as to why large swathes of higher education are no longer funded at all. So here's an idea: since the bankers created this mess, why not a higher education tax on bankers - the funds can easily be raised to reinstate the teaching grant without any pips be squeaked.

Case closed.

It's depressing that you're falling in with the mob trousers. I don't have any problem at all with different points of view. What I do object to is the sullen, nasty, resentful way in which the condemnations of all students are expressed. It is brainless envy, and, ironically given the events of yesterday, yet another example of mob rule.

Adiran, I have the feeling you're wasting your time. This place, on this subject, is a sea of synaptically challenged, gimlet-eyed resentment, expressed with the kind of vengefulness that betrays a deep-seated and rather pathetic envy of students en masse.

That's IT? That's the choice??? Albania here we come.

Well at least on this thread we've managed to concentrate all the repressed rage and boiling envy in one place.

Parading your prejudices as facts doesn't make them any more true. What evidence do you have that 'academic institutions' offered courses of the lowest denomination? And it's not baby boomers who are making government policy - Clegg, Cameron et al are MUCH younger than that.

I disagree. Actually I think almost everything you say is demonstrably wrong - not least because you want, implicitly to turn back the clock to the 1950s when Britain had a large working class, denied access to further and higher education, and a relatively tiny, rigidified middle class. Britain - and the industrialised west - is very different today. White-collar jobs predominate - and, led by trends set in the sixties in the US, these require the kinds of skills that good university graduates have. These skills are not by any means limited to the sciences and engineering - the highest earners, by degree type, are ex-arts and humanities students, not least because working as an ad copywriter, say, does not require a degree in physics.

?? The 'dilution' of the HE system - converting the old polytechnics into universities - was carried out almost entirely by the Tories under John Major. And blaming an older generation is a tired, tiresome and false cliche. Study British social history of the late 60s and 70s and you'll see why.

This year is going to be particularly distressing. It's the last year it'll be possible to enter university under the old fees regime. Over 170,000 students failed to find a university place last year. Applications this year are WAY up. But a numbers cap is still firmly in place. So the number of students unable to find a place will inevitably soar. The difference this time is that reapplying next year will suddenly be financially ruinous.

This is exactly why Panorama, The Sunday Times. The Observer, Channel 4 News and others were right to report on FIFA's hopeless corruption: the sight of Sepp Blatter obnoxiously gloating over the English 'bad losers' would have been SO much worse had they all waited until after the (inevitable) result. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/england/8189550/World-Cup-2018-Fifa-president-Sepp-Blatter-says-England-are-bad-losers.html

Of course. Legal systems are infinitely manipulable by political forces. Ask Assange, sitting in a detention cell.

Are you thinking of a present for Carlos Tevez?

Sheikh bin Tommac, by all accounts.

No they don't. The Iranians are Shia; al Qaeda are Sunni. They each hate each other more than they both hate the Americans.

Released documents so far: 931 out of 250,000. This might run for a while.

This story links two threads in a way I hadn't quite expected - this one and the Wikileaks thread. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/05/wikileaks-cables-al-jazeera-qatari-foreign-policy

Qatar is apparently the only applicant ever to have essentially failed in all aspects of its technical review. Yet it wins - and there seems a broad consensus that it won overwhelmingly through widespread corruption. But the technical and climatic hurdles seem so enormous that 2022 could not possibly be staged in Qatar, even allowing for 12 years of technological advances. Qatar just won't happen. Which may mean only that the the grubby low-lifes on 'ExCo' have given themselves yet ANOTHER payday, by accepting 'offers' in the coming years for countries vying to be the replacement. This, I would think, is the real reason for the otherwise weird decision on Qatar.

I can certainly imagine the response at the FA when this little request comes through from FIFA.

I agree about Band Aid. It was very poor journalism and shouldn't have got past editorial checks, let alone legal ones. Unfortunately, this will happen from time to time, when someone either screws up the investigation through inexperience or overzealousness or simply being too credulous. But that's my point: the penalty for getting it wrong is a hefty legal settlement and the humbling requirement to give an on-screen apology. Is that the case here? I would bet my mortgage on that not being so - otherwise we'd have heard the squeals of complaint and legal threat long before now. I think with their reputation and record, not one of those money grubbing cronies on 'ExCo' at FIFA would dare step into a courtroom to face any kind of cross-examination. As for timing, well it's called a 'peg' in the business - you tend to publish or broadcast around related events for topicality. It's a long established tradition and I see no reason to change it. And no, I agree, FIFA doesn't have a monopoly in corrupt practices - unfortunately, it DOES have a monopoly on world football. Vast kick-backs, private numbered Swiss accounts, threats and ego-massaging all have a role, no doubt, in a decision which led to two rich autocratic states being awarded successive world cups. Depressing as this all is, I'm also willing to bet that this will all unravel before FIFA's eyes. Russia is gambling on building a national infrastructure on the back of the 2018 tournament - but that will be wrecked by the same mafia who bleed the country dry now; and Qatar is your typical deeply misogynistic Wahhabi state which has floated the ludicrous idea of building air-conditioned bubbles to play in and then ship them off to Africa. Pie in the Sky doesn't begin to describe it. Impending disaster does. Good.

Google Private Eye's Gnitty. That's exactly the form.

Ah, my apologies.

My post was in response the delldays' 'what's a fact' question, not whether we investigative journalists on here 'already knew' everything. Of course we did - this is a message board after all! I'm not defending the BBC here, more the right for some pretty professional journalists in the News and Current Affairs department to be able to do their jobs without fear or favour. As for the 'pseudo-commercial' timing, how is your position a moral advance on that - aren't you calling for a 'pseudo commercial' decision to suppress a report until any commercial disadvantage is null?

That FIFA is deeply and irretrievably corrupt. If there were nothing but unsubstantiated allegations in the film, you could go along and watch the BBC being roasted by FIFA lawyers at the Courts of Justice. I don't think you quite understand the process of making programmes like this. Nothing - but NOTHING - gets on the air without a lawyer asking for substantiating material that he/she can stand up in court and successfully defend. By the same token, where are the libel lawsuits from a bunch of EXTREMELY wealthy individuals defending their 'honour'? With our libel laws tilted so heavily in favour of plaintiffs, they'd have yet another easy payday if the BBC had, as someone bizarrely put it, 'made it all up'. And why all the attention on the BBC? Did no one see the Channel Four News story this week on how about 50% of games in the Russian leagues are fixed? Or the Sunday Times exposes, etc etc.

How is it on your planet?