Justice to The Reverend

My student debt is massive. So massive I see it as a completely different financial entity to the rest of my monetary life. The figure on it is so out of proportion with every other part of my financial dealings, it feels like there is no way it can really be anything to do with me. But it is. And it continues to slowly grow like some festering tapeworm, slowly sucking up small portions of my fragile disposable income and subtly strangling me from the inside. This month I paid off £25 of it. The interest charged on it was £22. So at this rate, I will have paid off the full £10,000 in 278 years. I imagine, Rev, that yours is more or less the same.

So boo hoo for me. And boo hoo for every other graduate whose salary crawls below the 20k mark. It’s an ugly situation for sure, but incredulous murmurings from the Confederation of British Industries suggest even uglier times ahead. The crux of the CBI report is that Universities need more money and the students should pay for it. Tuition fees should rise and grants should be cut. If a university education seemed out of reach for the UK’s poorest young people now, this would expand that disenfranchised group massively.

The reasoning given by the CBI spokespeople is that there is just no other way to raise the necessary funds needed to run these institutions at the standard required. Many universities are running large deficits and will undoubtedly need more money. But I just can’t accept that the only way to save the higher education system is to raise prices; intentionally fueling the disproportionate number of middle and upper class students who are able to go to university. Not only would this be unjust, but flawed and self-defeating on so many levels. Firstly, the CBI points out that the taxpayer can’t shoulder the costs due to the current state of the nations finances. I have two problems with this. By denying so many people the opportunity to realise their full potential, the long-term impact of this can surely only lead to a diminished output in years to come. My other grievance is concerning the prioritisation of how the contents of the national kitty is used. Now, I’m not going to get into the justification of our war in Afghanistan here, I just want to look at it in regards to its prioritisation. The figure put on the cost of this war is billions. Billions and billions. I would gamble that if you asked Regular John of the streets of the UK if he would rather his tax money went into securing an education for the next generation of Britain or for funding our war in Afghanistan, there would be overwhelming support for education. If we really want our nation to progress, education must be always be right at the top of spending priority. And always, always above war. I realise that the current situation is not quite as straight forward as this; we are at war in Afghanistan and by cutting the amount we spend on it would be condemning many British soldiers to death. But it is certainly a good argument for accelerating the progress of our exit strategy. Also, there’s always Trident to look at if freeing up cold cash is on the agenda.

There are also other potential revenue streams that should be tapped before shaking students by the heels until their lunch money rattles out. The largest of these must be revenue from big businesses. It is they who benefit so hugely from the higher education system, so it seems only right if they have more responsibility in funding it. This, in fact, was brought up by the CBI in a BBC interview, but unsurprisingly in very vague and half-hearted detail.

So the future of the UK’s entire higher education system is hanging very much in the balance. Any decisions made on how this is handled will have massive consequences on many socio and economic levels in the future. Which is why I curse the empty sickness in my stomach when I hear that neither the Labour Party nor the Conservatives intend to release any manifesto on the topic until after the next general election.

Jayfor to The Reverenr

The relationship between the US and Russia since the collapse of Communism has been confusing to far more people than just you and me, Reverend. And I think that this is a complex a policy as any that has been made in relation to this over the last couple of decades. But is the prevention of one cold war the catalyst for another? Russia may be lauding the US President with unreserved vigour, but Barak Obama’s specific reference to Iran’s ‘ballistic missile programme’ is unlikely to do anything to douse the fires of animosity between Iran and the US (or indeed much of the Western World - Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s verbal attacks on the UK during the election protests certainly didn’t go unnoticed). The Iranian President’s answer of ‘without such [nuclear] weapons, we are very much able to defend ourselves’ when questioned about said nuclear programme undoubtedly contains considerable venom. Granted, Iran holds nowhere near the power and influence Russia did in those Cold War years, but the fear and paranoia is still likely to hold considerable sway in international politics whether the Iran threat is real or not. Many outbursts from senior Republican Party figures have confirmed this.

So maybe this is a lot to risk in return for political favours on the Latin America front, which as you suggest will probably be used more for ill than for good. But other consequences, such as removing potential US military targets from European soil and improving relations with the old enemy, Russia, makes fine sense. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Rev. O'Lution to Jayfor Justice

Not many comments I have today, it's hard to take things in on medication, but something that was on my mind as I chewed through my mango and pancakes this morning was Obama's recent abandonment of missile defence in eastern Europe. Many in America have criticised the President for his so-called sucking-up to the Russian regime and so jeopardising US defence, however, this move, although aggregating the Polish and Czechs, clearly has much more logic than the US media machine will let on. 1) By gaining Russian support, rather than undermining it's sphere of influence around Eastern Europe by expanding defence on what was once considered Soviet soil, there is more chance for for imposing stricter sanctions on Iranian nuclear activity, measures that Russia has so far failed to reach agreement on with the west. 2) Another reason for gaining Russian support is to more closely monitor worrying movements closer to the US borders. The US has rightly or wrongly (most often wrongly) been afraid of the threat from Latin America and the US government has all too often intervened in Latin American affairs, whether supporting rebel groups to led a coup d'etat or sending in mercenaries to assassinate important political figures. The twenty first century appears to be a very different story for the US strangle-hold on Latin America, especially after the formation of greater coalition between Latin American countries (although the name of that particular coalition has disappeared from my mind just now) - without this greater solidarity between these countries, the US might have been able to bolster military presence in Columbia and wave off any concerns from Columbia's neighbouring countries by suggesting it was just a move to aid the mysterious fight against the drugs trade, but such acts are not as easy to implementt as they used to be because much of Latin America has gained the economic strength and solidarity to stand up to the stoned-cold paranoid US machine. And so it seems that America needs help from Russia, a nation that has been well respected in much of Latin America if only for its links with Communism, though, Russia has built up this sphere of influence and now controls major oil lines through Latin America. To cut to the chase, the American's are afraid of the increasing ties between Venezuela and Iran... Chavez has agreed to open more doors for increased oil output to Iran in exchange for knowledge of nuclear technology - is this another episode of US paranoia, perhaps not, as just last week Chavez visited Iran and agreed to stronger ties in trade and oil.

In the wake of Obama's victory and whilst the inevitable was looming for George Bush, the former President said of his Presidential victor: “‘this is a dangerous world…and this cat [Obama] isn't remotely qualified to handle it. This guy has no clue, I promise you.’” Obama has not yet acted on many of the massive expectations he has set himself, but over the coming months we'll soon know whether his new regime of stronger ties between the US and Russia will be better for the American people than years of cold war paranoia between the two states.