Day 3705: Aaron Porter – Be Careful What You Wish For…

Tuesday:


Mr Aaron Porter is, depending on interpretation, "resigning", "standing down" or "choosing not to stand for re-election" as President of the National Union of Students.

Mr Porter is famous for shouting BETRAYAL at the Liberal Democrats because, when we were not given enough votes to put an end to TUITION FEES, we COMPROMISED to make the system more PROGRESSIVE and get the best deal for students.

IRONICALLY, Mr Porter appears to have been ousted following the revelation that he thought the Coalition's system was, er, PROGRESSIVE and that the NUS should try to get the best deal for students.

Still, I will not shed any TEARS for him; HE chose to try to ride the TIGER-monster… and now it has EATEN him.

Or as Mr Jesus might have put it: He who lives by the rhetoric of "betrayal" will die by the rhetoric of "betrayal".

Unsurprisingly, he's been given a column in the Grauniad to air his self-justification. No doubt he can look forward to many more when he receives the usual reward for being a grovelling quisling an NUS President: a safe Hard Labour seat.

Equally unsurprisingly, it makes NO SENSE at all.

I précis:

"I've done tremendously well bringing people together and leading the fight against the nasty horrid Coalition and so now I'm standing down in the interest of unity."

Er, riiiiight.


He talks about "the politics of personal attacks" which is IRONIC for a man who himself attacks Captain Clegg and Mr Dr Vince for "disgraceful behaviour", (way to play the men not the ball there, Aaron) and rather OVERLOOKS that the "attacks" that have brought him down are coming from, er, the very STUDENTS he claims that he represents.

And after all, why would the students attack him when he's been showing ONE FACE to them – one of solidarity with the campaign against tuition fees – while showing a SECOND FACE to the Universities and the Government – making the frankly OUTRAGEOUS suggestion that student fees could be kept down by cutting grants to the less well off, as well as the recent revelation that it turns out the NUS think the Coalition proposals are progressive after all!

He goes on to say: "Young people have proved that they can hold entrenched interests and uncaring governments to account"

Well, HALF right: "Young people have proved that they can hold entrenched interests."

It is CLEAR that the entrenched vested interest here is… the NUS itself!

The NUS has been acting (and always HAD acted) in the interest of careerist Hard Labour proto-drones who want face-time on the tellybox and column inches in the Grauniad when it SHOULD have been acting in the interest of the STUDENTS.

For CYNICAL and SELFISH reasons, the NUS leadership have fanned the flames of student anger over the Coalition's plans for tuition fees having kept pretty quiet when Hard Labour INTRODUCED tuition fees and pretty quiet when Hard Labour TRIPLED tuition fees and while still keeping pretty quiet about the fact that THEIR OWN PROPOSALS for a graduate tax are, fundamentally, PRETTY SIMILAR to the scheme we've ended up with.

If a graduate tax is acceptable, then the loan scheme with its higher starting point for repayments and cut-off point is ALSO acceptable; and if the loan scheme is NOT acceptable, then NEITHER is a graduate tax.

There is something frankly DISHONEST about making young people upset, afraid and angry over this when you are promising them EXACTLY the same deal under a different name.

Now I think that there is a WORD for making promises to people and then going behind their backs to break those promises… but it eludes me for the moment.


Does this mean that we will get a better representative for the students elected?

Well, as things are we shall probably get an angry young socialist called Mr Mark Bergfeld whose manifesto is:

"The fight goes on – No fees, no cuts, save EMA"

So, no change in the rhetoric, then.

(And after all, after the poison of Porter, who's likely to even THINK of standing on a platform of "let's try and make the best deal that we can get"?)

Is it better to face someone like Mr Porter who rails against you but will compromise in secret, or Mr Bergfeld who rails against you and WON'T compromise ever? And, more importantly, who is better for the STUDENTS?

Maybe, if he gets elected, Mr Bergfeld will – like the Liberal Democrats – make the UNPLEASANT discovery that you CAN'T keep all your promises all the time when you are in a position of political weakness. Or maybe he will just go on hating us.

In the end, that was Mr Porter's REAL fault. He was TOO LIKE the Liberal Democrats: spoke out against the tuition fees and then found that he couldn't actually get rid of them so tried to make things less bad.

Though at least we've shut up about abolishing tuition fees (for the duration of the Coalition) since we found we can't (for the duration of the Coalition). Mr Porter tried to have his cake AND fling it in our faces.

Declaration of Interest

Yes, yes, okay, I DID have a LITTLE bit of a controversial opinion about Mr Aaron Porter's policies… and then he resigned.

And there was that time I had a LITTLE bit of a tussle with Mr Aaron Murin-Heath… and then HE resigned.

Look, I don't JUST have it in for people called "Aaron"… it's just, if you're working your way through the ALPHABET, you have to start SOMEWHERE!
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Day 3621: Is it Time to Recall… Aaron Porter?

Tuesday:


The Coalition proposes that new graduates pay an amount every month proportional to their ability to pay, with additional help for the lowest earners, repayments to be capped at either thirty years or a maximum total payment ("paying off the loan").

The NUS proposes that graduates pay an amount every month proportional to their ability to pay, with additional help for the lowest earners, repayments to be capped at either twenty-five years or a maximum total payment ("for fairness").

So can ANYONE explain to me why the NUS' proposals are fair and reasonable but the Coalition's are wickedness incarnate?


Today, Captain Clegg has written to the Leader of the National Union of Students, Mr Harry Porter, to ask him to stop gathering elves and pixies and warlocks to march on Hogwarts Cowley Street and instead really consider the actual proposals.

So consider the actual proposals is what I did.

Mr Porter has been getting a lot of facetime in the media recently, leading demonstrations against the government's tuition fees proposals, condemning the Liberal Democrats for breaking their pledges and generally being "the chosen one".

But has anyone told the people marching behind him that his own proposals are FUNCTIONALLY IDENTICAL to the Coalition's?

A quick comparison:

Graduates earning less than £15,000 would pay nothing under EITHER scheme.

Graduates earning between £15,000 and £21,000 would pay MORE under the NUS scheme: yes, that's right MORE under the NUS scheme. Graduates on £15,000 to £21,000 would pay 0.3% of their earnings under the graduate tax and nothing under the coalition's proposals.

Graduates earning over £40,000 would pay LESS under the NUS scheme. Yes, again, it's not the way around you would expect. Top earners would only pay 2.5% under the NUS's tax proposals but would pay 9% under the government's loan and repayment scheme.

Now, I may be being THICK here, but the NUS appears to be proposing a system that is much more generous to the RICH than to the less well off.

Isn't that just a little bit… dishonest?


But how does Mr Porter manage to magic up enough money from the scheme, given that the better off will pay so much less? Ah, well he thinks that he has discovered a cauldron of free money.

You see, the NUS scheme will apply to ALL graduates, not just people starting new degrees in 2012. That's what they call "retroactive taxation", or changing the rules after people have already made their choices. After all, it's not like you can give your university degree BACK. Oh, but they've "had the benefit" of further education, says Harry Porter, it's only FAIR that they pay up now.

Well is it fair? The deal for those people was, surely, they would get an education paid by other taxpayers, and then they would pay their taxes to fund their children's education (not to mention their parent's pensions and their own health service and so on). Haven't they kept their side of the bargain? Isn't this just a sly tax increase on a lot of people who don't actually earn all that much extra for their time at university, a lot of nurses and teachers and, well, university lecturers?

Isn't that just a little bit… dishonest?


Then there's the time horizon. By which I mean, what happens as time goes on and your pool of graduates who didn't pay for their degree at the time gets smaller and smaller. At them moment, say Peter wants to go to University. Peter is going to pay for his tuition from graduate taxes he pays in the future, but he won't need to put in as much because the pool will also be getting contributions from Peter's dad.

In the fullness of time, at most once they have their twenty-five years of tax-paying, the pool won’t be getting that "extra" income from Peter's dad. When it's time for Peter's kids to go to university, they'll have to pay their tuition fees from their own tax contributions just like their dad… but they WON'T benefit from any extra contributions from Pete himself, 'cos HE'S already paying for his own education.

Isn't this pushing costs onto the next generation… which is rather what the NUS accuse the Coalition of doing.

Isn't that just a little bit… dishonest?


Mr Porter is trying to get a head of steam behind the idea of taking the Liberal Democrat's own proposals for "right of recall" for dealing with corrupt MP's who break the law and using them to "recall" Liberal Democrats who signed the NUS pledge (and, one assumes, subsequently break that pledge).

(Never mind the STUPIDITY of a proposal that would open EVERY SINGLE Opposition MP – all of Hard Labour and that Green and the Scots and Welsh Nasties and all – open them ALL to recall for failing to implement THEIR manifestos. Oh yes it would. Since CLEARLY failure to achieve an overall majority is not an excuse for not fully implementing your manifesto.)

In the words of one Student Union president, Mr Joshua Forstenzer of Sheffield University (no doubt quoted for IRONIC reasons):

"If they flip-flop or do a U-turn on this issue, they are betraying the electorate. It is a fundamental democratic principle that we should be able to remove them."

I'm sure Mr Joshua will be calling for the removal from their Parliamentary seats of Mr Andy "crash and" Burnham, Hard Labour's education spokesperson, and Mr Ed "Bully" Balls, Hard Labour's former education spokesperson… and Mr Alan Johnson and Johnson, one time Hard Labour education minister… and Mr Blanket the Security Blunket one time Hard Labour education minister, all of whom stood on a manifesto promise to not introduce top-up fees and then voted to introduce top-up fees. Otherwise, of course, he'd be flip-flopping and U-turning HIMSELF!

I have to say, the FUNDAMENTAL democratic principle is that if you think your representative told you one thing and then did another then you will get a chance to throw them out in less than five years anyway. But perhaps you think that deceiving your electorate is SO heinous that you just HAVE to take a pop at them earlier.

But if DISHONESTY is your measure for facing a RECALL, then shouldn't the first person on the list be… well… Mr Harry Porter himself. For being just a little bit… dishonest.



I think that a university education ought to be available to everyone. But I think that it should only be taken up by people who are academically inclined. Other people should have other opportunities.

The system we have at the moment means that fewer than half of young people get their opportunity because all the effort goes into getting as many as possible squeezed into a university course that won't necessarily be any use to them.

If you're not going to provide those opportunities to the people who DON'T get to go to university, then your system IS transferring a benefit, money in fact (the cost of subsidy), from the unprivileged to the privileged.

I suppose in those terms it's kind of fair to ask graduates to bear some extra cost of their education rather than raising general tax and getting people who never went to university to pay for it. (Though as I say, I'd rather have a RANGE of opportunities so there's something for EVERYONE)

The NUS proposals recognise that. That's why THEIR system isn't so very different from the Coalition's. It just seems that they want to make things easier for themselves by squeezing people who are already pretty squeezed.

And it seems they want to BLAME the Liberal Democrats a system that Hard Labour commissioned, that the Conservatories support and that they agree with.

Only WE made the government proposals FAIRER than theirs.

Remind me: what have they got those students marching for again?

I cannot recall.
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