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Scotlands Tuition Fees – An Anti-English Tax?

Articles, Community, Information, Opinion No Responses »

Dec 312010

By Gordon Maloney.

Talk of an anti-English “educational apartheid” in Scotland is as misguided and naive as it is deceitful

The Scottish National Party have repeatedly ruled out tuition fees in Scotland, for Scottish students at least. This commitment to free education is welcome, but the Liberal Democrats’ widely reported U-turn on their pre-election pledge to vote against any increase in tuition fees has left the Scottish Government and, indeed, the entire HE sector in Scotland in a difficult position.

This is why students in Scotland have – and need to continue to – fight attacks on education in England and Wales as fervently as in Scotland.
One of the dangers, which was spelled out in the SNP’s green paper on higher education funding, is that of fee refugees. If tuition fees go up to £9000 in England and Wales and they remain at £1820 for the same students in Scotland, there is every possibility that an unsustainable number of “fee refugees” could cross the border into Scotland. Because of this, the Scottish Government has considered increasing fees for English and Welsh students to as high as £6500 a year.

This has prompted stereotypically hysterical cries from the right-wing, Unionist media. The Daily Mail has accused the SNP of “planning a new anti-English ‘tax’ to make it harder for students south of the border to escape soaring tuition fees.” This is ironic for two reasons. Firstly because of the Daily Mail’s objection to people coming to the UK to escape dictators, war and disease, and secondly because these papers largely backed the Conservatives – the ones who put the Scottish Government in this position in the first place – at the general election in May.

These arguments, however, distort the reality of the situation. In common with other devolved bodies and local authorities across the country, difficult decisions (and the blame for them) are being passed on from the Coalition Government to the Scottish Government. With very limited revenue raising powers, this essentially becomes a matter of letting others chose who and what to cut, while forcing them to make cuts at all. These bodies may be passionately opposed to the Government’s austerity agenda, yet without the ability to increase taxes they have no choice but to follow the scorched-earth road to recovery (or ruin, as is seeming increasingly likely.)

Let’s be clear about one thing. If the SNP do increase tuition fees for English and Welsh students, the blame for this will lie squarely with the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats in Westminster. The only “educational apartheid” is one between rich and poor, something that New Labour didn’t do enough to bridge and the Coalition seems intent on turning into an impassable abyss.

Grim Reality Of Aberdeenshire Budget Cuts

Aberdeenshire, Articles, Community, Featured, Information, Opinion No Responses »

Dec 312010

By Cllr Martin Ford, Aberdeenshire Council

Decisions by the Westminster and Scottish governments have left Aberdeenshire Council facing its worst budget cuts ever.

For 2011/12, Aberdeenshire Council has no choice but to make cuts in its budget totalling in excess of £30 million. The Council’s funding from the Scottish Government has been reduced and it has had to agree to freeze the Council Tax. In real terms, allowing for inflation, the Council’s Government grant has been cut by more than five per cent

In fact, Aberdeenshire Council’s position is worse than previously thought.

Unexpectedly, just before Christmas, the Scottish Government advised Aberdeenshire Council that the grant figure it had announced for the Council was wrong. Instead of a grant of £426.988 million for 2011/12, Aberdeenshire would be getting more than half a million pounds less, £426.477 million. The Council will have to cut a further £511,000 from its revenue budget for 2011/12 as a result of the Scottish Government’s revision of its grant funding figures.

There is nothing Aberdeenshire Council can do about the level of funding the Scottish Government decides it is to get, and nothing the Council can do about what will come from its other main source of income, the Council Tax (see: Council Tax freeze and many cuts decided, Aberdeen Voice, 26 November 2010).

The task for Aberdeenshire Council is to minimise the impact of the loss of income it now faces on the public services the Council
provides.

The bulk of the saving required in the 2011/12 revenue budget was decided at the full council meeting on 25 November when cuts and efficiencies totalling almost £27 million were voted through by the Council’s Liberal Democrat/Conservative administration.

I am sure many people do not yet realise how the cuts that have been decided will affect them. Standing in the middle of Newmachar the other day, by the village hall, the breadth of the impact of the cuts really came home to me.

I am appalled at what is being done to really important services – and angry because at least the worst of the cuts could so easily have been avoided

Behind me, in the hall car park, were the recycling skips. A cut of £350,000 in spending on information about and promotion of recycling was one of the administration’s budget cuts voted through on 25 November. Optimistically, the administration’s budget for 2012/13 also includes a £500,000 ‘efficiency saving’ achieved through a reduction in the amount of recyclable material going to landfill.

It seems unlikely, to say the least, that cutting virtually the entire budget dedicated to informing people about the importance of recycling will lead the following year to such a dramatic improvement in the recycling rate.

Newmachar village hall is in School Road, a lit street with, by the village hall, a pavement on one side. In the 2011/12 budget, spending on footway maintenance has been cut by £200,000 and the amount allocated to installing dropped kerbs reduced by 50 per cent. Over £100,000 has been docked from spending on testing and maintaining street lights.

Next to the village hall is New Machar School. Provision of classroom assistants in primary schools is to be significantly reduced over the next two years. Spending on classroom assistants is to be cut by 50 per cent (£1.3 million) during 2011 to 2013 and by a further £0.53 million in later years. Spending on primary visiting specialists will be reduced by £200,000 in 2011/12. School devolved budgets are to be cut.

On the opposite side of the road from the village hall is a grass verge on which is sited a dog-waste bin. The administration’s cuts voted through on 25 November include reducing the funding for dog wardens by a third in 2012/13. In 2011/12, £200,000 is to be saved by reducing grass-verge cutting. The budget for village orderlies – a much appreciated service that certainly helped keep towns and villages tidy through the summer – has been cut completely from next year.

Behind the verge opposite the village hall is the cemetery. Spending on grounds maintenance in burial grounds is to be reduced by £130,000 in 2011/12.

Beyond the cemetery is the play park. Spending on maintenance in parks and open spaces is also to be reduced by £130,000 in 2011/12.

Next to the play park is the library. A saving of £80,000 is to be made in 2011/12 by reducing the opening hours of some Aberdeenshire libraries.

Then there are the cuts that don’t show – unless you are a person who depends on the service that is being cut.

I am appalled at what is being done to really important services – and angry because at least the worst of the cuts could so easily have been avoided, had the Scottish Government allowed councils the freedom to decide on their own Council Tax. A two per cent increase in the Council Tax in Aberdeenshire, that is 44 pence per week for a Band D property, would bring in £2.4 million that could be spent on schools or social work. For the cost of a cheap bar of chocolate, cuts to classroom assistants or social care for children could have been avoided.

The Council still has to find around a further £4 million of savings to balance its budget for 2011/12. I hope the administration will work constructively with opposition councillors through the rest of the budget process to minimise the impact of these further cuts on the most crucial Council services.

A View From Inside The Kettle

Articles, Events, Featured, Information, Opinion No Responses »

Dec 232010

The mainstream media have been vocal in their condemnation of the so-called student riots. An alternative view is offered by Aberdeen student Gordon Maloney, an activist in the protests.

The last couple of months have been incredibly exciting for student activists. Four of the biggest student demonstrations in recent memory have taken place within a month of each other, and between these there has been continuing news of University occupations, demonstrations and stunts across the country.

In the beginning, these actions were more or less focused on the Coalition’s proposed increase of the cap on tuition fees and abolition of the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) in England and Wales The focus has since broadened significantly and action is bound to accelerate since the government’s success in raising the cap.

“What are you protecting? Your job’s next”, protesters chanted at lines of masked, baton-wielding police between horse charges and demonstrator scatterings on the day of the vote. These protesters – many of them school children – have come to understand more quickly than some other sectors of UK society, the extent to which the same reckless cuts to further and higher education will decimate jobs, services and communities across the country.

After the damage done at Millbank in the first demonstration, many in the student movement seemed concerned not with the damage done per se, but rather that it provided the government and the right wing media with the opportunity to de-legitimise the protest altogether and to dismiss what happened as the work of “socialists and anarchists” – not students – as if these terms were somehow exclusive. We were repeatedly told that images of masked students smashing windows, graffiti on police vans or students throwing bits of placards at police would be used against us. They were, but it hasn’t worked.

When our marches were kettled and we were denied our right to protest, anger boiled over

This tactic, employed so successfully by the right after G20 in 2009, seems to have failed this time. At the time of writing, a Daily Mail poll asking, “Do you still support the students after these riots?”, showed that 76% of respondents do. Since September, I have spent countless hours campaigning and speaking to people on university and college campuses and around areas without large student populations. The only difference I have noticed in people’s attitudes after the protests is a much greater awareness of the issues. People have heard about the fee increase, the broken pledges and the scrapping of the EMA. They have, of course, also heard of smashed windows and burning placards, but they understand that this just showed the scale of anger of demonstrators.

The people I speak to understand that we have already gone through the democratic process. We have had the debates, and in terms of public opinion we have quite convincingly won. We even won the election. A party which pledged to abolish tuition fees altogether is in government. People demonstrating already felt betrayed not just by the Liberal Democrats, but by democracy. When our marches were kettled and we were denied our right to protest, anger boiled over. Criticism of this has been less widespread than might be imagined.

It seemed that the only outcome of the damage to property – I refuse to call it violence – was to ensure widespread coverage of the events.

It is easy to argue that it is understandable that people broke windows at Millbank. It is also reasonable to argue that, faced with cuts as potentially devastating as we are, it was proportionate. The question then becomes one of necessity. Would the 10 November demonstration have acted as such a catalyst for future demonstrations if it had remained, as NUS President Aaron Porter wished, a peaceful A to B march? Would it have changed anything at all? Realistically, probably not.

Despite the repeated mantra that protestors have gone on demonstrations intent on chaos, nobody at these protests wanted to be violent. This was made crystal clear to me when I saw a lone policeman trip up in the middle of a crowd of protesters who, just a minute before, had been pushing police lines and throwing sticks. Nobody touched him. Not because they were scared of repercussions, but because that wasn’t why they were there. People backed away from him, allowed him to get up and return to the line of police.

Damage to property shouldn’t be necessary for people to be heard, but in a society that seems to care more about paint being thrown on a car than the well-being of an innocent man who suffered a brain haemorrhage as a result of a police attack, it seemed to many demonstrators that there were few alternatives. Michael Gove told reporters, on 24 November, that the Government would, “respond to arguments….not to violence”. We have had, and won, the arguments. They didn’t listen, and they can expect more of the same if they continue not to listen.

Keen Keynsians Teach Tories a Lesson

Aberdeen City, Articles, News No Responses »

Dec 032010

By Gordon Maloney.

It wasn’t quite Paris 1968, but accusations of current-day student apathy seem to be wide of the mark as Aberdeen students occupied a local Conservative Party office to teach party staff basic macroeconomics

Students from Aberdeen’s colleges and universities held a teach-in at the Conservative Party’s Aberdeen South office on Tuesday morning to protest against the Coalition’s deep cuts to public services and the increase in tuition fees for students in England and Wales.

The occupation began with a protester giving office staff a brief lecture on basic Keynesian economics.

He later told reporters, “Based on what Osborne is doing to the economy, the Tories must have missed some basic economics classes, so we’re here to fill them in on some theory.”

Demonstrators offered staff wine and mince pies and sang songs.

Before occupying the Tory HQ, a spokesperson rejected claims that their demands were selfish. “We’re here to demand much more than merely giving Universities more money. We’re here to challenge the idea that the entire public sector can be hung, drawn and quartered while it’s business as usual for those at the top, whether it’s vice chancellors’ pay increases, MPs’ expenses or bankers’ bonuses. We see time and time again the argument that there’s no money and there just has to be cuts. This simply doesn’t hold up.”

The action was called by the Aberdeen Defend Education Campaign and backed by both Aberdeen College Students’ Association and Aberdeen University Students’ Association, and comes just days after Aaron

Porter, the President of the National Union of Students gave his support to non-violent direct action. Porter told an assembly of students at the University College of London, “Wherever there is non-violent student action, NUS should and will support that. What we are facing is utterly disgraceful.”

Enough Is Enough

Aberdeen City, Articles, Featured, Opinion No Responses »

Oct 012010

By John Sangster.

Well, here we are into the autumn of 2010. The general election is becoming a distant memory and the Scottish elections are homing into view. No doubt we will soon be getting bombarded with the usual plethora of promises as the political parties vie for our vote. It will be “we’ll give you this” and “we’ll give you that” and if “they give you this and that, we’ll give you this, that and something else that we’ll think of nearer the election”.

I am waiting for the ultimate political promise where one party will guarantee reincarnation after death, this being a particularly good one as there’s no way of proving otherwise.

The party manifesto that they spout out during the campaign is the thing that nobody reads – mainly because the parties have the nerve to charge us for it. During the last election I asked the Labour and Tory candidates in Gordon for a manifesto and was told “I don’t carry them with me when I’m campaigning but, if you go into any party office in Aberdeen, they’ll sell you one”. The problem is that all these promises can never be kept as there are so many of them in one document that it would take decades to fulfil them all.

I seem to remember in the nineteen eighties that all Aberdeen’s political parties were promising to make Aberdeen the greatest city in the world, the pavements were paved with gold, the oil was overflowing and The Dons were winning everything. If you fast forward to the last Scottish election, the political parties were promising to clean up Aberdeen, to wash the pavements, to make contingency plans after the oil runs out and the Dons were winning absolutely nothing. What went wrong? Answers on a postcard please.

a bus station where, in the winter, passengers have to stand in the blizzard to see if the bus is coming

My own guess is that the standard of politician in this country has plummeted and our towns and cities are no longer run by people with principles who genuinely want to make a difference. As Tony Benn so eloquently put it “We are no longer being governed, we are being managed”.

Today’s politician doesn’t speak to the people anymore, they consult with spivs and speculators and money people whose only interest in the city is where their next buck is coming from.

Aberdeen has many examples from the eighties onwards : the shopping malls , (put there by apparently blind planners) the fact that Union Street was never pedestrianised, and the assorted plans to cover areas all over the city. One plan after another brought to us by useless politicians who now use taxpayers’ time to exchange juvenile insults with each other.

The major building crime of the century as far as city planning goes is Union Square and the new bus station. Whoever gave the go ahead for that should be taken to the city boundary, pointed south and told to never ever come back.

It is the monstrosity of all monstrosities – a bus station where, in the winter, passengers have to stand in the blizzard to see if the bus is coming. Did the politicians do anything about that? No. Will they do anything about saving UTG?, No. Will they clean up the city and restore places like Johnson Gardens? No. However, will they promise you everything at the next election? Yes, yes and yes again, they will be falling over each other (and you) to give you leaflets. Lots of shiny new leaflets run off at your expense.

This is the time to say “NO, we will not put up with this anymore”. I urge the independently minded citizens of Aberdeen to stand at the forthcoming elections and vote out the useless bunch of chancers that occupy the Town House just now.

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