Wednesday 10 November 2010

Seek not succour from Paul Uppal, students

I finally tracked down Paul Uppal's question at Prime Minister's Question Time.

Guess what? It was a) rubbish and b) probably written for him by Tory HQ. They're called planted questions.

It was:
Is the Deputy Prime Minister aware of a report on Radio 5 Live that graduates on £25,000 will only pay £30 per month?

Clegg took the opportunity to claim that this makes the tuition fees 'progressive'.

It is, of course, utter nonsense. You can see adverts for loans on daytime TV which promise low repayments. The small print tells you that you'll be paying for the rest of your life, and this is the case with tuition fees. Plus the normal tax you'll be paying. And let's not forget that the fees are repaid at a rate of inflation plus 2.3% - so naming any particular sum is impossible because we don't know where inflation is going (at the moment it's around 3.9%).  This 'report' - sourced to the BBC rather than to the government' has all the hallmarks of a government spin operation, and Uppal's played his disreputable role.

So much for the 20,000 students in his constituency, for whom he's shown no concern at all. Nor has he shown his face in the institution.

Let's not forget that Uppal received a free education and a student grant when he studied politics at Warwick University.

(I did enjoy Clegg ranting about cheating landlords screwing the government for housing benefit a couple of questions later - after Uppal made an impassioned plea for the government to help out the poor suffering landlord class, of which he is  prominent member).

No comments: