Why would the people of the UK benefit from a Labour Government?

Firstly, its the only party advocating a referendum on Brexit. The country is divided so letting people choose is the only thing that makes sense.

Secondly, Labour is the only party which has policies which would benefit the lives of ordinary people:

1) Abolition of tuition fees.
2) Building more houses.
3) Giving workers shares in their companies.
4) Nationalising rail and utilities.
5) Rolling back NHS privatisation and academy schools.
6) a green new deal.

The last Labour manifesto was fully costed and the next one will be likewise the same. Its time to make up your mind on what sort of country you want.

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ArtieKat · M

Remind me about tuition fees, please - to save me looking it up. My recollection is that they were probably mooted under Major's government but ACLB did nothing to overturn the policy. He's a couple of months older than me, and our generation did very well out of full grants etc when degree courses were only for about 25% of the population.

Burnley123 · 41-45, M

@ArtieKat Tuition fees came under Blair but rose twice under the Tories. The Labour 207 manifesto had to abolish them as a signature policy.

I believe in the principle of free education. Also, the population has huge amounts of private debt.

Boomers did well out of both the post-war welfare state and out of Thatcherism too. That is true.

SW-User

@ArtieKat now with the £9k plus tuition fees the England is more expensive for a university qualification than the USA (on average).
The daftest thing is I look at my children's debt. Both are in public service ie both work for university actually. So with the relatively low pay they will never pay it off.
75% of student debt will fall back on the exchequer we've actually set up a huge national debt problem for the future again. It's about £2.5billion a year. Why have such a complicated system that in effect fails to pay for itself? A small additional graduate tax would be cheaper to administer, not add to national debt and recoup same amount?

ArtieKat · M

@SW-User I personally think that the whole concept of a degree education was devalued by the aim of getting 50% of the population into higher education. There was nothing wrong with vocational qualifications like HND/HNC - plenty of my contemporaries who were intelligent but not academic went down that route; and, in many cases, were earning while they were studying. The policy was a very artificial way of lowering youth unemployment figures.

SW-User

@ArtieKat in my family no-one ever went to university we were working class and really never crossed out minds we simply never did it. I left school with an a level. I applied for a computer operator job at a large local employer. On the first two days there we did some tests. I was taken aside with another guy and offered a trainee software engineer position. But I needed to go to college to get an hnd. That required me to get a grant etc, less than a week before the course started. I initially said no, my entire family were facing redundancy as the government closed the dockyard.
They persuaded me my mum had to get a bus 15 miles to sign the forms for me to get the grant.
Now I had an amazing career luckily. However in my 40s I was being made redundant as a company withdrew from the UK. I applied for a job I knew I could to, I was by then a Chartered IT Professional with over 20 years experience. I spoke to the hr department. They wouldn't entertain interviewing me as I wasn't a graduate.

So long way to get to my kids I hugely encouraged them to get degrees so they didn't face that type of discrimination in the future. Nowadays someone with an hnd like I did in 1984 would be highly unlikely to get the opportunity I did.