Student loans
Back in the early 1990s in Denmark, students could easily get cheap loans to finance their studies. The result was that a generation of students ended up with massive debts that they couldn’t realistically pay back.
So a few years before I started university, they introduced much better grants and restricted the ability to get student loans in order to ensure that nobody would be saddled with debt they couldn’t pay off.
England now seems to be going in the opposite direction.
Given that their is a limit to how much graduates can be forced to pay back every year, and given that the plan at the moment is to write off any debt left after 30 years, for most people there will be no point in restricting their borrowings.
That is, they won’t go to a cheap university, but will instead apply to the most expensive ones and borrow as much money as they possibly can to fuel their consumption.
Poor buggers if future governments decide to scrap the repayment limit or the 30-year write-off point!
Changing England’s borders
One of the main reasons there are so many people in favour of separate parliaments for Scotland, Wales, England and Northern Ireland is that England is dominating the UK so heavily.
Just look at the pie chart on the right – England constituted 84% of the UK’s population in 2001.
I therefore decided to investigate some ways of fixing the English problem by changing England’s borders. I’ve mainly used the English Regions for the following maps and figures.
My first idea was to extend Scotland (adding Cumbria and the North-East) and Wales (adding Cornwall and the rest of the South-West), bringing both up to about eight million inhabitants.
It’s nowhere near enough, though – England is still more than big enough to run the show undisturbed.
To make this approach work, I guess Scotland would have to be extended all the way down to the Humber, and Wales would have to encompass the West Midlands, but that would completely undermine the Scottishness of Scotland and the Welshness of Wales.
My second idea was to split England into East and West along a line extending down from the Pennines, but that isn’t enough, either: East England would be able to run the show on their own (but only just – moving a few counties such as Hampshire from East to West would take the East down under 50%).
One might also argue that Cumbria is much more similar to Northumberland than to Somerset, so it might not be a very natural split.
I also wonder whether London would dominate the East so strongly that the genuine needs of the peripheral areas would be completely overlooked.
Another option would be to create a Greater London by merging London with the East and South East of England. This would actually work fairly well – although Greater London would be a lot less populous than the Rest of England, it would probably be able to hold its own given the way London dominates the whole of the UK.
This might also be a very good way for the remainder of England to build up a identity separate from London, perhaps centred around Manchester or Birmingham.
Finally, I tried to recreate the Danelaw. This would actually balance the two halves of England very neatly and would from a mathematical point of view be the best solution. However, it would place London on the border (just south of it, to be precise), and I’m not sure whether that’d be a good or a bad thing.
From the point of view of Danelaw, its economy would be hugely influenced by London (and many people would be commuting from Danelaw into London), but it wouldn’t have any influence on over it.
From the point of view of non-Danelaw England (Wessex?), it would completely dominated by London, although it would be in periphery.
Free university education and private universities
On the Andrew Marr Show this morning, they were again briefly discussing tuition fees vs. a graduate tax, and it was mentioned that annual fees at the best universities might rise to £10k a year.
This is crazy if we’re talking about state universities. In the US, fees are “£3,572 a year (although students at private universities pay a lot more on average, £13,877)” – and don’t forget that American parents tend to save up for their children’s university education from the day they’re born.
I’m starting to think that the move towards higher and higher university fees in England are due to Oxbridge comparing themselves to the Ivy League in the US, which are extremely well-funded universities.
Proponents of tuition fees tend to argue that it’s OK so long as there are grants for the poorest students, but what about the 80% of the population in the middle that aren’t poor enough to qualify for the grants, but not rich enough to pay for all their kids’ tuition fees and accommodation, either?
Also, tuition fee fans often say that the graduate premium (i.e., the amount of money you earn extra because of your degree) is so high that it’s a no-brainer to get a university education, no matter how much it costs. If that’s the case, why should anybody get a grant, so long as there are loans available to postpone payment till they’ve embarked on their hopefully lucrative careers?
The way I see it, if people make so much more money over a life time if they go to uni, they will presumably pay more tax, too, so it should be a no-brainer for the state to send young people to uni, paying for their education and giving them grants to give them the best possible basis for making a fortunate and paying a lot of taxes.
On the other hand, I have a feeling that Oxford and Cambridge will never be satisfied with any level of state funding. So why don’t we simply cut them free and make them private universities without any state funding whatsoever, except for charitable status if they give free places to poor students, just like private schools? They’re probably famous enough that they can attract more than enough students worldwide who are willing to pay £15k a year.
We should then move the remaining universities back to exclusive state funding, and reintroduce student grants allowing students to concentrate on their studies, but at the same time make universities tougher again to ensure graduates are ready for a globalised world.
Independent London
The seven countries of the British Isles
Ken Livingstone was asked in an interview what he would most like to achieve as mayor. He replied:
Total independence for London. If London was independent we would have more people than half the members of the UN do, we’d be able to use more of our wealth to provide better infrastructure and a better quality of life instead of pumping £20 bn more into the national economy than we get back.
I’m all in favour of an independent London. It’s so different from the rest of the country that it skews everything.
For instance, London is multicultural and has lots of really rich people (and very poor ones, too), which isn’t true for the rest of the country. This makes it very hard to create national policies.
However, one issue is how large the Republic (or Kingdom) of London should be.
If it was created based on its current area, so many commuters would be left outside it that England and London wouldn’t be independent at all.
So I think it needs to be fairly big, probably taking in everything within the green belt around it. Perhaps it should also include everything between London and France, given that it would be odd for people from Dover to have to travel through London to get to their capital in central England.
Political honeymoon
YouGov have measured the popularity of the new government (PDF here).
The overall approval rating of 60% (vs. 33% disapproval) is perhaps not great.
However, what I find astonishing is that it seems to be popular in the entire country:
- Both sexes (men 62%, women 57%)
- All ages (18-34 61%, 35-54 56%, 55+ 61%)
- Both social grade bands (ABC1 65%, C2DE 53%)
- All countries/regions (Scotland 58%, London 55%, South of England 70%, Midlands/Wales 58%, North of England 49% [vs. 44% against])
In fact, the only group against the government is Labour voters, who naturally enough disapprove (25% for, 68% against).
Both Tories and LibDems approve (by 87% and 69%, respectively).
I dare say this is very positive.
I’m sure a Tory-only government wouldn’t have been that popular in Scotland, for instance.
Hopefully the new government will make good use of its honeymoon with the voters!
Con 298, LD 108, Lab 212
Filed under: Cons, England, Lab, Lib, SNP, Scotland, election, psephology
Most of the last polls before tomorrow’s election are now out, and they seem to point to a result along the lines of Con 33-37, LD 26-29, Lab 24-28.
There’s also a Scottish poll predicting Con 17, LD 22, Lab 37, SNP 21.
If I put the average of the figures into the Electoral Calculus Regional Predictor and shift LibDem support slightly towards the north of England, I end up with a seat prediction of Con 288, LD 98, Lab 232.
The Tories seem to be doing better in Lab-Con marginals, but this is to some extent cancelled out by the LibDems doing better in Con-Lib marginals.
Let’s therefore assume that Labour lose another 20 seats to the Conservatives, and that the LibDems win another 10 seats from the Tories, and we end up with my final prediction for tomorrow: Con 298, LD 108, Lab 212.
In many ways this would be an excellent result: The Tories would probably end up in power, but without being able to do whatever they fancy. Labour would have to find a new leader, and the LibDems would have demonstrated how bad the electoral system is if they got more votes but fewer seats than Labour.
The third debate, King, and the secret hopes of the Tories
Most pollsters agree that Cameron won the third debate and that Brown lost it.
However, swing voters seemed to think Clegg did best.
FiveThirtyEight have published a post-debate analysis of seats, and for the scenario where the Tories advance a tiny bit while the LibDems take many votes away from Labour (Con 36, LD 31, Lab 24), they predict Con 335, LD 144, Lab 140.
In other news yesterday, Mervyn King (the governor of the Bank of England) was reported to have said that “whoever wins this election will be out of power for a whole generation because of how tough the fiscal austerity will have to be.”
I was very disappointed that nobody confronted them with this quote in yesterday’s debate, but it makes me wonder whether the Tories are making a huge mistake by trying to win this election.
Just imagine the next general election in 2014 if the Conservatives have had a very small majority of 335 (out of 650) while the LibDems have been the official opposition…
If King and the IFS are right, and if the Greek crisis starts affecting the UK, the country would have seen four extremely painful years, full of strikes, unemployment and bankruptcies, and it would all be blamed on the Tories.
Meanwhile, Clegg and Cable would have been pointing out all their errors every week at the despatch box.
I can’t help thinking the Tories would secretly prefer a hung parliament that would allow them to share the blame.
Con 251, LD 181, Lab 177
I saw on UK Polling Report that Angus Reid is now reporting these figures: Con 32%, LD 32%, Lab 24%.
This is such a big gap between the LibDems and Labour that it made me wonder whether this could actually lead to Labour becoming the third party in the UK.
Using information about who is switching to the LibDems, namely that it’s mainly in the north of England, and not really in Scotland, I used the Electoral Calculus Regional Predictor and got these figures: Con 251, LD 181, Lab 177.
So it is possible! The LibDems have a realistic change of becoming the second party and shoving Labour away from the dispatch box.
A better way to elect the UK parliament
Filed under: Cons, Denmark, England, Germany, Lab, Lib, ROI, SNP, Scotland, election, psephology
When people in the UK discuss alternatives to the current electoral system used for Westminster (first-past-the-post), they tend to look towards Ireland, Australia or possibly Germany, but never Scandinavia.
However, the system used there has many advantages, and indeed people there just take it for granted, so it must have got something right!
To make the Danish electoral system tangible, I have therefore made a simulation of the UK General Election 2005 according to the Danish system. (It’s quite long, so feel free to skip down to the results instead of reading all the details.)
Here are some of the advantages of the Danish system:
- Every vote counts. Even if your vote doesn’t get anybody elected where you live, it will count towards your party elsewhere in the country. This combats the way parties under FPTP tend to concentrate all their efforts on swing voters in marginal seats.
- The politicians need to get themselves elected, not just their party. A politician will typically be up against at least ten other candidates from their own party, and it is therefore important to have a personal agenda, not just to toe the party line.
- Need to be positive. When all votes count, if party A claims party B are evil, it might benefit party C or D just as easily as party A. So instead, party A needs to give the voters reasons to vote for them.
- It preserves some sort of constituency link. Given that it’s still the constituencies that put up candidates, and given that MPs are elected in small groups of constituencies, there is still a very strong local link, and it’s easy to understand how to get rid of a bad MP.
- Results are available quickly. Like FPTP, but unlike STV, results come in quickly, thus providing for a good election night experience.
- Opinion polls are right. Under FPTP, there is no simple correlation between share of the vote and number of seats won, so a party can lose votes but gain seats and vice versa. Under the Danish system, more votes leads to more seats, and opinion polls will therefore accurately predict how many MPs each party will get.
- Parties become truly national. Under FPTP, most parties tend to get most of their MPs elected in specific geographical areas (LibDems in the South West, Labour in the cities, the Tories in rural England). The Danish system spreads out the MPs more evenly, so that the LibDems will get fewer seats in the South West but more in the cities and rural England, Labour will get fewer seats in the cities but more elsewhere, etc. (This is not taken to extremes. The SNP only gets seats in Scotland – it’s not artificially extended to England.)
Prime ministerial debates in Scotland
Filed under: Cons, England, Lab, Lib, NI, SNP, Scotland, Wales, election
The BBC’s Michael Crick can report that “the Leaders’ Debates at the forthcoming election have now been cancelled. Instead, over the past 2-3 weeks they’ve been quietly replaced with Prime Ministerial Debates. It’s a cunning manoeuvre, agreed by the three main broadcasters (the BBC, ITV and Sky) and the three main parties, to exclude the SNP and Plaid Cymru leaders from the debates.”
I’ve discussed in the past why the SNP cannot be excluded in Scotland.
It is also very well described in a comment to Crick’s story by DougtheDug:
If it is true that this renaming has been done to exclude the SNP and PC from the debates along with the Democratic Unionist Party, Sinn Fein and the Social Democratic and Labour Party, (The Ulster Unionist Party will be represented via their link with the Conservatives), then it’s a clever ploy but once again done with no knowledge of the rules of the game.
Under OFCOM the SNP is classed as a major party in Scotland along with the Conservatives, Labour and the Lib-Dems. PC has major party status in Wales and the NI parties have major party status in Northern Ireland.
Party political election broadcasting is not worked out on the basis of a party’s UK standing but its standing in each of the constituent home nations of the UK. The debates, call them what you will, are multi-party election broadcasts and unless they are impartial in all four home nations then they will fall foul of OFCOM, the BBC guidelines and the law. The only way they can be impartial in Scotland is for all four major parties to be on the platform at the same time. Similarly for Wales and Northern Ireland.
What the broadcasters are trying to do is to apply the rules of impartiality in England which has three major parties to the four party setups in Scotland and Wales and the four party set up in Northern Ireland. It’s a classic case of the broadcasters thinking that England is Britain is England.