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Listening To The Radio Today....
Dec. 8th, 2010 05:45 pmToday Radio Four's Today programme interviewed Polly Toynbee, well-known Guardian writer and President of the BHA, along with Tom Burkard, who has experience of the UK education system (though notably he's got a strong American accent) and is part of an organisation called for Centre for Policy Studies.
They were debating the recent decision to do away with the EMA (Educational Maintenance Allowance i.e. income support for children in their late teens from particularly low income families) as part of the Coalition government's brutal tax cuts. Polly Toynbee was picked because she's a well-known socialist who is obviously going to be wholly against scrapping the EMA. Meanwhile they seem to have picked Tom Burkard because he's the only person they could find with the right background who would be heartless enough to wholly insist on scrapping it.
The interview becomes rather ridiculous towards the end when he's insisting that children from extremely low income families who want to go onto further education (i.e. A Levels, not university) will have no trouble getting part time jobs because his step-daughter found it easy. Still perhaps we shouldn't be so surprised when we see the website for the Centre for Policy Studies, whom he is representing. On that website they happily brag about their connection to the economic liberalism of the Thatcher era. (More recently they are insisting on the vital importance of marriage in society. *groan*)
It feels like the old libertarian thing which allows poor people "the freedom to remain poor", unless they are lucky enough to get the opportunity to pull themselves out of it (which'll be pretty rare).
This is the same Today programme on Radio Four which brought you the interview with Gary McFarlane.
( Read more... )
They were debating the recent decision to do away with the EMA (Educational Maintenance Allowance i.e. income support for children in their late teens from particularly low income families) as part of the Coalition government's brutal tax cuts. Polly Toynbee was picked because she's a well-known socialist who is obviously going to be wholly against scrapping the EMA. Meanwhile they seem to have picked Tom Burkard because he's the only person they could find with the right background who would be heartless enough to wholly insist on scrapping it.
The interview becomes rather ridiculous towards the end when he's insisting that children from extremely low income families who want to go onto further education (i.e. A Levels, not university) will have no trouble getting part time jobs because his step-daughter found it easy. Still perhaps we shouldn't be so surprised when we see the website for the Centre for Policy Studies, whom he is representing. On that website they happily brag about their connection to the economic liberalism of the Thatcher era. (More recently they are insisting on the vital importance of marriage in society. *groan*)
It feels like the old libertarian thing which allows poor people "the freedom to remain poor", unless they are lucky enough to get the opportunity to pull themselves out of it (which'll be pretty rare).
This is the same Today programme on Radio Four which brought you the interview with Gary McFarlane.
Interviewer: There are more student protests today in advance of tomorrow’s vote on tuition fees and it is tuition fees that have captured most of the headlines and attention in previous protests. The people who have reported on these marches have been impressed as well by the number of students whose main concern is the scrapping, in England, of the Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA). It gives cash up to 30 pounds a week directly to youngsters between the ages of 16 and 19 in low income homes if they continue with their studies after GCSEs and, they say, they need the money.
( Read more... )
