And without fanfare have you noticed the Governmentâs message has switched from beating Covid to living with it? 
Thing is for most normal, right thinking people this has always been an understandingâŠ
I always assumed weâd go for herd immunity but I havenât a clue about whatâs going on and generally query anything that passes Johnsonâs lips (Iâd rather listen to scientific research)
Now theyâve just found another 1.7m vulnerable people who have to shield - down the side of a sofa probablyâŠ
Any volunteers??
The UK is to become the first country in the world to run a study which will see 90 healthy adult volunteers deliberately infected with Covid-19.
Backed by a ÂŁ33.6m UK government grant, the Human Challenge study will involve establishing the smallest amount of virus needed to cause infection, which will give doctors greater understanding of Covid-19 and help support the pandemic response by aiding vaccine and treatment development.
Dont worry BT⊠they will only take young fit and health folks⊠us old geezers would be too risky ;-0
Chucking this into the Covid-19 mixer.
Iâve got and undergraduate and a post graduate paying a fortune for pretty shoddy on line lectures and support.
I think this is going to change university education forever
Why canât I now go to Harvard or MIT or INSEAD or Oxford from the comfort of my home
How about hybrid courses that gives you teaching from a combination of universities
Why do all uni courses need to be three years?
Tbh I donât think it will. Part of university is the experience, and youâre not going to stop people wanting that experience.
It may make a difference to those extremely able students, but your average student will still want to go.
First the current batch have had a shit experience
Second each year at uni costs the thick end of ÂŁ20k
Could fund a lot of great experiences with that kind of wedge
Yeah, but youâre not saying that kids wonât go to University - tuition fees wonât fall, just cost of accommodation and food.
Also, the American Universities you mention above will cost far more than that even via online tutorials.
Lastly, you wouldnât be able to raise that 20k per year at 18 years old, the whole structure of loan payments is so that is an affordable proportion of your salary for x years after graduation. Good luck trying to get a ÂŁ20k loan at 18 years old with no income.
Youâd like to think so but the infrastructure to support the students is still there, you still need to pay lecturers, you still need to pay for the IT infrastructure.
In fact this year we have a spent a fuckton of money on beefing up our IT Infrastructure so that students can do remote learning without any problems. We still have to have to buildings open with the support staff in there as some students need to come in to do labs etc. etc. (all Covid secure of course).
So, yeah, on the face of it youâd think that students not being here it should be cheaper butâŠ
I wonder how much an OU course costs, thatâs all online with remote support isnât it?
If only someone had come up with an idea like that.
We could have had something like an Open University
What a proper government might consider doing about tax in the economy:
Tories are now saying there should be no tax rises this year. Overall, I agree. Right now we donât want overall tax increases taking demand out of a fragile economy. But that doesnât mean no tax increases. It means we need tax increases and tax cuts. Let me explain in a thread.
Tax is not all about raising revenue. Far from it, in fact. We now know that government can spend without taxing: the last year has proved that, for good. But that should mean that we also understand that tax has other important roles too, like tackling inequality.
Inequality has always been significant in the UK. And Covid has made it worse. There has been a dramatic increase in unemployment. Many on furlough are on less than normal pay. And many self employed people have been hit very hard. But others have seen their wealth increase.
We know why some have seen their wealth increase. When a government runs a deficit itâs an accounting fact that someone else must run a surplus: the rules of double entry require this. This is, in fact, the only book balancing that is of importance when looking at govât accounts.
And the government has run a deficit. It might be ÂŁ400bn this year. To fund this (although the Bank of England denies it) the Bankâs bought ÂŁ290bn of govâyt bonds between March and December 2020, pumping that much newly made electronic money into the economy as a result.
By chance the chief economist of the Bank of England has said that he thought savings had increased by at least ÂŁ250bn during lockdown. Thereâs a good chance he underestimated by ÂŁ40bn, Iâd say. The overall number will match the deficit and the QE that is funding it.
But thatâs an aggregate sum. In other words, thatâs the savings of all of us, added together. But thatâs not the whole picture. Because some in the country will have saved more than others. And as we also know significant numbers of people will now be borrowing to make ends meet.
Some of the borrowing caused by the Covid crisis will be new loans. Some will represent the running down of savings. Much will be informal. It will also be rent arrears, utility bills unpaid, and credit cards maxed out. The interest rate due on those borrowings is incalculable.
What that means is that the lucky ones have saved more than ÂŁ290bn. Others are in much more debt to the same amount. Because, again, thatâs what the accountancy of double entry always, ultimately, means. The Bank of England have underestimated savings by ignoring new borrowing.
Think about it. Overall, the best off will be ÂŁ400bn richer this year, at least. And at the same time millions of people in this country will be suffering the anxiety of increased debt. And all because of Covid. Never, ever, presume that the world is fair. It isnât.
This is what the Tories want you to ignore when they say no tax increases now. And we shouldnât do that. We need increases in tax now because there is a massive, unearned, Covid gain in our economy that is creating inequality that is going to be corrosive in the long term.
Some of that gain is to be found in companies that have done well out of this crisis, just when other companies have been forced to the brink of oblivion. More is in speculative gains. Some of that will be in the City. And much of this will simply be increased personal savings.
So what do we do to tackle this? First, improve the position of the least well off. Increase universal credit, and not just by ÂŁ20, which is clearly insufficient.
Then we also need to provide access to cheap loan funds for those in debt distress. Itâs the least the state can do. It can borrow for nothing, in effect. Why canât it share that benefit with those most in need, instead of saying them penalised by high rates?
And for those who think those idea of state backed loans for those who need them a very strange idea, maybe 80% of UK companies have such loans right now. Why shouldnât ordinary people get the same support when they need it?
After that, reduce taxes (and most especially national insurance) on the earnings of those on low pay, noting that income tax will make little difference for them right now.
There should also be council tax rebates for those on low pay, whilst in general the rates of council tax for the least well off who are likely to live in the lowest value houses should be cut.
Credits for utility bills could also be considered as support for those in need. They would be targeted and effective. People have a right to basic services.
Oh, and we should provide the BBC licence fee free to those on benefits, paid for by the government, and not the BBC.
Those are starters on what might be considered that could help those in need. But what about taxing to reduce inequality at the top of the income and wealth orders in the UK? This, I stress, is something we should do to tackle inequality though, and not because we need the money.
That point is worth repeating: we do not need to feel grateful to the rich for the tax that they pay. We now know that taxes are just part of the government fiscal cycle. Instead, we need to tax the rich more because they are rich.
And before anyone says this is the politics of envy, it isnât. This is about pure, hard nosed economics. Being rich is problematic because the rich earn money from being rich. And most of that money earned from being rich is paid by those who arenât well off.
If youâre in doubt that the least well off subsidise the rich just call the payments from those with least to the who have most interest charges and rent and youâll see exactly what I mean. The fact is that if the gap between rich and poor is too big we create an unequal society
And we also end up with a poorer society. Thatâs because the rich will control more and more of the income, as they do now. They though will save more and more of that income, and thatâs a real problem.
The problem with too much saving is easily explained. It arises because the more that is saved in a society the less is spent on generating income. And as a result it ends up poorer as a result. Savings donât generate income. They may redistribute them, but donât create them.
So, societies that have too big a wealth divide donât thrive. Too much saving is one reason. But the wealthy also donât take risks. So they arenât entrepreneurs and donât create new businesses. Thatâs because theyâre really frightened of losing the wealth and status theyâve got.
So the simple fact is that tax has to correct for these trends, or failings, if we are to have a thriving, innovative, and wealthy society, which a country socially divided by inequality cannot deliver.
So what to tax more? First, the obvious ones. First, we need to increase corporation tax, which is the tax on company profits. This will only hit the companies that have done well from Covid, of course. Only they will have profits. The rate is 19% now. It could easily go to 25%.
Then there is capital gains tax. First, make the rate equal to income tax. It is equivalent to income, so why not tax it as such? Second, cut the second tax free annual allowance that this tax gives to the wealthy. Why should they get two alliowances when the rest get one?
Next, thereâs investment income like rents, interest, dividends, income from trusts or whatever else. People who work for a living have to pay national insurance on their earnings but the wealthy donât, but still get all the benefits. So introduce an investment income surcharge.
This investment income surcharge would be at 15% on all investment income over ÂŁ5,000 a year, but higher for those of pension age. You have to be very wealthy to earn more than ÂŁ5,000 of investment income a year right now. This is just creating a levek playing field.
And then what? Remove the national insurance cap. Why should those on higher rates of pay have a national insurance rate of 2% on those higher earnings when most people pay at 12%? Thatâs just not fair. So that cap has to go.
And another tax with a cap has to be changed too. Thatâs council tax. The top bands, which are capped so that few pay more than ÂŁ3,000 a year should be replaced by a new tax based on a percentage of property value. Itâs easy to do: property valuation is really not hard these days
And while weâre talking rates, why does income tax stop at 45%? Wouldnât 50% be fairer on incomes over, say, ÂŁ300,000?
One or two more ideas. First, stop the tax relief that lets the wealthy claim back more tax on their gifts to charity than basic rate taxpayers can. Why should the rich actually benefit from charity? And the same is true on pensions - why should the rich get more tax relief?
Add all this up and a wealth tax can, to be honest, wait. That will take several years to introduce when some of the above could be happening in April. No wonder the Tories like the talk of wealth taxes - it puts off extra tax for a long time when we need it now.
Just a couple more things. How much will all this raise? Not ÂŁ290 billion, I can assure you, which is by how much the government has increased private wealth as a result of QE. So the wealthy will still be winning hands down from this crisis. I am really not being unfair.
But how much precisely? I canât tell you, because anyone who is honest knows it is almost impossible to predict tax yields exactly when making changes of these sort. But I stress again, these tax changes are not really all about raising money. They are about tackling inequality.
Increasing inequality is the pernicious, so far largely unseen, consequence of Covid, and its impact may well last longer and be massively detrimental to millons of peopleâs lives, whilst unfairly enriching many others. But Covid should have taught us we do live in community.
If thatâs the case then we need tax increases now. But the money raised should not be used to supposedly âpay for Covidâ, because QE has already done that and it does not need to be reversed. The money should be used for a positive programme of redistribution.
This is what social justice should look like now. And this is what tax should be doing to deliver that social justice, now. Taxâs ability to do this is what I called The Joy of Tax in my book with that tile in 2015. Itâs what we need to discover now.
Mrs C_S is the planning manager at a Rusell Group Uni and am well versed in the money being spent on infrastructure etc.
It still doesnât excuse the piss poor delivery of some lectures, poor interaction with lecturers and students and not very good innovation in making online access to courses engaging and compelling.
IMHO of course.
ÂŁ6k per year - ÂŁ18k in total - That assuming that a 3yr course is absolutely necessary - I suspect that some course could easily be covered in 2
I cannot see the Russel group changing much yet - but take one of the old institutes that converted to being a Uni - they are always competing for students. So far they have tried the lazy approach of unconditional offers etc - why not compete with the OU and really shake up the course structure
The real issue they have is that they spunked the next 25 yrs of course fees on nice new buildings and are in deep shit if their income dries up - they have no incentive to change at all.
Business has changed, working habits have changed - why not further education?
I think they will get there, providing that remote learning is a long term goal - however if the Unis are hell bent on getting everyone back in the classroom, then they will not put the effort in - just enough will be the order of the day
Do students want it to change?
YoungAdult#2 was desperate to get back to Uni and recently went back to his house share in Cardiff even though his lectures are online (though theyâre starting to do socially distanced lab work now).