Mr Burnham says that a Labour government led by him would "lift the millstone of debt" from students and replace fees with a graduate tax.
Fellow leadership contender Yvette Cooper also backs a graduate tax while Jeremy Corbyn wants to scrap tuition fees and bring back maintenance grants.
...
The graduate tax plan is among the shadow health secretary's five manifesto pledges, which are:
- Replacing tuition fees with a new graduate tax, and creating new university-style support for young people seeking apprenticeships
- Freeing councils to build new homes and introducing regulation of the private rented sector
- Abolishing the youth rate National Minimum Wage, establishing a true living wage for all ages, banning forced zero-hours contracts and unpaid internships
- Renationalisation of railways and reregulation of buses
- Good care throughout people's lifetimes, through a National Health and Care Service, bringing social care into the NHS and meaning no-one is forced to sell their home to afford care.
Bloody hell, watching Labour's leadership-candidates flail in Corbyn's wake* is almost becoming as entertaining as watching the clowns in the GOP in Trump's. Re-nationalising the railways, and now scrapping tuition-fees** -- What next ? Endorse Natalie Bennett's calls to turn RBS into a People's Bank ? Abolition of the monarchy ?
Should be entertaining regardless. And meanwhile, the ever-brilliant Martin Rowson returns to the Guardian: Rays of light amidst so much darkness.
Now, if only Bernie Sanders' campaign could have the same effect on Hillary Clinton in the US...Ha ! Sorry, drifted off into la-la land there.
* What would they be talking about at this point in the campaign if it weren't for Corbyn ? Raising the retirement-age to ninety ? A 2p top tax-rate ? Burning the homeless for fuel ?
** Not that a graduate-tax is quite the same thing as free universal higher education of course.
No comments:
Post a Comment