Friday 10 December 2010

Well Done Adrian Sanders

Well done Adrian. Yesterday, just in case you missed it, there was a vote in the Mother of all Parliaments (which is looking increasingly tatty these days) to make poor people ineligible to attend University. Turns out to get into university these days it's how many pound coins you've got, not how many "A" levels you have. Nine thousand pound coins and you can go to Uni for a year, the average course is 3 years so twenty seven thousand coins is what you need to get a degree. Plus what you have to spend just to stay alive. Mine cost less than a hundred quid but that was 30 years ago. No I didn't buy it from some fake American University, it came thanks to a great idea by Harold Wilson. Which proves that politicians can have good ideas from time to time.

Anyway, back to Adrian. He is our local MP and a LibDem. Before the last election the LibDems tried to get our vote by promising to vote against any rise in fees for students. The head LibDem made this promise but the moment he got a sniff of power he began to look for ways to rationalise the fact that he would have to break his promise in order not to fall out with his new lover that nice Mr Cameron.

The story I did read was that Adrian Sanders wasn't going to vote yesterday as he had an important meeting here in Torquay with a government minister about Health Care in the Bay. As Adrian wasn't going to vote with the coalition on this occasion and the government minister was obviously going to side with Mr Cameron their absence would have cancelled each other out. The fact that Adrian Sanders voted against must, I think, mean the government minister didn't come down to Torquay to make sure Health Care in the Bay was being catered for but decided putting up university fees was more important. All this mean is there was one more vote for and one more vote against which didn't make any difference to the outcome but showed that the government don't care about Health Care in the Bay. Sad state of affairs but not surprising.

Now voting against your side when you are in government isn't some thing you do lightly. Then up at the top don't think, "Oh well he cast his vote according to his principals therefore he must be a good chap." No, what them at the top think is, "He voted against us, the bastard."

So well done Adrian.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

The lib-dems say they are in a coalition, so all their pre-election promises go out the window. I say in that case there should be another election to test the coalition's policies. Won't happen as we live in a half baked democracy (also see global companies/banks, as they are the ones actually in charge)

Anonymous said...

I'm still gobsmacked that when the rest of us are losing a few percent here and there, they think its fair to whack the young with a whopping £30,000+ debt just for learning. Well done Adrian.

Anonymous said...

It's outrageous that undergraduates will be charged these enormous fees and grossly unfair that Scots and Welsh students won't have to pay this increase.
Good for Adrian Sanders for voting against the fee increases.
It will probably now be cheaper for our students to study elsewhere in Europe or even as far afield as Canada or Australia.

Anonymous said...

Sanders is great waste of space and will jump on any bandwagon that he thinks will get an X on the ballot paper for him.

Not forgetting his scandalous expenses claims £70 plus for a kettle 1st class travel the cheapest is National Express so he should travel the cheapest way ans pay out of his £66,000 basic salary. What other occupation gets subsidsed food/drink and many other scams. All that have fiddled over a sum of £10 in total should be prosecuted and jailed.

David said...

I agree about excessive expences. MPs should be told how much a year they can claim on travel depending on where they live. After that they are on there own. And if you comdem Adrian for jumping on a bandwagon what is your attitude to Nick Glegg who thought present power is better than a future vote?