General British politics discussion thread

Average fees for private day schools is £18K, average UK salary before tax is £35K. Do you really think 2 people with 2 children earning the average wage can send their kids to private school? If you are sending your child to a boarding school the average cost is £42k per year. That is more than the average wage before tax. Private schools are the playground for the rich and only the well off will want to keep it that way.

No amount of trying to gaslight people that they can also afford it if they just didn't spend so much on "luxuries" will make that reality go away. Your post itself hints at that point - "are they, or do they just have different priorities to some people?".

I don't know how he has so many followers when he has shown again and again that he is nothing short of a bully and a coward. But grifters will grift and if his followers are stupid enough to let him keep his lifestyle while they are miserable then there is nothing you can really do to help them.

I see the financial picture for the UK is about as bad as you can get. I don't know how the Tories are going to be a viable opposition. They have been so reckless with the economy it is almost criminal. How could Sunak and Hunt and the party stand there and tell people they were going to cut taxes? If they still have a reputation for anything other than ruining the economy for the next 10 years then the UK is truly lost. This is not the GFC, this was self inflicted harm and I hope it is called out again and again whenever a Conservative MP makes any noise about anything.

The average wage in Ireland is 45K euro per year, the highest fee/private school cost is just over 9K per year. So a two income household where one parent earns the average and the other half of that can make smart decisions and afford a private education for their children.

As I have shown, the average fee for private day school is £18K and that is more than half of what an average wage is. This inequality exists already and to think that by making private schools pay VAT and Business rates will all of a sudden make it worse is just ridiculous.

In case you are in any doubt, I am mentioning average private school fees in the UK and comparing the most expensive fees in Ireland and comparing it to the average wage. If you were to take the average fees in Ireland it would surely look even more affordable for a lot of parents and not just the very well off.

https://www.zurich.ie/blog/private-secondary-school-cost-in-ireland-in-2023/

"There are around 50 private or fee-paying secondary schools in Ireland, with more than 28,000 students attending these schools*.

Fees can vary from school to school but can be a considerable expense for parents each year in addition to the cost of things like grinds, books, uniforms and transport.

The Irish Independent detail the cost of sending a child to a fee-paying school and found that this expense has risen for many parents. They also highlight that the most expensive private day school in the country is St Columba’s, in Rathfarnham, Dublin, where fees are €9,632, up from €9,147 last year**."

https://www.jobted.ie/salary

"The average annual earnings for employees in Ireland is €44,202 per year or €3,683 per month (gross salary)."

https://www.forbes.com/uk/advisor/business/average-uk-salary-by-age/#:~:text=pay%20measures%20up.-,Earnings%20on%20the%20up,tax%20salary%20of%20%C2%A335%2C828.

"The latest government data (published July 2024) reveals that the mean average UK weekly wage (including bonuses) across all industry sectors (in England and Wales) is £689 gross (that’s the equivalent to an annual pre-tax salary of £35,828."

Good rebuttal 🤣

If you think I am going for the poster report it.

500,000 is 5% of the school population in the UK which has just over 10 million students.

So around 5% of the population is extremely wealthy which is probably the figure most would give if guessing . And that doesn't factor in the amount of foreign kids in that 500,000.

So 5% sounds like it backs up what other posters were saying to you does it not ?

Considering only 5% go to private schools a disproportionate amount of people I know in England are private school graduates. That's probably down to the areas I lived and industry I was involved in. Mostly Labour voters to so happy to make an example of themselves to show their socialist credentials.

Hunt having a car crash of an interview blaming everyone but the conservatives as usual.

Some are lying, and some aren't.

Sin e

in the UK it is a significant disadvantage applying for university from a private school.

Where are you getting this from?

I tried to show it is very difficult to send your children to private school and it takes more than just prioritizing your spending to do that in the UK unless you are better off than most and your reply seems to be that there are a lot of people able to do it.

Well done, you have "proven" that in a population of more than 60 million people there are enough people that make enough money to spend half of the average wage annually for school fees.

Decent article from the BBC that reinforces some of the points made on thread already about the addition of VAT to UK private schools.

The part below reiterates that as a general rule, you don't scrimp and save to send your kid to Harrow or Winchester.

The average cost of private school fees has risen by 20% in real terms since 2010, and by 55% since 2003, even without VAT, the IFS says. However, the proportion of children being privately educated over the period has not fallen.

The IFS suggests there could be a small initial drop-off in pupil numbers.

Over a longer period, though, it estimates private school attendance could fall by between 3% and 7%, or 20,000 to 40,000 pupils. This represents a small share of the total pupil population, which is more than nine million in England alone."

Noticeable that the new Labour government in the UK gave more of a pay rise to public servants in 2024 than FF/FG did in Ireland.

A paltry 3.2% pay rise in Ireland in 2024.

Need to be specific what they will be doing, they will mean test the winter fuel allowance. They are not withdrawing it from all pensioners.

They will also be raising taxes and that is something they said they would not do to working people, if you want to get your attacks in on them now. They may not raise NI or income tax but if they put up council tax it will hit working people so that is another broken promise.

You do realise they have been left in a terrible position? Sure it may not be the apocalypse that they are portraying it as but it is not good. They will have to make decisions that is going to hurt. This will be on the back of giving pay rises to a lot of government employees. But it should mean no more strikes in the NHS or schools and that will be a good thing surely, but it will come at a cost.

I think you aren't seeing a lot of discussion around it because I doubt a lot of posters here will say you need to give fuel allowance to someone that does not need it. Also I think a lot of posters understand the position they find themselves. If anything this give them more of an excuse to get ask for a closer relationship with the EU to negate the damage done to the country.