And, tucked away in the middle of Cameron's speech today, was a little nugget of gold.
"So we will say to churches, to voluntary bodies, to private companies, to private schools come into the state sector, find the parents and the children who have a simple regulatory regime, per capita funding and we can have those new schools so we can really drive up standards"
Per-capita funding. That vital old policy, under a much less scary-sounding new name. Clever boy.
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Some good stuff here - Tim Worstall suggested I drop-in.
Thanks for pointing out that nugget about (nobody's listening are they?) ...vouchers... So far as I can tell it is the only substantive policy on offer from either side, and a good one (albeit very partial).
I liked the previous essay on education too - I'd done some of these back of envelope calculations myself, but it's nice to see them confirmed by an accountant.
The worry about vouchers is that Blair really wanted to remove the cap on university fees a few years ago, and almost-completely failed to do so - so there there is still no market in EU-undergraduate university fees (they are all, except three places, the same 3100 pounds).
Also, the government sets a cap on the max number of students which it will fund at each university (with penalties for exceeding this) - which prevents the more popular from expanding as much as they could in order to force students to attend less popular universities and keep them solvent (but at the cost of reducing overall participation in universities, by reducing demand). For some reason, nobody seems interested in this fact - and the even the popular universities, who would n=benefit from removing the numbers cap, are keeping quiet about it.
Blair was defeated by the labour left who attacked variable fees on the basis that they were inegalitarian, and the lie that they discriminated against 'the poor' (of course the poor never have paid fees and still do not).
It will be a much tougher fight to introduce a per-capita/ voucher system - and I'm not sure I can see any of that kind of toughness in Cameron, but I hope I am wrong.
I also liked the stuff about modern Scottish politics - I used to live in Glasgow and before that Penicuik. The dominance of statist leftism was depressing, and is having its baleful effect as the gap between England (ie. South East England) and Scotland continues to grow.
Thanks Bruce. Not sure why I'm listed as an accountant - either I must have pressed a button by mistake, or Blogger assumes I'll say something, and starts me off under 'A' automatically. I'm a jobhunting graduate at the moment, and occasional rare-book dealer. And my calculation's just as back-of-an-envelope as yours, I guess, based on Parliamentary answers and news reports. Makes you wonder why no-one else has done it, though...
My family's in academia too - St Andrews - and people do wonder why top universities put up with everything the state forces on them - the low pay, the distortions of research assessment, the Laura Spence sneers, etc. Trouble is, there aren't any votes in universities, and none of the VCs or principals has the balls to threaten a UDI, as I suppose you'd call it.
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