Captain SKA - Liar Liar

If it doesn't get to number one for Christmas, never mind, lets just get it to number one and keep it there. I want to hear this on Radio One.

Hope

There has to be a fairer way to fund higher education than imposing the dread stone weight of debt around the ankles of those who chose the path of knowledge. It is not only that individual who benefits from learning.

This morning, did you read a newspaper? Drive a car? Have you ever been to the doctors? Perhaps you had a child, delivered by a midwife? Maybe your children go to school? Perhaps you are reading this on a computer? Maybe you take photographs, cook food, go to restaurants. Are you or is someone you know on medication? Have you ever in your life been on an aeroplane? Do you read books?

We all benefit from people who have had a university education in almost everything we do in everyday life.

Students have already spent up to 3 years of their lives not earning, in some cases up to seven years, making their way through college courses, some in pursuit of learning, others in pursuit of dreams and a few just treading water until they find the right path.

From cleaning the house with a vacuum cleaner, to driving, washing, in so very many ways engineering, design students benefit everyone. So how can it possibly be unfair for everyone to contribute to the education of our population? And students are not just kids leaving school, but sometimes mature students who have realised through experience the paths their lives should go, who need a qualification in order to realise their dream. How can a father or mother with two young children ever now take that brave decision to leave work in favour of three years of hard work and learning, with fees to pay and a family to feed? And students with disabilities. How can they be expected to take on so much debt?

Why punish those even more but weighting their lives with a growing debt, for if they don't achieve the £21 000 a year and start paying back it will grow.

If you live in a cave, don't drive, have nothing technical in your cave, never take medicine and have no kids etc, ok, maybe you should get a tax rebate. Otherwise in our glorious and beautiful interconnected web of life everybody benefits so everybody should contribute, levelling the playing field just a little and sharing the burden.

I for one would rather invest in people, in their potential, in a brighter future for our youth than in banks.
And I would celebrate the colaboration of art and science, not favour one above the other. The world needs its dreamers and thinkers and sceince and art so much closer than so many people understand. Next time you vacuum your house lust look at the amazing piece of everyday design and technology you are using.

I would share the cost of educating our population, I would celebrate that web that connects us all to each other, strengthen it. That is the true meaning of The Big Society, if only Cameron had the whit to realise it.

Just because the vote for the increase in fees has gone through government it does not mean that the fight against this is over. The bill has a long way to go and if there is no one in opposition who has the powers to stand against this retrograde piece of legislation then we will have to do it ourselves. So if you blog, then cut, copy, paste or link to this post. If you are facebook then please share this post.

What I think about the governments vote on increasing university fees in the UK

When people ask me what I do I usually say, I write and illustrate books and I am an artist. That is the short answer.

This is the long answer.

I work at home in a small house in Pembrokeshire. For the most part I illustrate books. At the moment I work for only one publisher, Frances Lincoln in London. They employ about ten people directly, designers, editors, sales people, pr people. Indirectly there are freelance sales staff also.

The books are scanned in the UK so in an indirect way part of my painting also helps keep people at the repro house in work.

The books are all printed in China, which then takes me into the import export business for the first time, and shipping. So printed and bound books are shipped back to the UK where they are housed in a warehouse distribution point in Oxfordshire, Bookpoint. I know that by this stage they are a tiny drop in an ocean of books, as Bookpoint is huge, but it is all the drops gathered together that keeps all the people working in that place and each drop is important.

From there my books go out to book sellers, usually independents in the UK as the chains these days only ever seem to stock the really big sellers, but none the less my books give content to these shops and therefore indirectly again keep people in work.

Meanwhile the sales staff have been busy at Frances Lincoln. British children’s books are some of the best in the world and my latest book is selling very well in France and also in Denmark, Spain ( in Spanish and Catalan) and in the USA and Australia, New Zealand and Canada. I tried to count up how many books at one time but my head gets confused after so many hundreds of thousands, all printed and shipped and sold around the world and in the UK. ( Can You See a Little Bear alone sold in excess of 230 000, The Greatest Gift over 100 000- I liked the Greek edition best).

I also sell paintings, privately and through a gallery, which again is a contribution to the income of another family.
In the past I have worked designing card for card companies and helped those companies grow from tiny companies to turning over millions.

More important than all of this is that if all goes well the books end up in the hands of families who then share the stories. If I am lucky then they are taken into the hearts of those families, children sleep with the book tucked under their pillow, dream with the stories and wrap themselves up in the world of books.

I went to college for 4 years. I had the minimum grant, despite the fact that my parents were not well off, and my fees were paid. Last year I paid more in tax in one year than the sum total of my fees and 3 years grant.
If I had not had my grant, just enough to enable me to pay for my digs, a part time job paid for food and paint, I would have left school at 18 and got a job in the porcelain factory in Worcester.

The Royal Worcester Porcelain factory did offer me a job when I left school, but they also said they thought I would do better to go to college and follow my heart.
The factory is now closed.

If I had faced having to take out a student loan to pay for my fees, food, accommodation, materials there is no way that I would have even considered going to college. Debt was simply a thing you did not enter into.