Martin Lewis überfällt Badenoch bei Good Morning Britain wegen Studienkreditplan | Kemi Badenoch

He has to do this

He’s spent the last few years telling all and sundry what a good idea it is to take out a student loan, and any voices saying ‘hang on, the government’s got considerable flexibility in the T&Cs to alter thresholds and interest rates’ were ridiculed or drowned out (often simple because ‘Martin says’

Not that I’m agreeing with the government’s direction of travel. I think thresholds should be reconsidered.

Plus looking again at the whole scheme. I don’t think it can be weeded up for those already with loans. But going forward, perhaps a more straightforward ‘graduate tax’ which pays for grants for fees/living costs. Difficulty being that such a change might need a large sum of money upfront, and the government’s not exactly awash with cash

Wasn’t he a massive advocate for the loan system when the tories uplifted the fees in 2012?

It is funny how he has shifted on this yet doesn’t bring up his past views on this and the impact it had

He should have been the one doing the interview. He would have eviscerated her.

In fact I imagine he wanted to do it  but Kemi team would only accept Ball, so he ambushed her instead.

Why has the narrative seem like it flipped overnight? All I heard for the last 2 decades was nothing but positve about student loans, Off everyone Its not really a loan, Its an investment, you don’t pay it back if you aren’t earning enough now literally it seems overnight everyone is like abolish it or stop payments of it? I don’t get it.

Meanwhile the BBC are doing what they always do by pandering and giving special slots to Reform.

Lewis is 100% correct, there’s far too much focus on interest rates and nowhere near enough on repayment thresholds, even though the thresholds have a far bigger impact on most graduates.

He advocated for the loans at the time because (unless you were on a six figure salary) interest was largely irrelevant. The payment threshold was high enough that most people would only be paying a couple of hundred quid a year, so by the time the loan got wiped most students wouldn’t even have paid back the amount they took out. He naively however assumed that the government would keep the threshold up with wage increases, which hasn’t happened.

In 2018 the threshold was £25,000 whilst the median wage in 2018 was just over £24k. That meant lower income graduates didn’t have had to pay a penny of their loan back. Even middle earners would have been paying 9% back on only a small portion of their salary (since you only pay 9% on what is over the threshold), I think when I got my first job after uni I was paying about a tenner a month.

The threshold however hasn’t kept up with average wages at all, the threshold is now £28,470 despite the median wage being just over £39k. That means a lot of low income graduates now have to pay back some of their loan (despite the degree not helping their career) and middle income earners have gone from only have to pay a couple of hundred quid a year in repayments to instead having to pay back a couple of thousand a year, meaning interest suddenly does become relevant.

Not a fan of the Tories or Kemi but I thought she handled herself very well there!

I’ve always looked at it from a carers point of view

A carer has to pay for themselves to be trained to look after an old person as well as pay taxes so that an old person can get a state pension but the old person doesn’t need to pay tax towards the carers training or pension.

Money is just going up to older people and never coming down and we aren’t even talking about billionaires taking advantage yet to show how fucked young people are. The investment into young people and the future is a disgrace.

Maybe he should take a huge pay cut and go become an mp then chancellor / leader etc.