What does 'as a concept' mean'? A good idea until it's your property defaced, damaged, destroyed or a friend or family member injured or killed I guess?
Students are not 'charged' 10K. It's nothing up-front and the only paid back years and years later. Might stop media studies, beauty therapy and all the other crap courses.

How pro-violent would you be if a member of your family was caught up in a nasty violent incident albeit as an innocent bystander? Would you say; ahh never mind they have a right to violently protest or would you be pretty annoyed at the anarchisitc mob that killed/maimed your loved one? Violence does not respect or recognize boundaries and rarely discriminates.
Your remark is ill considered.

[QUOTE=HBG;10255750] Has Spain hit an iceberg? Things may be bad but I don' think we all have to run for the lifeboats.

Yeah, university is the answer.... what the question is, now thats another thing.

[QUOTE=HBG;10255750] Sheffield is a very good university. 5 nobel prize winners came from the department I studied in, that was good enough to convince me. All my employers tend to agree, most the people I work with were Oxbridge educated.

As for getting out of Spain We've never been happier, especially since we've moved to Asturias. We have no reason to go back, and as long as our work continues to hold up, we never will

But Spain is also one of the biggest contributors, and has been since at least 2007. Since then it has just about broken even.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europea...tics#EU_budget

The UK gets two-thirds of its contribution back, so that isn't really comparable!

This money was never a charity handout. Its main purpose was to improve the infrastructure in less developed countries so that the more affluent countries could benefit. For example French and German factories set up plants in parts of Spain where the labour is cheap, and needed good transport links. Increased prosperity also enlarges the market for goods produced in the affluent countries.

Yes, a nice ultruistic idea of supporting less well off countries and helping them to climb up to the status of the richer countries.
So what went wrong with Greece - just living off someone else's fatted pig.
And considering the historical preference for the short stubby plantins why oh why did they open an office in Barbados to give grants to the long bent bannanas that were supposedly banned because they were not straight.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...a-growers.html

Perhaps they thought they were setting up an office in Granada, but someone in Brussels typed in Grenada and was too frightened to admit their mistake.

And all by an organisation that hasn't had its accounts approved for 14 years.

It's immaterial really what you contribute, it's difference between that and what you get back that is important. People here tell us Spain is the equal of UK, many will tell us it's superior in every way, some that business is booming, so it begs the question why Spain has always been a net recipient and UK a net contributor. I think it was last year the UK's annual contribution went up over 70%, it's costs UK £53 million a day, it's taking the orina. As for the enlarging the market of the affluent countries (whoever they are) the UK runs a huge trading deficit with the EU, our increasing markets are outside of the EU.

Well, I guess there are lots of historical reasons. I would never say that Spain is the equal of the UK. Spain started from a much lower economic base after WW2, it didn't get Marshall Plan money from the US like the rest of Europe, its development was held back in many ways by the dictatorship. But there were parts of the UK that did receive a lot of EU investment, like the Northeast - same thing happened, multinational car plants relocated there and they became more prosperous.

Is the reason why the UK's net contribution went up suddenly because the rebate it got for not getting CAP money went down, from two-thirds to less than 40%?

If it was really not in the UK's interests economically to be in the EU then surely the Tories and big business would be unanimous in wanting to pull out, but they aren't, are they? They must be getting something out of it?

Sheffield University is top rate, ranked 8th in the Complete University Guide. Are you thinking of Sheffield Hallam University, formerly Sheffield Poly? But there's not much wrong with that either - it's 49th out of 119 in the guide.

It's rated 28th when I just checked.

You're quite right! Typo, sorry.

28th out of 119 still not bad though!

Read this recently, talking about ratings of universities, the first Spanish one was 200th.
http://www.abc.es/20120816/sociedad/...208152209.html
It's from the Chinese, but Spanish universities fare no better in the other surveys, the last highest I saw was around position 150. So that makes Sheffield look brilliant!

They're getting there slowly, the calls for getting out get stronger all the time.
Don't forget the Tories got where they are thanks in part to a promised referendum. As yet it hasn't arrived, but Dave knew what the electorate wanted, that's why it was in their manifesto. Now Dave has told us 'It's time to open the door and consider a referendum' We're still waiting, Dave!

I get the suspicion the rankings may need altering soon

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education...ondon-Met.html