DEFENDING government plans to introduce new, devastating, "top-up" tuition fees of up to E10,500 per year for university students, Education minister Margaret Hodge arrogantly asserted "There is no such thing as a free lunch."
Setting aside the eating habits of this millionaire Labourite, such an argument ignores the fact that almost every one of Blair's cabinet enjoyed the benefits of a university education largely funded by grants -and yet they are the very people now seeking to deny this to future generations of students.
The stench of hypocrisy grows even worse when Hodge trots out the tired -and highly dubious - statistic claiming that the "average" graduate earns an estimated £400,000 more over a lifetime than the "average" person without a university degree.
But since much the extra money required to plug the gap in university funding is required to finance the government's target of getting 50% of school leavers to go to university, it is self-evident that an ever-declining proportion of future graduates will secure any significant earning advantage.
In any case, if the reason why students should be taxed is because graduates earn more money, then surely the logic is to tax the rich, rather than victimise young people seeking to learn at the point they have least money in their pockets.
Already student debt is becoming a devastating reality for hundreds of thousands of working class young people pursuing higher education.
Year after year colleges and universities
And saddest of all, it means thousands of working class young people, despite their talent and ambition to learn, either being wages, and their treatment by the company.
BMW has now come up with a slightly changed offer, including at least inflation, and a small guaranteed bonus in the second year. This is being recommended by the union leadership and will be voted on in the coming weeks.
The major reason why the situation has got so bad in the motor Industry is that the unions have allowed the companies to play off one group of workers against the others, in the name of competition.
The worst of the changes has been the introduction of agency working into the motor industry. These workers are almost