Tuition fees

Coverage of UK higher education often focuses on the £9,000 per year paid by most domestic undergraduates. I don't see much likelihood of immediate change. Universities need the money, but there's little public support for increasing student debt (or for government subsidies).

Still, the government has scrapped VAT exemptions for private schools. This has led to many day school fees rising to over £20,000. (Eton's fees are rising to £63,000, but I'm not clear whether that's tuition-only or includes board.)

For another point of comparison, a friend just posted that four Oasis tickets (for the seats/date he wants) are currently being advertised for over £25,000 via re-sellers.

Maybe the university fees aren't so bad in comparison...

A ban on outdoor smoking

According to BBC reports, the new Labour government (not to be confused with a New Labour government) is considering a ban on smoking in certain outdoor spaces. This might initially sound quite draconian, given that smoking outdoors is not generally so dangerous to others, but actually the places proposed - thinks like pub beer gardens - are places where one might well be in close proximity to other people's second-hand smoke. Whether or not this is a proportionate measure, it is potentially justified by harm to others, rather than paternalism.

Oxford uses the Alternative Vote

Unfortunately, I missed the registration deadline to vote for Oxford's next chancellor, but I was interested to see that they use a (slightly modified) AV system for the election. I blogged quite extensively about AV back in the day of the UK referendum (e.g. here and here).

It doesn't seem that AV is particularly likely to be adopted for general elections these days, even if the recent election (parliament; BBC; Wikipedia) has sparked some renewed debate about the problems with FPTP (e.g. this short feature, posted in the run-up to the election).

I assume Oxford's use of AV constitutes an endorsement of sorts and, at least, an illustration of how it works.