University funding - BBC coverage

What really bugs me about the last few weeks' coverage of the student fees issue on the BBC has been its concentration on the Liberal Democrats' agonies: which way to vote, whether Dr Cable would vote for the policy he himself was introducing, would the Parliamentary party split two, three or four ways?  Questions over Nick Clegg's personal credibility and ability to hold the party together are all very well, but compromises are the stuff of coalition.  Does it make any sense to roast the LibDems for a pre-election promise that clearly didn't convince enough of the electorate to put them into overall control?  No.

The much bigger issue that's been obscured by the soap opera focus on the LibDems is the change in university funding.  Though there's been no White Paper, precious little news coverage and not much debate or comment in the press, a huge shift is taking place in the central Government funding of higher education, reducing the annual budget from £7.1 billion to £4.2 billion in 2014-15.  With the ring-fencing of funding for the teaching of science, technology, engineering and maths subjects, other subjects will have little or no public funding.

Very quickly, we could end up with 'universities' that are nothing of the sort, with very little teaching of non-technical subjects.  Change of this scale should be debated properly before being enacted.  The BBC could and should make a better contribution to the understanding of this issue.

Reasons to be cheerful

Now that we've left behind the mess of last weekend, I'm feeling optimistic.  It looked as if there was a real possibility (as seen from outside) that a Lib-Lab pact could be formed, keeping Brown in power for months or years.  The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats seemed to be struggling to reach an agreement, and various die-hards in both parties were telling us all about red lines.

In important ways, the components of the new Government fit my views perfectly.  I'm an economic conservative, strongly so; I believe in markets, opportunity, rewards for enterprise and penalties for failure, and having been a borrower, I hate uncontrolled debt and spending money that can't be paid back.  Socially, many of my views are liberal; some views expressed by readers of some of the more right-wing papers make me sick, and I think that we should fight hard to maintain the tolerance for which this country is renowned. This Government can steer a middle path, leaving extremists behind - the best of all worlds.

I think that both party leaders have played a blinder.  Clegg has achieved more for the Lib-Dems than could have been thought possible last weekend, and Cameron has gone further too.  Maybe Brown's death-bed conversion to the faith of electoral reform was the catalyst, but never mind.

The combined parties have offered Cameron a much larger pool of talent from which to fill the roles in the new Government.  His appointment of more Lib-Dems than demanded by the coalition agreement is a master stroke, money in the bank when decision-making gets tough in the fight against Labour's legacy of debt.

All in all, it's been a great start.  I'm concerned about electoral reform; I don't want to see BNP MPs at Westminster. The horse trading that we saw in the last week could have allowed a cynical Lib-Lab pact to deny the people the change of Government that we so badly needed; 'first past the post' elections usually allow the electorate to choose.  I'm nervous about the consequences of fixed term Parliaments that stop the country from voting when a vote might be the best solution.  But these questions can at least be addressed with careful consideration rather than as the sort of stitch-up deal that could have happened.  Reasons to be cheerful...