I forgot to tell you about the excitement that occurred the other day. There was a sheep in our front garden munching on the hedge. I was convinced it had come to see us and was ready to invite it in, but my Mistress seemed more concerned to return it to its rightful home. Anyway, by the time she got her shoes on and went outside the sheep had wandered down the road. She rang the owner of the sheep but he couldn’t find where it had gone, so she did the only thing you can in the modern age and harnessed the power of the internet to email lots of other people in the village to look out for the sheep and who it belonged to. I’m pleased to say that after her 24 hours of freedom she was caught looking at her reflection in the French windows of someone’s house. I don’t know whether she was on the old ‘does my bum look big in this’ mission or whether she thought she had found another member of her flock and was happy to have a friend. Either way, we were glad that she was returned home safely.
Like many other people at the moment, I am concerned about university tuition fees. However I think there might be an equation that is being missed. Money is not limitless. Whatever services we have need to be paid for by us, the tax paying public. It is not some faceless Government that come up with the money, it is you, your family, your friends and you neighbours. We are struggling to pay for pensions because everyone is living longer. We are struggling to pay for university fees because so many more people are going to university. Either we need to reduce the number of people who go into higher education to make it possible for the taxes to foot the bill, or we need a different way to raise the money. If I were being really controversial I would point out that there is a limit to the number or people with a university education that are needed to fill the jobs that the country requires. However, I do believe in equality of opportunity and if you want to make university education available to all, then you have to accept that the old means of paying is not going to work. Rioting and demonstrating is not going to change the economics of the situation.