In a country where money can be found to bomb the Middle East, buy a royal baby an £8,000 wendy house, invest in new nuclear technology and cover MP's 'expenses', there ceases to be any logical explanation as to why student grants should be scrapped.
Due to their use of an obscure Commons Committee measure, the Tories have been able to ram through legislation axing student grants without a full parliamentary debate and scrutiny. Such sly and underhand tactics are far from democratic and will effectively see the lifeline and opportunity for higher education offered to thousands of working class students destroyed.
Axing student grants leaves the opportunity of university for those whose mummy's and daddy's can afford it, regardless of their own educational prospects or work ethic. Kids with triple the talent and half the cash stand in a worse and much difficult position than those who may well be less talented but are financially better off. The whole thing screams elitism. By limiting the opportunity for students of lower income families to go to university we inevitably risk losing the talent of so many young minds and artists. Imagine never unveiling the cure for cancer, the next generations J.K.Rowling or Louis Theroux because they were all unable to afford to go to university. (What on earth would the world Netflix and chill too?!) The cuts are undeniably classist reforms put forward by men in suits who simply don't know what it's like to struggle or be without, deluded by the idea that talent only exists where money does.
Whilst David Cameron may have spent his student years exploring his sexuality with dead pigs, a lot of young people in Britain actually go to university to better themselves. Yet this opportunity of social mobility is now effectively destroyed and open only to those who are privileged enough to afford it and ironically do not need it. These are people usually from the same social backgrounds... as if the people at those at the top of every field aren't already white, rich and Eton enough? It creates a boring and talentless Britain, a perfect reflection of David Cameron if that's what he was aiming for.
Despite the Tory spiel, axing grants doesn't just mean that a lot more students are going to have to substitute everything in their cupboards for the Aldi version of it (aren't we all already doing that?!) and it genuinely means that some of us will be unable to afford to go to university or, at the very least, have a say in where or what we study. It paints a bigger picture of the widening gap between the rich and the poor as a whole and a future society very much unequal and very much in need of grants...not debt.