Blah.

[deathcookie]

Student finance can bite me. After rent and tuition fees are taken off, my loan will give me the grand total of £5.70 a week to live on next year. Whee! Thank goodness I had the foresight to hold back £2,000 in savings.

In their infinite wisdom, the LEA assessed me on my mother's earnings, so slapped tuition fees on me, and reduced the amount of

Comments

[beingjdc]

You need to persuade your LEA that you and your parents are irreconcilably estranged. Or you need to get married and divorced very quickly.

http://www.dorsetcc.gov.uk/index.jsp?articleid=2763

Make sure you write to your MP for advice, citing clearly that your parent has refused to pay. There's not much they can do, but eventually if everyone in this situation makes them aware of it, they'll put pressure on to make parental contributions compulsory.

[deathcookie]

A firm but well-meaning letter will be sent later today. The last time I wrote a letter was when Jane Griffiths was still an MP, and getting a form 'thank you for your suggestions' letter is a little disheartening.

I'm also going to research more facts and figures, so I don't sound like a stupid and ill-informed child. :P

[beingjdc]

Er, Jane Griffiths *is* still an MP.

[deathcookie]

I was tired and phrased that all wrong. Meh. What I meant is that she's not the MP in my area anymore.

[beingjdc]

Oh, have you moved?

[deathcookie]

Not recently; the last letter I wrote to an MP was when I was about 14, and a lot more idealistic than I am now.

[beingjdc]

So who is your MP now, Martin Salter? He's done a lot of work on the student finance stuff, though that doesn't necessarily mean he has a cunning plan.

[deathcookie]

Yep, Martin Salter, MP for Reading West. He opposes top-up fees, and he's pretty vociferous about the Higher Education Bill.

Cunning plan or not, writing to him won't hurt, and it'll give me something to do for the day.

[beingjdc]

Opposes them in the sense of having voted in favour of them, but there we are.