3 Comments

On the first part of today's 2Things. Students in Scotland do not pay. NatCen should have been doing there Social Attitudes survey in the 4 parts of the UK. The results would be radically different

Expand full comment

I know that NatCen has a big sample and do research the whole of the UK. The example of tuition fees was just an example: generally public spending has been loaded against the young over the past decade and a half: you have the Triple Lock, but you close down the SureStart programme or other childcare support, for example. But I agree that there might be differences in these generational views in Scotland and Wales.

Expand full comment

I just went back to look at the chapter, and it doesn’t seem to have considered whether this is different in Scotland, which for my money would have been a good way to test the hypothesis. Disappointingly, the discussion about left/right attitudes refers exclusively to Conservative and Labour voters, which suggests a focus on the (large) English samples. It’s also worth noting (Figure 7 in the generational divide chapter) that the cyclical effects on views on tax and spend are quite strong—about a decade for upswing and downswing—and that different generations do track each other. We’re definitely on an upswing at the moment.

Expand full comment