Ben G.T. Coumbe

What is happening to house building in London is a national disgrace and a huge economic own goal. Worse, it stymies social mobility, locking young people from poorer families and from other parts of the UK out of the London labour market.

Fluid restriction in patients with heart failure: a systematic review heart.bmj.com/content/early/…

In 1973, petrol price surged - but no one thought of asking the gvt for an energy bailout. Now, it's the default reaction. The cost? More debt, higher tax and interest rates, cost-of-living squeezes. Matthew Syed on the case for breaking the cycle:- thetimes.com/comment/column…

The fact that mortgage rates have remained high has really disguised the massive inflation-adjusted repricing in London property. The real-terms price of flats isn't that far above the post-financial crisis lows any more.

@RobLaurensonD4P @DrLKVaughan Schrodinger’s examiner!

@DrLKVaughan The NHS paying for examiners and examiners not being paid can both be simultaneously true. It would be both utterly scandalous and totally unsurprising.

Wow. The NHS pays for examiners for secondary care specialty postgraduate exams. But not for GPs. GP registrars fork out.

It’s always seemed odd that student loan interest is linked to RPI - when the UK Statistics Authority says RPI isn’t a good measure and experts say it overstates inflation. The pension triple lock uses CPI, yet graduates are charged based on RPI. Very odd.

The justification for charging tuition fees, with reverse triple lock interest, and resulting 9% extra income tax, is the graduate premium. This, you are told, is the extra lifetime earnings from which you will benefit as a degree holder. And we believe that to be between £100,00 - £150,000 over the course of your career. But “believe” is the operative word. The thing is, we don’t know. But the government does. That’s because they have something called LEO data - Longitudinal Education Outcomes. And it tracks the university, course, and earnings of nearly 40 million people. Here’s the kicker: they won’t release the full data to the public, to you. Only to pre-approved researchers. And even then, they don’t get the whole dataset. That’s because pressure groups that represent universities have lobbied for it to remain private. They say you can’t measure the value of an education in a salary. That it’s about the soul and the mind and enrichment and growing up. And I agree with them, if only for the fact that they did have a really specific idea of the value of an education when they were taking my money. And indeed the government does too: +9% on my marginal tax rate. So the ask is simple. Release the records. Let graduates make an informed choice about the actual value of their degree. They just have to press publish. What have they got to hide? x.com/lfg_uk/status/…

We have a student loans system which, on a *massive scale* actively embeds injustice and inequality both between and within generations. And the government apparently has no interest in reforming it.

Student loans. A problem because interest rates are too high, repayment thresholds too low.. and 9 percentage points of extra tax too much. BUT the real problem is our low growth/low productivity economy. If incomes for graduates were higher... none of this would matter so much.

To uprate the state pension by 4.8% and freeze the student loan repayment threshold is one hell of a reveal of the political economy in the UK (and most other DMs).

While plan 2 may have been progressive by design, freezing the repayment thresholds has clearly been regressive The threshold for paying RPI+3% interest will be £53k in 2028. Had it risen with wages, it would have been closer to £70k

Good explanation. I would add that a Plan 2 graduate with a debt of £69,000 or more will actually see their debt pile increase *faster* with every pay rise(1) - because the increasing interest rate outweighs the higher repayments. (1) Between £28,740 and £51,245.

Marginal tax rates for graduates with student loans – add interest and another 6% for postgrads. £25,000: 37% £50,270: 51% £100,000: 71% This issue – I first wrote about it in 2021 – is now beginning to get the political attention it deserves.

The UK has a welfare problem. Millions written off into a system from which far roo few ever emerge. Dumped on fringes of society - thousands more signed on every day. The waste of money is bad: the waste of lives far, far worse.

@medicalmodelbri @kcisc Pretty sad how medicine has fallen- it used to be you needed a medical degree, 3-5 yrs general medicine, 7 years cardiology training and professional exams. Now it seems you need a little more than bravado.

@BBCNewsnight Particularly enjoyed the comment on the “reverse triple lock” to describe the interest on student loans. Punishing success. @OliDugmore

"There is a real, deep sickness for my generation..." Oli Dugmore, the New Statesman's Digital Editor, on the burden of student loan debt. #Newsnight

The UK Medical Training Bill is coming forward as an emergency piece of legislation next Tuesday. It has some merit, and most people will agree with the principle behind it, but it does pose a question...read on... A🧵 1/12

The data here tells two different stories depending on how you read it. Story one: London is the world’s 4th largest startup hub, raised $17.7B in 2025, produced more unicorns than Berlin, Paris, and Tokyo combined. Success. Story two: London’s stock exchange fell to 23rd globally for IPO fundraising, behind Mexico and Oman. 88 companies delisted or fled in 2024, the largest exodus since the financial crisis. Deliveroo finally turned profitable after years of struggle, and DoorDash immediately swooped in to buy it for less than half its IPO price. The pattern is consistent. Freetrade built a profitable trading app, got acquired by IG Group for £160M after targeting a £700M valuation. Runna built a successful fitness app, Strava bought it. ARM, DeepMind, Skyscanner, Shazam. The exit playbook is always the same: build in London, sell to San Francisco. What London actually built is Europe’s most efficient farm system for US acquirers. The city does the expensive, risky work of finding founders, funding early rounds, and proving product-market fit. American companies wait until the risk is de-risked, then buy the winners at discounts enabled by London’s shrinking public markets. The $17.7B in venture funding measures inputs, not outcomes. The outcome is that UK startups raised all that money, then got absorbed into US companies before they could compound at scale. Being 4th in funding and 23rd in IPOs tells you exactly where the value is leaking.

Since the 1970s, old age govt spending has increased while public investment has fallen in many rich countries. By @jburnmurdoch ft.com/content/b4d2c7…

Student loans are a lifetime stealth tax. I am one of the first people to be bestowed the honour of paying £9,000 a year for uni. Although, really, it cost me £14,120 a year, because of my maintenance loan, and the interest charged throughout my degree. I graduated with £42k of debt, in 2015. By the time I was earning enough to actually reduce that debt it was 2022, and I owed £47k. To be clear, I’d been making payments over the years in between but wasn’t paid enough to combat the interest I was being charged. Unlike most other commercial loans, where a higher salary might command a more favourable interest rate, British student finance charges you more interest the better paid you are in order to slow down your ability to pay it off. What’s more the govt can and has unilaterally changed the thresholds where these different interest rates kick in, and the interest rate they’re kindly willing to charge. Generally, RPI+3%. If a commercial lender behaved like that, you’d have a case for breach of contract, and we would call it loan sharking. What’s more, if you were rich enough to pay your fees off up front or shortly thereafter, you’re not liable for any of this interest. When it comes to student loans, the rich pay less. They can opt out of paying 9% of their income to the Student Loans Company in perpetuity. It’s the opposite of how a fair tax system works. For clarity, this hasn’t stopped me living my life. I’m married, have a kid, and own my home. I’ve got a well paid job and will carry on cracking on. I made a choice, agreed to the terms, and am happy with my life. But for many, many others that’s not the case. The most common living arrangement for men in their 30s like me used to be with their spouse, now it’s with their parents. If you wanted to alleviate the cost of living for a downwardly mobile graduate class, you could do a lot worse than wiping their student debt and giving them back 9% of their pay cheque. Would stimulate the economy, address mental health issues, and probably improve the birth rate. Our latest cohort of grads will be repaying into their 60s. And, just a thought, maybe education isn’t a commodity. Maybe it’s a public good.