Uni used to be for better students & fully funded, it is the mad idea that everyone goes that has resulted in massive student debts and bugger all trained apprentices.
This really annoys me. Its so pointless. Why get £30K plus of debt to do a degree that gives you zero chance of getting a job?
When I went to uni (back in 92) you went to do something relatively academic, science, engineering etc. It was bloody hard work, our lectures started at 7am and went on till 9pm some days! Numbers were lower but it was sustainable, no need to pay fees and all students were on campus in halls so no issues for local residents.
A mate of mine sent his 18 year old daughter to some agencies to get some office admin work over the summer and couldn't even get signed up without a degree. Why on earth do you need a degree for that?
Houses, we need to build social/council houses & keep them, not sell them off. That is why there is this huge rental market & loads of people in rent arrears or being evicted. Like back to the 30's when my Dads Family were known to have done the old moonlight flit, except of course these days you can't easily disappear to evade your unaffordable debts.
Read a report recently about right to buy. 8/10 that were sold are now rented out by private landlords, often back to local councils at a huge premium. And only 1 replacement is built for every 10 sold off. Housing is a joke, the conservatives obviously find in funny the way they were laughing about it at PMQs today.
The only people who are buying places are those with money who want more buy to lets. I'm going to be moving up to Cov at some point in the not too distant future and I've been keeping an eye on properties. A lot of them sit on the market, at a reasonable price, for months. Then the price drops and they sell straight away, within days they are listed as rentals. You could easily stop it, make it hard to get buy to let mortgage and hike up tax on income from rent.