This thread is not simply about education, it reveals far wider and inherently sinister motives. Nor is the move away from Erasmus to a less advantageous Turing initiative about money and educational progress, as the Johnson government would have people believe.
Removal of Erasmus is singularly about nationalistic politics and planned isolation - except for the wealthy. It’s about generating an "Us Against Them" culture where choosing whether to listen to "them" is removed as an option.
Wilhelm Pieck - Walter Ulbricht - Willi Stoph - Erich Honecker. Johnson would fit comfortably into that sequence. He shares their erstwhile determination to isolate their nation from the reality of having a healthy relationship with neighbouring states by reducing contact among those who are our future.
Johnson believes it to be better for his nationalist ideals that we do not fraternise with people who recognise him for the foolish and incompetent, dishonest and untrustworthy character that he is.
In 1961 the East German regime built the Berlin Wall to prevent their flawed ideology from being exposed through contact with their fellow citizens in the free West. TV and radio stations were already being jammed but contact between peoples still occurred and this inevitably caused discontent.
Moving forward sixty years it’s reported that this year the flow of applications from EU candidates for entry to UK universities has slowed to a trickle, a situation financially very damaging to the entire education sector. Without the income from these students, there is an unavoidably damaging effect to our own students: one can be certain that government will not fill the funding gap.
Until now, 50% of post-graduate applications were from overseas students: this year at some universities, numbers for these flagship earners have dropped to 10%.
These are lost exports..!!
University Applications From EU Students Down By 40%
Is the government concerned..? No, they are not. On the contrary it fits their agenda.
The refusal of Johnson to allow young UK students to have the advantage of continued participation in the Erasmus programme is his personal version of the Berlin Wall. The deterrence of students from EU to UK institutions squares the circle and ensures that we do not endanger the effects of government propaganda by exposing our youngest and brightest to the truth. It fits well with their lack of effort to negotiate recovery of all those benefits lost to UK travellers through the tragedy of Brexit, making UK residents the second class citizens of Europe.
Significantly, it’s not only EU students looking elsewhere that runs our country down. Brexit and it’s ambassadors have trashed our reputation abroad. Once, we only ever heard about the Conservatives as "The Nasty Party". Now, Britain itself is referred to as "The Nasty Country".
The Berlin Wall survived for almost thirty years and in that time it oppressed those it entrapped. Johnson’s psychological barrier must not be permitted to become established and must be challenged at every attempt.
The excuse that there are ample world-wide university programmes now available is designed to give the impression that Johnson has somehow introduced new opportunities. He has not. Any opportunities now available were already there in addition to Erasmus. What he has done is to ensure that opportunities for the wealthy remain, but that those of modest means are not exposed to what he sees as dangerous influences.
If the consequences of this sabotage were entirely financial, that would be bad enough, but it goes much further. We are now seen as a discredited, mean-spirited and unpleasant nation where racism is not only tolerated but acceptable to the point where it is becoming normalised, even in our national leader.
Over many decades, students from all over the world have attended our schools and universities, many going on to be leading figures in their own nations, particularly in politics and industry. They developed a fondness for Britain as an enlightened land of education and personal advancement. That attitude to Britain was greatly influenced by the time they spent here in our education system. Johnson's current attitude to this important group of future leaders will not serve us well in the future.
Boris Johnson is a prime illustration that one can purchase education, but not intelligence. He can get away with this for a while. He and his Brexiter base has no interest in education, having had only fleeting and mostly unsuccessful contact with it.