Get rid of tuition fees. All university education should be free.

All university-level education should be free. Those people crying out for the good old days when fewer people went to university have got completely the wrong end of the stick.
100 years ago, the same could be said for high/secondary school – why do we need our working classes to be able to read and write, do reasonably complex maths, understand any scientific principles at all?
We live in an age where (almost) everything we do, everything we work with, play with, consume and produce are linked inextricably to very complex scientific products and concepts. Some of the people arguing here went to school before DNA was discovered, for heaven’s sake.
School children now learn about the structure and principles of DNA, particle physics, climate modelling, computing science, software development, and other stuff that didn’t exist 30 years ago.
It’s simply not the case that there’s an “ideal” percentage of the population that should have a university education. As society and technology progresses, there is simply more to know and more to understand. This has been the case since the dawn of human civilisation and will continue to be the case until civilisation ceases to be.
As a society, we owe it to ourselves to aim to provide a university (and higher, if possible) education to every person that desires it and is able to do so. The progress and survival of the human race to some degree relies upon us getting this right, not penny-pinching and making people pay for the “privilege” of developing their (and as a result, society’s) skillset and knowledge.
Just as we reap the benefits of all children going to school up to the age of sixteen, the benefits of nearly everyone in society having a higher level education wouldn’t take long to be realised, through the development of life-enhancing and preserving technologies, to more rapidly developing alternative energy sources and mitigating climate change.
There is also such a thing as knowledge for knowledge’s sake. A more educated society is a fairer, more equal, and (hopefully) happier society.
Put simply, higher education benefits all of us, not just the person being educated.

Mountain Bike Erosion and Trail Use Study

My dissertation from my degree at Nottingham Trent University, studying the erosional effects of mountain biking, walking, and horse riding on different trails. The study also looked at the social interactions between the different groups of people using the park.

The social and environmental effects of mountain biking at bestwood park in nottinghamshire

If you would like to reference this study, please let me know by commenting below, or send me an email at If you would like any further details, or access to raw data, also get in touch and I’ll see what I can do.