I attended the hustings for the Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency last week, my home constituency and, annoyingly, the safe conservative constituency Mr Boris Johnson has decided to run for in his attempt to become Prime Minister, sorry an MP.

I was lucky enough to have my question about maintenance grants put to the panel. The question was simple; almost every normal student I know relies on a combination of the bank of Mum and Dad, a part time job or an overdraft to be able to live at University because maintenance grants simply aren’t enough to cope with a large rent, bills, textbooks and food. This doesn’t appear to be a problem to most MP’s but in the day to day lives of students it has a huge impact. Nobody seems to question why, the only way to get a degree nowadays, is to get yourself into some immediate debt with a very friendly bank.

Mr Johnson’s response to this largely consisted of the idea that in the long term University graduates will earn far more, which is fantastic, but my friend heckled, “How does that help me pay my rent now?” He did not look pleased.

I managed to speak with Mr Johnson at the end of the hustings and put my question to him again, asking if he would pay my rent now and in return I will pay him back later when I’m earning lots of money. I don’t think he found my remark that funny, arguing it would be unfair to have to tax people who haven’t been to University just to subsidise those who do when we will earn a lot more in the future (who knew Boris was a man of the people!). I suggested, since he went to University (studying Classics at Oxford) for free, and now appeared to be doing quite well for himself (earning £143,000 as Mayor of London, £250,000 for a newspaper column in the Daily Telegraph and around £360,000 from book sales) maybe it wouldn’t be totally ridiculous that he could pay some form of tax, as a University graduate, to help us students who are racking up debts. As my friend remarked, he appeared confused about the idea that people live without any money.

His suggestion was that he had not heard of such a policy and none of the other major parties were suggesting it, before somewhat snidely remarking if I could write my proposal down on one side of A4 he would definitely look at it. Well Mr Johnson, as you are inevitably going to win the safe Tory seat I call home, much to my disappointment, you are going to have to at least try to represent my views in Parliament. So here you go. Less than one side of A4 summarising a proposal to tax University graduates who now earn well above the standard living allowance, to directly subsidise students at University. See what Dave thinks!

The Proposal – http://goo.gl/y7Jpqm