SO now we know. We are all invited by Tony Blair to join in his 'Big Con,' which first of all will centre on the ludicrous question of Top-Up Fees for university students.

This is typical of the champagne socialists (people who can afford to be socialists) in the Cabinet, all of whom were fortunate enough to benefit from grants provided by the state when they were students and did not have to face repayments of many thousands of pounds on graduation.

So much has been said on this matter and the fact that so many of even Labour MPs intend to vote against Top-Ups, puts the matter seriously in doubt anyway.

I would like to broaden the issue into just what the Government are about in 'encouraging' up to 50 per cent of school-leavers into universities when probably only about 15-20 per cent of them are properly qualified and motivated to derive full benefit from higher education of this type.

We now have a raft of new 'universities' that offer degrees in such a vast range of subjects that the mind boggles! However, employers are not stupid and candidates for jobs producing first class degrees in some 'ology' from the university of toytown will be quickly sussed out.

So again, I ask why all this pretend-higher-education? We are in far greater need of plumbers and electricians than specialists in the most obscure subjects that the jackasses in the department of education can think up and authorise.

I believe the Government is pursuing this course of action in order to artificially deflate your unemployment figures which, at five per cent, are currently half that of the nine to 10 per cent in our comparable trading partners Germany and France.

If ministers can keep the other half of the unemployed effectively bottled up in universities and off the dole queue figures and get the poor souls to pay for it all themselves, then the Exchequer is billions of pounds better off. What a wheeze!

May I ask all local MPs of all parties to make sure they vote against this awful proposal which is calculated to leave the next generation of youngsters in a financial mire for the rest of their lives.

CHARLIE THOMAS, St Huberts Road, Great Harwood.