"Student bursaries go unclaimed"

So ... kids from families with average incomes or above are screwed because these bursaries are savagely means-tested; and kids from poor families are screwed because applying for them is so difficult.

NEETs from poor families who'd like to study something are probably doubly screwed because the temptation is to stay on out-of-work benefits which are worth much more than what they'd get as students.

The perfect Nulab clusterf***!

Like I said before, we should take a big pot, throw in all benefits currently paid to 18 - 24 year olds (income support, jobseeker's allowance, incapacity benefit, student grants, irrecoverable student loans and interest subsidy on the ones that get repaid, tax credits ...) and dish them out to everybody in that age group who is not in work (whether student, single Mum or NEET) as a non-means tested Citizen's Income of about £50 a week (which is roughly the current IS/JSA rate for that age group). As a quid pro quo, claimants wouldn't get a tax free personal allowance, to keep the cost down and make it fairer to those who don't claim.

That's that fixed.