>>Used to be that general taxation paid for education in the expectation that a well educated work force would earn more and pay more tax. But as in so many ways my generation is choosing to haul up the ladder as quickly as it can. If I was in my twenties I think I might be getting seriously p___ed off. I'm amazed how little protest there is by young people about how comprehensively they are being stitched up.

Yes, it's a shame. It is our generation to blame, not least because we have allowed parasitic types to get rich by scooping value in exchange for nothing. They like to call it a market but markets involve exchange of value, not transfer of value.

>>I wonder what the lovely Sophia thinks about it all.

Who can say - MB makes it sound as if they've communicated extensively which must narrow down the pool of UT posters and the "boyfriend" narrows it still further... or does it?

In fairness, 4% of Swiss do speak Italian so maybe "si" and "grazie" aren't so odd, even though Gstaad is in a German canton. But the registered email is invalid (no MX records maintained for it by "3 Mings LLC" that seems to run a domain farm out of a San Francisco address with an equally suspect contact emai ;-) ) and it is unclear why an Italian-speaker in Switzerland would react like this to such a US-centric post. Or why s/he would be inclined to create posts on the subject at 2am Swiss time.