'Why allow Boris to grandstand his hard Brexit?': your best comments today

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/may/08/why-allow-boris-to-grandstand-his-hard-brexit-your-best-comments-today

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We’re highlighting some of your thoughts shared beneath key stories today, with Boris Johnson’s latest Brexit comments, a proposal to give £10,000 to millennials and student finance issues for families on the agenda.

To join in the conversation you can click on the links in the comments below to expand and add your thoughts.

Boris Johnson accuses remain-voting cabinet colleagues of reviving ‘project fear’

Our politics live blog reported reaction to Johnson’s latest comments, along with No 10 declining to rebuke the foreign secretary for calling Theresa May’s Brexit customs plan “crazy”.

‘How about you bring to the table what your version of Brexit will deliver’

Instead of just letting Boris grandstand his hard Brexit, why doesn’t somebody challenge him? ‘Let’s not beat around the bush, Boris: here’s the evidence of what not being in some kind of customs union will do. How about you and your hard Brexit pals bring to the table what your version of Brexit will deliver.’ No project fear, lets just have some cold hard facts about all these countries queuing up to do deals with us. We don’t want to hear the usual spewing out of meaningless percentages that you churn out.Bluemooner1

‘Why is nothing being done to prepare the infrastructure at customs checkpoints?’

Can anybody say what the point is of May keeping two solutions for the Customs/Irish border problem on the table for discussion, both of which have been rejected by the EU?

One, uses non-existent technology and the EU has described it as “magical thinking”. The other, May’s favourite, involves the UK collecting tariffs for the EU, a bit like having stray Brexiteers, rather than the barperson, collecting payment for the beer at Wetherspoon’s. Understandably the EU has also described this second solution as absolutely unacceptable.

And if the UK is really going to leave the customs union, as May insists it is, why is nothing being done to prepare the infrastructure at customs checkpoints and ports such as Dover?SteveinBavaria

A £10,000 handout is a short-sighted solution to millennial misery

The Resolution Foundation has proposed what it is calling a “citizen’s inheritance” to help redistribute wealth to young people. You’ve been sharing reaction beneath this opinion piece.

‘I don’t want £10,000 that I can only spend on education or a house’

Speaking as a millenial, I don’t want £10,000 that I can only spend on education or a house. It’s not enough for a house and I already have all the education I could possibly need. Whilst I could get a good jump on my pension, that’s not really helpful when I know even with a lump like that I’ll still likely end up having to work into my 70s anyway.

What I’d really like is my public services improved. Let’s start by lowering energy prices, renationalising rail services and cutting prices. It would also really be great if some of that money could go on the homeless too, lots of them are really young and there’s so many more of them on the streets over the last few months and years. Try building some houses, proper ones not the crazy tiny nonsense being proposed.Conon98

‘Fix the housing problem first’

The lump sum is an absurd idea unless you fix the housing problem first. Otherwise, like Help to Buy, it will just be sucked up by higher rents and higher house prices.

Really, we just need to fix housing by letting prices collapse. Then we might see some decent internal investment in something more useful than property, as well as lower house prices for millenials and lower capital gains on housing for the boomers.tomandlu

‘It’s a hidden nasty’: Parents in dark over need to top up student loans

Readers with experience of university as students and parents have been reacting after experts attacked the government for failing to tell families they must pay up to £5,000 in living costs.

‘Lower income families outside the threshold are the ones hard hit by this’

The real nub of this is in the recent increases in accommodation costs. I set money aside for my child going to university this year based on the experience with their siblings - in other words what we supplemented their loans with - and added a bit. Going through the figures recently it is far from enough.

Lower income families outside the threshold for extra support are the ones hard hit by this. If we are going to have loans at least make them enough to cover accommodation, food and books. Otherwise it is just more discrimination by the back door, with families like mine who are able to pay making life easier for their children by removing the need to work in term time while the less well off have to try and work alongside studying.Andreamaisie

Comments have been edited for length. This article will be updated throughout the day with some of the most interesting ways readers have been participating across the site.