Students, police clash as UK approves tuition hike

[darth los]

And good for you guys.

I wish Americans had the balls to something like this, with outrage after outrage our elected officials keep visiting on us.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101209/ap_on_bi_ge/eu_britain_tuition_tangle

:cool:

[Legion2213]

I would have shot them all, most were destructive scum, defacing war memorials, attacking the heir to the throne in his car and the like - It's a good job I'm not in charge of Royal protection, or there would be a lot of dead scruffy students around that car.

None of these wasters will have to pay a penny back until they are earning over £21,000 a year anyway....which most of them won't do seeing as they go to Uni to drink and laze around.

Legion2213 - Conservative type of fellow. :cool:

---------- Post added at 09:47 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:41 PM ----------

Overview of scummy behaviour....

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1337088/TUITION-FEES-VOTE-PROTEST-Charles-Camillas-car-attacked-thousands-students-descend-Parliament.html

[darth los]

Interesting.

I would have just like to have seen this sort of outrage after we were lied into a war. Instead everyone kept on their my space pages and finger fucking their cell phones like they were too busy to care.


Agree with what happened or not atleast they believe in something and aren't going to let a percieved injustice go unadressed. There's something to be said for that atleast.

Me thinks sometimes that our elected officials forget that they work for US and are beholden to the will of the people, not the other way around.

:cool:

[Legion2213]

Don't misunderstand me, peaceful protest is a right and I have no problem with that, but this went well beyond that.

As for the tuition fees, I personally believe they are fair, the vast majority of these students will never pay a penny back.

[MinionZombie]

The IFS stated that the findings of the Browne Review thingymajig (set up by Labour, no less, the very bunch of losers now decrying it ... but they rarely liked the findings of reviews they set in motion) were indeed progressive and a fair way to deal with the situation.

There seems to be an awful lot of misinformation going around - from the shameful actions of the NUS ("Demo-lition" the 'protest' was named, with the slogan "WE WILL RIOT" - I shit you not) to the utterly useless 24 hour news media (BBC, Sky, ITN, C4 etc) who haven't been interested in providing information for a clear debate from all sides of the argument since ... ever, frankly ... the news media's fixation on one figure of £9,000 with absolutely sod all context afforded to it, and then focussing on nothing else more than a bunch of self-entitled students & rent-a-mob-wankers trashing the place.

Now who will be paying for all that damage? Oh yes, the tax payer - of whom, all their parents are.

A violent protest proves nothing and gets nobody on side and any argument is thrown out the window, if they were even interested in examining the detail of the proposals at all.

There was a couple of striking examples of students on the news last night - from a rabble of masked scrufters saying 'we come from the slums of London, what about us?' - well if you're actually intelligent enough to attend University, you'll no doubt be able to get not a loan, but a ruddy grant, seeing as the proposals afford 18,000 new 'poorest but intelligent' students to attend Uni.

Then another berk banging on about being 'enslaved by debt' and confused notions about 'freedom' - *ahem* - a student loan is unlike any other loan on the planet. The interest rates are very generous for one, for two you only start paying back once you're earning over £21k a year (prior it was £15k), and then you're only paying a fraction per month of what you would have been doing under the old scheme (and, to refresh the memory of some of the students, it was Labour who introduced Top Up Fees in the first place, despite emphatically saying they wouldn't ... and on a similar note, the LibDems signing that 'pledge' was the most retarded idea ever) ... furthermore with a normal loan, "the man" doesn't give a shit if you're earning or not, if you don't pay up, they're sending bailiffs round to seize your shit - that doesn't happen with a student loan - and further still, after 30 years it's written off.

Also, with the £9,000 thing, apparently only a relative few would actually fall into that figure, and I've heard that Universities would have to provide a number of grants if they were going to charge that amount of money.

...

A couple of other things, they seem to think that university was free until now - bollocks - when my parents were attending uni, they might not have had to pay for the tuition, but they had to pay for the cost of living (interesting to note how many of these students you see dressed in expensive clothing and smoking fags, and loaded down with mobile phones and cameras, isn't it? :rockbrow:).

I myself went to Uni, and while I had graduated before Labour's Top Up Fees came in, I still was paying for tuition through a loan - a loan which I still have hanging over my head, this debt that, according to one utterly confused prat, would render me a "slave" and revoke me of all my "freedom".

*facepalm*

Seems as much an opportunity for Labourites to rant "Tory scum" (indeed that exact quote was shouted by one of the wankers - no doubt some cunt just along to smash shit up rather than protest in any way, shape or form - who smashed up the Royal's car ... now, remind me, who'll be likely paying for that damage too? :rolleyes:) and pretend to be 'part of the great struggle of the 1980s' and become a 'protesting hero' - but they've not seen any of the hypocrisy or ironies of their actions, nor any of the context, nor any of the details ... ugh! Twats!

Peaceful protest yes. Violent riot no. Seeking to establish an informed debate? Yes. Using it as just an excuse for a bunch of sore Labourite students to piss and moan about "baby eating Tory bastards"? FUCK NO.

Concerning the latter, these cunts have no idea about their hypocrisy and ironies do they? Labour were in for 13 bloody years ... shredding cash like nobody's business ... I didn't get the result I wanted when I first voted in the general election, and indeed in more than one local election, but I understood that that's how the game works. Some you win, some you lose. But no, these nob'eds want a one party dictatorship ... yes, very "democratic". :rolleyes:

...

Bit of a rant, but I feel better for that, as I'm utterly sick to death of hearing about this tuition fees stuff, and seeing footage of these twats smashing shit up.

/rant

[Publius]

Agree with what happened or not atleast they believe in something and aren't going to let a percieved injustice go unadressed. There's something to be said for that atleast.

Must...fight...Godwin's Law. :p

[Mike70]

:lol:

i just love seeing how much more cultured and sophisticated europeans are compared to us backward folks on this side of the atlantic.

[Tricky]

I think they are a bunch of disgusting scum for what they did & have done over the past few weeks, and I've had some interesting discussions with people over the last few weeks about it all!
In the UK everybody is entitled to free state funded education up until the age of 18, completely funded by the taxpayer, yet to these students thats not enough! My opinion is that the government should fund degrees for all the science subjects, english, maths, architecture, engineering, teaching, petrochemicals, medical, dentistry etc, the things that are actually going to directly benefit the economy & the ordinary people of Britain who need people in those professions. Anyone who wants to do degrees in art, philosophy, music, media studies, david beckham studies, klingon language etc should be prepared to fund it themselves. I'm not against people getting those degrees, even though some of them are a bit mickey mouse, I just think they should pay for it if its not going to lead to an "essential services" job. Young people in this country have been brainwashed into thinking that if you dont go to uni you wont get a job, and that uni is some "right of passage" that everyone should do, mainly just for the party side of it it would seem. I personally know people who went to uni, cant get a job doing what they studied, and so sit on benefits for years because they consider themselves above doing what they consider menial jobs because they have a degree :mad:
These student protesters are very quickly losing any public sympathy they have because of the way they are conducting themselves at these marches, vandalising the cenotaph is just pathetic, especially as one of them is claiming he didnt know what it was (a certain Charlie Gilmour, son of the Pink Floyd guitarist David). It serves them right if the police start to lose patience with them and get a bit nasty, in fact I'm almost tempted to go down and start throwing things at these students myself!

[darth los]

:lol:

i just love seeing how much more cultured and sophisticated europeans are compared to us backward folks on this side of the atlantic.

Dude, don't forget those soccer games as well. There are like double digit body counts at those things ! :stunned:

:cool:

[AcesandEights]

Release the dragooooons!

http://www.painting-palace.com/files/117/11613_Gordons_and_Greys_To_The_Front_An_Incident_A t_Waterloo_f.jpg

[MinionZombie]

This Charlie Gilmour sounds either like a cowardly scumbag, or a total illiterate moron, if he didn't know what the Cenotaph was. I mean jesus christ. Scum. Utter, utter scum.

*makes a bunch of angry, ranty noises and gestures*

I'm sick of them, these violent and uneducated thugs ... and the NUS should be in serious trouble for their handling of all this, not least because of the "Demo-lition" and "We will riot!" slogans ... I mean how utterly irresponsible ... and further to their lack of education, they seem to think that protesting and rioting is the same thing. What a true bunch of cunts ... it seems like each 'protest' has far less and less people involved who actually want to refer to the fees issue - although whether they want a true, honest, informed debate about them or not isn't at all clear (no doubt they don't want debate, just 'my way and that's it, fuck you' ... a position often found spilling from the mouths of Labour's ranks).

The Anarchists and Socialist Worker's Party have been having a field day ... and I do wonder how many of their ranks are adorned in expensive, trendy kit, and surrounded by bits of technology (computers, cameras, phones, iPods, etc) ... and how many come from middle class backgrounds ... in other words - posers.

...

There was a video done by a bunch of music students from Northumbria, if I remember correctly, and it was - seriously - a bunch of tone deaf twats moaning about the new fees programme to the sound of "Do They Know It's Christmas?" - you know, the charity song that was about starving children in Africa ... yeah ... just think about that for a minute ... ... need I say more about this whole sorry affair?

Makes my skin crawl, but then "student politics" has never appealed to me - not even when I was at university - for instance the anti war demo, sighted conveniently smack bang next to the front door of the Student's Union Bar ... the stench of weed and the sight of pints of Guiness was potent and in excess, shall we say. Plus the fact that there were no TV cameras or reporters there - what the fuck was the point? Nobody was paying any attention except themselves - if you're so fussed, go to London and join the anti war march there, is what I thought at the time, and I still think that.

So yeah - student politics wasn't, and never has been, attractive to me - I was much more fussed about doing well on my course, and when not doing that, enjoying my time with my friends and just generally learning how to live beyond the parent's supervision, you know.

[SymphonicX]

Can't really be arsed to get too deeply into this as political threads on this board are truly like arseholes.

Just suffice to say, I never went to uni - because at the time I graduated from college, Labour had just gotten into power and changed everything. This meant I had to "defer" my entry for a year because I needed to get a job to afford the fees (or so they said at the time, and a few weeks later clarified that "oh no, you can get a grant") so anyway my deference equalled a rejection from all my placements even though I scored the highest in my year.

But if this was today, and today's situation - and I was 17 again, my parents earning what they earned from manual labour, I'd be eligible for support in some context. As long as THOSE kind of students are protected, I feel more at ease.

However I do feel sorry for those people who's parents earn just above whatever threshold the government are going to set to charge these fees - These things tend not to hit the poorest hard - but they do shoulder an extra burden on the lower middle classes or those who are percieved to be able to afford the fees.

Would I do this thing with a student loan? Fuck no. I'd rather work for three years, save up £9k, then pay outright for the course. £9k - bit steep in my view.

Those in my peer group who did have student loans are still paying them off, and one guy I knew worked every day for a year (12 hour days) and was told by his doctor that he'd collapse from stress if he didn't stop - but he cleared the whole debt in one go. Would I do something like that? Fuck no, the guy's in his 30s. He found it *that* tough to pay off. I'm glad that didn't happen to me.

And now, well it'd be worse really. No one's saying uni should be free, but you have to ask yourself what's costing tripple now that didn't cost that half a year ago - if you think of it like that you're bound to feel aggrieved.

I wish people would stop harking on about the violence though. You've got a protest with 100,000 people on the streets of London, being violently kettled into small spaces for hours and hours with no toilets, food, drink or shelter. Add that with a SELECT FEW who want to cause trouble and you inevitably get the same thing each time - a violent and disorderly protest.

The tragedy here is that the violence is the only thing that gets reported. But let's realise that simply making a board up and walking down a street means NOTHING to the government whatsoever. You may have the right to do it, but they have the right not to do anything about it. Protests are a way of voicing frustration but rarely does it really change anything - except in the exceptional few cases in the beginning where political marches by people such as Ghandi had a bit more relevance. Comparing the plight of Ghandi to that of modern day students doesn't bear half the poignance that it thinks it does.

Anyway whatever, this issue is way too divisive for these boards nowdays where all you have to do is express some sort of anti tory view and get shot down with a 40 paragraph post about the merits of David Cameron's winking arsehole.

[Tricky]

The part that annoys me about the violence on these recent protests is that I went on the first Liberty & Livelihood march back in the late 90's in London, there was hundreds of thousands of us but virtually no trouble at all, and apparently being country folk we were the supposed savages! (in fact the only violence I saw came from the foaming mouthed animal rights protesters on the other side of the barricades who thought the whole thing was about fox hunting, which it wasnt at all, and they conveniently forgot that a great swath of the protesters then were gamekeepers and farmers who are keen conservationists, but thats another story). Point is none of us felt the need to trash the centre of London, we just marched through, made a lot of noise & waved banners, then got on our coaches home feeling that we'd made our feelings known, even if it was to change nothing. If these students/anarchists carry on the way they have been, there will inevitably be somebody killed when the police start firing baton rounds or the military get involved, then it'll be sensationalist headlines about police brutality and how the poor little darlings were doing nothing wrong. By one account the royal bodyguards were seconds away from drawing their guns when Charles's car was attacked (im no royal fan, but totally agree it was out of order), imagine the headlines if they had shot someone!

[Neil]

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/50393000/jpg/_50393445_suspects_464.jpg Let's hope these guys are tracked down (if they are guillty)...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11978954