The right to protest is always an interesting area to look into. A few Wednesdays ago marked the first time I had travelled to London in 18 months and there were also 50,000 people protesting on the streets of London – I am informed that the two events are unconnected, I am neither that unpopular nor an instigator of mass protests.
These 50,000 people were protesting about the proposed increased level of student tuition fees in a protest in Central London, “We shall not, we shall not be moved” is what the protesters sang… until Countdown came on, at which point they went home or decided to smash up the Troy headquarters in Milbank.
The small minority who descended on Milbank took all the headlines. As one they, unfortunately, caused a detraction from the key issues – that being of university funding. One these moronic protestors threw a fire extinguisher off the top the Tory’s Milbank headquarters – which just like airbags in cars, was an instance health and safety equipment potentially causing more harm than good.
Although to be fair, the throwing of the fire extinguisher may have been to assist his fellow protestors put out one of the effigies of David Cameron or Nick Clegg that the protestors had set alight – yet if this was his rationale, then it would have been far safer to throw a fire blanket. It was later to revealed that said protestor was a student from Cambridge – fortunately he attended Anglia Ruskin University and not Cambridge University, proving that we do at least have some form of good education standards in this country.
One chap who did undermine my last assertion, was the student decided to show there should be no financial barriers to students wanting to attend university by kicking an overhanging glass window until the window smashed. What with the window overhanging, it smashed all over him and he was covered in shards of glass – thank god this man had a good university education, otherwise he might have done something that made himself look like an idiot.
I don’t mind protestors, but in my opinion it’s important to clearly think about how your protest will be perceived? Are you protesting for the right reasons? Are you getting your message across? Think back to 2009, when a group protested about the banks’ role in “causing” the Credit Crunch on a day to coincide with the submit of the G20 finance ministers. The idea of the protest was a logical one – the banks had lent irresponsibly, thought it was continually possible to achieve double digit growth and were taking on risk-laden transactions with little personal consequence if things went wrong. The execution of the protest was woeful – the protestors smashed up RBS’ headquarters in Central London. What with the RBS being majority owned by the taxpayer, the protestors basically cost themselves some money. Such actions must be like complaining about the state of television by smashing up your new 32 inch flatscreen.
I understand the motives of the protestors who were campaigning against an increase in student tuition fees. Nick Clegg is once again being made to look like a lapdog for David Cameron, quite how he can pledge to abolish tuition fees and then support them tripling is anyone’s guess. This Government is often said to be unpopular and “no-one voted for it” – but that is our electoral system and the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats collectively took 59.1% of the vote at the General Election. This compared to the 35.2% of the vote that Labour took in 2005. Henceforth, the major problem facing the Government, which was also faced by Gordon Brown when he took over from Tony Blair, is the lack of a mandate to rule, David Cameron doesn’t have a mandate, Nick Clegg also doesn’t have a mandate – indeed the only person to have a mandate is William Hague, although he strenuously denies this allegation and claims they were sharing a room to save costs, that way the money saved can be spent on repairing Milbank.
There have been cuts, things have had to change and Higher Education is not the only sector that is suffering from these cuts. The military has had a massive slash to its budget, with the Government reorganising certain defence arrangements, particularly with respect to warships: The Prince of Wales warship will lay redundant for a sustained period and will be fully bought into service many years later than expected – which draws an uncanny parallel with the man the ship is named after. As well as that, the UK and France are due to share warships under a groundbreaking military initiative – presumably part of a European initiative for the UK to pair up with a partner whom is terrible at fighting wars. I have no idea what would happen if the UK and France went to war with each other… well… other than that the UK would claim victory upon France’s surrender.
Following the lack of good news in the Higher Education sector, there was a second protest scheduled a fortnight later, with demonstrations all around the country, with many more students involved and this time and also less violence – I’m guessing this protest constituted a re-sit for all those who had performed poorly the first time around.
I saw part of the protest in my local city centre where there was a helicopter getting involved in the proceedings, presumably from the police’s side of things – it wouldn’t be a very good idea for the students to protest about the cost of university by one of them bringing a helicopter with them… although it does make you wonder at times that if these students decided not to protest, then perhaps all the extra money that has been spent on police and other security during these protests could maybe be allocated to university funding… just a thought…
One of the protestors I saw summoned his entire educational ability and made a placard which simply said the words “FUCK THE TORY ARSEHOLES”… something which is highly offensive… especially to Nick Clegg… because that’s his job…
*P.S. Subsequent to writing this I remembered that during the first protest I saw a protestor on the news, he was quite bafflingly dressed as a panda – I still to this day have no idea what the message behind it was… although it may have been that the average student is about as active as a mating panda…
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