Student tantrum revisited

As articles about the student protests/tantrums and the evil changes to their funding abound, I find myself increasingly confused by the whole matter. The Independent reports that only a quarter of the students are expected to actually pay off their loans, which would seem to put the whole change in funding firmly into the “book keeping trick” category, as the bulk of the funding will still come from taxes covering the loans but the government can at least claim it’s all loans. In the meantime apart from keeping the cost off the governments books for a bit it would seem … Continue reading

Dust settling on the student rampage

I’m afraid to say that the “small minority” of violent elements in the student protests and their “apologists and supporters have managed to remove what sympathy I had for their cause. I largely blame the students representatives and organisers who seem to have had no other campaign (at least in London) than walking on Parliament, and don’t seem to have had any plan on how to deal with and separate themselves from those amongst them that were intent on violence. Perhaps they might have had more luck if apart from marching they’d got friends and family to write to their … Continue reading

Fitwatch down

It would seem that after posting an article offering advice to students on how to make getting arrested after committing criminal acts the site Fitwatch has been taken down at the request of the police. Unlike Dizzy I don’t think Fitwatch consider all police to be “brutal bastards” and quite liked what they were doing. Overt surveillance of peaceful demonstrations does have a chilling effect on protest, and the compilation of dossiers of protesters who haven’t broken any laws is not acceptable. So hampering police operations when they’re doing this, and playing them at their own game seems fair enough … Continue reading