One of the best things I’ve watched recently has been the news coverage of the student protests. I love how smart all the students came over whilst trying to justify the violence that erupted as they began to trash the conservative party headquarters; “you can’t blame people for acting this way, when they’ve tried all other options.” Was one of my favourite statements of the night. I might have my facts wrong but I’m under the opinion that they had been peacefully protesting for about two and a half hours before a group decided to smash stuff up, now I’m not an expert but I’m pretty sure that had Ghandi and Martin Luther King tried peaceful protests for a few hours and then got bored and started smashing stuff up the world would be a very different place.
The only way that peaceful protests work in the modern day is if public opinion is won by the protestors. People who have gone and are going to university are still the minority in this country. So destroying buildings in the capital (however amusing it is to watch) doesn’t tend to sway the public in your favour. I realise that there were about 49,000 peaceful protesters spreading their message, but of course the media isn’t going to pay attention to that when a siege is going on down the street. I almost couldn’t breath for laughing when a reporter asked one of the peaceful protestors what she thought about the violence, she responded “It’s a shame as it will detract from our message, I just hope people at home will see that the majority of us are trying to get our point across peacefully.” At which point she got put into a split screen with the footage of four guys kicking in the ground to ceiling window and the rest of her words were drowned out by the sound of shattering glass.
I also found it slightly strange that the PM today claimed that the police who were there did an extremely good job and were extremely brave, but he thought that there should have been more police there. You know, David is probably right about that more police should have been there, I wonder what going to happen then when he slashes their budget (the predicted result of which is a loss of frontline policing power)? When Thatcher brought out her cuts she was at least smart enough to increase the home office’s budget to deal with the inevitable protests and riots.
Anyways now I’ll take a moment to talk about my views on the university cuts themselves. I’m not a student, I did two years of a 3 year course and dropped out (I really hated the course) and now I’m making extremely good money by some quirk of fate. I would actually be willing to pay more taxes to send people to university debt free. I see the intrinsic value of having extremely skilled and educated people in our society. I once saw a plumber on Question Time ask the question why should he have to pay for someone to get their medical degree, I bet when he has a heart attack or gets cancer he’ll be happy that there are well trained doctors in the NHS. However from what I can see I’m in the minority. The fact is most people are not willing to pay higher taxes and the government has no more money left, which means that their only option left is to cut; it’s the world we live in and no amount of smashing buildings up in London is going to change that.
But maybe you disagree, do you think the students were justified? Or maybe it brought more attention to something that would be over looked? Perhaps you wish we were more like France and everyone rioted in the street when they raise the retirement age to 62? Let me know.
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