Student clashes - bring it on

[Fugitive]

I'm sorry, but Carmel college is now full of douchebags who think they're cultured. The wear berets, drink fairtrade coffee and read the financial times.

 

Roby has a nice balance. Loads of scall birds doing hairdressing because they're retarded, and A-Level douches who aren't scallies.

 

St Helens College is where it's at.

 

I went to Carmel in 2000-2002 and it was sound then.

[Master Bates]

''Bring it on'' says a twat.

 

One of those student cunts chucked a fire extinguisher off the roof of an 8-storey building. Could have killed anyone. That turd needs to be banged up for a few years.

 

And make the rest of the wankers pay over the odds for their Mickey Mouse degrees. Today's events have convinced me that my taxes shouldn't go anywhere near them.

[Strontium]

Funny, when I said before the election that it was easy for the dems to promise what they like because they didn't expect to win any election you weren't too happy, yet here you are saying exactly that.

 

 

That's not what I'm saying at all. If the Lib Dems had won the election in their own right, keeping the promise to not increase tuition fees would be easy. What I am saying is that coalition means you can't follow through on all your policies, so promising to deliver policies when there's a good chance you won't be able to deliver it due to compromise, is silly.

[Joe Le Taxi]

I'm off to uni next year so these raises don't bother me.

[RoboRiise]

Thatcher took eleven years to get people rioting on the streets of London over government policies, Cameron & Clegg have managed it in six short months. Well done David, Nick, another first for the coalition.

 

Question for SD - how long do you think it's going to be before a Lib Dem MP joins the Labour ranks (or more likely, drops out of the party and goes independent) and of your MPs, who do you think is the most likely to jump ship?

 

Serious question btw - most of the Lib Dems I know are already very uncomfortable with some of the coalition's policies and feel that Nick Clegg is becoming Cameron's poodle - there's no way that they will be comfortable with what we saw today. Especially since they're all graduates, they're finding that they can't support talk of up to £9k a year for university tuition fees - one lad I was talking to the other day said that supporting it would feel like he was saying "yeah, I got my education - now quick, pull the ladder up."

[Trumo]

Not to side with Thatcher, but there were WAY fewer university students back then.

[Strontium]

Question for SD - how long do you think it's going to be before a Lib Dem MP joins the Labour ranks (or more likely, drops out of the party and goes independent) and of your MPs, who do you think is the most likely to jump ship?

 

 

It's not going to happen.

 

Serious question btw - most of the Lib Dems I know are already very uncomfortable with some of the coalition's policies and feel that Nick Clegg is becoming Cameron's poodle

 

 

Well, if they said that, then they're guilty of a serious lack of perspective.

 

one lad I was talking to the other day said that supporting it would feel like he was saying "yeah, I got my education - now quick, pull the ladder up."

 

 

Nobody's asking him to love the policy, just to accept it as the least evil that is possible right now. We didn't introduce tuition fees, we have opposed them for a decade and a half, and we have nothing to be ashamed of in defending this policy as the least worst option that we could achieve with 57 MPs out of 650.

[VERBAL DIARRHEA]

mentioned above how long does SD think it will be before a Lib Dem MP jumps ship, more to the point how long before Clegg jumps to the Tories ? Next election ?

[VERBAL DIARRHEA]

On a serious note my nephew started College in September, he was planning to attend the March but Sky + was taken up with hundreds of Bargain Hunt episodes so he had to stay home and watch Countdown.

[RJ Fan club]

On a serious note my nephew started College in September, he was planning to attend the March but Sky + was taken up with hundreds of Bargain Hunt episodes so he had to stay home and watch Countdown.

 

Pah, Bargain Hunt?

 

We had to put up with re-runs of Petrocelli and Quincy in my day. Then 15 to 1, followed by Countdown and Rex Hunt's fishing adventures.

 

I feel sorry for the kids of today, they missed out on some brilliant programming right there.

[Section_31]

''Bring it on'' says a twat.

 

One of those student cunts chucked a fire extinguisher off the roof of an 8-storey building. Could have killed anyone. That turd needs to be banged up for a few years.

 

And make the rest of the wankers pay over the odds for their Mickey Mouse degrees. Today's events have convinced me that my taxes shouldn't go anywhere near them.

 

There was a good few cunts in that crowd to be fair.

[RedBadger]

I think you are all being a bit harsh on Nicky and the boys here. OK so they promised to get rid of the fees but found they couldn't so they did the next best thing. They put university out of the reach of the less well off thereby helping them to avoid all the debt. They are to be applauded really.

 

To think that, being so disappointed with what Blair then Brown had done to the Labour party, for while I started to beleive that the Liberals might be the keepers of my "spiritual home". Oh well you live and learn.

[VERBAL DIARRHEA]

Pah, Bargain Hunt?

 

We had to put up with re-runs of Petrocelli and Quincy in my day. Then 15 to 1, followed by Countdown and Rex Hunt's fishing adventures.

 

I feel sorry for the kids of today, they missed out on some brilliant programming right there.

 

I was laid up with a back injury for 6 months in the early 90's and became addicted to re-runs of St Elsewhere.

[RJ Fan club]

I was laid up with a back injury for 6 months in the early 90's and became addicted to re-runs of St Elsewhere.

 

Easily done, I did 4 years in my first stint at Uni so had plenty of time to get stuck into a series. Channel 4 never did take my letters requesting a re-run of Hill Street Blues seriously. The twats.

[Master Bates]

I was a student back in the 80s.

 

In those days, ''Neighbours'' was the soap du jour. Can't remember now what Kylie's character was called.

[Trumo]

Fifteen-To-1 was where it was at.

 

I didn't get a student grant or loan because my dad was too fucking honest on the forms! One of my 1st year housemates got a full grant purely because his folks lived apart. This was despite his both parents being medical professionals, with his dad earning around £200,000 a year as a consultant, and his mum on around £50,000 as some sort of senior nursing professional. Staffordshire Council staff must have been on the 'erbs the day they passed that. My folks made less than £50,000 a year between them.

[VERBAL DIARRHEA]

Easily done, I did 4 years in my first stint at Uni so had plenty of time to get stuck into a series. Channel 4 never did take my letters requesting a re-run of Hill Street Blues seriously. The twats.

 

was off work yesterday and caught a brilliant episode of Colditz, took me back to my youth, not Hitler Youth ofcourse, but Norris Green was tough as a kid.

[RoboRiise]

It's not going to happen.

 

 

 

 

Well, if they said that, then they're guilty of a serious lack of perspective.

 

 

 

 

Nobody's asking him to love the policy, just to accept it as the least evil that is possible right now. We didn't introduce tuition fees, we have opposed them for a decade and a half, and we have nothing to be ashamed of in defending this policy as the least worst option that we could achieve with 57 MPs out of 650.

 

 

As always, honest answers.

 

As for it not happening, well it won't happen yet. Most of the cuts, sorry, budgetary restraint measures that have been announced are just words to a lot of people at the moment though, it will be twelve months or more before their impact becomes fully apparent and my own opinion is that although Tory voters will obviously be delighted with them, the more the merrier for that lot, an increasing proportion of Lib Dem voters may feel the party is drifiting away from it's pre-election values.

 

As for the emboldened part, I don't think he can. When he voted in the election he didn't believe it was the least evil, he believed that tuition fees should be abolished. The amounts now being talked about are sufficiently high to price a decent chunk of the population out of higher education, yet we have a labour market that now expects people to hold a degree in order to secure even a halfway decent job, with increased competition for vacancies in the coming years an absolute certainty - he's fundamentally uncomfortable with it.

 

I haven't asked him the question outright but my impression is that if the party can't be setting the agenda in government, he'd rather they were fighting the Tories from the opposition benches than giving them the majority they need to implement slightly watered down versions of their policies. I remember a month or two ago, he said that he felt the party were being patronised by the Tories and just being chucked a bone now and again to keep them quiet. I know you won't agree with the language I've used there but I'm saying I think that's how he sees it.

 

If we do end up having another election in my neck of the woods and the Lib Dem voters I know are anything like representative of their voters as a whole, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see a swing to Labour from the general election result despite the fallout from Woolas' cack-handed campaigning, or at least a swing away from the Lib Dems.

 

It's a very interesting prospect that election; the seat was to all intents and purposes a dead heat between Labour and the Lib Dems but of course, Lib Dem voters now know that they'd be returning an MP to the government benches and not the opposition. Chuck in the fact that they were the wounded party in the controversy around the original election, something you'd expect to galvanise their support and on the face of it you'd think the Lib Dems would maintain or increase their vote if their voters are happy with the coalition's policies.

 

On the other hand, even though it's come about as a result of the general election vote, it's still a by-election and so is susceptible to an increased proportion of protest voting compared with a general election. I believe UKIP are planning to stand and if you look at the thrust of Woolas' almost comically crass election leaflet, there's definitely a market for their brand of myopic jingoism around here, albeit not a large one. Still, they were beaten out of sight at the general election:

 

Phil Woolas (Lab) 14,186

Elwyn Watkins (Lib Dem) 14,083

Kashif Ali (Con) 11,773

Alwyn Scott (BNP) 2,546

David Bentley (UKIP) 1,720

Gulzar Nazir (Christian Party) 212

 

I can't see the BNP voters views having softened sufficiently for them to consider a switch to UKIP and UKIP are a long way away from the values of either the Lib Dems or Labour, so perhaps they'll just nick a few votes from the Tories and remain an irrelevance.

 

I imagine the Tories will do very badly out of the whole thing, it's hard to see them picking up votes from anyone really. Still, they won't give a toss; they haven't got a chance of winning themselves, another Lib Dem MP doesn't shift the national balance of power one iota (the Lib Dems won't gain any significant bargaining power with another MP) and a Labour win leaves things exactly as they were.

 

As a barometer of public opinion it should be fascinating (the constituency is a real cross section of British society and includes areas with widely differing economic and social profiles) but that's probably going to be the most significant thing about it. Well, that and giving about 70,000 people their representation in parliament back.

[RoboRiise]

Fifteen-To-1 was where it was at.

 

I didn't get a student grant or loan because my dad was too fucking honest on the forms! One of my 1st year housemates got a full grant purely because his folks lived apart. This was despite his both parents being medical professionals, with his dad earning around £200,000 a year as a consultant, and his mum on around £50,000 as some sort of senior nursing professional. Staffordshire Council staff must have been on the 'erbs the day they passed that. My folks made less than £50,000 a year between them.

 

 

Back when I applied (1989) my parents made substantially less than that, yet I wouldn't have qualified for a full grant either. Bearing in mind that this was way before the minimum wage, back when (for example) bar work paid £2 an hour if you were lucky, it was the main reason that I didn't end up going - it just wasn't economically viable.

 

In the last few years, I've seen people that I wouldn't employ to shovel shit, I mean serious fucking dullards that wouldn't even have been offered university places back when I was applying, not only get recruited to do the same job as me but then leave for far better paid opportunities, simply because they have that piece of paper.

 

My own opinion as far as higher education funding is concerned is that the only selection criterion for entry should be sufficient academic ability to achieve, but the trade-off is that it needs to be implemented far more rigorously than it has been in recent years. You know, little things like being able to write lucidly in your mother tongue after thirteen years of education without having to use a computer to check the spelling of five and six letter words, or understanding the difference between £257,500 and £2,575,000 sufficiently well that you don't engage in a five minute argument with someone nearly 20 years older than you, during which you repeatedly tell him that the second one is not just over two and a half million pounds and that he's "read it wrong".

 

That's a real-life case study I'm thinking of by the way, she had a 2:1... Believe me, speechless didn't even come close.

[RedBadger]

The people who signed the pledge obviously never expected to be in a position to influence government policy. That was incredibly foolish in hindsight, because the polls suggest a coalition government was fairly likely.

 

I assure you that anyone signing that pledge will have fully intended to honour it at the time. It is party policy. Unfortunately, coalition government means you only get to implement a portion of your policies. That is the reality of coalition government, you can't blame anybody for that.

 

I really don't know how many more times I can reiterate this. Are people really saying they would prefer an outright Tory government implementing a policy of no cap on tuition fees and less assistance for the poorest students and no higher threshhold for paying it off? I find it hard to believe.

 

So what you're saying is that, in a blaze of pre-election publicity, they were happy to sign a pledge to take certain actions but they only meant that they'd oppose fees if they were in no position to have any influence and obviously if they did have influence they couldn't be expeced to keep that promise. Is that it?

 

If you promise something that circumstances render undeliverable, it's not lying.

 

 

 

 

The flak we are copping over tuition fees is nothing short of disgusting. I am really livid about it, actually.

 

There's nothing cowardly about it Stu, I don't believe for one second that choosing the lesser of two evils is ever wrong.

 

You say we haven't got the balls, but from where I am sitting, the party is taking bold decisions, getting hammered in the press for them and seeing its poll ratings slide when the easy - and cowardly - thing would have been to remain in opposition and snipe from the touchline instead of getting hands dirty and trying to improve things from the inside.

 

Are you going to explain how we could get tuition fees abolished with 57 MPs out of 650, really, I'm dying to hear how.

 

You say it's doing your fucking head in, well I can tell you, I am fucking enraged about the shit that is being said about my party. Every single step of the way we have tried to do the right thing, every single time. Now you can disagree with what has been done, but you must be thick as two short planks if you think we have betrayed anyone, sold out or otherwise acted in an unprincipled and underhand manner.

 

Well maybe I'm just thick but I'll tell you what I'm not thick enough to get conned by the Liberals again.

[Hermes]

No surprise that it happened late in the day, gave them time to get out of bed.

[RoboRiise]

To clarify my views on the matter, student loans in and of themselves I have no issue with - that's a perspective influenced by my own experience described above because I would rather have a degree and debt than no degree and job prospects that are frankly dick, but the kind of figures that are being talked about for tuition fees now will ensure that people from families without the economic wherewithal to provide financial support will find it extremely difficult to emerge from beneath the mountain of debt a university education will involve.

[Strontium]

I think you are all being a bit harsh on Nicky and the boys here. OK so they promised to get rid of the fees but found they couldn't so they did the next best thing. They put university out of the reach of the less well off thereby helping them to avoid all the debt.

 

 

You missed the bit where it's going to be cheaper for the poorest 30% to attend university than it is now, yeah?

 

To think that, being so disappointed with what Blair then Brown had done to the Labour party, for while I started to beleive that the Liberals might be the keepers of my "spiritual home". Oh well you live and learn.

 

 

If it was a Lib Dem government doing these things, I would share the general outrage.

 

I certainly would like to know how the Labour Party would fund higher education, and whether or not they would have dismissed the findings of the report that they commissioned.

 

When he voted in the election he didn't believe it was the least evil, he believed that tuition fees should be abolished. The amounts now being talked about are sufficiently high to price a decent chunk of the population out of higher education, yet we have a labour market that now expects people to hold a degree in order to secure even a halfway decent job, with increased competition for vacancies in the coming years an absolute certainty - he's fundamentally uncomfortable with it.

 

I haven't asked him the question outright but my impression is that if the party can't be setting the agenda in government, he'd rather they were fighting the Tories from the opposition benches than giving them the majority they need to implement slightly watered down versions of their policies. I remember a month or two ago, he said that he felt the party were being patronised by the Tories and just being chucked a bone now and again to keep them quiet. I know you won't agree with the language I've used there but I'm saying I think that's how he sees it.

 

 

It is unquestionably easier being in opposition, never having to make difficult policy decisions. I don't doubt for a second that some people are finding it difficult to adjust.

 

Tim Montgomerie of ConservativeHome has a fairly balanced list of the compromises that have been made between the two parties.

 

I very much regret the fact that the best we could do on tuition fees was a cap and a more progressive repayment regime. We only have 57 MPs.

[Hermes]

I would have went to London today, but I've got to help fund my studies so I worked.

 

Not studying English language obviously, or you would have gone to London.

[Hermes]

To clarify my views on the matter, student loans in and of themselves I have no issue with - that's a perspective influenced by my own experience described above because I would rather have a degree and debt than no degree and job prospects that are frankly dick, but the kind of figures that are being talked about for tuition fees now will ensure that people from families without the economic wherewithal to provide financial support will find it extremely difficult to emerge from beneath the mountain of debt a university education will involve.

 

So you think the tax payer should fund it?

 

I have kids who in a few years may decide to waste a few years of their lives at University. Do I expect the tax payer to fund it? No, that's why I've been saving since the day they were born. Thankfully we now have a government that is refusing to milk those that work, to fund those that won't.