Student clashes - bring it on

[Strontium]

There was plenty of opposition.

 

 

I must have been incommunicado on the day that Labour Party HQ was smashed to pieces by rioters. Maybe because it didn't happen. Of course it didn't happen, because every NUS President is a Labour Party lackey who will offer just the merest token resistance to anything a Labour government does.

[L19red]

Is the inference we should take that because they didn't riot therefore the charges weren't opposed when they were originally introduced? Its so hard to tell these days between your angry rants and your "humourous quips".

[Hermes]

Hats off to Sky news. Live coverage of a bunch of brainless morons leads to over 50 arrests. Hopefully, one will be for attempted murder.

 

Not so many smiles in front of the camera now eh?

[Anubis]

Hats off to Sky news. Live coverage of a bunch of brainless morons leads to over 50 arrests. Hopefully, one will be for attempted murder.

 

Not so many smiles in front of the camera now eh?

 

I'll bet you've fetched Margaret down from her prized position over the mantlepiece, and are lovingly cradling and stroking her as you typed that.

[TonyBellew_BUM!]

Fucking brain dead primadonas should be made to pay for the fucking damage they have caused as well as the cost of THIER OWN FUCKING EDUCATION!!!!

[Hermes]

Fucking brain dead primadonas should be made to pay for the fucking damage they have caused as well as the cost of THIER OWN FUCKING EDUCATION!!!!

 

Exactly. Add it on to their fees.

[Hermes]

I'll bet you've fetched Margaret down from her prized position over the mantlepiece, and are lovingly cradling and stroking her as you typed that.

 

You're in favour of hurling a fire extinguisher off a multi-storey building into a crowd of people?

[Anubis]

You're in favour of hurling a fire extinguisher off a multi-storey building into a crowd of people?

 

No, but then none of that changes you wanking over Sky News like they're some sort of alturistic media knights of the round table, when in the past News International have endangered the lives of innocents themselves.

[L19red]

its a pity TV evidence can only be used when its cops on the receiving end. I wonder what Ian Tomlinson's family are thinking tonight.

[Ponz]

It's not unreasonable to expect individuals making over £21k per year to fund part of the education that made those earnings possible. If the debt serves as a disincentive for some to attend university, all the better. Rather than churning out thousands of mediocre graduates, the system should encourage young people to think more carefully about the true value of a degree. Many would genuinely benefit from forgoing one in favour of work experience, vocational studies, volunteering, starting a business etc.

Treating university as an essential birthright that should be extended to 60% of the population just debases the whole concept.

[L19red]

and another one where tv evidence wasn't enough to prosecute

BBC NEWS | UK | England | London | Police to probe 'woman assault'

[Yozzer]

Revealed: Lib Dems planned before election to abandon tuition fees pledge | Politics | The Guardian

 

 

The Liberal Democrats were drawing up plans to abandon Nick Clegg's flagship policy to scrap university tuition fees two months before the general election, secret party documents reveal.

 

As the Lib Dem leader faces a growing revolt after this week's violent protest against fee rises, internal documents show the party was drawing up proposals for coalition negotiations which contrasted sharply with Clegg's public pronouncements.

 

A month before Clegg pledged in April to scrap the "dead weight of debt", a secret team of key Lib Dems made clear that, in the event of a hung parliament, the party would not waste political capital defending its manifesto pledge to abolish university tuition fees within six years.

 

In a document marked "confidential" and dated 16 March, the head of the secret pre-election coalition negotiating team, Danny Alexander, wrote: "On tuition fees we should seek agreement on part time students and leave the rest. We will have clear yellow water with the other [parties] on raising the tuition fee cap, so let us not cause ourselves more headaches."

 

The document is likely to fuel criticism among Lib Dem backbenchers and in the National Union of Students that the party courted the university vote in the full knowledge that its pledge would have to be abandoned as the party sought to achieve a foot in government. Within a month of the secret document, Clegg recorded a YouTube video for the annual NUS conference on 13 April in which he pledged to abolish fees within six years.

 

"You've got people leaving university with this dead weight of debt, around £24,000, round their neck," the future deputy PM said in the video that was screened at the conference on 13 April.

 

Clegg also joined all other Lib Dem MPs in signing an NUS pledge to "vote against any increase in fees". The leaked document showed that during the preparations for a hung parliament the Lib Dems still intended to fulfil that commitment.

 

The Lib Dems, who are now under intense pressure after agreeing in government that tuition fees should be allowed to rise, said the document was designed to work out how to reach agreement with the Tories and Labour, who were "diametrically" opposed to them.

 

As the party was isolated, the negotiators concentrated on trying to win ground where they could find consensus. Source say that, in government, they have succeeded in tackling the discrimination against part-time students identified in the secret document.

 

The secret internal Lib Dem document is disclosed in a new book on the coalition negotiations by Rob Wilson, Conservative MP for Reading East. Wilson, who interviewed 60 key figures from the main parties for Five Days to Power, reveals that:

 

• The Lib Dems made no attempt to stand by their two key economic election pledges – no deficit reduction this year and opposition to a VAT increase – in the coalition negotiations. A Clegg aide told Wilson: "The thing that changed minds was George Osborne saying that he had seen the figures and it was quite horrific in real life as opposed to spin life."

 

• Alexander, appointed by Clegg last year to lead a secret four-strong coalition negotiating team, had thought the Lib Dems would only support a minority Tory government and not a coalition because of a "substantial gulf" between the two parties. In his confidential document on 16 March, Alexander wrote that it "would make it all but impossible for a coalition to be sustainable if it were formed, and extremely difficult to form without splitting the party."

 

• Chris Huhne, a member of the secret team, wrote a dissenting report to Clegg insisting that the Lib Dems would have to form a full-blown coalition with the Tories and not prop up a minority government. He warned there was no precedent for a minority government succeeding delivering a fiscal consolidation, raising the prospect both parties would face a backlash. "Financial crises are catastrophic for the political parties that are blamed, and we should avoid this at all costs."

 

• George Osborne, who had long feared the Tories would struggle to win an overall parliamentary majority, persuaded David Cameron to allow him to form the Tories' own secret coalition negotiating team two weeks before the election. The Tory leader demanded total secrecy and asked only to be given the barest details for fear that he would blurt it out "unplanned in an interview".

 

• David Laws, a member of the secret Lib Dem negotiating team who briefly served in the cabinet, predicted on 24 February 2010 that the Tories would make a "very early offer of co-operation or coalition" in the event of a hung parliament. Laws told Wilson that he has a high regard for Osborne who tried to persuade him to join the Tories in 2006.

 

• Gordon Brown was so keen to form a coalition with the Lib Dems that on Monday 10 May, the day before his resignation, he offered to form "a completely new sort of government" in which Clegg would run EU policy. The Lib Dems understood they would take half of the seats in cabinet.

 

A Lib Dem spokesman said tonight: "These are selective extracts of documents which discussed a range of options ahead of any possible negotiations. As the Liberal Democrats made clear throughout the election and in negotiations, they had four key priorities which were set out on the front page of the manifesto. All of these priorities were agreed in the coalition document. The nature of the coalition agreement has meant we were able to set the foundations for a stable five-year government that will deliver many of the priorities the Liberal Democrats have long supported."

 

Clegg tried to downgrade the pledge to abolish tuition fees at the 2009 conference, prompting a backlash from the left. A plan to abolish them over six years was included in the general election manifesto.

[melons]

I don't mind paying for my education, should it be free - yes. Given it's almost impossible then fair enough - i'll pay. As it stands now it works out about £7ph of teaching. I'd of said that's about fair, understandable if it's to rise with inflation and all that. What i don't think is fair is the fact that you are loaned these monies and they add interest at almost a banks rate, that interest is charged from the day of the first payment. That is is classed as an income by other agencies, not just benefits but while we're on it - it's classed as an income with them, it's a loan, you have to pay it back, if i was getting a loan from a bank it'd be classed as that and not brought into calculations when applying for the likes of housing benefit and so on.

 

Then you get to pay it back, and get this, it's classed as part of your income again, even though you never see it. It gets included all over again in those assessments as part of your income, so that £15pw you're paying back is assessed and not discredited again.

 

 

Do student's have the right to protest, course they do - and so they should. If people don't stand up and make themselves heard society won't learn from it's mistakes.

[Original202]

Exactly. Add it on to their fees.

 

I doubt many of the protesters need to worry about the fees. They won't be passing any University entrance tests.

[Sugar Ape]

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.

 

What if you have worked and paid taxes for 30 years and now your child is off to University, are you not entitled to ask that your 30 years tax contribution goes toward funding your childs education?

[RoboRiise]

Hats off to Sky news. Live coverage of a bunch of brainless morons leads to over 50 arrests. Hopefully, one will be for attempted murder.

 

Not so many smiles in front of the camera now eh?

 

 

Already the Clegg-Cameron-Murdoch axis pays dividends.

 

 

You're in favour of hurling a fire extinguisher off a multi-storey building into a crowd of people?

 

 

It would depend. For example, if Margaret Thatcher was standing in it I'd have to give it serious consideration. I'm a pretty good shot though so I'm reasonably sure that I could minimise any collateral damage.

[RoboRiise]

It's not unreasonable to expect individuals making over £21k per year to fund part of the education that made those earnings possible. If the debt serves as a disincentive for some to attend university, all the better. Rather than churning out thousands of mediocre graduates, the system should encourage young people to think more carefully about the true value of a degree. Many would genuinely benefit from forgoing one in favour of work experience, vocational studies, volunteering, starting a business etc.

Treating university as an essential birthright that should be extended to 60% of the population just debases the whole concept.

 

 

I agree with that completely, I just don't think that pricing people out of the market is a reasonable way to go about encouraging it. As a policy, it has to include an implicit assumption that there's a correlation between the least financially able and the least academically able because otherwise the disincentive isn't targeting the right people.

 

That's especially true when you consider that not everyone leaving uni with a degree will be heading for a high-flying job in the city and pulling in £50k a year by the time they're 23, not because of a shortage of jobs but because that simply isn't their vocation.

 

What this policy is in a nutshell is a recipe for filling our universities with the children of affluent parents, regardless of their academic ability. In short, exactly the problem that you say exists now but with the lowest financial stratum removed from the equation.

[Cardie]

Tory-lite doing there usual spineless it's all labours fault, don't blame us we're the people party.

 

I said Politicians were self serving cunts and the Tory-lite have managed to trump the two real parties. A party with no credibility (to be fair they had none before this) no backbone and no morals promising the earth with abolutely no intention to deliver, fuckin off their right to vote and oppose the tories in exchange for a few minor jobs and a mountain of kickbacks.

[Strontium]

its a pity TV evidence can only be used when its cops on the receiving end. I wonder what Ian Tomlinson's family are thinking tonight.

 

 

"If only he never had heart disease and cirrhosis of the liver, he still might be alive today"?

 

I agree with that completely, I just don't think that pricing people out of the market is a reasonable way to go about encouraging it. As a policy, it has to include an implicit assumption that there's a correlation between the least financially able and the least academically able because otherwise the disincentive isn't targeting the right people.

 

 

Hence why the new fee regime will be cheaper for the poorest 30% and why there will be £150m of scholarship money available.

[JER]

 

"Too many oiks in the university system these days. Some don't even have trust funds."

Edited November 13, 2010 by JER

[JER]

Revealed: Lib Dems planned before election to abandon tuition fees pledge | Politics | The Guardian

 

Can someone explain to me why Phil Woolas is being kicked out, when every Liberal campaigned on this pledge?

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

I must have been incommunicado on the day that Labour Party HQ was smashed to pieces by rioters. Maybe because it didn't happen. Of course it didn't happen, because every NUS President is a Labour Party lackey who will offer just the merest token resistance to anything a Labour government does.

 

Perhaps I shouldn't have said they did smash Labour HQ to pieces. Maybe I should have gone for something more accurate like 'there was plenty of opposition'. Hold on a sec, I did say that.

 

Liberal Democrats seems to be all about the deflection these days. They want to go back to 1997 and have a debate about other's actions rather than their own rancid lies.

 

I take it you don't want to take back your line about being 'just a poor, helpless 57 MPs'?

 

I guess it's easier to respond to this part of my post than it is to respond to the rest of it; the more important part.

 

It is not the least worst option at all, that's a complete canard. Labour are voting against it unanimously. All your MPs have to do is keep their pledge to their voters and it won't pass. That's the least worst option.

 

 

 

For anybody who cares, the Guardian are today carrying an article titled Lib Dems planned before election to abandon tuition fees pledge. EDIT: Too late!

[L19red]

"If only he never had heart disease and cirrhosis of the liver, he still might be alive today"?

 

You dont even believe that yourself. Here is your previous comment on the subject from April 7th 2009

 

I'd say post it anyway - I'm somewhat intrigued as to how the wanton slaughter of an unarmed man can be presented in a balanced way!

 

Needless to say, I think that video depicts what we call an open and shut case.

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

You dont even believe that yourself. Here is your previous comment on the subject from April 7th 2009

 

Strontium Dog must have the world's largest donated collection of his own arses.

[dennis tooth]

Revealed: Lib Dems planned before election to abandon tuition fees pledge | Politics | The Guardian

 

 

 

 

57 MPs should be recalled and put before the courts in that that case.

 

This is by Strontium Dogs' logic and by using the exact same method of judgment he used lately about a Labour MP who lied to get himself a seat.

 

Judge others lest yee bee judged.

 

Let him defend this, his weak manipulated soul can go to hell with Nick's phallus in his mouth.

 

Liberal Democrat Liars.