MPs vote on tuition fees increase today in UK.

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I think he lost his cred there after the Forgemasters debacle. Clegglet couldn't give two s**ts about his constituents, and given how badly he sold out to get in with the Conservatives, he's now a Quisling-level traitor. Even worse, Sheffield is a Uni town.

Screwed over one of the few steel mills left in Sheffield

Screwed over the Russel Group Uni and the Former-Poly Uni

And his constituency is where most of the student accomodation is

I hate it when people/groups simplify in that the police were the brutal oppressors and the students were the oppressed.

I meant if you look in some countries, there is real oppression and police brutality.

Its not a game of "My life is worse than yours/ My pigs are more brutal than your pigs." It doesn't hurt any less being beaten by a British policeman than an American one, or a Guatemalan one. A police horse which steps on you is as heavy the world over. Its no less of a crime. IN fact it's even MORE of a crime. And its as "real". They aren't pretending to beat people with sticks.

We have had tuition fee increases as well (in the public Universities of the United States).

I go to a University of California school (UC). In just only two years, they have raised tuition almost forty percent. Luckily, I studied hard and so I have had grants to cover the increases. But I had to sacrifice.

It is not just the UK that is going through this. Many Americans are also going through this.
I am sincerely sorry you guys have to deal with this as well.

its not that far wrong IMO. This country is changing atm. in some ways moving towards those other countries, these protests are a reflection of that. (these demos have had a wider scope than just the tuition fees issue)

Imagine how much more savage the police would be were it not for the internet and the fact that now they have to wear identifiable numbers that can be picked up on cameras? (actually just youtube 'operation solstice' & pray they have calmed down in the intervening 25 years!)

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Interesting write-up on lies peddled by the police, and repeated by the BBC. I was watching the BBC live feed and contrasting it with independant coverage. The lies that poured out of that superintendants spokeswoman s mouth today were staggeringly obvious. Some are mentioned here;

http://london.indymedia.org/articles/6634

just like dodgy foreign invasions breed terrorists, this sort of aggressive policing politises ordinary people into activists.

The cuts tend to be very focussed eg. they boast about cutting 'quangos' and waste in state depts but you can bet all those that have a regulatory role (eg. HMRC) on corporate greed will be cut and those that facilitate it (export guarantee?) will be spared.

the police have two roles, 1. the socially useful role and 2. the state bully-boy role. So what the police lose out in the helpful community role they will make up for, at least in part, in the oppressive role. the amount of overtime payment this last month alone must have been phenonemal. Even if police take-home pay is severely cut, the police know that financially they are far, far better off in the job tham out of it. ill be cynical and suggest that the reason their paid so well is to help reinforce the percieved seperation from (and lack of empathy for) the general public, especially in times of recession.

Yesterday has made me proud to be British. Good on the students for kicking against the pricks.

Now the task is for we Aspies to use this as an inspiration and stop ideological tory cuts to our benefits.

Solidarity.

Grit your teeth, hon, I've heard rumors they're going up again next year. Keep studying!

1. I think the behaviour of some of the protesters was disgusting. (Swinging on the cenotaph, urinating on Churchill's statue etc).

2. I think people should have to pay for a personal benefit. I'm an Australian post-grad business student, and I've got a fairly hefty debt from my student loans. Would it be nice if the government paid for it? Sure. But I don't really see the fairness in taxing everyone else so I can go to uni. In Australia, everyone has access to the government loans system (the gov't pays the fees upfront, you repay them when you earn over a certain amount of money), which sounds very similar to the system being introduced. You learn to live with it. It makes buying a house more difficult, but I don't think government policy should be geared towards encouraging people to buy houses in the first place.

3. A target of 50% of the population having a university degree is foolishness, even in a developed nation. You will have to devalue the standards to the point where a degree is not worth hardly anything. I think a target of 25-30% of the population should have a uni degree, the rest either a technical or whatever background.

4. The UK government can't keep spending like they have. Where else are the cuts supposed to come from?

have you crossed a bridge today? an engineer designed that with their qualifications.



well theres the £billions evaded in corporate tax, that would be a start

We could start with the tax cheats on the tory front bench (eg. osborne £1.6m) their tory policy/cuts advisors (philip green £285m) & tory-promoted corporations (eg. vodafone £6 Bn)

Just a handful of tax-dodgers (the vodafone figure comes from the actual bill which they refused to pay, not avoidance loopholes) All of which would just about have covered all of the first wave of public spending cuts; same deficit reduction - no cuts necessary at all.

http://www.ukuncut.org.uk/

Yes I have. A bridge I paid for through my taxes. The engineer was paid for his/her services as well. And these days, that engineer most likely was a full-fee-paying overseas student.

A university degree generally means a higher income for the individual, regardless of the public good that might come along with that. Yes, doctors are necessary, but they also get paid a truckload of cash. If you had the ability & inclination, why wouldn't you be a doctor? So what if you had to take on debt to do your degree. It's not like a doctor couldn't afford to repay it.

There is an argument to pay for the degrees of people who are not rewarded well post-graduation but serve a significant public good (social workers, nurses, perhaps), but this does NOT include architects, and business degrees, lawyers, doctors, engineers, etc.



Couple of points here.

1. I am not in favour of tax dodging. The law should be enforced without fear or favour. Lengthy tax codes are the enemy here and unfortunately the Australian Tax code is the longest piece of legislation in the world.

2. I would much rather money stays in the hands of the private sector (which generates wealth), than under the control of government (which generally does not).

Let's look at Vodafone. What are they doing with those unpaid taxes? Paying shareholder dividends? employing more people? offering cheaper/better services? So, yes, people & corporations should pay the taxes the law requires. BUT soaking the rich is pretty much never the answer to economic problems. You are basically taking money off people who have proven they know how to spend & make it, and giving it to organisations that are more or less society-wide luxuries.

A business student? You sound like one. Only people who know how to make money are socially useful? So how would you describe the 85% of aspies who are unemployed? You and everything you stand for disgusts me to my bones.

Read my posts again. I even specifically mention people whose university degrees serve a public good but who are not rewarded well financially.

Show me one sentence of mine, even out of context, that could be interpreted as me saying that people who don't know how to make money are socially useless. My goodness.

"2. I would much rather money stays in the hands of the private sector (which generates wealth), than under the control of government (which generally does not). "

I interpret this as you seeing the private sector and those you (falsely) assume create all wealth as being personally more meritorious than people like me who survive on benefits(funded through taxation) . Am i wrong?

Not more more meritorious. Better at creating wealth, though, yes.

Public money should be spent on the public good. Supporting people with disabilities is most certainly a public good, especially in cases like ASD, where no-one is at fault. Paying for some middle-class kid's law degree? Not so much.