Category Archives: students

Oh no! Whatever shall we do?

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I used to like the sitcom Malcolm in the Middle, I especially enjoyed the episode where Francis, the elder brother, incited his classmates at the military school he attended into participating in a hunger strike. The reaction from the Commandant in mocking tones was, ‘Ohhhh, make it stop.’ He then went on to tuck into a nice big dinner.

Resistance is not futile. But you have to be a bit smart about what form your resistance takes.

Students occupying a University of Kent building to protest at education cuts and the rise in tuition fees say they are prepared to continue their sit-in over Christmas.

Ooooh, ouch. That’ll have Dastardly Dave and Nasty Nick feeling very morose as they tuck into their organic, ethically sourced, environmentally sustainable turkey on Christmas Day.

The university, which is shutting for Christmas on Wednesday, said earlier it would seek a possession order.

Some of the students who originally took part in the sit-in have now returned home for the Christmas holidays but those who remained said they would stay put.

They’ve started to cut and run.

The students demanded that the vice-chancellor Julia Goodfellow should publicly condemn, through the university website, the Parliamentary vote for the rise in tuition fees and the proposed cuts in education.

They also demanded that she retract herself as signatory of a letter published in the Daily Telegraph on 8 December.

But maybe she doesn’t agree with your point of view? What would your reaction be if the VC witheld your degree certificates until you publicly declared your support for the budget cuts and the increase in tuition fees? You’d be up in arms, wouldn’t you? So what gives you the right to hold a gun to the woman’s head?

If you disagree, then fine. But that’s life, there’s plenty of stuff this government is doing that I disagree with. What you are demanding is that people have their money taken off them, under threat of prison, and given to you. Why? Because you feel you are entitled to other peoples’ money? My only demand is that the State gets the hell out of my life.

Anyhow, word has reached me from contacts at UKC of some very depressing news. Apparently, this sit in does not cover going out of the building for a shower, they’ve been doing that, and security have been letting them back in to resume their protest. And the same has held true for going for a cigarette.

Yes, smoking.

They’ve occupied a building, and so annoyed the university authorities that they’ve had to apply to the courts to resolve the occupation. But they’ve gone outside for a smoke?

Give me strength. Did the stormers of the Winter Palace wipe their boots before going over the threshold? Did the leaders of the Solidarity movement moderate their language to stop the communist government of Poland getting their feelings hurt? Did Bolivar use wooden swords and pop guns so his imperial overlords wouldn’t suffer any nasty injuries?

For God’s sake, when did our students become so supine and spineless? Where’s the devil-may-care attitude? Where’s the ‘fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me‘ sneer? Where’s the passion?

I could weep for what our students have become. I may not agree with them, but if you’re going to break the rules, then break them.

Just for that, I hope they stay in over Xmas, and I hope the VC cuts off the heating, electricity and water in the building.

Yes, but what does it mean?

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I’m sat here watching the students, and some of their hangers on, attempting to recreate the poll tax riots. And failing. A couple of pointers for them:

  • If you want to go for it, you’ll have to take the majority of the population with you. From the feedback I’ve seen, you don’t got them. 
  • If you want to go for it, you need to hit hard and hit early before the police get themselves sorted. 
  • If you want to protest about the government not taking money from everyone to pay for your BA in Hollyoaks in its entirety, then don’t start waving anarchist banners about, that isn’t how anarchism works. Anarchism is the total absence of government. No government means you pay for the lot. 
  • Get some decent slogans, your ones are pathetic.

Anyhow, it is obvious that the trouble makers are a minority, and I have no doubt that the event has been hijacked to an extent by a group of people who just like smashing stuff up, but then that’s life.

My attention lies away from the demo in London though, it is directed towards the left wing politicians, and the media, especially the BBC. One word has been trotted out ad infinitum today, and I’m struggling to put it into any meaningful context. The word? ‘Progressive’.

Listening to Radio 5 in the car (the only option down here because music radio, endlessly playing the same 5 shite songs all day bores the arse off me) ‘Progressive’ is used in a positive sense. This policy is not progressive. One can only draw the conclusion that a progressive policy is desirable.

To me, progressive suggests a journey. But progressing to what? To my mind, a policy which moves us towards a country where the endless interference by the State is curtailed, where the freedom of the individual from mindless regulation and incessant and invasive monitoring is enabled is progressive.

What we have here is a demonstration from people who want the government to force us, under threat of imprisonment, to hand over our cash, via them, to fund the desire of some individuals to go to university. That, to me, is not progressive, it is reinforcing the idea that the State must take from the whole of society to bankroll the desires of one group.

As an aside, I think the whole thing is too broad, as is always the way with law these days. I’m actually quite happy for my taxes to be spent on the education of those who would leave Uni with degrees in subjects like medicine, engineering, the sciences – stuff that benefits the economy and the country as a whole. If we can be world class in these areas, we will all reap the benefits. However I do object to the idea that cash should be taken from me to fund what is little more than a lifestyle choice from people who will study degree courses that will not really be of any benefit to the individual, let alone the country as a whole. As a general guide, any subject which has the word ‘studies’ in the course title. I also have concerns over ‘ology’ if not prefaced with the two letters ‘bi’, I’ll let ‘archae’ slide as well, as long as we don’t get thousands of them.

I digress. Progressive is a weasel word, used to disguise the real feeling the user wants to impart.

Progressive is a word that you will rarely hear someone outside the left use, when it is used by the left, I can only imagine that the thing they want to progress to is, well, it doesn’t bear thinking about.

What they mean is ‘fair’.

Fairness is a subjective term. Is it fair that students will have to cough up? Well, if you’re about to embark on a university course, it doesn’t seem fair at all. If you’ve left school at 16, trained as a plumber and have just struck out on your own with no or little help, then it seems perfectly fair.

So, can we stop the use of this word? Perhaps the term ‘weasel word’ isn’t quite accurate. I prefer a term like ‘cattle-prod word’, a term that is couched in such a way that one is designed to feel guilt about going against it. It is a form of bullying and is used to suggest that we are all moving forwards together. To be frank, it makes me shudder.

One way or the other, they’ll get it.

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Oh, the students.

OH has touched on the subject, and makes some salient points.

Make no mistake about it, one way or the other the only people who will pay for university education is those who get it, either directly as proposed or hidden away in taxation once they get a job afterwards. There will be no escape.

Consider this; why do so many people go to university these days? University used to be for the elite. Elite is not a dirty word, not when it is an elite based on academic merit. Something happened in the 60′s and 70′s, a section of the (not at all meritous) political elite thought that there was something wrong with working with your hands. It was something to be looked down on, there was something wrong with the working man actually working. The result now is that all children, regardless of ability or aptitude spend their whole lives in school being herded through the door marked ‘academic excellence’.

There’s a problem with that. Not all kids have the ability to be academically excellent. The solution we had was to lower the bar. The result? Those who are academically excellent find their excellence is watered down, those who are not clutch a fistful of qualifications as valuable as a barrow load of Weimar Republic Marks. This is not fair on either. You cannot have prizes for all, it simply does not work that way. I would love to be able to sprint like Usain Bolt, paint like Da Vinci, think like Einstein or compose like Mozart, but nature did not make me that way, there is nothing anybody can do to change that. Not one thing.

This current education system strives for mediocrity, and does not even deliver that. We have all been turned into apples, all of us. The marketplace is flooded with apples. These apples are so common that they are dirt cheap. How much for a banana? Don’t see many of those, valuable things, bananas.

Be a banana.

If I had my time again, I’d have forgotten university, I’d have trained to be an electrician. You work for yourself, you are responsible for yourself, you command your worth. I fell into the trap of believing that university was the only way. I was wrong. Personally I got a great deal out of going to uni, academically it was pointless, a waste of three years.

Oh, to have had a trade. Yes, long hours, hard work. But your work. No office politics, no cuts, no pointless forms, reports, appraisals. I may yet still do it, if given the chop. Invest the redundancy payout in myself.

Why the hell did we do away with our secondary moderns, our polytechnics and replace them with degree certificates mass printed on rice paper? Why do we persuade people that the only choices are between debt ridden graduate or dole cheat? To try to persuade people that with a half-arsed effort they can be Bolt, Da Vinci, Einstein, Mozart? This is madness.

I should have been a banana.

I’m sorry students, but the money isn’t there. Take over every building in Westminster. The money still won’t be there. Unseat every LibDem MP in the country and replace with a scarlet red Labour MP. The money is still nowhere to be seen.

You are blaming the person who has realised there is a fire. Unfortunately, he hasn’t got the guts to shout ‘FIRE’. The person you need to blame is the one is the one who set the fire, the one who decided that everyone had to go to university. Who was going to pay for it? I’ll tell you this, unless you take the red shilling (and I’ve never seen a more politically detached generation than this one), once you start to earn and study the deductions column on your payslip, your attitude will change reeeeaaalll quick.

Don’t fall into the trap. Evaluate your situation. What will you do with that degree, what will you actually do with it? Unless that degree will give you access to a career path you have decided upon, civil engineer, vet, biochemist, doctor, ask yourself, is this worth the money?

Don’t view this as a tax, don’t view this as being screwed over. View the student loans people as a silent partner in You Ltd. This partner will want his investment back. Look at your place in the market, will this investment you are making in yourself produce a worthwhile return? If not, say ‘I’m out’, go and play to your strengths. You could have three year headstart in experience and valuable knowledge over your competitors.

There is always more than one route to the top and it may not pay to follow the herd. They may be heading to the slaughterhouse.