For my Libertarian friends

manofmystery wrote: Finnforest wrote: horsewithteeth11 wrote: I figured this could lead to an interesting discussion in this thread. I'll only say that most of these kids doing the smashing are probably well-to-do darlings with access to warm meals and bed at Mommy and Daddys, and beers this weekend over talk of how cool they were to smash up the city.  This is apparently what qualifies as idealism for some of our youth. For them to be trashing their city and urinating in the streets because they don't like paying for their education only shows me how pathetic they are, as people.  There isn't even much true protest in what these kids are doing, I think it's pretty obvious that many are just using this as an opportunity to misbehave.....and I'd wager that many of them are really having fun doing this.  So, not only do I have less sympathy for their cause because of their "protest",  but I hope those who can be identified do some time in jail, and pay restitution.  More likely, the police will be sued for abuse, such is the backward world we live in.  I have no problem with peaceful protest or a simple walk-out of class.   But people who do this, wherever they are, make me sick.     Angry spoiled kids with too much time on their hands, no real talent, and nothing worthwhile to say lead to punk.  I can't imagine what kind of musical abominations could come out of this.

Gents, you honestly have no idea of what you're talking about or of the larger picture about the student protests here. And also, you're trusting the Daily Mail, a homophobic, xenophobic, sensationalistic and deceitful rag with a consistently displayed hard right-wing and pro-authoritarian agenda - you may as well just make up your own story.

There was a very limited amount of basically illegal behaviour in one or two student protests, which was then generalised to apply to the whole 150,000 people who attended the London ones. There have also been some building occupations here in Oxford and elsewhere - but the university authorities have additionally closed down unrelated buildings with the intent, one suspects, of trying to sour public and student opinion against protesters.

The police have manhandled people and started violent scuffles for no reason, been unnecessarily violent, have kettled people in what is essentially an inflammatory curtailment of the right to peaceful protest and have been using some very disturbing language in their public statements. You might suspect that their determination to play an increased role and escalate these protests is in some way an attempt to claw back some ofthe upcoming cut in police resources.

Kindly cross-reference this inflammatory Mail drivel with some more reliable news source. What the Mail are doing, as usual, is to take a tiny snapshot of the day's whole events and paint the entire issue as being equivalent to that.

Finn, seriously, you have no idea beyond your own guess as to the social demographic of the people who are out there. The Lib Dem leadership in particular and Michael Gove have been going along with this insane guesswork as to how the protesters are largely middle-class, since one of the major sources of discontent with the cuts/fee-tripling combo is that our social mobility and working-class access to university education will be buggered by this bill. Which it will.

Anyway, I'll probably leave it there because otherwise I'll get much too angry about the whole thing, but I can say that the people who've been protesting (not me) have largely been remarkably peaceful and polite and that I'm very concerned about the roughness and the escalating language of the police response - my university has certainly been trying to both drive public opinion against the protesters and to punish people for protesting against the cuts peacefully and in a legitimate manner.


Edited by TGM: Orb - December 01 2010 at 12:50

The T wrote: Equality 7-2521 wrote: The T wrote: Equality 7-2521 wrote: The T wrote: Read the law well HP. It implies that people have to stop any stopped bus that is unloading children. Pat had to go after the bus that was already stopped, and stop it. Interpretations abound as to what he would have had to do; I would favor the two major thought currents in the scholar world: a) he had to stop the bus from unloading children, ergo he had to forcefully close the door of the bus by parking his car right next to it; or, b) after the children step out of the bus, Pat would have had to park in fron of the bus thus stopping it from further movement.  Anyway Pat failed. He's in debt to society. For that, he should pay a 70% tax on his income till the day he dies or wear a Che Guevara t-shirt till every hour of every day till he's 50.  Little do you know I actually respect Che. i would have guessed a little of that. He was an idealist and dies defending what he believed in. But I'm sure you don't particularly love 1) his ideas about society and the way it should be run; 2) what he has come to represent after his death No I don't like what his symbol has come to mean. However, he was a freedom fighter who sought to overthrow an oppressive government. I respect that. So do I.

 

He was a terrible economist, and on the whole, of course I disagree with him

My statement fought for freedom was a bad one probably. I meant he fought for freedom from an oppressive government. He of course envisioned one which would necessarily become just as oppressive, but he held the spirit of revolution.

Rothbard wrote a good piece when he died. He and I about feel the same way about Che:

Rothbard wrote: What made Che such an heroic figure for our time is that he, more than any man of our epoch or even of our century, was the living embodiment of the principle of Revolution. More than any man since the lovable but entirely ineffectual nineteenth-century Russian anarchist, Mikhail Bakunin, Che earned the title of “professional revolutionary.” And furthermore, to paraphrase Christopher Jencks in a recent perceptive, if wrongheaded, article in the New Republic, we all knew that his enemy was our enemy–that great Colossus that oppresses and threatens all the peoples of the world, U. S. imperialism.

Minus the Bakunin part. I won't pretend to know anything about him. 

No prob Rob, and I didn't realize the publication sucked.  Someone just dropped that article on us here.  I just have zero sympathy for dumb-asses who break sh*t, whatever their cause.  Once the first brick goes through the window in the name of "justice, man", they've lost me.  There are other methods than costing the taxpayers huge bucks to clean up their little party. 

Like Pat, I'm also amazed that people are freaking out about fees over there.  Unless I'm mistaken, Europe generally subsidizes a good % of educations, No?  They should be pretty grateful.  Here in the States, if you want a college education, you take out loans and pay them back until you die.  Unless you can dribble or throw a ball really well, which makes you a God, and they give you a scholarship. 

Scares me too. 

How so?  I've never noticed anything beyond her amazing voice

Hmmmm....interesting point.....like i said, I hadn't noticed that. 

Now that you mention it, she is somewhat attractive. 

thellama73 wrote: I can't understand why certain governments *cough*France*cough*allow violent rioters to dictate their policy. Is there no tear gas?

The T wrote: thellama73 wrote: I can't understand why certain governments *cough*France*cough*allow violent rioters to dictate their policy. Is there no tear gas? So you're asking for government repressing free people giving opinions?

No, I'm asking for government to give a good smackdown to people who are destroying private property.

Finnforest wrote: No prob Rob, and I didn't realize the publication sucked.  Someone just dropped that article on us here.  I just have zero sympathy for dumb-asses who break sh*t, whatever their cause.  Once the first brick goes through the window in the name of "justice, man", they've lost me.  There are other methods than costing the taxpayers huge bucks to clean up their little party.  Like Pat, I'm also amazed that people are freaking out about fees over there.  Unless I'm mistaken, Europe generally subsidizes a good % of educations, No?  They should be pretty grateful.  Here in the States, if you want a college education, you take out loans and pay them back until you die.  Unless you can dribble or throw a ball really well, which makes you a God, and they give you a scholarship.

Up til now, the UK's subsidised a substantial amount of higher education with limited fees introduced in the last ten years. This year, we're having 80% of our higher education tuition budget cut (and I think that includes all humanities teaching funding), and a 40% higher education cut overall. In return, our fee caps are tripled (to £9K a year, which isn't Ivy League but it's still quite a lot of debt) to compensate for it.

It's a fundamental change designed to drive us towards the American system, which is somewhat unpalatable (as someone who's going to one of the institutions that will actually charge as much as they are able to) because of how insanely high Ivy League fees are and how little of that actually goes into teaching.