26 November 2010

Idiot Savant wrong about London student protest

I’m fascinated about the authority Idiot Savant claims to talk about a protest in a city he wasn’t in, based on media coverage he was selective at looking at.  From his post you’d get quite a distorted picture of what happened, but then he couldn’t possibly know.  Not even the Guardian and Independent articles he quotes support his distorted propagandist view of what happened.

He’s either stupid, lying or just wilfully blind.   You see I actually am IN London and SAW the protests.

Let’s start. 

He said “The UK government is currently trying to balance its budget by shifting costs onto the young, through a trebling of university fees. This will prevent many kids from poor families from going to university”.  Bearing in mind this is shifting costs from future unborn taxpayers to current students.  However, he is wrong about it preventing kids from poor families going to university as they can get student loans to pay for fees, that they do not have to start paying back until after they earn the average wage.   A barrier to poor students?  Hardly.  In fact, the threshold to repay the loans is being increased as well, but that fact spoils the tale the socialists are stringing out to justify their protests.   That’s just him swallowing the spin of the Socialist Workers’ Party.

Then he claims that the protest was kettled (when the Police surround a group and confine them) and THEN the students rioted in response.

No.  Quite where he got this from is curious, as none of the major media reported this either.

In Whitehall a group descended on an unused Police van and vandalised it, others vandalising bus shelters and ticket machines, Transport for London reported objects had been thrown at buses carrying passengers at Trafalgar Square, smashing windows.   Buses were diverted away to avoid further incidents.  Some spray painted slogans on buildings.  To be fair a handful of schoolgirls who were skiving off school tried to stop some of this, but to no avail.

The kettling happened after this as the group descended on Parliament.  The Police responded appropriately to protect property and the public, and it isn’t surprising why.  There are reasonable grounds for opposing kettling, but to keep a protest contained when it has become violent is quite acceptable.  However, Idiot Savant is painting a picture of students surrounded, kept confined and THEN lashing out - which is completely wrong.  He should know better, but he isn't driven by reporting the facts, but by his own socialist agenda.

You see he completely ignores what happened on the last protest, when students ran amok, vandalised the Conservative Party headquarters, occupied the roof and one threw a fire extinguishers onto the Police below narrowly missing them (that person has since been charged).   Does he really think the Police should stand by and let private property be destroyed and peaceful citizens be threatened and intimidated by a mob?

No.  He wasn’t there.  I have seen both protest marches and the aftermath.   I know what the policy is (and I didn’t vote Conservative or Liberal Democrat) and it isn’t keeping the poor out of university education.  This is largely a group of naïve middle class students who are bemoaning the fact that when they start earning above average incomes, partly due to their education, they might have to pay the majority of the costs of that education.   These protests are hijacked by violent criminals (anarchists who don't recognise property rights).  The Police acted appropriately.  

Maybe Idiot Savant should concentrate on protests on cities where he is actually there, or maybe he should either report what actually happened rather than undertake a Gramscian reworking of the facts to fit his political agenda.

Oh and if students want something to protest about, how about that university education in Scotland has no fees, that this is funded from Westminster and on top of that the European Union demands Scotland offer the same education to students from any OTHER EU Member State.  That does NOT include England, because England is deemed to be in the same Member State as Scotland (which is true).

So English taxpayers subsidise free Scottish tertiary education so that Bulgarians, Romanians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Poles, Finns, Swedes, Danes, Germans, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Austrians, Italians, Spaniards, Greeks, Cypriots, Maltese, Portuguese, French, Belgians, Luxembourgians, Dutch and the Irish can get a free tertiary education - but they can't.


That's a serious reason to be pissed off with the European Union, the Scottish government and the whole devolution experiment.   However, socialists love the European Union because they think it can help make everything "free".

4 comments:

FAIRFACTS MEDIA said...

I wonder if the UK government has argued sufficiently about the amount of subsidy given to fund degrees.
If the students were paying a market level tuition fee, I would imagine the fees would be far higher than the "upto 9000" pounds we see quoted.
Didn't New Zealand do a proper study on who benefitted from a tertiary education, the student or the state, so government could argue that since the student gained xx% of the beenfit from their studies, that they should pay xx% of the cost?

I also think the students are being incredibly unfair and naive in targetting Nick Clegg and other Lib Dems in their protests.
They should accept that the Lib Dems had to drop their promise as part of a coalition agreement.
I am sure there's many a Tory MP pissed off at the Tory policies dave Cameron has had to drop to keep the Lib Dems happy.

And we also need to look at ZanuLiarbore's broken promises on the issue.
As a student attending Warwick University in the late 1980s, i recall student Labour politicians telling everyone that when Labout came to power, that student grants would increase to what they were, after inflation, in 1979.
But Tony Blair brought in tuition fees to add to the loans introduced by John Major.
And it was the former ZanuLiarbore government that instigated the Browne review that recommended the tuition fee increases.

Libertyscott said...

Fairfacts, yes I recall the report stated that students gained 50% of the benefit of their studies so should pay that proportion. Which for a start, is hard to disagree with.

You're right about the Lib Dems, although the truth is the LDs didn't think they would ever be in a position of power, so could make promises they never thought they could keep.

Labour of course has no scruples and is now moving even further to the left, with the Primrose Hill socialist mob.

Unknown said...

Although it is many years since I spent some time living in London, when there, I was surprised at the relatively large numbers of extremists associated with different political philosophies based in London. Still small in relative terms, London can probably "boast" larger numbers of Marxists, Anarchists, Libertarians, Christian/Muslim/Jewish/Environmental radicals than most countries of similar populations.

Living there, you really feel you are in the centre of world poitical debates. This is both good (you get to meet some really interesting people & ideas) and bad (London regularly gets major protests and even riots organised by the few dozen radicals who want to make a point).

I assume this situation has not changed.

scrubone said...

http://twitter.com/#!/jordantcarter/status/13008892187381760