PROTESTS AT PARLIAMENT: WELL NO ONE IS LISTENING, WHAT DID THEY EXPECT?

I watched this video of the demonstrators outside the English parliament building tonight with mixed feelings.

I deplore (I really mean that) violence of any kind and I’ve spent my life trying to avoid it and discourage other people from it, but I guess sometimes you have to ask yourself, what else is there to do?

We live in a democracy, people say, so what you do is you wait till the next elections and you vote for the other lot. (Of course the other lot is just as useless and have almost identical policies so that’s a bit of a non starter.)

But what if you have a situation where one of the parties voted into government said that they would not do ‘something’. In fact they said that to do even half of that ‘something’ would be a disaster, never mind the whole thing. They even went so far as to sign a pledges not to do this “something”. They achieved a deal of publicity about swearing and promising that they would not do this ‘something’.

Then, lo and behold, and quite unexpectedly, they found themselves in government, with flashy cars, and massive offices; with staff bowing and scraping; with people calling them “Minister”, or “Secretary”, or, in one case, “Deputy Prime Minister” and every principle they ever had went flying out of the big posh office windows.

And what of this pledge that they had trotted around every university town in England? What of the photographs in the local press the length and breadth of the country? Well, at the first sniff of the Ministers’ Dining Room Wine List, they scrunched it up and dropped it into the ministerial waste paper bin to be emptied by the ministerial lackey.

So... what’s the option? Wait till the next election? Vote for the person who signs a pledge to repeal the law? Take the word of the prospective MP?

Huh?

What happens if he too drops his pledge into the ministerial waste paper bin as soon as he is comfortably ensconced in his ministerial armchair?

Peaceful protest is fine, indeed it’s right, except that this far from an election no one pays any attention to it.

The only time that the people in England have managed a change in the government’s policy was when they turned London upside down over Thatcher’s Poll Tax. The government listened then, just like the French government does.

Do you see where we are going with this? It’s not a pleasant picture, is it? But what is the alternative?

Tonight there will be arrests, but the real criminals will ride out of the building with their fat, self satisfied, lying bottoms on the rich upholstery of a ministerial car paid for by us, safe in the knowledge that they had their university education for free. Paid for by us!

Fair? Thought not.


Pics: (1) Qu'ils mangent de la brioche. Ex-Saint Vince laughing it off, after all he got his car and his office...and his doctorate; (2) Fires near the Westminster parliament. It will soon be the only way many of us can keep warm; (3) His magnificence Charlie and Mrs Parker Whatist’s car was hit by missiles and daubed with pain as they tried to get to the theatre. I can just hear his “ghastly people”. Don’t worry Chic, the feeling is mutual. Nice car by the way. Who paid for it? (4) Nick the Dick doing an advertisement for furniture polish. It’s clearly the only kind of pledge he knows.

FMQs totally devoted to snow today, can be viewed here.

LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE ENGLISH STUDENTS: YOU'RE SUBSIDIZING OVERSEAS STUDENTS

Well, now we know the reason for the student fees increase in England

Mr Cameron admitted that the increase would mean that fees for foreign students wouldn’t rise so much. So, that should be a comfort to all the English students who are considering whether they care to leave university with debts of perhaps as much as £45,000 or £50,000.

Not all students just follow the 3 year degree course. Teachers, for example, have to go on after university to study for a further year for their PGD which allows them to teach, and doctors may be at university for 7 years before being qualified (£63,000 + living expenses. I’d expect they'll have to import doctors from abroad in the future.)

Doubtless this news cheered up the 50,000 or so students and lecturers who protested in London today with disastrous consequences when it all got out of control. Injuries were sustained by both protesters and police in what was described by the Commissioner of the Met (why can’t they have a chief constable like everyone else?) as embarrassing, and badly managed. Why does that not surprise me? Oh because everything they do is embarrassing and badly managed. Who on earth runs that organization? Oh yes SIR Paul Stephenson. That’s right, they get the Knighthood before they start the job and the seat in the Lords after they finish it, no matter what a cock up they make of it.

And in parliament Nick Clegg, standing in for David Cameron admitted that he and his party had broken their pledge on students’ fees. Never suspecting that they might be called upon to uphold it, they had argued in opposition for no increases. Harriet (nobody loves me) Harman accused him of hawking his way round campuses soliciting votes ahead of the election and then being led astray by the Tories. Hatty joked that we all knew what it was like in Freshers’ Week. “You meet a dodgy man and do things you regret.”

Er no Hatts old thing. You may, but we don’t.

Cleggy had to own up that because of the financial situation (which he, of course knew nothing about before the election?) and because of compromises in the coalition agreement (ie the Liberals folding their tents), they had had to put forward different policies (one diametrically opposed to the previous ones). Despite being quite sure that he was doing the right thing he declined an invitation to meet students’ representatives.

Back in China, having put the Chinese students’ minds at rest about English students subsidizing their degrees, Mr Cameron went on to explain that the way to economic success was by granting freedom and democracy. He seemed to miss the irony of his words: the prime minister of a country which will be lucky to see a growth rate of 0.3% this year, lecturing a country which is likely to see 10% growth.

I sure that Hu Jintao will be grateful for his advice, even if he is somewhat mystified by it... and for the subsidy to his students.