[Previous entry: "Cuts are essential to all our futures"] [Next entry: "european union control should be resisted!"]
11/10/2010: "Students - short memories?"
as students march against tuition fees, a few points that demonstrators might want to consider:
- the fact that you are ALLOWED to demonstrate in large numbers - under that last labour government, the terrorism act was used to restrict any protest containing more than TWO people!
a protest on the scale we are witnessing today, would have had to be authorised by the police weeks in advance, if and only if, the police permitted it, your protest would have been restricted to areas where the police allowed you to go.
- 1997, labour in opposition campaigned and voiced support AGAINST tuition fees - months later, when they got into office as a government, they introduced them!
- the labour government seeking re election, gave a manifesto pledge NOT to introduce top up fees - not three months after being re elected as the government, they introduced top up fees!
- a labour government introduced top up fees, at £3000 a year, telling students that "only the very top universities will charge this, the majority will set their tuition fees a lot lower" - opposition parties warned that all universities will now charge £3000 a year tuition fees... most universities did, opposition parties were correct.
- a labour government stated that they "had no plans to sell off the student loan book" - they sold off the student loan book to barclays, which means after 3 years of low interest protected student loans, they could in effect, charge whatever interest they wanted to, and in a worse case scenario, turn the farce that is student loan recovery in USA into the same here!
i didnt see, hear the students and lecturers up in arms about any of this... WHERE WERE YOU THEN?
harriet harman was today making sarcastic and witty one liners at the despatch box in parliament about all this... totally inappropriate!
these fees are not conservative dogma - they are not some idealogical plan - they are, like every other area of public spending, having to be introduced because - to quote liam byrne, the labour outgoing treasury minister, "there is no money left!"
the sheer scale of what the country has to BORROW each year, just to stay afloat is staggering, and the labour party are conveniently forgetting about it.
21 MILLION people need a form of tax credit just to get by each week/month - every single tax credit is paid for by borrowing!
1.4 MILLION extra civil servants employed by a labour government since 1997 - every single wage, holiday pay, sick pay, promotion, yearly bonus, office building they use, computer they use, phone line they use, etc, etc, are ALL paid for by taxpayers - all to replace manufacturing and service jobs that labour allowed to disappear as they chased the golden egg of financial jobs.
last year alone we borrowed £155 BILLION pounds, just to break even, stay afloat, etc.
this cannot be allowed to continue.
the longer it takes to sort out this mess, the more money the country will waste on interest payments.. one report states that if we carry on borrowing each year at the rate we are, we will owe a staggering £45 BILLION, in interest payments alone! - this is more than the total defence budget for our brave armed forces for an entire year!
i wonder if any of the students protesting today are studying:
politics?
These will know that the past 13 years of labour government have wiped away (not my opinion, but well documented by government advisors to two labour prime ministers in their own books!) everything, the "right of politics" has put in place, as they have to make conditions right so that people NEED a labour alternative... 18 years of conservative government almost wiped them out completely!
just look at how blair/brown dumped all labour's old principals to get back in during 1997!
finance?
the bbc should interview some of these instead of quoting their own opinions as fact - id love to hear from students studying finance about why they think its fine to pay interest to foreign banks, instead of funding our brave troups involved in wars, that they post on their facebook walls that they like and support? (of course the £45 BILLION in interest could also apply to other areas like child poverty, elderly care, etc.)
id like to hear from students as to why they think they should be exempt from contributing to sort out the financial mess we are in?
every other walk of life has to do their bit to help.... why not students?
