Down with Mandela

In Parliament Square there is a staute of Nelson Mandela, he of South African anti-apartheid fame.  I heard him speak once, but unfortunately to do so I had to listen to some sanctimonous arsehole called Tony Bliar (misspelling deliberate), but that's another story.

I understand that students are unhappy about the rise of tuition fees but I couldn't really understand why somebody thought it necessary to dawb Mr Mandela's statue with the pink paint that I saw on it this morning as I rode to court.  Nor, if they simply wanted to protest was it necessary to write "fuck police" in big letters on Winston Churchill's statue.

A few days ago I saw students protesting outside Parliament about the reduction in funding for school sports.  They were well organised, very vocal, got themselves on the tele but managed to avoid closing the whole of central London and trashing the place.

Comments

  1. lenko11 December 2010 at 12:12

    You really don't understand the underlying motives, do you? It's about young males kicking against the authority of the elders of the tribe. It's about defiance of those perceived to be better off, in their struggle to BECOME the better off. It's about testosterone, and the joy of violence, and showing off to the females who egg them on, and the chance of a quick shag after the party's over.

    Tuition fees are the background music. Could be anything -- if the government had suddenly banned Marmite, the yobs would react in the same way.

    Because like it or not, we're all built more or less the same way.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Defence Brief12 December 2010 at 11:24

    Actually, I do get it and having looked at the pictures released by the police this morning I am pretty confident that they are not students. They are far too old to be students who would be affected by these changes, which does somewhat undermine your rather evolutionary psychology based explanation.

    The people who perpetrate this sort of violence are the people who 30-years-ago would have been fighting on football terraces.

    But, whenever a student is interviewed on TV they seem to applaud, condon, encourage and warn of future violence. While I accept that there maybe some editorial bias I can only go by what evidence I have seen.

    ReplyDelete
  3. mcmrjp12 December 2010 at 11:48

    Whats worrying is the encouragement from the likes of the new boss of Unite Union. I am also aware that parents were encouraging their kids to get involved. So far it seems like a "blast" to them but now we have one student with a very serious head injury - if it continues someone will lose their life. Also the arrests have started and more to follow. I agree most of those involved will be members of SWP or anarchists but if there are some misguided students they will find themselves in Crown Court and, if convicted, go down, lose any future job prospects and never get into Canada or the USA.

    If the idiot son of the Pink Floyd member who climbed the Cenotaph and swung on the flag and didn't realise what it stood for, is anything to go by, then I don't see why we should subsidise their academic careers as they clearly are not learning anything!

    ReplyDelete
  4. phisheep13 December 2010 at 00:48

    Maybe I am not up with the proposed legislation, but "far too old to be students who could be affected" concerns me a bit. Not that I'm a protestor or anything, but I did get a degree at 50-ish. Whoever says you can only get them at 20-ish. Is the legislation aimed only at young students or something?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Defence Brief15 December 2010 at 17:43

    Phisheep, I was under the impression that the current system of fees applied to those under a certain age and that if you were over that age then you paid the full wack anyway. When I was a young student a mature student explained to me that was how it worked. Maybe it's changed or I've got it wrong over the years.

    ReplyDelete

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