STUDENTS UNITE! The NUS is NEEDS YOU!
Molten Magma | 05.02.2004 16:20 | Education | Liverpool
The NUS is calling for a National Shutdown of Education on the Wednesday 25th February.
Below is an article copied from the Social Workers Student Society that informed me of how much money the Government has and how much it is willing to waste rather than privallege students.
Fellow Students I am calling for you to unite and walk out on the 25th February.
Below is an article copied from the Social Workers Student Society that informed me of how much money the Government has and how much it is willing to waste rather than privallege students.
Fellow Students I am calling for you to unite and walk out on the 25th February.
Education is a Right not a Privilege!
New Labour has demonstrated its cringing devotion to the interests of big business once again by voting to introduce top-up fees. Top-up fees are a disaster for working-class people wanting to go to university; they will act to further introduce the logic of the market into education. Opinion polls have consistently shown that most people in Britain oppose top-up fees. Once again, Blair and his gang of hypocrites have put the needs of the millionaire fat cats ahead of those of the millions ordinary people.
The whole system has been lobbied for the vice-chancellors of the county's most prestigious universities. Fat cats like Malcolm Grant at University College London and Richard Sykes at Imperial College argue that top-up fees are needed to solve a "funding crisis" (meanwhile vice-chancellors at newer institutions life University of East London and Kingston University have argued hard against them). It obscene for any Government, let alone that of the world's fourth richest country, to claim it has a public service funding crisis while at the same time it is free spending £6.3billion on illegal war.
For too long the Student anti-fees movement, under the leadership of the National Union of Students executive, has put its faith in negotiations with the New Labour Government rather than protests and mass direct action. This is a strategy that failed in 1997 when fees were introduced and has failed again on Tuesday the 27th of January when Blair managed to The Higher Education Funding Bill fees through despite the opposition of all the other parties.
SWSS believes that relying on cowardly Labour MPs to defend us is never going to defeat the neo-liberal agenda of Blair and company. We should build a mass movement modelled on the Stop the War Coalition to mobilise the tens of thousands of people who are willing to fight for free education that is open to all. On Wednesday the 25th of February, NUS has called a national day of Higher Education shut down. We should organise college occupations and major local demonstrations on this day.
New Labour has demonstrated its cringing devotion to the interests of big business once again by voting to introduce top-up fees. Top-up fees are a disaster for working-class people wanting to go to university; they will act to further introduce the logic of the market into education. Opinion polls have consistently shown that most people in Britain oppose top-up fees. Once again, Blair and his gang of hypocrites have put the needs of the millionaire fat cats ahead of those of the millions ordinary people.
The whole system has been lobbied for the vice-chancellors of the county's most prestigious universities. Fat cats like Malcolm Grant at University College London and Richard Sykes at Imperial College argue that top-up fees are needed to solve a "funding crisis" (meanwhile vice-chancellors at newer institutions life University of East London and Kingston University have argued hard against them). It obscene for any Government, let alone that of the world's fourth richest country, to claim it has a public service funding crisis while at the same time it is free spending £6.3billion on illegal war.
For too long the Student anti-fees movement, under the leadership of the National Union of Students executive, has put its faith in negotiations with the New Labour Government rather than protests and mass direct action. This is a strategy that failed in 1997 when fees were introduced and has failed again on Tuesday the 27th of January when Blair managed to The Higher Education Funding Bill fees through despite the opposition of all the other parties.
SWSS believes that relying on cowardly Labour MPs to defend us is never going to defeat the neo-liberal agenda of Blair and company. We should build a mass movement modelled on the Stop the War Coalition to mobilise the tens of thousands of people who are willing to fight for free education that is open to all. On Wednesday the 25th of February, NUS has called a national day of Higher Education shut down. We should organise college occupations and major local demonstrations on this day.
Molten Magma
e-mail:
Molten_Magma@hotmail.com
Comments
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Trots!
05.02.2004 21:39
Try convincing your own class to stop shitting on us the working class before you start lecturing us what to do!
Ta ra.
working_class
We don't need no education
06.02.2004 06:31
VoR
Hypocrit
08.02.2004 01:09
How on earth would you kno what the middle class think/feel or believe? And what on earth does classes have to do with ALL STUDENTS from ALL BACKGROUNDS paying tution fees and not recieveing grants?
Are you a student? If so then join all other students and walk out on the 25th of february - if not then why bother commenting on this article?
Molten Magma
stupidity..
08.02.2004 16:11
man, wake up!!! people like you are those who weaken the alternative movements,... relax!
we all have a number of common goals and we should focus on those...
peace out!
mari
Valid Points...
10.02.2004 17:23
As you say there has been an evolution and change, but many of those people who cannot understand why many working class people who do have a bee in their bonnet, (like me at times!) have not looked at why we do, certainly not to any great depth or degree. I will be personal for a moment. In Liverpool, for example, for a long time working class people could not really get into the three, yes count 'em three, universities. It wasn't impossible but it was certainly not encouraged in any way. In the main university, Liverpool University, I would argue that there is still a bias towards middle class people from the South and surrounding areas, and a bias against working class people from Liverpool. At this time, as we see regeneration money coming into the city, and the beginnings of a brave, new Liverpool happening before our eyes, it seems that outside people and outside businesses are getting all the cream, and furthermore creating low-paid, low-status contract labour for local people. One side, technically you may call it monied middle class and above are getting all the money, and the other side, technically you may call it working class, are getting all the shit low paid jobs. Cut this any way you like, try to rationalise it, etc etc, the reality is that it is going on. And, as ever, it does and will cause problems and animosities and so on and so on. Believe me, if there were genuine middle class and monied lefties standing up and genuinely wanting to challenge such blatant injustice, blatant economic injustice in all its nefarious forms, I would be the first to cheer them on, and sing their praises. I just don't see it happening, that's all. Any poor person, any working class person left out of the wealth of this country is going to be pissed off when they see other people making money hand over fist and getting all the good things, when they struggle and struggle just to make ends meet, and very usually on a very shitty low wage. You would be pissed off too.
The Class issue is always going to be a hot topic, consistently and continually, simply because there is a class system and there is injustice and systemic injustice which is allowed to go on unhindered. And because certain people profit from those very divides. And it goes on unchecked because the class system is the last taboo, the last thing to be looked at in depth, and what class is really all about; what it is about is what racism, religious intolerance etc etc is about, a justification that allows some very nice middle class people to have cosy comfortable lives, and someone else who isn't nice and well-mannered etc, not to have nice cosy lifestyles. It is as broad and as simple as that. It is an issue that is so all-pervading in Britain, and yet one which the left does not want to really look at, for any number of myriad issues. Until it is tackled, and effectively, and debated by serious numbers of people, it is the 'disease' that will continue to make Britain ill.
Timbo O'the 'Pool
Commercial companies handel on 'modern' universities
15.12.2006 18:25
These ventures are promising the customer (or the investor) several benefits to get ahead of the market, with 'consultancy' from leading academics. These academics will be the professors' and lecturers' normally close at hand for the undergraduate/postgraduate students' guidance. Not only is the modern undergraduate/postgraduate paying for a 'service'. i.e. Education. The lecturers' that provide this 'service' are blunted by the forces that are driving the modern university into inventing the most cost-effective escalator. It is not the purpose of this posting to discuss the justification of the inventions,as they can have a multitude of socially/nationally/globally beneficial uses such as sustainable energy/medical applications etc.
Performance targets (again a commercial term) and pressure on academic staff will only dent the knowlege dissimated to students. Commercial Institutions' will ebb their own ' policies' and 'procedures' and corporate culture in to universities. Companies' hold on the university (through funding) can potentially have a detrimental effect on the breed of graduates that they (University and Company) together foster.
Kushara Navaratne
e-mail:
kusharan@yahoo.co.uk
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