Pro student letter in todays Northern Echo

In response to the right and far right polutting newspaper letters pages and message boards with anti student crap its time we took them on.

HEAR All Sides, December 14, was a sorry mix of mostly right wing and reactionary nonsense.

Take Des Moore, a correspondent who knows nothing of what is happening on the left or in the universities.

Moore blames the Socialist Workers Party for the student protests, but the SWP is a spent force, a pale imitation of what it was. The emerging protest movement is clearly autonomous and anarchist inspired.

Further, Moore calls protestors “left wing fascists”, but he knows that the left fought against fascism and Nazism very effectively.

Lawrence McGowan bemoans the lack of “respect”, but lacking respect is not a criminal offence.

Certainly, the lying politicians and the police, who nearly killed a protestor with a truncheon blow to his skull, do not deserve any.

Finally, Nigel Boddy, whose limp calls for campaigners to support minor regional parties and the Greens totally fails to confront the crisis in legitimacy and democracy that lets the rich pay no tax and tries to make us pay for the crisis the banks caused.

Trevor Bark

http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/features/letters/8741907.Student_protests/

Mayday
Homepage: http://mayday-magazine.com/

Comments

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Nice one

16.12.2010 14:31

Nice one. Let's not forget that the local press has a larger readership than the national press.

And as to all the right wing commenters: let's see their cowardly asses on the streets, if they can get them off of their sofas.

Squatticus

Scottish rises for English students

16.12.2010 16:50

The total number of students in Scottish higher education in 2010 is 272,625. 209,170 or 76.7% are Scottish domiciles. 35,170 of the remaining 63,455 are 'overseas' students, meaning there are currently 28,285 English, Welsh and Northern Irish students studying in Scotland, slightly more than 10%. 22,510 of those students are English, which is one out of twelve students in Scotland. By contrast, 11,895 Scottish students studying in English institutions in 2010. I can't find a total figure of students in England for 2010, but in 2008 the total was 2,005,840, so at most one out of every one hundred and sixty eight students in England are Scottish. That means the Scottish education system actually supports 14 times the ratio of English students out of it's total numbers compared to the reverse.

The draconian fees introduced in England is simply going to increase that ratio, by making English universities too expensive for Scots students and by making Scots universities comparitively cheaper for English students. This is why most Scottish MP's voted against the English rises, excluding some LibDems but including the SNP who normally don't vote on English only matters. That is also why 200 Scots students travelledto the London protests, and why it seems likely that the Scottish Parliament will raise fees for non-Scottish domiciles, to ensure Scots aren't prevented access to their own higher education institutions by economic refugees from England.

Mike Russell, the Scottish eductation minister is floating the idea of increasing fees for non-Scottish students to £6000. Liam Burns, the head of the Scottish NUS, was on TV today, more or less defending this, but the head of Edinburgh Uni Students Association, Liz Rawlings was also on attacking it. Ms Rawlings demand for a 'uniquely Scottish solution' of zero fees for every student was slightly undercut by her English accent.
The newspapers here haven't really covered the issue yet, although the Edinburgh Evening News today carried a (slightly sensationalised) story about the increasing numbers of (especially English) students in Edinburgh turning to prostitution to pay for their studies.

http://news.scotsman.com/news/Students-selling-sex-to-fund.6662589.jp

Danny