London Student Protests
When the first student protest was due to happen, I had considered going. In fact, I had planned to make an appearance but declined only because I had class that day and my mentality was that I was not going to miss it considering I'd already paid for it. In hindsight, I'm glad I didn't go. Missing the first protest meant that when the next one was announced I'd already made the firm decision not to attend.
I am against the rise in student fees, because god knows I'm one of the students who'd never have been able to afford it if this had happened four years ago (I entered into university as the first year to have the 3000GBP cap) but I don't see why people can't see the bigger picture in what transpired during protests. Or perhaps they can, but choose only to report one side of it to further their own agendas, and much of the general public just follow popular opinion - for or against the rises or otherwise - and behave like mindless sheep, incapable of thinking and evaluating the situation for themselves.
Did the protest descend into violent rioting? Yes it did. Was that wrong? Of course it was frikken' wrong! Does that automatically make all students mindless vile-mouthed assholes? NO it does not. As a physicist, let me point you towards what is known as the Gaussian Distribution, or what biologists will refer to as the bell curve.
Clustered around a mean value, is where most of the population would fall. Further out, towards the extremes of the variable (denoted by the x-axis), the population drops off. Same with the concept of opinions; extreme views are rare but being extreme (and ergo have extreme values if you were to make them analogous to numerical values), even a few can influence the outcome.
Most of the students were there for peaceful protest. Some of the students decided to become raging arseholes and start lobbing missiles and stuff and vandalizing everything in plain sight for the sake of it. Some of them weren't even students but anarchists who had joined in with the intention of hijacking the aims of the protest and causing disturbance for the crack of it. Well, golly-gee, mister! They certainly succeeded in what they were aiming for! All because some dolts were sheep and decided it would be a great idea to join in on the "fun" as well, and now we have an entire nation and world looking on in disgust thinking students really aren't worth it.
Well guess what keeps news channels and papers in business? "Interesting" news. Scandal. Well look what the rioting gave them. They're not going to sell papers by giving both points of view and reasoning it out like rational beings - they have their own agenda, give an opinionated POV and watch as the debate flies. Hasn't anyone noticed that the papers do not only report on the news? The more popular writers of the articles even have their own pictures beside their names, smiling benevolantly on as if they were miniature celebrities in themselves. It's not just the "Comments" section that's filled with reporters' opinions, you know... Gosh, read between the lines sometime.
And the students. No, I don't want the fees to rise either. And yes, some students were hit with batons. Was it wrong to hit the ones that were peaceful? Yes. Should they have only gone after the violent ones? Hell yes. Should they have beaten some of the protesters that hard? No. But damnit, for the sake of humanity don't go about trashing public property, defacing war heroes, and throwing fireworks at the horses from the mounted units! Don't provoke the police by lobbing stuff at them and then screeching about how you were wronged when they decided to throw your ass in a cell or come after you with with a baton. If you see other students getting violent around you then bloody hell, turn around and leave! Because you can be sure the police are going to stop them eventually and if you're smart then you wouldn't stay beside them.
You're trying to show the public that you are worth the education and the money to support it. Thanks to a few who incited violence, we got the complete opposite. And when the videos are showing students coming up against a barricade of officers and the horses coming through for a "charge" (seriously, a quick trot and a light canter), I really wonder what they were trying to show, with the level of foul language they were using at the police. It certainly wasn't peaceful protesting, because they ended up looking more like football hooligans. >:(
I am against the rise in student fees, because god knows I'm one of the students who'd never have been able to afford it if this had happened four years ago (I entered into university as the first year to have the 3000GBP cap) but I don't see why people can't see the bigger picture in what transpired during protests. Or perhaps they can, but choose only to report one side of it to further their own agendas, and much of the general public just follow popular opinion - for or against the rises or otherwise - and behave like mindless sheep, incapable of thinking and evaluating the situation for themselves.
Did the protest descend into violent rioting? Yes it did. Was that wrong? Of course it was frikken' wrong! Does that automatically make all students mindless vile-mouthed assholes? NO it does not. As a physicist, let me point you towards what is known as the Gaussian Distribution, or what biologists will refer to as the bell curve.
Clustered around a mean value, is where most of the population would fall. Further out, towards the extremes of the variable (denoted by the x-axis), the population drops off. Same with the concept of opinions; extreme views are rare but being extreme (and ergo have extreme values if you were to make them analogous to numerical values), even a few can influence the outcome.
Most of the students were there for peaceful protest. Some of the students decided to become raging arseholes and start lobbing missiles and stuff and vandalizing everything in plain sight for the sake of it. Some of them weren't even students but anarchists who had joined in with the intention of hijacking the aims of the protest and causing disturbance for the crack of it. Well, golly-gee, mister! They certainly succeeded in what they were aiming for! All because some dolts were sheep and decided it would be a great idea to join in on the "fun" as well, and now we have an entire nation and world looking on in disgust thinking students really aren't worth it.
Well guess what keeps news channels and papers in business? "Interesting" news. Scandal. Well look what the rioting gave them. They're not going to sell papers by giving both points of view and reasoning it out like rational beings - they have their own agenda, give an opinionated POV and watch as the debate flies. Hasn't anyone noticed that the papers do not only report on the news? The more popular writers of the articles even have their own pictures beside their names, smiling benevolantly on as if they were miniature celebrities in themselves. It's not just the "Comments" section that's filled with reporters' opinions, you know... Gosh, read between the lines sometime.
And the students. No, I don't want the fees to rise either. And yes, some students were hit with batons. Was it wrong to hit the ones that were peaceful? Yes. Should they have only gone after the violent ones? Hell yes. Should they have beaten some of the protesters that hard? No. But damnit, for the sake of humanity don't go about trashing public property, defacing war heroes, and throwing fireworks at the horses from the mounted units! Don't provoke the police by lobbing stuff at them and then screeching about how you were wronged when they decided to throw your ass in a cell or come after you with with a baton. If you see other students getting violent around you then bloody hell, turn around and leave! Because you can be sure the police are going to stop them eventually and if you're smart then you wouldn't stay beside them.
You're trying to show the public that you are worth the education and the money to support it. Thanks to a few who incited violence, we got the complete opposite. And when the videos are showing students coming up against a barricade of officers and the horses coming through for a "charge" (seriously, a quick trot and a light canter), I really wonder what they were trying to show, with the level of foul language they were using at the police. It certainly wasn't peaceful protesting, because they ended up looking more like football hooligans. >:(