Joe can you re set my earlier posting please? And put my name to it? Thanks.
We can't add your name, but we can do this. --Mod
Before anyone dares to lecture me about the freedoms fought for by the older generation my father fought in almost every theatre of the the second world war, my grandfather fought in the first and I have friends whose children are in Afghanistan as I type.
You talk about disgracing the memories of those who fought and died as if you speak for them. My father told me that he fought for freedom, to stop governments like that of Germany becoming so strong that they destroyed society. That he fought and saw most of his friends die to preserve freedoms taken from us by successive governments. That he fought to allow people freedom from the police state and for the right to protest.(He also gave up going to uni to fight and therefore sacrificed his future in more ways than one)
He also told me before he died he was sick that what he had fought for was being removed slowly and hoped (mistakenly)that the european union would ensure our individual freedom.I tell you I support the students 100%. Maybe I don't support the violence against the police, but then ask those who have been on the other end of a police truncheon from a highly protected and legally inviolate thug in a uniform and they will tell you different.
If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.
Winston Churchill
Those who sit here pontificating about when we were young lions remember, jobs were easy to come by forty years ago. you could go from one to another in a day. Most employers paid you to train and you could, if so inclined, go to night school, work hard and get a degree. You could get, "on the job" training a qualifications up to and beyond degree level. You could go to Uni straight from school with a full grant.You could work a few years, qualify in another area, as I did and then go with a grant. If you had to, you could get a job to suppliment your money or if you were wise and didn't drink it away you could save enough to get by on.Little of this exists for young people today.
If you were the son of a bus conductor and reasonable sized, poor family, like me then the thought of a debt of thousands (though it would be hundreds in those days) would have ensured that I would never have got a degree and life in a profession. (Even though I have done a range of different works). With a debt of equivallent size I would never have got a mortgage, I would never have got my first decent car on HP.
If you have no support for the students, you have no support for our future. All it seems to me is that people cling to the rhetoric of the time. This time it is right wing propaganda.
My son has just completed his degree and owes thousands, even with the limited financial assistance we were able to give him.Will he buy his own house? Hardly able to. He'll end up paying some property owner an inflated rent to his detriment. He and his girlfriend have a debt of tens of thousands. Try getting a mortgage with that !!
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"That window is closing, and it's being closed because today's ruling class has decided it's in its better interest to go back to a "feudal" model of society. You seem to be in the "I got mine" camp, and good for you - I never even had the chance to acquire property, and neither have the majority of working people, to say nothing of the rest of the world. Poverty is making a comeback, and it's by design". Absolutely right.
Lastly we in Britain have litttle to be proud of in some aspects of our history. Examine our conquest of the America's and Africa and the Australian continent. How many of our soldiers died not in the name of liberty but conquest and enslavement? Some of my ancestors for certain.
"Bottles of urine were hurled on a day when democracy was held in contempt. " Democracy is pretty dead here. It has been held in contempt by those in power, not by those in protest !! (Examples such as MP's continuing expense abuses, increase in surveilence and the recent right wing cuts fly in the face of democracy.)
The young aren't any more ignorant than we were. The ignorant ones are those who think it is right to and that they can exploit us.
sj