Student Riot in London

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david1701 said:
but thats what I'm saying, we want (hehehe I stole your thing) people doing certain degrees and would be fairly boned if they never started because they didn't think they'd make the money (think nurses)
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Nurses don't go to Uni - they go to nursing schools - same as Police or Army basic training.

No-one's arguing against vocational training colleges being properly funded.
Only if you want a higher degree that may have no direct impact on finding a job.

How many sociology degree holders do we need?

Maybe if more proper apprenticeship schemes were widely available, fewer school leavers would think they needed to go to University?

That way you earn and learn at the same time. Plus you only need to top up with loans if you want to drive a Ferarri to work...
 
cambsno said:
Anyway Carl, I agree that medical degrees for example should be free, just not the Mickey Mouse ones!
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but a medical degree is one of the highest earning career paths there is & there is no compunction to use said degree for the benefit of the NHS which is what seems to be implied by making them free. - Got a medical degreee, go and work in private practiCe, or the pharmacuetical industry (that way really big money lies)

if you charge for one, then charge for all
 
TriggerHappy said:
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Interesting that the chant was "Stop throwing ****!" rather than "Throw that tw@ next!".

I heard on the news earlier that the extinguisher thrower had been IDed and was in Southampton and was going to be charged with attempted murder. While I agree that he/she should be dealt with strongly, was it attempted murder or attempted manslaughter if there was no specific target?
 
Nod said:
I
I heard on the news earlier that the extinguisher thrower had been IDed and was in Southampton and was going to be charged with attempted murder. While I agree that he/she should be dealt with strongly, was it attempted murder or attempted manslaughter if there was no specific target?
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The news article is here (or one version anyway):

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK..._Revealed_By_Sky_News_After_Millbank_Violence

Regarding the murder/attempted murder charge...

If you fire a shotgun into a crowd of people from 30 meters away, is that attempted murder? You have limited control over who will get hit, and the chances are that most of the pellets will be non fatal. The analogy is pretty much the same, the only difference is the weapon.
 
Reckless indifference to an unjustifiably high risk to human life
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That is one of the terms that implies 'malice aforethought', a necessary ingredient for murder - if you go to the top of a high building and throw a fire extinguisher off when there is a crowd of people below IMO you have complied with the requirement.
 
Arkady said:
Nurses don't go to Uni - they go to nursing schools - same as Police or Army basic training.

No-one's arguing against vocational training colleges being properly funded.
Only if you want a higher degree that may have no direct impact on finding a job.

How many sociology degree holders do we need?

Maybe if more proper apprenticeship schemes were widely available, fewer school leavers would think they needed to go to University?

That way you earn and learn at the same time. Plus you only need to top up with loans if you want to drive a Ferarri to work...
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I'm with you on the funding of vocational **** as I think its where a lot of people should be because its where they'd be happier

Though I'm proud of the way anyone can in theory go to any uni in the country that will take them with the full support of the government on the understanding they give it all back when they are making money because of that education
 
Degrees: proof that it is possible to be educated beyond your natural level of intelligence.
 
Didnt I read somewhere that 2 year olds are going to be able to get nursery education? I may be wrong. If so then it would be better for the government to use that money in higher education as children that age are quite OK at home with their mums like they always were when my kids were little.

When I was at university I didnt get any grant and had to do part time work to keep the family going ( I was a widow). There was plenty of time to do this as I was doing a degree where I didnt need to go into uni every day.

My son, however did an engineering degree and was studying full time so was unable to work. If he hadnt received a maintenance grant ( about £3,000 a year I think) I would have really struggled to help him as I was still earning less than needed to have to pay back my student loan.He still ended up with about £20,000 in student loans and credit cards.That is fair though as he is now( 13 years later) in a reasonably paid job. However the higher fees being proposed will make it very difficult for poorer students who have to borrow the whole amount to ever be able to get onto the housing ladder, unless they go into well paid jobs like doctors , lawyers etc. as they will have so much debt that they wont be allowed to borrow for a mortgage.

Though I dont agree with high tuition fees there is never any justification for violent demonstations.I'm glad someone is being charged with throwing that extinguisher.They want locking up.
 
Nod said:
While I agree that he/she should be dealt with strongly, was it attempted murder or attempted manslaughter if there was no specific target?
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You can't attempt manslaughter in law. Manslaughter is where somebody is killed as a result of another unlawful act, but that act in itself must be a substantive offence. You can only attempt Murder.

To prove Attempted Murder is actually harder than Murder itself. You need to prove a premeditated intention to kill, which is unlikely in this case. Most "attempted murders" end up being charged as GBH instead, as this negates the requirement to prove intent to kill.

Regarding the murder/attempted murder charge...

If you fire a shotgun into a crowd of people from 30 meters away, is that attempted murder? You have limited control over who will get hit, and the chances are that most of the pellets will be non fatal. The analogy is pretty much the same, the only difference is the weapon.
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This is "transferred malice". If your intention is to kill a specific person, then it does not matter if you accidentally kill someone else; it remains murder because of your intention.

While death was a possibility in this case, it did not happen; it is highly unlikely that a murder charge would be substantiated if an officer had been killed, because it would have been manslaughter (death as a result of an unlawful act, namely Violent Disorder). If you could not substantiate the full offence if the suspect had been successful, then the attempted offence will also fail. As you cannot attempt manslaughter, the charge will be lowered - most likely to Violent Disorder. Unless the suspect admits that he intended to kill the officers down below in interview...which he won't.
 
DemiLion said:
Actually you can be found guilty of Attempted Manslaughter, but the circumstances are very very rare.

vis the CLRC decision [11.13]:

http://www.lawcom.gov.uk/docs/cp173.pdf
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I must admit, despite that recommendation, I have not heard of it being put into action in the 7 years since that report was published. I cannot find anything authoritative on the subject of Attempted Manslaughter, and none of my legal books (which have extensive sections on Murder and Manslaughter) makes any reference to it.

I see where the CLRC are coming from, and their example is excellent: if a man were to come home to find his wife and her lover in bed and stab them both with the result that one dies, he would be charged with Manslaughter in respect of the dead person, and Attempted Murder against the one who survived - thus meaning he faces a greater charge for a situation where the harm was less. Such are the anomalies of the law, but I'm not aware of there being any enactments or cases that have established this recommendation as law.

Either way, it wouldn't apply in this case. Almost certainly, the charge will be Violent Disorder.

...and as I type that, Sky News has just announced that he has been charged with Violent Disorder on their Breaking News.
 
IMHO most students don't know how easy they have got it, look at a group of mixed uni students including those straight from a-levels some who have taken year out and mature students. I would hazard a (university educated :p) guess that 50% of students don't REALLY know why they are at uni and 25% don't really want to be on the course they are on. They have just drifted onto it from school. I certainly did because i did ok at a-levels and going to uni was the expected next step, my careers advice at school was 'what is your best a-level subject? go do that at uni then'

Many of our mature students manage to balance their academic work on top of their part time job and running a family (and come out for a beer on occasion), while still getting better results than those straight out of college.

I'm sorry but uni isn't THAT hard and stressful, our most pushed students have up to 32 hours of contact a week, and are expected to put in upto 60 hours of self study on top of that if they are of average intelligence and want to do well, that is about 90 hours a week, quite a bit but over a 7 day week not unreasonable, I've certainly worked longer hours, if your clever you should 'get it' a lot quicker and need to do significantly less.

Uni is a choice, YOU are choosing to go and what to do, therefore you pay for that privilige, if you don't want to or cannot afford to do that then get a job with vocational training or something with a day release to unit for a part time course.

Not sure on undergraduate costs but a post graduate costs about £30-40k a year, about £100k investment per student for a PhD, 9k a year fees doesn't look so unreasonable then. Oh and I fully expect the 'elite' unis to tell the government to stuff its funding and go private, do expect to be getting into the likes of oxbridge and imperial for £9k a year, I'd suggest you double that... possibly twice.
 
puggie said:
IMHO most students don't know how easy they have got it, look at a group of mixed uni students including those straight from a-levels some who have taken year out and mature students. I would hazard a (university educated :p) guess that 50% of students don't REALLY know why they are at uni and 25% don't really want to be on the course they are on. They have just drifted onto it from school. I certainly did because i did ok at a-levels and going to uni was the expected next step, my careers advice at school was 'what is your best a-level subject? go do that at uni then'
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Really? I knew exactly what I wanted to do after graduation and I did a degree that would allow me to do it. I wouldn't have gone had I not known what I wanted to study. I had a job in my year off before I started and while it was a one year contract I know they would have kept me on had I wanted to stay. I would have said that most of the people on my course had similarly clear ideas - one or two didn't and changed courses for something easier (e.g. computer science) or dropped out completely.

puggie said:
I'm sorry but uni isn't THAT hard and stressful, our most pushed students have up to 32 hours of contact a week, and are expected to put in upto 60 hours of self study on top of that if they are of average intelligence and want to do well, that is about 90 hours a week, quite a bit but over a 7 day week not unreasonable, I've certainly worked longer hours, if your clever you should 'get it' a lot quicker and need to do significantly less.
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13 hours a day, seven days a week is "not unreasonable"? I was one of those that had ~30 timetabled hours (Wednesday afternoons off), I can tell you that with the assignments on top of that I was pulling all-nighters in the terminal rooms that had 24/7 access to get some of them done. I would do other assignments (electronic engineering and engineering maths originated) in my room in the evening then head in to the department to log in to the gould or vax server after midnight (when I might actually find a free terminal), then work through to my 9am lecture. Since I wouldn't use speed I sometimes had to go home for a few hours to sleep and miss lectures / tutorials entirely because 24 hours continuously awake is as much as I ever could manage.

My definition of unreasonable is clearly different from yours.

A friend of mine that graduated at the same time as me and stayed on to do a PhD was paid a support grant of some kind by the department of about £4k/year (tax free). Or it might have been £6k/year, still tax free.
 
Yes REALLY a lot of student drift through uni as if still at school not really knowing what they want to do, just because its the done thing.

plenty of people who really want to go somewhere in industry work those kind of hours, my brother-inlaw does those sorts of hours, gets about 10 days a year off and is having his first holiday of more than a week in about 5 years at the moment. its how you get somewhere in a career rather than plodding on in a job. you go to uni to get a career.

anyway students only work about 15week semesters between decent breaks its not like you have to keep those hours up indefinitely.

my wife did over 2 months of 18 hour days flat to finish her PhD. its not supposed to be 9-4 school days.
 
puggie said:
plenty of people who really want to go somewhere in industry work those kind of hours, my brother-inlaw does those sorts of hours, gets about 10 days a year off and is having his first holiday of more than a week in about 5 years at the moment. its how you get somewhere in a career rather than plodding on in a job. you go to uni to get a career.

anyway students only work about 15week semesters between decent breaks its not like you have to keep those hours up indefinitely.

my wife did over 2 months of 18 hour days flat to finish her PhD. its not supposed to be 9-4 school days.
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You really think it's OK for people to work themselves that hard? There's good reason the government sets legislation preventing people from being required to work more than a 48hr week (with a couple of exceptions) and entitling people to 28 days holiday a year based on a 5 day working week. It's simply not healthily to push yourself that hard and I'd find it questionable if any employer had such expectations!
 
I deplore the violence and am sickened by it. Unfortunately whenever there is a genuine and valid protest it seems to attract the very worst elements of society who are hell-bent on causing trouble amongst the anonymity of a large crowd. Regrettably I fear this is the tip of an iceberg, because increasing numbers of ordinary law-abiding people will feel public protest is their only recourse against a government that has not been democratically elected. This in turn will provide further opportunity to the anarchist minority who care nothing for the cause of the protests that they hijack. And against this background the Government are cutting the budget for front line policing!

The fact is that thousands of thoroughly decent hard-working students felt compelled to protest against a massive hike in tuition fees that will encumber them with a burden of debt for much of their working lives. I look at my daughter, who has just started secondary school, and wonder what chance she will have of going to university. Are we reverting to a two tier system where the rich get a good education whether they have the aptitude for it or not and the poor don't?

We are/were a democracy and if that's what the majority of voters want then fine, so be it. The majority of Conservative voters may well still back the party in another election, but the same cannot be said with any certainty about Liberal voters. Indeed, they voted for a manifesto which specifically opposed an increase in tuition fees and certainly did not endorse many of the policies of the Coalition.

I've no objection to the Liberals forming a government with the Conservatives to resolve a hung Parliament. However, once the spending review had been completed and detailed plans announced proposing where the cuts should be made, another General Election should have been held with the two parties campaigning on a joint platform and asking the electorate to endorse those plans. Had they won that would have been fine and nobody would have cause for complaint, after all, that is the essence of a democracy.

Unfortunately as things stand democracy has temporarily been suspended in this country and complaints will inevitably grow and become more bitter. The ensuing protests will provide more opportunities to the anarchists and the role of the police will become more challenging with fewer resources.

I'm not saying the Goverment's policies for resolving the financial crisis are right or wrong, after all this is a non political forum. However, I do believe they should get a mandate from the people to endorse those policies before they are implimented.
 
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TriggerHappy said:
You really think it's OK for people to work themselves that hard? There's good reason the government sets legislation preventing people from being required to work more than a 48hr week (with a couple of exceptions) and entitling people to 28 days holiday a year based on a 5 day working week. It's simply not healthily to push yourself that hard and I'd find it questionable if any employer had such expectations!
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Don't work in the Oil Industry then........ 50hr weeks (not including commuting) are not uncommon, 48 week years are the norm add the travelling time and the non stop stress of demanding deadlines and I'm afraid I tend to agree that students do have it generally a lot easier, as they should IMHO.
Do we really want people to have it tougher than the last generation and for things to continually get harder?
However £9K or a near 300% increase in fees is totally and utterly unjustified, who else in this round of belt tightening has seen a 300% increase in all or part of their "costs" and that is after the empty Liberal election promises. It would of course be "fair" to quote Mr Cable (sp?) if they were then virtually guaranteed a better paid job, but as far as I can see post graduate un-employment (or worse still a poorly paid menial job in McD's) is the prospect that waits for our Uni graduates lumbered with an enormous debt.

Matt
 
BandyQuill said:
here it all goes again, look at the comments on the bottom looks like people are condoning the voilence and comparing it to the poll tax riots

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/educatio...est-riot-police-braced-for-day-of-mayhem.html
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Where are they condoning the violence?

I think the best comment on that article is this

60 arrrests out of 50,000 protesters? That's a whole 0.12% of them! Damn those violent, unruly youth! The more educated they become, the more dangerous they will be! We can't let that happen!!!!!!!!!

We bemoan the youth for being lazy, now we bemoan them for taking action. If you do not believe in something stand up to it. I do not condone violence and believe very few do, but I do condone protesting something which you believe to be unjust.

Whatever happens in the next 5 years I think Clegg has sunk the Lib Dems as a party once and for all.
 
Yeah, why dont the politicians use all that money we have sitting around to pay for free degrees? You would have thought that some of the more intelligent students would be able to work out that it is just not possible to make uni free??? The more I see on the news the more I think we should push fees up even more!

I dont agree with many things like the child benefit changes but I am not going to go out and smash up the police, because I am intelligent enough to realise we ALL need to put up with lower pay, less services, cuts etc... in order to secure a strong long term future.
 
cambsno said:
Yeah, why dont the politicians use all that money we have sitting around to pay for free degrees? You would have thought that some of the more intelligent students would be able to work out that it is just not possible to make uni free??? The more I see on the news the more I think we should push fees up even more!

I dont agree with many things like the child benefit changes but I am not going to go out and smash up the police, because I am intelligent enough to realise we ALL need to put up with lower pay, less services, cuts etc... in order to secure a strong long term future.
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HEAR HEAR !!!
 
cambsno said:
<snip> I am intelligent enough to realise we ALL need to put up with lower pay, less services, cuts etc... in order to secure a strong long term future.
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:thinking: You forgot higher prices, higher taxes ..... and of course higher profits, more authoritarianism and less freedom, work longer, travel less, eat poorer!...... none of this will secure a strong long term future for any of us mere mortals .. how can it?

It will be very good for the top few percent though and of course the government, big business et al....
 
cambsno said:
... in order to secure a strong long term future.
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By preventing 90% of people going to university?! Thus ensuring that the only people who can afford it are the next generations tories?! I don't suspect that Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford will be seen as a "mickey mouse" degree.
 
cambsno said:
Yeah, why dont the politicians use all that money we have sitting around to pay for free degrees? You would have thought that some of the more intelligent students would be able to work out that it is just not possible to make uni free??? The more I see on the news the more I think we should push fees up even more!

I dont agree with many things like the child benefit changes but I am not going to go out and smash up the police, because I am intelligent enough to realise we ALL need to put up with lower pay, less services, cuts etc... in order to secure a strong long term future.
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Uni wasn't free - what's happened is the fees have been hiked by up to 300%. On that basis, I presume you would welcome your council tax being tripled. I'm not surprised that young people are outraged, they've just seen their future go down the toilet, flushed away by a government of over-privileged ex public schoolboys who have no mandate for this because they were not democratically elected. If students were protesting in this manner in Tiananmen Square we'd all be calling them freedom fighters.

I feel sorry for the police who have to deal with this whilst being shafted themselves.
 
this is heading to politics, which will result in it being locked.
 
goldenlight said:
Uni wasn't free - what's happened is the fees have been hiked by up to 300%. On that basis, I presume you would welcome your council tax being tripled. I'm not surprised that young people are outraged, they've just seen their future go down the toilet, flushed away by a government of over-privileged ex public schoolboys who have no mandate for this because they were not democratically elected. If students were protesting in this manner in Tiananmen Square we'd all be calling them freedom fighters.

I feel sorry for the police who have to deal with this whilst being shafted themselves.
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Please explain
not democratically elected
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??

EDIT: .... Don't bother Matty is right... Sorry :D
 
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No, colleges can charge UP TO £9k, they are not automatically doing that! Regardless of that fact you and the students overlook, if we dont have the money to support it then we dont! Going back to an argument many people have raised, we cannot afford to send everyone to university - especially to do pointless degrees.

Oh, and trying not to go down a political road but stating a fact about people... the majority of the last government were all ex public schoolboys!
 
cambsno said:
I dont agree with many things like the child benefit changes but I am not going to go out and smash up the police
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Neither did over 99 percent of those who demonstrated smash up the police, they just wanted to make a point. They will exercise their right to protest against things they believe unjust.
 
Go back before 1992 when there were Uni's and Polytechnics, students then went to the right place for their course and those days it was free. There were no fees and a lot of people going to Polys got grants (depending on their circumstances). As soon as the polys became Uni's, it all became one big pool (apart from Oxford & Cambridge) and then the grants disappeared, fees arrived and everyone went to Uni like sheep. No alternatives like apprentice-ships for the none uni bound.
 
cambsno said:
No, colleges can charge UP TO £9k, they are not automatically doing that! Regardless of that fact you and the students overlook, if we dont have the money to support it then we dont! Going back to an argument many people have raised, we cannot afford to send everyone to university - especially to do pointless degrees.

Oh, and trying not to go down a political road but stating a fact about people... the majority of the last government were all ex public schoolboys!
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In my post I said fees had been hiked by up to 300%

I agree that we probably have too many people going to university but rationing by ability to pay rather than ability to learn is not the answer.

I fully accept your point about the last government. In many ways rather than being political I'm actually anti political - I have no faith in any party and am angry with all of them.
 
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I just don't get this 'ability to pay' argument :thinking: ... They don't pay anything until they are earning at least £21,000 p.a. Surely that applies to all :shrug:
 
Splog said:
I just don't get this 'ability to pay' argument :thinking: ... They don't pay anything until they are earning at least £21,000 p.a. Surely that applies to all :shrug:
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This. I've never understood the argument either. I've had people left right and centre tell me that because they're from a lower class background they can't afford to go to Uni. And then I tell them they don't start paying anything till they earn over £21k, then I hear but then we'll be paying off our loans until we're 90, before I tell them after 30 years the loan gets paid off automatically.

By the way, after some of the comments (Those generalising students and putting us all into a group) I'm a University student and I agree with the price rise.
 
Splog said:
I just don't get this 'ability to pay' argument :thinking: ... They don't pay anything until they are earning at least £21,000 p.a. Surely that applies to all :shrug:
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Pieface said:
This. I've never understood the argument either. I've had people left right and centre tell me that because they're from a lower class background they can't afford to go to Uni. And then I tell them they don't start paying anything till they earn over £21k, then I hear but then we'll be paying off our loans until we're 90, before I tell them after 30 years the loan gets paid off automatically.

By the way, after some of the comments (Those generalising students and putting us all into a group) I'm a University student and I agree with the price rise.
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I'm with both of you on this, I see the students being interviewed on TV and just think they are that dumb they should not even be at uni.

Let get it right once and for all.

YOU DO NOT PAY UP FRONT

YOU ONLY PAY AT TIMES WHEN YOU EARN OVER £21K

YOU PAY FOR A MAXIMUM 30 YEARS
 
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Pieface said:
This. I've never understood the argument either. I've had people left right and centre tell me that because they're from a lower class background they can't afford to go to Uni. And then I tell them they don't start paying anything till they earn over £21k, then I hear but then we'll be paying off our loans until we're 90, before I tell them after 30 years the loan gets paid off automatically.

By the way, after some of the comments (Those generalising students and putting us all into a group) I'm a University student and I agree with the price rise.
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:thumbs: Another way to look at this ..... Imagine someone starting an apprenticeship at 16 - 18! ... They work their 40 hours a week for little above basic wage :thinking: after a few years they start to earn a reasonable income ... perhaps 15k - 16k ..... a few years later they earn £20k, if they're lucky £25k If they really want to earn more they need to progress in their career! ....... Education should be seen as an investment in a students future career earning opportunity
 
Splog said:
:thumbs: Another way to look at this ..... Imagine someone starting an apprenticeship at 16 - 18! ... They work their 40 hours a week for little above basic wage :thinking: after a few years they start to earn a reasonable income ... perhaps 15k - 16k ..... a few years later they earn £20k, if they're lucky £25k If they really want to earn more they need to progress in their career! ....... Education should be seen as an investment in a students future career earning opportunity
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You're kidding right? Plumbing/Electrician's can be extremely well paying jobs. What's the average wage of a Plumber in London? Around £50k a year isn't it?
 
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