The morning after

[j4]

Still here, just about.

So anyway, I wake up to Radio 2; the radio comes on at 7am, so I get to hear the news headlines at least twice before I actually drag myself out of bed. The news this morning was bizarre. Headlines I might have expected: "Government votes to raise tuition fees" (or even "Three MPs resign as government votes to raise tuition fees"); "Violent protests over tuition fees vote" (or, more likely, "Our boysPolice injured in protests over tuition fees vote" -- in all the bits of the rolling news that I did read/watch yesterday, the BBC never mentioned any injuries to protestors). But no: the lead on the news was "Camilla's car gets paint on it".[*]

Mind you, at least tuition fees got a tangential mention on the BBC. Nobody's reporting Cancún at all. Perhaps our children we won't have to worry about university fees after all because by then we'll all be desperately trying to build floating homes out of old tyres. Or shooting each other.

[*] ETA: Angry Mob suggests that this means the media succeeded in their hidden agenda.

Comments

[keirf.livejournal.com]

Cancun? What's happened in Cancun?

Oh, climate talks.

[vinaigrettegirl.livejournal.com]

Now is now, I know; but I guess, having been old enough to understand things, at 11, when National Guardsmen shot protesting students dead during protests at Kent State, in Ohio, the kettling and relatively low levels of violence seem to be almost civilised.

Today's question, for me, comes from a ... Unitarian? ministry blog: of what am I a commitment? You embody a lot of commitments, in my mind: green principles without being a monotone bore, for a start :-).

It's all hard and various votes in two countries depress me and make me angry, but I shall make a few political calls before dinner. We do what we can; all is not lost.

[pjc50.livejournal.com]

Hardly a media agenda, other than the usual Daily Mail, but it was certainly either very ingenious or very stupid of the royal drivers to go past the protest.

I find it dispiriting, because it highlights that there's a section of England who actually hate students per se, and who have a horrible I've-got-mine-fuck-you attitude to public services.

[abi]

Yes, just STFU about the Charles and Camilla thing, media. I happened to catch Dr Evan Harris (for it was he) on the news last night making the point that no matter who it had been in the car, attacking it with paint would still be unacceptable, and I gave him a little round of applause for it. But I've mostly been spitting mad at the press coverage - there has not been one single acknowledgement that the protesters might, just might, have a legitimate grievance. Everyone "oh well of course" deplores the violence and insists that the students have a right to peaceful protest, but the undertone of it all has been: what on earth do they think they're complaining about?

Maybe right now I'm OK with taking on a six figure debt to buy a house, but when I was eighteen £20 was an absolute fortune, £100 was more than I could ever imagine spending on anything, and I wouldn't have fancied mortgaging ninety times that away per year of studying before I'd earned a penny to pay it back. Do people forget this as they get older?

[htfb.livejournal.com]

Cancun was on the business pages of the BBC this morning but has dropped off again, it seems...