Age-appropriate?

[tamaranth]

Okay, whose idea was it to have a large mob of schoolchildren marching along our road shouting 'Fuck the Fees'?

Comments

[woolymonkey.livejournal.com]

Well, it wasn't the school! They sent out nervous emails yesterday asking parents to try to find out if anything was planned. Spider denied all knowledge, obviously. Was he out there?

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

I did not see him, but there was a large Mass of Youth in pale blue. They had placards too.

[woolymonkey.livejournal.com]

Update
As T now knows, Squirrelmonkey decided to stay in school rather than face a 50 minute detention tomorrow. Spider went on the protest. He reckons, probably rightly that the detentions won't happen because there are too many people involved. Also that it's worth it.
And yes, he did march past T's house this morning, and no, they never did come up with a better slogan.

[ladymoonray.livejournal.com]

Almost certainly the kids. It only takes one to come up with the idea, the others probably thought it was cool.

[moral-vacuum.livejournal.com]

We of course remember the Grange Hill episode with the mass protest to retain Scruffy McGuffy...

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

Aye. Nice catchy alliterative chant, too. [grin] Good work on the Anglo-Saxon ...

[woolymonkey.livejournal.com]

Well they'll be the ones graduating with 30K of debt, watching people a few years older with the same earning power beat them to house purchases...

[ladymoonray.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. But I'm not sure I'd have really *grasped* that as a teenager. The chance to make a lot of noise and swear in public, though...

[uitlander]

And think I was being 'radical'!

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

My impression is that people get worried about finances a lot younger these days. See "hollowing out of the middle class".

[woolymonkey.livejournal.com]

Swearing in public is always a bonus :)

But they DO grasp it and they ARE angry. (Not just my two.) It doesn't take a great level of maturity to see the injustice of this year's upper sixth paying one third what the lower sixth will be charged when it's their turn. Also, this generation is very aware of money in ways I don't think mine was. They know they'll need to pay for the stuff they want and that some of it--like houses--is scarily out of reach.

They also know they've been lied to, especially by the LibDems.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

If the headmaster on Today was typical, a lot of parents will be getting letters saying their child was truant today and what are they going to do about it.

[woolymonkey.livejournal.com]

This is what the monkey school sent out.

Dear Families
As you may be aware from reports in the media, a day of student protest is planned for tomorrow,Wednesday 24 November 2010 across the country. These protests are against the removal of the education maintenance allowance and the rise in student tuition fees proposed by the coalition government.
We have no specific information about what protests, if any, are planned for Cambridge but it is highly likely, given the student populations, that some form of action will take place. It would also appear from experience around the country that schools and students may also be encouraged to get involved in these protests and the schools may be targeted as part of this action.
We would be grateful if you could discuss this with your son/daughter. Should he/she choose to take part in any protest, it is unlikely that we would be able to alert you to their absence which would have to be logged as “unauthorised”. Our main concern, clearly, is the health and safety of
young people engaging in any form of unsupervised protest. All classes and other activities will proceed as normal tomorrow.

From a school that's usually very heavy about unauthorised absence, I'd say this is close to supportive, albeit nervously so. They seem more worries about what the kids may get up to if they're not in school.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

I'd be worried too. There's always a chance someone will show off and hit a cop or something...

[bellinghwoman.livejournal.com]

Well, the've just evacuated The Old Schools as a precaution (against what I'm not quite sure, but we've been told not to bother trying to get hold of anyone there) - glad I'm out in West Cambridge! Wonder if anyone will try and get onto the climbing framescaffolding that's just been put up all over the Senate House?

[woolymonkey.livejournal.com]

Phew! Seems no-one did anything worse than a bit of swearing. Not here in Cambridge anyway.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Thank Ghu for that.

[mr-tom.livejournal.com]

I suspect that Nick Clegg had something to do with it.

[moral-vacuum.livejournal.com]

Everything is Nick Clegg's fault. Including the collapse of the Irish banks, GIllian McKeith, and the resurgence of rickets in poor children.

[andrewducker]

Nick Clegg taught my child to swear!

[mr-tom.livejournal.com]

He's also the person that puts the wet teaspoon back in the sugar bowl and makes it go all clumpy.

[moral-vacuum.livejournal.com]

It was an important part of the Coalition Agreement. Although the LibDem manifesto was against it, Clegg has come to realise that an effective clumping policy is necessary if we are to achieve...er....

[bugshaw.livejournal.com]

cohesion! Which is a good thing :-)

[moral-vacuum.livejournal.com]

Although of course we need to safeguard appropriate levels of granularity, where locally agreed.

[dorispossum.livejournal.com]

They'd have been the Parkside/Coleridge kids (assuming they were in uniform). those not in uniform may have been ours - quite a few went on protest (and my newspaper students sent photographers etc!).

It appears that MOST of the protesters in Cambridge were school kids or sixth form students. Unsurprising, since THEY are the ones who will suffer the fees increase. They were also protesting about abolition of EMA, unsurprisingly. Am thoroughly ashamed of the apathy shown by the UNIVERSITY students - a case of 'I'm all right Jack' since the increase won't affect them personally? And because a larger proportion come from higher income backgrounds compared to other unis?

My prize for best placard: 'Rich Parents for All!'

[woolymonkey.livejournal.com]

Brilliant placard. They were indeed Parkside/Coleridge (one of mine was there) but the teachers and police were sending people in uniform back to school.