forthwritten

sebastienne

to engage in direct resistance, to simply say "no, don't do this", is to stay on the road that has been chosen for you, but to try to push back against the flow of traffic, the direction of power. Whoever wins, you lose, because you've allowed those in power to define the terms of the discourse, and your endpoint is still a point on their road. It is far better, therefore, to strike off the road, to show the other way as best you can".

[...]

The very idea that we must choose a cause to fight, resist the single cut that is the most evil, and stay true to that campaign, is our defeat. We feel it, because the size of the whole project terrifies us, but to come to the place where we choose we have already implicitly accepted so much.

The universities minister, David Willetts, is expected to announce that the cuts, which government sources acknowledge could be up to £400m – 6% of the universities budget – will begin next April, 12 months before the new fees regime begins.

By not synchronising the timing of the cuts and the introduction of fees, the government appears to be opening another front in its battle to reform higher education. Some universities have warned they might have to declare bankruptcy because of the cuts, as many would be unlikely to be able to charge the kind of fees that would recoup the money they will no longer receive from the government. There are also questions about the quality of the courses on offer as universities struggle to operate with less income.

The Tory-led government has risked a rift with the Liberal Democrats by slashing 40% from the universities budget and making an 80% cut to the teaching budget.

The desire to create an upsurge in community involvement is so self-evidently admirable that the coalition's political opponents and commentators find it hard to criticise. But it is also difficult to buy into as a solution to society's problems, particularly at a time of austerity.

The New Yorker magazine recently took a long, detailed look at the coalition's "big society" plans and could not resist a measure of scepticism. "Cameron envisages a garden-fence government in which little platoons of concerned citizens, unhindered by senseless regulations and sclerotic bureaucracies, band together to conceive and execute the governance of their own communities," it said.

The magazine likened it to "Wikipedia government, collectively created by the impassioned, the invested or the bored".

“A Harvard economist said to me recently that the coalition government's fiscal deficit reduction programme is the biggest macroeconomic experiment in an advanced country in any of our lifetimes - and this was before the Comprehensive Spending Review on 20 October. He argued that no government, unless forced to, would be dumb enough to take such unnecessary risks with the well-being of the nation.

“Every other country will be watching, he said, to ensure they don't repeat the same mistake as George Osborne's wildly unnecessary, misguided, doctrinaire and potentially dangerous spending cuts. They've let the Chancellor jump off the cliff first.”

A senior doctor has warned that police risk repeating a Hillsborough-type tragedy if they continue with tactics deployed during the recent tuition fee protests.

The anaesthetist from Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, who gave medical assistance to the protesters, said that officers forced demonstrators into such a tight "kettle" on Westminster Bridge that they were in danger of being seriously crushed or pushed into the freezing River Thames.

In truth, the coalition's reforms are ideologically driven. Cameron is making a deliberate choice to reduce state support for universities and marketise our system of higher education. We will become consumers not students; departments will focus on price not free inquiry; research will be funded on grounds of profitability and "impact", not on expanding our collective knowledge. The starkest example of this can be seen in the cuts to arts and humanities, which will lose up to 100 per cent of their funding in many places.

Yes, it was exactly like every protest I have been on, and, yes, it was completely different. Some of what was happening was immediately recognisable to me and some new. What is most impressive is how far these students have come in a couple of weeks. They are the opposite of just about every stereotype that is used about them. Call me old-fashioned but I hardly see them as hardcore anarchists, as their main contention is wanting access to state institutions. They do not want to drop out of the system but rather to drop in. They are also way too efficient to be proper anarchists.

[The Women's Budget Group report] finds that lone parents, the vast majority of whom are women, and single female pensioners are hardest hit, losing services equivalent to 18.5% and 12% of their respective incomes. Overall, single women lose 60% more than single men, it adds. "Viewed as a whole, together with the measures announced in the June 2010 emergency budget, the cuts represent an immense reduction in the standard of living and financial independence of millions of women," the report concludes.

glitzfrau

Avoiding the depressingly frequent trap of female poverty in old age? Building financial security and a meaningful career? Having a strong sense of self beyond the biological function of motherhood? I always thought these were among the core goals of feminism, but no, they don't really count. Women's paid work isn't really meaningful, in the way that men's paid work is; women's work is only ever set against that of a nursery nurse, and no matter what the skills a woman might learn in the workplace while her children are in childcare, what good she might achieve at work, what pension contributions she might make for an independent old age, what promotions she might attain, what a social network she might build up, these are all irrelevant if her salary is less than the cost of childcare.

Ceri Goddard, the Fawcett Society's chief executive, said later she was "obviously disappointed" with the outcome of the case. "We will study the judgment and may well appeal," she said.

But taking court action had led to the government conceding that gender impact assessments did apply to the budget and should have been carried out in two key areas: the public sector pay freeze and certain benefit changes.

The challenge had also led to an investigation of the whole gender issue by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said Goddard.

We’ve just had an email from Olivia Bailey, the NUS national women’s officer, calling for women to protest outside the office of the Lib Dem Minister for Women and Equalities.

[...]

Those wanting to join the action should meet at 11am on the 8th December, outside Lynne Featherstone’s Office near Crouch End, 62 High Street, London, N8 7NX. Come with whistles, banners, Sashes, Suffragette colours (Purple, Green, White) and Suffragist colours (Green, Red, White).

Nearly 300 academics from 76 universities have written to the Guardian to say they understand the "anger of students" over education cuts and to express their support for this week's planned protests.

Praising the "magnificent demonstration" by students and staff earlier this month, the letter's signatories claim that plans to raise tuition fees and scrap the education maintenance allowance will lead to the "destruction of broad-based, critical education".

[...]

The signatories to today's letter – who are drawn from 68 UK universities and eight non-UK education institutions – say they consider themselves to be "involved in a defence, not just of our jobs, but of the values which brought us into higher education, reflecting the wider significance of education to society".

They go on to say that the planned increase in fees means the "effective removal of higher education" for working people.

The letter points to research from the Institute of Fiscal Studies which says that the cuts will lead to "insignificant savings to the taxpayer".

"The ending of the education maintenance allowance and adult learning grants gives the lie to the coalition's attempts to argue that those on lower incomes will retain access – these students will not be able to afford to stay in post-16 education to secure the qualifications they need to apply for further or higher education.

"The coalition has no mandate for its ideologically driven class rule – the anger of students is no surprise to us. Our intention is to fight alongside them in our institutions to defend social science, humanities and the arts and to protect higher and further education for all."

The decision to cut the universities' teaching budget in England by 40% and raise the cap on tuition fees threefold to £9,000 (US$14,360) could make foreign students look elsewhere, precisely at the moment when many more options are being made available, they say, and many are hoping to attract UK students seeking cheaper options than at home.

The areas of concern are the likely impact on teaching quality of the cuts in funding if they are not replaced by rises in fee income and the potential deterrent effect to EU and other overseas students of allowing a massive fee hike.

Thousands of students across the country staged sit-ins, walk-outs and demonstrations today to show their opposition to the increase in tuition fees.

The nationwide protest, organised by the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts (NCAFC), saw schoolchildren and sixth-formers as well as university students and lecturers take to the streets to demonstrate.

An estimated 10,000 joined a demonstration in central London. The protests were largely peaceful but there were clashes with police when specialist officers corralled students into a "kettle" in Whitehall.

It was the number of placards bearing references to Harry Potter that gave the game away. "Now we can't afford to go to Hogwarts", read one. "David Cameron is Voldemort," suggested another.

Of course the veterans of these sort of demonstrations were here: student union representatives, political activists, leftwing teachers, anarchists and stalwarts of the Socialist Workers party.

But a large, excited, very vocal percentage were schoolchildren, some as young as 13 or 14, who had piled out of lessons and joined the clamour against increases in tuition fees and the loss of education maintenance allowances.

This is a leaderless protest with no agenda but justice: it is a new children's crusade, epic and tragic. More fires are lit as the children try to keep warm: they are burning placards and pages from their school planners. A sign saying "Dumbledore would not stand for this shit!" goes up in flames.

This is also an organic movement: unlike previous demos, there are no socialist organisers leading the way, no party flags to rally behind. The word spread through Twitter and Facebook; rumours passed around classrooms and meeting halls: get to Westminster, show them your anger.

"I don't think I've ever seen anything quite so frightening. I've seen police on horseback, but this was like a cavalry charge. There was a line of police on foot, and they just moved out of the way, then maybe a hundred yards down the street there was a line of police on horseback. We'd been standing firmly and just moving back slowly, but when the police on horseback charged, that was the moment when we absolutely ran."

On Thursday, the day of the meeting, a student occupation was in full swing. The epicentre in the Jeremy Bentham room – where protesters are still camped out – was packed to bursting. A living wage, with the outsourced cleaners brought back in-house, had become one of their key demands. Here, as elsewhere, what started as protests about tuition fees accelerated into a political movement against cuts of all kinds. Inequality, poverty, the shredding of public services, unemployment, bankers and boardroom bonuses had become part of the protest. One fight, one struggle, they said, as if 40 years had suddenly fallen away. Not exactly Paris 1968, but in their sit-in meetings they were beginning to see themselves as the vanguard for a wider campaign. Thatcher's children, selfish, materialist, apathetic? Not at all.

Disposing of your old kettle in an environmentally friendly way is difficult. Since the police seem to like kettles so much help them out by sending your old kettle to:

Metropolitan Police Service
New Scotland Yard
Broadway
London
SW1H 0BG

Pass the idea on to anyone you know who has an old kettle they want to get rid of or who wants to protest against police tactics. A few thousand kettles should restrict their mobility somewhat.

• Shame on the Met for kettling 13 and 14 year olds for nine hours. It was freezing last night, and many of them were dressed only in school uniforms because they'd walked out of lessons. That's horrific.


• Am still dubious about the Met's claim that the police van was occupied by police officers who abandoned it because they felt unsafe. I'm inclined to think that it was abandoned deliberately so the protesters had something to damage, which then gave the Met an excuse for their aggressive response.


• I suspect the Met are trying to make an example out of these protesters and trying to scare off young people from protesting again. I'm not sure if people are frightened by their response, or angered by it.


• I'm kind of touched by the strength of feeling and selflessness shown by protesters. A fair number of them have or will have graduated by the time the cuts to funding and increased tuition fees come in, but they're protesting for those who will be affected. I intend to protest, and when I do, it will be for research, teaching and the students I may one day teach.