Riots in the UK?

[Cerrone]

Revolutions only work if you have enough people pissed off about something. Revolutions fail when not enough people are involved, or when they turn nasty and people start siding with the ruling party rather than you, which is what happened in this case.

Evidently those students were very uninformed then. Its symptomatic of the way society here is that people disregard the wisdom behind the concept of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" and because of that it's no wonder nobody achieves anything in terms of political activism or basic organisation.

Students could have marched peacefully (and the majority did, thankfully), and they could have debated the politicians directly, but because of the actions of the 2,000 or so who decided to show aggression where no aggression was needed. As a result, they have turned the public opinion against them.

Do whaaat? What member of the public is against them? Everyone i've spoken to -aside from armchair critics on the internet- agrees with the students, applauded them for their efforts and mentioned how the government and police were bastards who deserve whatever they get pelted with.. be it eggs, fire extinquishers or bags of medical waste..

I think you meant to say Adrian, that the MEDIA is trying to influence public opinion against them, as the media are puppets of puppets and so on.

If you want to campaign for free education, you have to show the public that you are worthy of receiving free education. I'm afraid that most of the public don't think that people who decide to riot and throw fire extinguishers off of buildings deserve to have free education.

Quite personally, it seems that each generation has to find out for themselves that peaceful protest is ineffective and seem to need education on the subject. You're under some delusion if you think peaceful protest has ever achieved anything; look at the massive anti-war demonstrations in london for a recent example, then look back through history and see how every single attempt has proved to be completely useless. Perhaps with the exception of Ghandi of course, but even with Ghandi- like Malcolm X and MLK- Ghandi was the more attractive option when politicians where eventually forced to choose a side BECAUSE of rioting Indians in the colonies attacking british soldiers. It's not as simple as making a decision as to which tactic is more effective- peace or violence- the crucial point is that "violent" action forces the people in power to do something because the don't understand "peace" as you or I do, they take "peace" to mean pacified and harmless i.e not worth paying attention to anymore.

I agree, socialism is like going on a shopping spree in a nick-nakcs store... You get boring pointless shit you don't want or need and no chance of making your money back on it. You sound like you should be supporting the government on this one no? They're the ones who are fixing the spending blow outs. It always hurts to throw out the big investments that you've decades on but are bleeding you dry, but it's got to be done. The country just doesn't generate enough GDP to sustain those numbers, not these days with massive socio-economic shifts going on.

Supporting them doesnt even come into the equation, they're wasteful and incompetant and undeserving of the power they've -through no actual merit- accumulated. I'd say however, that to save our tax money they could stop dropping bombs in the middle east, stop sending poorly equiped soldiers out to get blown up in the middle east, and stop investing billions in the nuclear weapons program which is probably the most useless thing our little nation has got. Then with the trillions saved there we could reform the education system (most crucially), rebuild our energy plants to something which doesnt rely on external trade then let the rest of it fall nicely into place.

You say that like it would make a fucking difference who was in power right now.

Well there you go, certianly the three parties need hauling out of parliament by a meathook through the nose.

Actually i'm personally more inclined to do what Cromwell did and just take over by force, then hand over power to reformed local citizen councils that're actually comprised of people instead of politicians, and having a new "government" existing only in a vanguard capacity.

It could happen!