@1984 407963 wrote:

I remember going to the “Stop the Rape in Dafur” march and thinking it will never make much difference but still glad I went. Felt like a moral thing to do at least.

Good luck with it all

the problem here is not only would most people support the cause, it doesn’t cost Britain anything (AFAIK we’re not even deploying many soldiers to the UN force there, in comparison to the “Oilistan” conflicts)

The poll tax protests only worked because Thatcho was going batty anyway and her own colleagues wanted to stitch her up, and the wider population saw it as an opportunity to pay less tax. They then voted in the Tories back again in 1992.

Funding students would be spun as “needing more taxes” and thus lose support with the wider populace. This need not be the case but some methods of achieving it (such as a cap on top salaries to management in some organisations) will be viewed by many as an “unacceptable interference in the market” – or other alternatives (which unis are already doing) is reducing student numbers of non “market friendly” courses.

A much wider problem facing young folk today is in the 1990s during the better economic times, a load of creative arts/media courses were set up in the hope that there would be lots of paying jobs in content creation. this briefly happened, then the depression, outsourcing and a culture that “content should be free” hit at the same time. These jobs are gone and gone for good – so unlike something like mechanical engineering or proper electronic engineering (involving soldering irons as well as computers) the public can’t be expected to fund them.

I thought one protesters’ groups demand for transparency of uni finances was a really smart idea, as already we have some transparency of govt departments (if you want to read through a 100 page document of boring figures!)

TBH if I lived in Reading I would have gone up to the Oxford occupations and read some books! it would be the only way I could ever hope to get inside the Bodliean library and I could have called my mum from there and said “well, I did get into Oxford after all” :laugh_at: