'We will not introduce top up fee's and will legislate to prevent them'

Tony Blair Labour manifesto Pledge 2001

'I pledge to vote against any increase in fee's in the next parliament and to pressure the government to introduce a FAIRER ALTERNATIVE'

Signed- Nick Clegg

Strange times in Blighty when (hashtag) Day 3 (or "dayX") saw the 'baying rabble of masked and hooded troublemakers' ( ©DAILY BILE)along with their accomplices the 'feral mob' (© DAV CAM) once more exert their civil right resulting in a police response that it is now apparent was neither civil nor right.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=axWyu1t4rkE

The Met decided to redeploy the 'kettling' tactic of crowd control last witnessed at the previous Student Protest, during which schoolchildren and others where incarcerated (too emphatic?) in freezing temperatures, denied toilet facilities, food water or exit from Trafalgaur Square up until (in some cases) ten o clock in the evening. However in addition to this most counterproductive and intimidating of police options came a yet more medieval decision- to, with the intent of dispersing a peaceful crowd of protesters, instruct a charge of 21 horses headlong into the students. Now, let me stress that I am not a dogmatic ideologue who views every police officer as an architect of state brutality, but it is hard to dispel that perception when the curtailment of civil liberties is as forceful and flagrant as it was yesterday. Tellingly, the reportage of this incident has predominately been concerned with the one officer who was toppled from his horse amid the carnage, rather than any protesters on the ground subject to it.

I was unfortunately unable to attend yesterday's protest but have one previous experience of seeing a crowd 'kettled' from a restaurant window just off High Street Ken back in 2008. The demonstration being staged was a 'Free Palestine' protest in which a relatively humble sized crowd (certainly bearing no resemblance to yesterday's proportions) gathered to voice their grievances over the Israeli bombardment of the West Bank and Gaza strip in January of that year. Me and my family watched in amazement as this crowd of no more than 50 was advanced upon by a horde of officers wielding riot shields and rubber truncheons (some of whom where also on horesback) who proceeded to hem them in a semicircle and prohibit any movement. I took away from this singular example two observations which have acquired greater pertinence in recent weeks; firstly that the amount of police presence was entirely disproportionate to both the temperament and size of the protests being enacted and latterly that the experience of being tightly and arbitrarily restricted in a limited space served not to mollify the already peaceful protesters but in fact to aggravate them.

The final commons result on the Browne Report is as culpable as any major political event to spin because whilst it may inevitably lead many to crown the efforts of britains yoof/ youngsters/ whippersnappers (substitute accordingly) as 'futile' it was by no means a triumphant victory for the coalition. Although not quite the mass defection hoped for, 21 LibDem's favoured being able to sleep at night and disobeyed the whips. The impact of the mass demonstrations seems to have been to remind Westminster that the younger demographic whilst often foggy in its message and less clear still in its allegiances, is capable of defiance and activism. Teenagers across the country have slipped into the roles of protest co-ordinator's, sit-in and occupation manager's and militant critic's of government hipocrosy with minimal effort.

Although the media's lens may gravitate as ever towards the violent minority, to paraphrase Edmund Burke (of all people) although the Crickets in the night are the first you here they obscure the sounds of all the other wildlife underneath. The vast majority of the protests have been moderate and the examples of violence can be shown to be either products of the draconian police measures mentioned earlier or the intrusion of anarchist elements onto the movements fringes. Excluding the recent surge in party membership this does represent a largely bipartisan movement amongst which the dark shadows of the Iraq war, expenses scandal and recession are cast heavily over any political party attempting to capitalize on the outrage. Long may this movement elude the shackles of ideology! It is only in doing so and through sustaining their optimism and naivety that the views of the anti-cut militia amongst our generation will keep their place at the forefront of the opposition!

a possible introductory paragraph for a story about a globalwarming-sceptic geologist delivered in a monologue

“You can, and no doubt once this discussion has finished, will talk to me all you want about climate change and try ignite a rumble of unease in my stomach. If gorging me on facts about the imminent droughts, tornado’s, melting icecap’s, earthquakes, food shortages and the drying up of the gulf stream gives you a morbid twang of satisfaction then go ahead. If you want you can call me a ‘stoic ignorant refusnik’ when I upturn my palms and ask ‘and?’ in response. (indeed I believe I just saw Janet scribble those very words onto her notepad a minute ago) Because we haven’t ‘scarred the earth’ and we don’t need to ‘protect’ our ‘frail’ and ‘vulnerable’ ecosystem, things are going to pan out naturally. Trust man’s hubris to think that laying our asphalt coat on the earth and encrusting it with houses and cars, that embroidering its surface with coal factories and skyscrapers, allowing pesticides to seep into its babbling brooks and endangering its many species through centuries of hunting has inflicted any permanent damage on it. Just because we’ve killed, cremated and scattered god’s ashes doesn’t mean that nature hasn’t taken up that biblical force.

It’s not this feeble, sensitive edifice, requiring the patient adoration of an eco-conscious 5 foot creature who sees itself as the harbinger of mankind’s restoration to remain intact. Do you honestly think that it needs to do more than shrug to entirely eradicate us? That’ll it’ll even need to yawn to reduce any trace of man’s short dominion to ash, dust and the odd bone? No, the earths not bruised and weakened by our actions but simply napping, tolerating us whilst its alchemy of lava sits at its core awaiting an eruption of primal intensity. Do we truly believe that the homosapien with his posable thumb prised on the nuclear button has a greater right to occupancy than that of the Velociraptor? Well of course we do, and that’s why the extinction of the most majestic breed of creatures to knowingly have inhabited ‘our’ earth is labelled ‘pre’ history. It’s why the palaeontologist is not the same revered intellectual titan as the military historian. I don’t see how devoting endless pages of scrupulous documentation on mans folly is going to profit anyone, so why is prehistoric life marketed predominately as an interesting distraction for children, whilst knowledge of Stalingrad is a..”

he interrupted himself to stop and take a lengthy swig from the glass of water in front of him, swishing the fluid around his cheeks so they inflated like balloons. The attention of the room was what you’d call rapt, with the silence punctured only by a muted sneeze of the man propped up on the wall at the back and then the odd torrent of coughs that bubbled in succession as though acquiring an unstoppable momentum with each phlegm-soaked emission. The conference hall was packed right to the two exits at the back, with the room arranged in a kind of gradient of importance- journalists and advocates towards the front tailing further back to cynics and further back still to those ambivalent to Dr. Werther’s opinions but attracted by the large turnout.

Theres the polished asphalt, closed off by men in reflective wastecoats, permitting an uninhibited stroll across territory usually unchartered by people on foot.Theres no immediate danger present and furthermore very little likelihood of a renegade car defying the blockade to tear down those in the road, so why are the vast majority coyly sticking to the pavements? Perhaps they think its some kind of decietful trap designed by the authorities to lull the citizen into a state of unshackled freedom only to then apprehend them by once more opening the thoroughfare to the cars. Tricked once to often, the possibility of remaining stood stationery in a spot which ordinarily would see you ground beneath the churning momentum of a 4x4 without disrupting traffic, seems for the flummoxed christmas shoppers too much to process. So the sheer volume of families and clans engaged in their debates on the appropriate choice of present for grandad (could he navigate an ipod?) edge across the pavestones on either end of the road at such a gradual pace you have to pay attention to realise their even moving at all. They're cautious of what such a moment of approved rebellion could unearth in them, watch the glances those on the pavement shoot in envy at the few strutting along the road in brash certainty, embellishing their bravery with swaggers and sneers. I hear fragments of conversations all around swell into a tumultuous dawn chorus of anxieties, jokes and taunts, a girl near me says "and then i tried to save it but i couldn't'

'Theres an elderly lady who lives in my town on the helston road approaching the station. She has registered an impact on me in the last month, through a series of encounters which are all but identical in their tone and content, but for the changing of the seasons around us. The way it will go is that i'll be ambling in my usual state of mild delirium when a frail form in a blue nightie and a head of milk white hair will loom out of a doorway and ask in a quivering but pleasant tone "excuse me dear, what day of the week is it?" At which point on our three prior meetings i have replied after a brief moment of hesitation 'The day is Saturday'. Now, i travel that road every day, give or take a few exemptions, and yet this woman requires assurance about the day of the week it would appear only once a week. On the second meeting i caught a glimpse into the corridor behind her to see a staircase with a stairlift attached and numerous handles attached to surfaces, presumably to aid her balance around the house. A wave of pity started to crest in me as i considered that this brief encounter could be her only contact with the outside world, ambling over the doorsteps frontier into the crisp Winter morning to confirm that she is still compus mentis? But then another more callous thought occured to me, perhaps she is to be tested later to check whether her faculties are all there, the visiting doctor will ask her in a voice of benign reassurance "ok, so can you tell me what day of the week it is? and can you tell me who the prime minister is? very good Vera, now do you know how old you are?" Upon hearing the first inquiry i can imagine her face illuminating with the knowledge i had supplied on my trip up the hill earlier. However ludicrous this train of thought seemed i could not banish the feeling that i was dealing in a cartel of information for the uninformed, it appealed to my inner philanthropist i suppose. What frightened me most in each instance of our dialogue though was the genuine mental exertion i had to perform, i had to seriously consider what the day was. My insecurity rose up and i become disconcerted about having given a senile woman false information- after all if i had to think to affirm it was Saturday then where we not in the same situation? Give them thought then, the shoppers fearing to stray from their habitat in their existential angst and the lady grasping for the security, the familiarity of the weekday in the cold."