Wednesday, Week 5, 2010. A day that shall forever go down in history. No I’m not talking about the release of Call of Duty: Black Ops. I’m talking about the day the students fought back, the student protest. Set against the backdrop of our nation’s capital students from around the country are Con-Dem-ing the coalition Government. And unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past month or have been hospitalised due to a lethal combination of booze and fresher’s flu you’ll know why. David Cameron and his lackey Nick Clegg are proposing a massive hike in tuition fees with students to be facing a sum anywhere between £6,000 and £9,000 per year. Naturally the Student backlash has been fierce especially as these extreme measures come from a Government made up from Liberal Democrats who had promised not to do exactly this. But is this the only reason everyone seems so annoyed? I for one think there is a secondary cause.
We in Britain love a good moan. Now don’t get me wrong if there was ever a cause worth moaning about this is it. However I think we have to face facts, we as a nation do get a certain pleasure in complaining. Whether it is about the weather, who got through on the X-factor or even having to pay for plastic bags at the supermarket, we Brits grumble about it. I myself am no exception, I get a small amount of almost masochistic delight in watching the bus driver look me dead in the eye and drive past my stop. And why? So I can whinge to my mates about it later. Why do you think Facebook is so popular? I don’t want to see Aunt Ethel’s holiday snaps, I just want a place where everyone has to listen to me complain about having to get up at seven on a Wednesday. Asking “are we there yet?” constantly isn’t going to make the bus go any faster but it sure as hell makes me feel better. Even the media is the same, do we want to hear constant stories about cats being rescued from tree’s and panda’s being released into the wild? No, we want stories that will get us all worked up about bird flu, swine flu or whatever else scientists reckon is going to kill us. Is this a bad national trait to have? Well if you don’t ask you don’t get. Maybe the protests will convince the Government to change its policy, maybe they won’t but if we didn’t complain then nothing would ever change. This is one of those rare occasions we get to complain about something that matters instead of just for the sake of it. So if you are one of the students who went to London or if you’re attending some of the protests closer to home then remember you’re not just protesting against the massive rise in cost of a university education you’re honouring a time old British tradition.
