At the current NUS national conference the following things have just been passed:
National demo (date to be set)
No Confidence in David Willets (he's a c**t)
No to White Paper (Education white paper)
Tax the Rich (don't know the details, but seems a bit obvious)
ex-NUS president, Stanley Jenkins spoke at the conference. He was a war vet who went back into education, became the first full time NUS President, travelled on his power, met politicians, forced the government to put certain things in place that stabilised education (including making it free) and then went into colonial work which has irked a lot of left wingers who turned up at conference. He said there were too many communists in our universities back then and he sorted things out.
Does the average working bloke think todays universities are full of commies/beatniks/etc?
Our uni is about to have a referendum on NUS membership. Think my vote will be to stay out. Lots of lefty liberal types in power last year and this year its swung the other way a bit with a toff of the highest order, red trousers and everything being voted in.
I'm not sure about the 'Soak the Rich' agenda... this graph seems to indicate a reasonably fair system to me?
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Does the average working bloke think todays universities are full of commies/beatniks/etc?
Well I'm a lecturer so probably don't qualify as the 'average working bloke' you're after... But from the inside my sense is that students are less politicized in the traditional sense than a decade or so ago. That is, although there are still careerist party hacks of all stripes far fewer students seem to identify as 'political' or affiliate to any particular party or are activists in the way that we've defined the term in the past. There's a lot of tweeting-as / instead of-political action that I don't quite get. What's more interesting is their involvement in single issue campaigning or voluntary work on social issues like homelessness or the environment or with other charities: this is something that seems to have increased while I've been working in the sector.
So it [u]looks[/u] like there are far fewer 'commies / beatniks / etc' but I guess I'm wondering out loud whether what counts as politics in general and student politics in particular is changing.
The top 5 % still have more income than the bottom 50% - rich seem to be doing well
Wealth would be even more iniquitous
IMHO students are less militant than previous generations
I was Student Union President 10 years ago after i graduated and it was a fantastic year
My team and I were fiercely independent and wouldn't be influenced by the various parties in the student body. My uni was pretty small, so people weren't really interested in some of the more left-wing ideas, but we were fully on-board protesting against fees
After being immersed in my own career for the last 10 years, i've totally lost track of what the NUS is up to
I have very fond memories of the NUS, the electoral team in 2001/02 as well as the full time staff within the organisation
Moreover, i've got some incredibly fond, yet a little hazy, memories from some of the drinking sessions we got involved in all over the country - fantastic fun!!
Now i'm proper reminiscing.... 😀
A friend of the Left has just been voted in as an NUS VP, but generally most activists I know think people like you (NUS/SU's) are c**ts. Nothing personal. It's just the way many behave, seeming to have deals on with the universities and not looking after the students, grassing people up, making trouble for people, the bullying, undemocratic behaviour, corruption, condemning their uni's students, false witness accounts to get students sent down, not fighting against the recent change in top up fees and the white paper, etc.
[url= http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/rosslyn-mcnair/students-left-wing-love-affair_b_1301159.html ]This [/url]seems to cover it
Does the average working bloke think todays universities are full of commies/beatniks/etc?
Perhaps the average working bloke doesn't give a toss about students given that the majority of people in the UK did not attend university
That'll change in a generation, what with 41% of the yoof going into HE.
Does the average working bloke think todays universities are full of commies/beatniks/etc?
I would expect the attitudes of university students to mirror British society generally. Despite the worse global economic crises since the 1930s there is still generally very little interest in politics in Britain - turnout at elections has been falling for decades and membership of political parties has collapsed to a historical low.
For that reason I wouldn't expect today's UK university students to show any significant commitment to politics, radical or otherwise, or throw up "Camila Vallejo" type leaders at the present moment. Although opposition to tuition fees did undoubted radicalised a lot of students, but that was just a few months ago and the journey to political discovery ime takes a little longer.
So no - not at the present, but who knows about the future. There's certainly some evidence that the current situation might lead to a less predictable public attitude to politics.
For that reason I wouldn't expect today's UK university students to show any significant commitment to politics, radical or otherwise, or throw up "Camila Vallejo" type leaders at the present moment.
+1, I don't have any interest in it, don't know many students (if any) that do. Don't vote, don't care, and don't know who Camila Vallejo is. It's all dull, and doesn't really matter who is in power, I'll still ride my bike and have fun.
don't know who Camila Vallejo is
[url= http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/magazine/camila-vallejo-the-worlds-most-glamorous-revolutionary.html ]Camila Vallejo, the World’s Most Glamorous Revolutionary[/url] Apparently.
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She was worth following.
NUS conference is not a good picture of how political students are - it's a talking shop for a bunch of crazy lefties and students who want to become MPs. Perhaps i'm being overly cynical but the leadership always seemed keen not to offend the party bosses - got to look out for future career I guess!
That said I do think students care, when I was a sabbatical at our uni I ran a campaign around the election to turn the vote out. Turn out on campus ended up being at about 56% which is very high for the age group. Also had the amusing result of kicking the local lib dem out.... (the winning MP spent a good deal of time on campus campaigning (including on the polling day), turned up to all the election question times, gave a bit of banter, etc - the loosing incumbant just assumed that students always voted for lib dems so she didn't need to do too much... opps)
Student politicians are bad, but not quite as ugly as the "real politicians" they become when their lust for power gets satisfied.
NUS conference ............ it's a talking shop for a bunch of crazy lefties
Yes but they don't mean it.
Sue Slipman (OBE) epitomises that.
Your SU allowed political parties on campus? I heard from two parties locally that said they were either rude or slammed the phone down on them apparently. I've heard rumours implying they may be working hand in hand with the university to ensure our students don't become politicised. It's safer for the status quo.
It's funny really, because having read the extremism document handed to HE principals, it appears blocking freedom of speech on HE campuses isn't allowed by law.
