#copsoffcampus protests in London

[wub]

Twitter hash tags/users vs. geographical placing;



Laurie Penny getting stuck in

[NilsFG]

What are they protesting about this time?

[Pedro Sánchez]

What are they protesting about this time?

Not being able to protest.

[Pedro Sánchez]

Twitter hash tags/users vs. geographical placing;



Laurie Penny getting stuck in

Is that the map of Starbucks in Central London?

[wub]

Just had a pig come up to me. Told him calm and measured: "Your friends murdered Mark Duggan." #copsoffcampus

i wana no why #copsoffcampus isnt trending its all over my news feed #coverup again the media dont like you to see the truth

[ehbes]

wait are they really protesting about police being on uni campuses? thats laughable

[NilsFG]

What are they protesting about this time?

Not being able to protest.

Very meta and deep

[Pedro Sánchez]

Just like everything with the youth of today, the trend changes every 2 minutes, hence why every protester has a different issue on their placard. It's like Twitter acted out in real life.

[wub]

Huffington Post are self fellating over being the 'only' news outlet to be covering the demonstrations.

[wub]

Funny how when no cops turn up there's no violence #copsoffcampus

Remember:- Keep your faces covered Say nothing when arrested Tell everyone you were peaceful. Smash the fuz! #copsoffcampus

[m8son666]

loool they are literally creating a reason to protest and then complaining about it

[MasterA]

Why do these fantasies always climb over police vehicles but never overturn them or set them alight?

Civil disobedience turned into a jolly for Tarquin and Sophia, lel.

[Pedro Sánchez]

They don't understand the nature of protest, they have confused it with 'The Things That Have Pissed You Off Today Thread' thread.

[mercutio]

There is far too much cynicism and looking down on all young protesters in this thread. Most of you don't even know what these students are protesting against and are tarring every single person at the protest with the same V for Vendetta/champagne anarchist brush. This protest is in response to police brutality against student protesters at a previous occupation. There is hard evidence for at least two separate incidences of this: 1) a video of a student being punched in the face multiple times by a police officer. 2) a video of a student on the floor being hit with truncheons by two separate officers. Furthermore, there is far more eye-witness testimony of other instances of brutality to break up the same occupation (two of my friends were there).

Yes, some student/young protesters flit from one demonstration to the next with little idea as to what they are actually protesting against but saying this is true of all protesters is as much of a fallacy as all muslims being terrorists and all black people being muggers. If people were to attend these events and converse with those who were there then they would realise that the majority of people there are reasonable and well informed.

[m8son666]

If they hadn't broken the law by illegally entering a building in the first place and walked along the street shouting fuck the police and other meaningless provocation, there wouldn't of been any 'brutality'.

It's like a child stealing sweets because there parents won't give them any, then taunting there parents and moaning about when they get in trouble for it.

Please sum up for us, as you sound so informed, the reasons for these protests. Not the ones protesting being able to protest but the ones where people ended up getting police brutalitalised.

It seems to me that the original reasons for the protests can't be that important as these 'activists' seem to have completely forgot about them in order to fight the power.

[mercutio]

The original reason for protesting was that many students felt that the education they were receiving and the institutions who were educating them were going to be severely compromised due to what they claim to be the privatisation of higher education in the United Kingdom. Vast changes in budget allocations in universities across the which have seen drastic reductions in the percentage of a university's budget that is spent on teaching and teaching resources while simultaneously budgets for management have shot up. Students are taking offense to what they see as the corporatisation of higher education as universities are beginning to spend more and more money on attempting to advertise themselves to future students rather than spend money on students who are currently in education. On top of this is a movement towards the privatisation of student debt, students aren't happy about this as in order to make as high a profit from this debt sell off as possible the government have contemplated retrospectively introducing interest payments above inflation for all student loans issued since 1998.

Whether you agree with the original reasons for protesting or not doesn't really matter. Your first paragraph doesn't really make any sense as well. The police brutality hasn't (to my current knowledge) occurred during this protest. Instead it took place at earlier protests in which students occupied university property around the country which they were legally entitled to be in. While I don't wholeheartedly agree with protesters shouting "fuck the police" and trespassing on private property, first, this certainly isn't a cause for police brutality (we have a legal system that is designed to deal with criminality) and secondly, I can understand why people would be driven to shout at policemen and attempt to draw attention to their protest through illegal actions when they are protesting the fact that police (who are supposed to protect and serve the public) are instead brutalising people who are peacefully protesting.

Edit: I realise that I didn't make myself entirely clear here, this is simply what was being protested against before the first example of police brutality. In the last month there has been a large increase in student protests, some have been for this reason while the other major strand of student protests have been in an attempt to align students with workers (specifically workers at universities who are underpaid and have been allowed little room to unionise). There have been various other protests which have on the whole been fractured and for a variety of reasons. So in response to you asking what the original protests were for the answer would be the previous two examples.

It is not that the original protests were unimportant, simply unpunished police brutality, essentially state sanctioned assault, is a far larger problem. I don't deny that quite a few people at today's protests and probably a larger proportion of those who broke into senate house are uninformed as to why these protests were needed and simply opportunistic youths looking for an excuse to stick two fingers up to the "man" or "system" but that has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that these protests are very important. If you judge an entire movement simply by the stupidest people who affiliate themselves with that movement then nothing on earth will ever be worthwhile. Being on dubstepforum should have made that clear.

[test_recordings]

Exactly, if you haven't kept up with non-mainstream news recently, police have been stationed on campuses to really crack down on dissent. University managers now prioritise corporations over free speech and protests on university grounds are being considered illegal without permission.

I'm quite glad someone's protesting at least. Police repression is now unequivocal and, even with hard evidence of recent violence against the public, people still think that there's nothing wrong

You'll be glad for what they're doing in the future, when the government decides letting everyone fall in poverty and social control is acceptable

[Pedro Sánchez]

You'll be glad for what they're doing in the future, when the government decides letting everyone fall in poverty and social control is acceptable

Already happened, poverty safety net has all but been removed for the working class, universal credit will be the nail in the coffin.

[Forum]

[m8son666]

This is my third year at university and i have noticed no change in my course in fact i have got more teaching hours than i did at the beginning. None of my friends at university have seen any change either. The only courses i know that have been effected, at UoB anyway, are one or two of the humanity courses. Which in all fairness when needed to save money (whether or not money needs to be saved is obviously a point of contention) should be the first to go, the government can't support a degree in everything what about unicorn management why don't universitys teach that omg it's the tyrannical government and their austerity.

On the privatisation of student debt i am yet to be shown why this is a bad thing. Yes the government have contemplated increasing the interest rates but i am sure they have contemplated a lot of things, until there is concrete proof that the privatisation of the loans is a bad thing i am apathetic toward the whole thing. Also when getting the student loan i am sure you will have signed something to say that the interest rates are entitled to change so i don't see what the government are doing wrong there. I could pick anything the government have 'contemplated', assume it's bad, tell a group of empty minded trying so hard to fit in students its bad and then they will go and cause a minor inconvenience to the police doesn't mean it actually matters.

Whether you agree with the original reasons for protesting or not doesn't really matter.

What? is that not the point of this discussion?

While the reasons for the protests may be valid, unfortunately the kind of person that this kind of thing attracts is the worst kind of person. I'm not talking about the people who just latch on to the protests to say fuck da police, i can understand their motivations. I mean the people at the heart of the protests the people who consider themselves the saviours of this generation, i have met a lot of these people and they are insufferable. So i am siding with the police in this case however outrageous you may find that.