So...What are all of your opinions on the Student incidents?

hmmm students...

In a nutshell I am absolutely discussed with their behaviour! And without sounding too middle aged........the youth of today have no respect!!

I protested in my youth, went on demonstrations and marches (over the poll tax malarkey) but we never did anything like this! The images on the Mail Online of Thugs deface the Cenotaph and urinating on Churchill are sick. If my child was one of those pictured on here, I dread to think what I would do.......I feel the shame and humiliation for their parents.

As the parent of a child who will be at university in a few years, it does worry me the level of debt she is likely to get into due to tuition fee rises but this carnage is not the answer. Looks like I will just have to save that bit harder to lessen the debt level and pay some off to ease the burden for her.

Just watching on the news, the Police were videoing troublemakers instead of pulling them out of the crowd, which would have escalated things. So there will be a few knocks on teenagers doors over the coming weeks and months.

Make sure they at least have a criminal record, and if feasible, refuse them any university place, and make them get a job!

But its a minority that's causing the problems, kids stoking up kids with immature ideology, and off they all go like sheep. "Get the rich to pay our bills, rah rah rah". "down with the goverment, blah blah blah"

But anyone who breaks the law must pay the price.

I remember the Poll Tax riots in London, I got caught up in it with my girlfriend who was living in the path of it. Majority were youngsters and the damage done was frightening. I watched traffic lights getting bent to the ground and shop after shop getting smashed up.

Then the generation before there were those Mods and Rockers causing mayhem in Brighton...

But to balance it, you've got plenty of 18 and 19 year olds serving their country in Afghanistan and some paying an awful price...

I don't understand enough about the issues involved to have a valid opinion on the fairness or unfairness of the proposed changes to university fees. There are other cuts which are worrying me an awful lot more - nobody is going to die of having to pay a bit more for their education.

As for the protests, there's a lot of reprehensible behaviour occurring on both sides.

I got quite upset about Jody McIntyre being beaten, and then bodily dragged out of his wheelchair and across the street by the Met, although it was hysterically funny to see a BBC interviewer ask a man who can barely move his arms whether he'd been involved in the throwing of concrete, and suggest that he might have been perceived as a threat.

And I was fairly upset about Alfie Meadows being given such a thwack with a police truncheon that he needed emergency brain surgery, and the Met trying to insist that he should not be taken to the nearest appropriate hospital for that life-saving surgery because they'd "reserved" it for injured police officers. I don't believe Choose And Book should extend to emergency situations.

I think my favourite story, though, was this personal account which goes as follows:
- 17-year-old girl agrees with bunch of friends to go to protests but leave if it gets violent.
- they're up against a police line, they can't move back because of the pressure of the crowd, they get seven shades of snot beaten out of them by the Met.
- crying, she phones her Mum, explains she's trapped and they can't get out.
- Mum phones the Met central switchboard and asks for their official guidance on what the girls should do.
- Met officer advises Mum that the girls should go back to the front and try to explain to the police officers that they just want to leave.
- Mum relays this official advice back to the girls.
- Girls are daft enough to believe it, and surprised when they get beaten up again.

As much as I don't want to laugh...I can't really help it.

I saw this video yesterday as well, of this student, only 15, delivering a pretty poweful speech..see what you make of it.

YouTube - 15 year old Tells Establishment to Stick-it.

To be honest, I'm at that student age and it seems so stupid allot of it is just people lookinng to get some viloence going !