Chasing Royal cars is an urban pastime. Don't these country folk no anything about our ways!

The thing is most protests are supposed to be peacefull,but for some reason they never are,put it down to heavy handedness of the police or a small minority of thugs or just put it down to everyone fighting for the same thing!!!
it all ends the same way things gettin set on fire things gettin destroyed or people being carted off to hospital with all sorts of injuries!

Anybody else notice that only one student has been confirmed as being involved in the trouble. Some hoorah Henry from Cambridge. These increased fees will only last for a couple of years at the most as, like every major polictial decision made since the mid seventies, it is made based on polictial idiology and survival rather than economic benefit. When these measures start to hit "average" families who at the last election may have voted Tory and it looks like the Tories will lose the support, they will be reassessed.

I don't have a problem with the repayments system under these proposals. It is linked to earnings, and the threshold where you start to pay back has gone up from £15000 a year to £21000 a year. They are charging a (fairly low) rate of interest on the amount due but because it's taken out as an extra 'tax', you won't get bailiffs coming round and it gets written off after 30 years so if you end up never earning much you will just have a small (or none) extra tax and the outstanding amount will be written off in the end. When people say 'graduates will come out owing £40000' its a bit misleading because effectively that's an extra tax burden: if you want to look at it like that then everybody owes hundreds of thousands right now because thats what the government is going to take off you in the future, in VAT, petrol duty, income tax, NI and the rest of it! The thing to watch for though is I bet the government keeps that threshold of £21k fixed for a good few years rather than increasing it in line with inflation. Inflation is 4.5% at the moment so if they don't raise the threshold then in five years time that will be equivalent to a threshold of about £16800 in todays money. This is probably a tactic they have factored in to the costings.

I can see the argument for it being fairer that this repayment 'tax' is a burden which falls to graduates themselves rather than general taxation otherwise everybody else ends up subsidising graduates for having an advantage which usually leads to them earning more. However I don't think the government should remove its subsidy to the costs of students university education, because its not just a private gain, its a social gain in that the economy relies on graduates. Developing countries have problems of the 'brain drain' ie their graduates go overseas where they can earn more which leaves them with a shortage, if we incentivise people not to go then we could end up with a shortage that will lead us having to rely on increasing skilled immigration to fill the gap. If you look at Australia they have a shortage of graduates in the financial and business sectors so they rely heavily on Indians and in a lot of financial companies there the management is dominated by Indians, who hire other Indian graduates, sometimes Indian graduates from Aussie universities. So this causes social tensions.

100% support for the protests. Non violent protest don't make the front page so again I support it 100%. Attacking the Royal family car, 1000%. Parasites. I do wonder though if that was set up. Maybe people we're getting used to seeing the lone police van, with more press around than protesters, being attacked !!

Whilst Scotland offer free University places and Wales says they will not increase fees, England have voted to double/ treble the fees for it's students. I thought this was a United Kingdom? Seems to me you are penalised for being a student in England!

Despite several discussions with my student daughter I am struggling to see what they are protesting about. At the moment they get loans and grants to pay for Uni education which they have to start repaying once they earn above £15000. With the proposals they get loans and grants to pay for Uni education which they have to start repaying once they earn above £21000 to take into account the higher amount borrowed. It won't stop poor children going to Uni - no-one pays up front anyway. Yes they leave with a debt but that debt is repayable through their wages when they could be earning a decent wage. If I was a student I would be more upset that we weren't on a level playing field across the UK.

one thing about these so called students going on a protest,it gives the police a break from chasing proper criminals..i.e the motorists..just think an afternoon without a few quid in the bank..

No they wont....they'll just get less and less support from the man in the street.

I heard an interview on the radio and a student really couldnt believe that the lib-dems hadnt kept their pre election promise....

its quite scary that real world isnt it....

Harsh. You have to remember that this was the first vote for many of these kids. It is only with age that they will develop that cynicism that the rest of us have, the trust of youth! And they wonder why there is so much apathy around election time!

Yes and the Lib Dems did specifically target the student vote, on the basis of their opposition to tuition fees. When they went into coalition it was inevitable that both parties would have to drop some things from their manifestos as part of the negotiation process. The Tories for instance had been promising to reduce inheritance tax and they dropped that. Lib Dems had been campaigning against nuclear power and Chris Huhne is now Energy minister and looking to bring in a new wave of nuclear power stations. Nobody is up in arms protesting against these. The reason the fees issue has gone so sour for the Lib Dems is because they went touring round the university circuit stirring up students in opposition to Labour bringing in tuition fees, and threatening that if Labour got back in then the Browne report could end up advocating £7000 fees for students. So they got a lot of student support and Nick Clegg relies heavily on the student vote in his constituency of Sheffield Hallam. Now they are in government and are presiding over a policy which is bringing in potentially higher fees than was originally feared, the student vote has turned against them. They have got 57 MPs at the moment but I wouldn't be surprised if at the next election they drop back down to 20 or so, probably their vote will drift off to the Greens and various smaller socialist parties.

Lots of people just take the default cynical line on parties and elections like flying biscuit has: "they never keep their manifesto promises" but when someone says that if you ask them to give examples they struggle to find any, because this doesn't happen very often. They are very wary of breaking explicit promises because they know the opposition and media will slaughter them about it like George Bush (senior) saying 'read my lips: no new tax rises'. As a result you learn to infer what they are really going to do by what is left vague or left out of a manifesto, or what the leave open to interpretation in answer to questions, eg when the Tories or Liberals were asked about if they would put VAT up, they always announced "well we have no plans at this point to raise VAT, but nobody can rule it out...". This was basically obvious that they were going to rise it. I read later on that in internal meetings in Labour, Ed Balls had wanted Labour to take advantage of this by making an explicit pledge to not raise VAT, but Gordon Brown refused, probably because he also planned to hike up VAT at the next budget.

100% parasites the Royal family!Only parasites imo are the lazy students who think i as a tax payer should fund their education.I say get off your ars$s + fund it that way + as for supporting the violence they get all they deserve.Can't expect the coppers just to stand there waiting to get beaten up.Get the water cannons out,soon disperse then.