Petulant Children Ruining a Good Cause

With whats recently been happening in the capitol over the past few days, I thought I'd try and deconstruct how I feel about the whole student protest debacle. I say deconstruct because as I set out in this post I actually don't know for definate how I feel about it, my feelings are mixed for a number of reasons and I'm hoping that going through them will help me work out how I feel:

1) I did a three year Sociology degree followed by a one year postgraduate Masters in Social Research Methodology. Although I received a loan for the first three years, I funded myself for my postgraduate studies - this was before the rise in tuition fees of a couple of years ago, and way before this proposal of a £9000 limit on the fees. I struggled to raise the funds to study for that extra year. I worked over my summer, scraped and saved, and then still had to borrow £5000 from family members. Knowing how much I struggled, I can't even comprehend how it must feel to be 17 years old with the prospect of possibly having to pay £9000 each year to study. I have come out of University with £20 000 worth of debt to the Government and £5000 loan to be paid back to the family, students going to one of the 9k Universities can expect upwards of £30 000+ worth of debt when they start their working lives.

2) On the other hand, I have friends who work in London. One of my University friends works in a building which overlooks one of the epicenters of the violence. Having spoken to her over the past couple of days, she told me how scared she was, how the violence erupting below was so unlike what she thought the protest was supposed to be like and how she has "no sympathy for students after the way they acted...".

3) The general pretention which surrounds even the most well meaning student protest kinda grinds on me. It ground on me in the years at Uni and it grinds on me now. My job takes me to the local University for a number of days each week, and one of the main things I notice each day (aside from the seething jealousy I feel that they are living the life I was naught but 12 months ago) is the idea that somehow being in the University environment empowers these people with knowledge the lay man just doesn't understand. At the protests on Wednesday, apparently one student was quoted comparing their plight to the anti-war protests of the 60s and 70s! No. Just no.

In general, I think the students have shot themselves in the foot. The protests won't be remembered for the cause, but for the actions of those few teens who took it too far. The UK press have slaughtered them (and, now the lecturers who support them) - whilst I wouldn't think twice about wiping certain parts of my body on the Daily Mail, I believe there are a great number of people who put a lot of stock with the rag. If there were fence sitters before these protests I believe now they may be lost to the Conservative garden. I think now I realise that whilst I support the cause, I believe it may now be lost, and without the cause there can be no effect, the protests were for nothing. Violence for violence sake.

Blag Blogging. Blug Blibbing. Blub Blubbing.

So I was advised to sign up to Technorati to get my blog noticed. This whole experience has been rather confusing and there are a lot of things I'm not sure I totally understand yet - but, as you will learn, I feel like I probably should understand. Let me give you the lo-down on my past blogging experience:

Start off small. I used to have a blog on Journalspace, back when blogs were first starting to break it big. In my opinion I thought I did pretty well! I only started keeping it because my friends did, and we just used to talk about little things that happened and gigs we were going to and stuff. I got into it a little bit more than my friends, and at one point I was getting a pretty good daily hit count! Honestly, my little experiences even made the local paper! Leicester Mercury, Feb 11th 2006 - Look:

What do you mean you don't see it? LOOK:

Not sure where they got the name "Distilled Space".


Anyway, I think what brought people back was that about 2 weeks after I started the blog, my sister was diagnosed with cancer. The blog became a diary of what it was to be 16 and having a family dealing with a chronically ill younger sibling. The blog basically became about that, about me being angry and scared, and how my family coped and how I tried to cope, about the sacrifices we all made and with my life strewn liberally in between. Thing was, when Kate was declared in remission I kinda lost contact with the blog and I stopped posting. I became one of those guys who blogs only to tell people "Sorry I've not been posting, been totally busy. I'll tell you later. Bye".

However, my interest in online communities stayed. I got into online gaming and when I was at University started perusing blogs again. I didn't start one myself as I didn't feel like I had the time, although I wish I had, I think I would have benefitted from 3rd party input to tell me how much of a dick I was being in certain situations. Still, shouldawouldacoulda. Anyway, riding on the back of this interest my Masters dissertation was on Blogging and Online Identities - I discussed how bloggers create an online identity which is seperate from their real identity, totally incorporeal and therefore without boundaries. In my eyes it was interesting stuff, in the eyes of the examiner it was toilet paper. To be honest, it probably was pure bilge, I was trying to hold down a full time job and write a postgraduate dissertation at the same time and it probably wasn't working.

After this I decided to pick up my journalspace blog again and see where I could go with it. Unfortunately, JS had been taken over by some evil overlords or something and everything I had written over those years had poofed out of existence. It was kind of a blow really, it was a relic of a particularly emotionally charged time of my life.

So, my life isn't totally devoid of bloguration. I have blogged before! And I shall blog again! Help me blog viewers, I am awash in a sea which I'm supposed to understand! To a level at which I should be able to write a paper which could hold up to a review by my peers! Help!