Bloody Students

For the record, Durham Students' Union is no longer affiliated to the NUS. Therefore, I am able to post this quite merrily (as if anything would ever have stopped me), as one who greatly enjoys working with those at the most energetic and open-minded stage in their lives, but who readily observes and recalls how that can tip over into callowness.

The seriously ill being booted off Incapacity Benefit, and soon to be made to take over what were other people's paid jobs in order to retain even the dole? Nothing. The utterly, utterly pointless war in Afghanistan, which has been going on for half their lifetimes and which is now harvesting the boys next to whom they were seated in order to function as unpaid teaching assistants? Nothing. But as soon as the privileges of the upper middle class are threatened...

Which means, though, that we should expect a lot more trouble, if not necessarily as violent, or in quite so hopeless a cause as absolutely free higher education. Ninety-three per cent of children attend state schools. Every business is dependent on them, as it is on public transport and on the National Health Service. Indeed, hardly anyone has private health insurance, and a large proportion of those who do, have it through their trade unions. And so on.

In the present state of affairs, extremely few are those who could do without their Child Benefit, or their tax credits, or their state pensions, or their winter fuel payments, or their free bus travel, or their free prescriptions, or their free eye and dental treatment, or their free television licenses. Taking away consumer spending power is hardly the way to aid economic recovery.

Paid for by what? Not by any private sector, as that term is ordinarily used. Thus defined, there is no private sector. Not in any advanced country, and not since the War at the latest. Take out bailouts or the permanent promise of them, take out central and local government contracts, take out planning deals and other sweeteners, take out the guarantee of customer bases by means of public sector pay and the benefits system, and what is there left? They are all as dependent on public money as any teacher, nurse or road sweeper. Everyone is.

Well, with public money come public responsibilities, including public accountability for how those responsibilities are or are not being met.