Wandering away from the wreckage, whistling

Oops.

It turns out I have a remarkable talent for saying exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time. It's happened before, sure, but never quite this spectacularly...

One of my housemates (T) has been increasingly difficult to live with lately. Yesterday she stormed in, once again demanded to know "Who's going to do the washing up, then?" (There was hardly anything there, and it had been there a couple of hours at most) and I said "We thought we'd all hold hands and close our eyes and maybe it would do itself." Well. I'm sure you're all thinking the exact same thing I am: "That was very silly, Anna." Yes. Yes it was.

She yelled at me - she yelled at all of us - and I instantly felt guilty. So I went into the kitchen to apologise, but she just wasn't having it. Someone else decided to have a "house discussion" in the hope of airing some of our grudges in a sensible, mature fashion - but T wasn't having that either. Then, the shouting.

I have never heard my housemates so angry, and they're all pretty fiery. Not being great with confrontation, I just sat on the sofa hiding my face and crying while they yelled and stormed and slammed doors and threatened to move out.

Luckily, when everyone had left and I was still shaking and crying on the sofa (what can I say, I'm kind of a wuss), Arthur came in and gave me a hug and talked to me about stuff. That kept me sane. Then, when Ali came downstairs, clearly shocked and upset at what she'd overheard, he did the same for her.

I would have forgiven her, you know. I would. But T has a way of talking herself out of forgiveness. Have you ever heard of a nonpology? In this case, it took the form of "I'm sorry I shouted, I shouldn't have, but you guys REALLY need to start showing more respect and pulling your weight and I won't stand for being treated this way" - with no gap in the interim for me to say a) All is forgiven or b) Kindly attempt cranio-rectal insertion.

I could not be more relieved that I'm going home tomorrow. Sweet, undramatic Isle of Wight - you're always there for me. Happy Christmas, dramahouse.

Today's interesting thing is the BBC interview with Jody McIntyre, the guy I mentioned in this post.

Day x3

Yesterday, the government voted through a rise in tuition fees by a majority of 21 - 302 votes against 323. Meanwhile, the streets of London were overrun with a protest that became nothing short of a battle between the police and the public.

There are dozens of breathtaking photos from Boston's The Big Picture - I've linked to that site before. They're incredible. This is my favourite, but I really do recommend clicking the above link to see the others:

We are living in interesting times, no doubt about that.

I have to say that I was extremely disappointed by the BBC's live coverage on BBC News 24. Their reporter was behind police lines, unable to see anything but projectiles lobbed at the coppers, and certainly unable to see any violence against protesters (which photos, videos and tweets from protesters tell us certainly occurred). Their studio voiceover reflected this, and their emphasis was very much on police injuries sustained, barely mentioning the other side of the story. There were also a lot of leading questions when they interviewed protesters, along the lines of "How can you defend this violence?", never asking the same question of the offices taking batons to the public they're meant to protect.

I'm reluctant to be too opinionated on the violence, as I wasn't there, but it seems clear that there was a lot from both sides. Several police officers were injured, including one who was thrown from his horse, and several students were taken to hospital (or, in some cases, left in the kettle despite urgently needing medical attention). Jody McIntyre was dragged from his wheelchair (read his account of events here), Guardian journalist Shiv Malik was beaten until his head was bleeding, and one girl had her collarbone broken although I haven't found her name or the circumstances yet (I think it was a cavalry charge). These are the stories I've heard because, I confess, there's a political bias to the left in the people I follow on twitter, but I will say it again: there was violence on both sides. Too much violence.

Callous and horrible though it sounds, this direction this war takes depends entirely on who dies first. I know, I know! I'm an awful person for even thinking it, but it's true: if an officer dies first, the witch-hunt to find and prosecute anyone involved in the protests will reach unheard-of levels. If a protester is killed by an officer, the public opinion will swing back towards the students. Or there's a third possibility, in many ways the most horrible: a protester will die as a result of another protestor's stupidity.

If this happens, the whole movement will fall apart. Peaceful students will refuse to march with the Socialist Workers; unionists won't want to march with students; and absolutely everybody will scatter as soon as possible anarchists turn up. I would say that this is quite probable, but the police are proving so enthusiastic in their violence that they will most likely, pun unintended, beat us to it.

Every protest displays more violence, more public disorder, and more condemnation from the government and police forces. I'm sorry to say that a death is only a matter of time, because this hasn't ended with the vote. This isn't going to melt into the background; these students are not going to shrug their shoulders, say "Fair enough then, it's the law, what can we do?" because we know what we can do now.

This. Right or wrong, there'll be more of this in coming weeks.

Cardiff protests, part 2

I've always considered myself a law-abiding person. My daddy is a lawyer, so I've known other lawyers and police officers my whole life as dad's friends. The side of good, here to keep us safe.

Which in many ways made it scarier to be surrounded by police officers and vans yesterday. To see them grab my friend by the arm and throw him back into the crowd. To hear that an officer threatened to tear my friend, pushed into him by somebody, "a new arsehole" if he touched him again.

One of my friends got arrested. This article phrases it "South Wales Police has confirmed one male was arrested today for a public order offence." Don't think for a second that this means he was violent - he's a cheeky bugger, but it's infinitely more likely that he'd try to get a policewoman's number than take a swing at someone!

The strangest thing, by far, was being part of a crowd with nobody in charge. There was never a plan, but occasionally a consensus decision would be reached and dozens of people would surge - into a bank, into a shopping centre, into a vodaphone store - anywhere that has been dodging taxes, the crowd wanted to storm. I got pulled into Lloyds TSB by a friend moments after I arrived, and stood in the lobby as policemen chased after 30 or so students who'd gone upstairs. The officers locked the door to prevent more people getting in - locked me in.

The mood was on a knife-edge. I think that's one of the reasons the police didn't get more threatening - if they'd pushed too hard, things would have gone bad and stayed bad. As it was, however, a strange sense of humour emerged that I couldn't help but smile at. Our anti-Tory chants had accordion accompaniment; the section of the crowd that invaded St David's shopping centre sang "We're only going shopping, we're only going shopping!"; two friends of mine started a conga-line that gained some serious momentum; some guy was playing a Bob Dylan song and forgetting the words (even the policemen were smiling and chatting with that section of the crowd) - unfortunately that was interspersed with moments of fear and anger that swept across the mob. Those two emotions are separated by such a thin line; I don't think I knew how thin until now.

One woman, clearly angry / frightened (frangry?), started shouting at us - telling us we were scaring children, I think, although it was hard to hear. The crowd started chanting "She votes Tory" and "Tory scum" while an officer pulled her away from us, and I was honestly disgusted. One thing I will never, ever accept is demonising opponents - and especially not members of the public, who we just can't afford to alienate. I won't draw the battle lines between the students and the public. We're all in this together. This affects all of us.

Ben made this point loudly and dramatically as only he knows how; he broke out of the crowd and declared to the surrounding police, "It'll be your jobs next! You'll be where we are." That was around the time it looked like we were going to be kettled. We were given the choice: return to the student's union, or get kettled - which, for those who don't know, means being penned in by the police, not allowed to go home, sometimes for hours, sometimes being denied access to food, water, toilets. I'll be honest, I was not up for that. I was terrified, cold, losing feeling in my fingers. I would have gone home as soon as they started to storm the bank, but I still believe in what we're doing.

Luckily, the overall result has been a good one. During the protest, we received news that Welsh students won't have their tuition fees raised, or EMAs cancelled, which is an excellent start and reflects extremely well on the Welsh government. My friend wasn't charged with anything, so I hear, and South Wales police have acknowledged the protest as having "passed relatively peacefully", which I'd say is accurate.

Well. I know this is a fairly muddled version of events, so here's the summary of events from the Guardian; and here's a link to the rest of my photos. Check my twitter feed for twitpics etc from last night.

Also, this is the video I've been making all my friends watch lately. They love it, you might too.

Cardiff student protest

I've just run home to pick up blankets and charge mobile phones, so now seems like a good time to bring you up to speed.

If you follow my twitter feed, you'll likely have seen that I joined a peaceful protest outside Cardiff university at 12 noon today. The protest moved inside the building, and a small portion of us held down a lecture hall while the rest marched around the city centre. The police have acknowledged this as a peaceful protest. No windows broken, no punches thrown, to my knowledge.

While they were gone, discussions began with Cardiff uni security regarding the intended aims of our protest.

On their return, the lecture or "teach-in" began. It was utterly inspirational. I'm going to look up the details shared and pass them along to you.

As things stand now, it's looking like the protesters intend to stay overnight and bring more attention to our cause. I have to head back out as it's going to be a cold night and my friends will need blankets! This is just a placeholder post, I'll update in more detail as soon as I get the chance! As it is, things are very much in progress!

Education is a riot, not a privilege

Yesterday at university, we studied Thomas De Quincey's 1827 paper "On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts."

Everything in this world has two handles. Murder, for instance, may be laid hold of by its moral handle (as it generally is in the pulpit and at the Old Bailey), and that, I confess, is its weak side; or it may also be treated aesthetically, as the Germans call it — that is, in relation to good taste.

His point here (whether satirical or serious I am unsure) is that we can ask whether something is beautiful, and we can ask whether something is right, and that they are not the same question. This is quite a tricky concept at first, but if you find it truly impossible to accept the 'beauty of murder,' you probably haven't seen Dexter.

Dexter is a programme about a homicidal sociopath, and yet if you watch a few episodes, that stops being the focus. You start to appreciate his craft; to acknowledge the conscientious planning and the skillful execution. You become, as my housemate terms it, a "murder snob."

We can do that, as humans. We can separate the morality of a thing from the beauty of it. It's similar to Orwell's doublethink, and it's something that I've learned to do happily as part of my Higher Education.

I got home from university to find that HE was the subject of inevitable controversy. A peaceful protest in London had turned - er - less peaceful, as an estimated fifty-two thousand students protested the huge hike in the university fee cap (from the current £3,290 a year to £9,000).

They got angry. Some of them got very angry, and while I was too late to see how it started, I sat on the sofa and watched in amazement as students smashed windows and started fires at Millbank tower, which serves as the HQ for the Conservative party.

Our in-house punk was delighted, and it's not hard to see why. For years I thought that our generation had been placated by endless amusement; that youtube had given us all three-minute attention spans, and that I'd never see people my age care about anything as much as teenagers did in the 80s. They didn't particularly look like punks, as I remarked to Ben. He replied "Some of them are wearing jeggings, Anna. JEGGINGS." His point was that these are normal students. They're not a fringe group who identify themselves with rebellion, they are just normal people. At that moment, they were just normal people who had taken over Tory HQ, but still - normal people.

My heart goes out to the police officers who clearly wanted to be anywhere but there. They have a very tough job to do, and it does them credit (and gives me hope) to see that they responded without undue force. That's what separates us from dystopic fiction. (By the way, now's the perfect time to remind you about Little Brother. I bought a paperback copy and I'm lending it to people obsessively.)

On the one hand, it's destructive and morally wrong. I don't hesitate to say that. I can't imagine how frightening it must have been for the people just doing their jobs in the building. My heart also goes out to the police officers who were injured on the job; and as for the twat who threw a fire-extinguisher from the roof - well, he's incredibly lucky nobody died. On the other hand... I'm part of a generation that cares enough to riot.

There were anarchist flags flying from the roof of Tory HQ yesterday, and while that may not be right, isn't it beautiful?

Recommended pictures:
Spanish journalists were on the scene, and got these incredible photos of the occupied building's lobby.
Funny banners and protest signs reflect the mood.