(Wording of a poster photographed at a student protest march in Edinburgh, Guardian, 7th December, 2010). You’re right; it’s not. I hope he didn’t mean Clegg simply failing to keep his promises either. Bank makes £11 bn profit and pays only 1% tax; public sector workers laid off, Middle East erupts in protest at ghastly old regimes; draw it all together and go beyond the single issues.
Perhaps they will. I hope that, with a bit of luck, people sense that there is a change of mood; not just opposing this policy or that, but starting to talk about the moral basis of society, and by protest, gain the upper hand in the morals and values debate. They don’t want to get tied down in tedious debate over abstruse political theory in the way the Sixties radicals did, but they do need to start pulling it all together and talking about changing society.
In the pub, a friend of mine objected to comments about bankers’ bonuses. After a few ravings about fairness from me, he muttered something about the world having changed since Margaret Thatcher; that’s the way the economy works now. The terms under which we work have changed. Well, people, go and change them again or put up with more patronising gits.
