Students have blazed a trail

Diary of a benefit scrounger

By Sue Marsh

If you could only achieve my levels of geeky nerd-hood, you would have known much of what the coalition planned to do well before the election. I was under no illusions. I knew VAT would rise, I knew culture and sport would be clobbered, I knew IDS planned to totally reform welfare and I knew that Nick Clegg wanted a deal with Cameron and would have not tolerated one with Labour even if they had won more seats.

I remember the last Conservative government in all their nasty-party glory. Education neglected, health crippled, culture invisible, crime soaring, society denied, unemployment raging. My only glimmer of hope was the assurance they’d changed. That “Dave” really had dragged them into the 21st Century and that conservatism was now compassionate.

Watching the CSR settled that question pretty conclusively. I watched open mouthed as Osborne went further than even I ever imagined he might. Often, the policies he was announcing sounded fairly reasonable, but it seemed no-one had considered the impact of them two or three years down the line.

There were serious risks attached – not just to one or two policies, but to all of them. I had the impression that Dave had stood at the head of the cabinet table in front of a whiteboard, urging all departments to “Think outside of the box,” encouraging policy formation through “Blue Sky Thinking.” The PR man could inspire his team to dream, but like most good marketing men, felt little need to concern himself with the finished product. Details were something mere mortals would work out when the time came.

The immigration cap might well lead to a skills shortage, the VAT rise would only take money out of the recovering economy, the housing benefit cap could dispossess thousands of families. Scrapping cancer guarantees and NHS targets would cost lives, whilst cutting local authority budgets would squeeze schools. Unemployment would rise and therefore the benefit bill would rise with it. Crime would soar, (as it always does when unemployment is high) but the police would be short staffed, and unable to react. Even if they did catch the criminals, courts would have closed and prison places would have been cut. Reducing care budgets would only put extra pressure on the NHS, as elderly patients block more beds with nowhere to go home to.

My biggest fear was that by the time people fully realised the impact of so many jumbled policies, so much damage would have been done, it would be hard to ever reverse. I had faced such a wall of apathy during the election, I feared no-one would ever care about anything again. I remembered all too well how much we had put up with under the last Conservative government before we finally put our foot down over the Poll Tax. We would have to pass the compulsory three years tutting, then a year or so tutting and shrugging before we moved on to a good few years of writing very stern letters to the Times. Only when every very British form of protest had been exhausted would we take to the streets a la France – us Brits seem to find resistance uncouth.

But hang on, what’s this? A sea of beanie hats, dreads and pink hair has risen up. (A little after midday, but better late than never.) There are tens of thousands and more join every day. They tweet and they digg and they poke and they meme. Against all the odds, they are achieving formidable. Their flower-power parents couldn’t be more surprised to find their grunting hulks of lethargy painting banners and planning marches.

Students have declared the rise in tuition fees unacceptable and they have done it just 6 months into the coalition. They have blazed the trail. Nurses and doctors and teachers and the disabled have watched the footage of rallies and demonstrations and realised that they can say no too.

I’m firmly convinced that we ain’t seen nothing yet. In two or three years, I fear that we, the people, will need to remove our support for the coalition. I couldn’t be more delighted that it is young people that are showing us the way. By not waiting until it was too late, they’ve shown the rest of us that we don’t have to either.