The strikes strike again. We’ve discovered that the rail industry is in it for the long haul, with disruption set to continue until the unions get what they want. In other words, train strikes will outlive us. Which means we’ll forever be held to ransom by radical fools called Mick who want to grind our country to a halt.
But the result of all this is that, for the train strikes, it’s the end of the line. They’re getting old now – they’re boring. So I’m not even going to give them the satisfaction of more news coverage.
What I do want to raise, however, is the University and College Union (UCU) marking boycotts. Which is essentially another way of saying ‘strike’. And which is absolutely outrageous, ridiculous and totally unacceptable.
So far, Cambridge, Edinburgh and Bristol have come out saying end of year marks will be affected. Cambridge felt it necessary to add that, if students don’t get their marks, they can’t graduate. Talk about pointing out the bleeding obvious – I thought the Cambridge lot were supposed to be clever. Thanks for charging me £9,250 a year to learn how to suck eggs.
Regardless of the descension of the so-called Einsteins, this confirms that even soon-to-be graduates will be affected. This lot have been impaled by strike action for the entirety of their final year, with cancelled lectures and seminars causing constant disruption. And yet the selfish goons inside Britain’s unionist culture have decided they haven’t caused enough damage. And so they want to stop graduates from getting the hell out of university and into the labour market. It’s the equivalent of dancing on someone’s grave.
What makes this even more frustrating is that universities themselves are complete and utter con artists. Assuming the rumours are true, they’d give Phillip Schofield a run for his money.
Universities are complete profiteering merchant bankers (if you’re unfamiliar with Cockney rhyming slang, then look that up). They charge £9,250 a year and, on top of that, exploit the living daylights out of vulnerable students. To buy any university food, you’ll need your parents to re-mortgage the house. You’re forcibly charged shy of £100 to rent a manky black cloth on graduation day. And a gym membership will cost you so many limbs that it’s pointless buying it in the first place.
And yet, despite paying more money than you can shake a stick at, university staff have the cheek to go on strike and throw a spanner in your studies and create a gaping hole in your gradebook.
How do they get away with it all? Private sector workers aren’t allowed to strike. If someone at BT decided they wanted a pay rise and walked out as a result, they’d be told to shove it where the sun don’t shine and find another job. Universities are private institutions. So why is it one rule for one, and one rule for another?
I’ll tell you why. It’s because universities always have, and always will, hide behind the comfort blanket of their charity status. It’s like taking time off for mental health issues. Nobody can touch you. You are invincible. Charity, mental health, personal identity – they’re just words, but they have the force of God.
The other trump card for universities is education. It’s infuriating how gooey and lovey-dovey everybody gets in a politics classroom when someone says the word ‘education’. It’s a human right, a force for good, a tool for greatness and freedom. So, again, nobody can touch you if you’re championing education. Otherwise they will be accused of hating young people and polar bears, and subsequently burnt at the stake under a hammer and sickle.
All of this means that universities can get away with murder. They already do: charging students nearly £30,000 to do some reading hardly practices the egalitarian values they so passionately preach. But that’s okay because they’re an educational charity who desperately need the money for a brand spanking new Arts Centre so that disadvantaged kids can go to drama school. You can just hear the pitiful TV advert now. “Donate £5 million per month now and help Adam perform for three years before being unemployed for the rest of his life”.
On this backdrop, the strikes are not just strikes. They are urine-taking insults.
Who do they think students are? Fools? Idiots? Clowns? At university, there’s a whole ethos of getting students involved with representation, research and employment – treating them like lecturers. That’s the egalitarian way. But this Marxist rubbish is simply a disguising cloak to the malicious money-making immorality that goes on behind the institutional Chinese walls.
Universities, in this way, are hurtfully deceitful. And when you can’t even do what you went there to do – funnily enough, learn and ultimately graduate – they become completely unjust.
But that’s what these strikes are doing. They’re preventing students from playing along with the one trump card universities have always had: championing education.
Universities have made no attempt to resolve the strike action throughout the entirety of this year. And that won’t change. Why? Because they have a monopoly. Students have no choice but to pay £9,250 if they want a degree. Anywhere else, this would be outlawed by the Competition and Markets Authority. But not here. As I said before, educational charities are doubly untouchable.
Let’s summarise this dismal state of affairs.
If universities aren’t egalitarian charities, they rely solely on the promise of educating young people. But if they can’t even do that, then what exactly is their purpose aside from fraudulent profiteering deceit? If you can find one, I’ll eat my hat and change my name to Mick.
Image: PA Wire (Liam McBurney)
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