Cambridge University students hijack talk by David Willetts, Minister for Higher Education 22/11/11

22/11/11 - A talk by David Willetts, Universities Minister, at Cambridge University is taken over by student protesters.

Category:

Comedy

Tags:

• university
• cuts
• higher
• education
• cambridge
• david
• willetts
• occupy
• hijack
• spending
• protest
• protesters
• Student
• University Of Cambridge
• lecture
• take
• over

[hughcanbefound]

This is a poor effort from students of one of the world's top universities.

Prepare well-worded questions that could force the politician to slip up/to admit his policy is damaging. Turn up to the talk/lecture/event. Let him make his case. Then ask said questions if they are still unanswered/relevant.

Don't just shout at him so he can't even make his case. He might as well not have turned up. As GalacticMuppet said, disgraceful.

[marmy261]

so freedom of speech is now dead :(

[MissInformati0n]

it really is only about 10 of them isn't it.

[kookaburrakookaburra]

They chose him as the Messenger, to say that all is not well, not all can afford the fees. Good for them, they are the few that don't want to be bled dry of their future, they don't want to be "enslaved to debt."

[dogkicker91]

bunch of cunts

[1903eab]

PS. Have these bellowing twerps ever seen The Life of Brian? "YES, WE'RE ALL INDIVIDUALS!"

[Guitareben]

@justanotherpatriot So true!

[Guitareben]

@justanotherpatriot Interesting generalisations you have there.

[1903eab]

This was a disgusting and outrageous protest by a few self-righteous scumbags who simply don't get the concept of free speech.

David Willetts should not have given up so easily. It was a pity the great majority who were there to listen did not manage a show of solidarity to defeat the freedom-haters, but it must have been difficult to know what to do about this braying thuggery.

These scenes were not anarchist or socialist in character, but genuinely fascist.

[justanotherpatriot]

His policy will not change: it’s not like a research paper which we can subject to an especially swinge- ing peer-review. There is no super-sophisticated, high-level, “interdisciplinary” argument which we can deploy to change his heart. To entertain such fantasies is vain and self-deceiving.

[justanotherpatriot]

They do not behave like academics in debate; they do not behave reasonably, and can- not be reasoned with. Willetts’ views, right down to his responses to sharp questions on policy, are well-known. The man hardly lacks a platform. Only the most cloth-eared participant in our higher -education culture could be unaware of Willetts’ arguments, and only the most staringly loyal tory squire would be unable to mount his own description of its egregious opportunism, myopia, and chauvinism.

[justanotherpatriot]

Reasonable arguments cannot succeed here. Willetts is not interested in winning an argument of that kind; indeed he is not interested in *argument* in the way that you are interested in it at all: he simply does not esteem argument as you esteem it. He is interested in only one thing — in managing his policy through Whitehall. You can’t talk him. out of it. Politicians are immune to having “flaws” in argument exposed: that just isn’t how argument appears to them to work.