You rebel scum!

It's been quite a week for rebellion, and I hope you don't mind me taking a moment to share some thoughts. Actually, I hope you do mind. Because then I can do it anyway, and watch your mind explode due to my disobedience. Because I'm being rebellious, I may even swear. Take that, The Man.

Last Thursday was the day MPs voted on whether to raise tuition fees to astronomical levels and, of course, the day loads of people told the MPs to go fuck themselves with a huge angry carrot with spikes coming out of it. Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands - basically lots - of people turned London into a pulsating mass of anger, noise and dissent, filling camera lenses with the sight of fire and dancing and shouting and the breaking of stuff. Many, many commentators have written about the consequences of Thursday's vote more eloquently that I can, and with greater understanding. Nevertheless, it is worth repeating, often and loudly, that in this vote we are witness to an act of destruction that is at best short sighted, and at worst downright villainous.

This decision, and many related ones that are less documented but equally pernicious, is what happens when you let millionaires dictate what is normal and what is good. You will, perhaps, have noticed a lot of the rhetoric coming from ConDem HQ, bleating about what might be considered reasonable and affordable and fair. Words which all come with a built in assumption of a middle ground, as if we all share the same experience of 21st century capitalism. £30 a week might not be a big difference to you, George Osborne, with your estimated personal wealth of £4,000,000, but to some of my students it is the difference between being able to study and having to work for minimum wage. Similarly, £27,000 of debt might well be something you can pay off in no time if you are David Cameron, who recently knocked his mortgage down by £75,000 , but it is a daunting prospect to those potential students without your family background, contacts and - hey- university education.

The proposals being smashed through by this unelected government are amongst the most destructive things a government has done since Blair and co thought the best way to stop people blowing up innocent civilians was to blow up some of their own, only in Iraq. The very fact that there has been such a popular uprising against the education cuts would suggest that a lot of people in this democracy consider them harmful, narrow minded and arrogant. In other words, an attack on the people of this country by those who are meant to listen to what we want.

So, naturally, the newspapers the next day were full of this tale of a violent attack by one class on another; this shameful expression of power by a horde of bullies who would rather shout than listen. Except, of course, they had two to choose from. On one hand an entire generation of people had the chance to better themselves snatched away in favour of a self satisfied elite who do what they like with no sign of accountability. On the other, a couple who have never really paid for anything in their lives get some paint on them for a bit. Tough call. Tel you what, let's go for the one with the most exciting picture.

If I was not observing all this on the news and was instead watching it as part of an episode of '24' it would all be devastatingly clear what was going on. An illiberal government and the corporations to which it is inextricably linked seek to trivialise the battle between undemocratic repression and spontaneous civil rebellion by shouting 'Oh no, Prince Charles is sad!' Forget the revolution - some people dared to shout at royalty.

Don't get me wrong. I quite like Charles, and would not rejoice in his public beheading anywhere near as much as I'd laugh at Nick Clegg getting an olive stone jammed in his windpipe while trying to defend his latest betrayal. But the fact that our media pounce on something so moderate (and, conspiracy freaks, so suspiciously avoidable) at the expense of dealing with more pertinent issues is really sad, and says a lot about what really matters once money comes into play.

It is interesting, to me, that the courses most likely to suffer from these cuts are those involved in the arts, the media and various forms of expressive thinking. Worthless to industry, as we are told? Hardly. More likely it is deemed dangerous to arm a generation with the intellectual and aesthetic tools to take apart these lies and construct a counter attack.

Let's not be fooled by emotive langauge and evocative imagery. The actions of this government are where the real violence lies. Do. Not. Stand. For. It.