This article is just another that has a demented comment from clown dunce of commie forums Ivan White on it.

@LEO

You are being wilfully inaccurate in the hope of misrepresenting the situtation in Cambridge to the wider public.

Given that you are far from alone in expressing disdain for the protest, it is impossible you should feel anything but 'safe' expressing such disdain in the Student Union: the Union condemned the protest at the time, and Gerard Tully, the CUSU president, has repeated his disdain for it in his recent public defence of Holland [http://www.varsity.co.uk/comment/4624]. Please do not pretend, therefore, that such disdain is marginal in Cambridge or that you feel unsafe expressing it.

On your larger point about CDE's 'totalitarianism': aside from the fact that your lazy use of the term insults those who actually fought and fight totalitarianism, your sentiments wildly misrepresent the group. Following the protest, the venue was occupied for several days, during which time debates, poetry-readings, and teach-ins were organized. There was nothing repressive about that culture; and I'm sure your views would have been heard with patience by the occupiers had you taken the time to engage with them. I encourage readers of this thread to consult the Safer Spaces Agreement on which the Occupation was founded, and judge for themselves whether it smacks of totalitarianism: http://www.defendeducation.co.uk/lady-mitchell-hall-occupation/safer-spa...

I hope the people who made that decision get their comeuppance. That is pure evil to do that to a young student. Justice is a joke in this country. They can't even deport a terroist without an uproar but without the blinking of an eye judges can put students who got a bit rowdy at demonstrations behind bars for months like the Gilmour boy who should have been fined and given a slap on the wrist

@ David

Willets is a worthless piece of shit. He went to private school and university for free and is pulling up the ladder for everyone else. You would not put a 20 something year old in charge of pension reform. There is no justification for this privileged slap head him to sign away peoples futures who he has no connection to. Young people have had enough of being taken the piss out of. First we have a childless, over 60 millionaire, Lord Browne, recommending raising fees then we have another privileged baby boomer more than happy to pull up the ladder. The baby boomers are the most selfish generation of people in history

"What the fuck is CDE? Are we supposed to know?"

Cambridge Defends Education.

Do keep up Fergus. You insist on commenting on so much you clearly have not the first idea about.

Go back to your Irish estates and stay there please.

A total disgrace that this students career is put in jeopardy because of a poem and a crooked politician. The Tories careers should be ruined for their treachery, lies and betrayal of this country.What an arse about face country.

Freedom is slavery, anyone?

This article is just another depressing example of this country's slide into corporate fascism under the Tories.

http://cuttingedge2.forumotion.co.uk/t322-are-the-tories-velvet-glove-fa...

There is a great difference between protesting the powerful, and suppressing and censoring the powerful. The reference this piece makes to the 'reading of a poem' completely obscures the true nature of what CDE activists did last November. Before commenting on this I would advise all who weren't there to watch one of the many videos of the event before making their minds up.

A poem was not 'read'; a group of about twenty people shouted and continued to shout deafeningly loudly against the protestations of many others in the audience. Willetts was given no opportunity to defend his legislation and the audience were given no chance to address him (@Agent, @David). Willetts stayed for a considerable length of time before it came clear that this self-selected group were not going to let him say a word. After the event they went on to occupy the lecture hall for more than a week.

I attended the Willetts talk, have attended CDE meetings and know some people who have been involved with the group and with their other actions very well. I must agree that the most fitting word to describe their tactics is totalitarian. If they do not want to hear someone speak and answer questions, then they will stop anyone else who wants to hear them. We have seen this with Willetts and with DSK (a large number of CDE activists played roles in the demonstrations against his appearance). Those who express a dissenting opinion at one of their supposedly 'safe space' meetings are shunned.

I say all this despite being someone who is completely opposed to the government's higher education reforms (and opposed to all kinds of sexual violence) and, like any other sensible person, I agree that the penalty levied against Holland is outrageously excessive.

I agree with much of what Christopher has said (save for his jibe about anthropology students!).

I have been at times a part of, at other times a supporter of, CDE during the past two years at Cambridge. There is always debate within CDE, and it platforms positions which are shut out of the dominant debate. Not so "totalitarian, awful and horrible" in my experience.

Come on, Mike S, who are they and what do they do? I presume they are violent Trots who need to be stood on. You tell me different.

Ah the Irish ozone!

The PhD candidate Owen Holland and his admitted accomplices who shouted down British Higher Education Minister David Willetts during a lecture at Cambridge University should be expelled for wasting the time of all attending students enrolled in programs more important than poetry. Furthermore, I think the Court Of Discipline should scrutinize the qualifications of all the hundreds of demonstrators in support of these culprits because they are certainly wrong in this matter. How do these tantrum-throwers cope with other problems? In 1976, I was recruited to study math at Cambridge University because I earned a perfect score of 36 on my ACT exam twice. Tragically, the United States Of America's Interior Department, that regulates wildlife and Indians, barred me from living abroad and forced me to study at a hillbilly institution in Evanston, Illinois called Northwestern University, for eight quarters between December of 1979 and June of 1982, as Paul Terrence Wiggins. My grandmother Ruth Paula Wiggins's father was the "Confederate Cherokee Chief" Stand Watie who conspired with John Wilkes Both and Mary Todd to assassinate Abraham Lincoln; And, My grandfather William Paul Wiggins's father Chief Black Hawk burned down the White House in the War Of 1812. When he becomes King, will William the Duke Of Cambridge enforce the Jay Treaty by recalling his Irish cousins and by handing Terrapin Island back to us? The descendants of John Lackland Plantagenet have no claim to our continent or us, who they use as unwilling test subjects for medical experimentation. http://www.cnet.com/profile/ChiefHuntingBear/

Disgraceful. A typical story of divide and rule. The Tories may want to roll back the welfare state but most people want it. Therein lies their nemesis.

Only an idiot thinks that the notional idea of choice - pursued under this free market quackery - will result in anything equitable. It is merely a ludicrous sop which has no basis in fact.

The truly galling thing is that people still buy into a prospectus which has over the last 30 years impoverished the country and made society more unequal than at any time since the 19th century.

The problem with UK democracy is that it has become a self-serving entity (it never was much more) - under both Labour and the Conservatives - that puts the interests of business and a small elite above the common good.

The real mystery in all this is why anyone - without a shred of evidence to support it - would assume that the Tories would do anything else.

Someone who nicks a bottle of water from Lidl goes to prison but those who bring down the financial system in an orgy of parasitism, evasion, avarice and chicanery, face no sanction whatsoever. Indeed, what do we do? We ply them with taxpayers' money to a point where they sit anew on a pile of liquidity and profit whilst doing little or nothing to get the economy going. Meanwhile, the hapless pay twice in unemployment and declining living standards to keep the show on the road. As some point people will ask: who is this for?

The trade unions should stop funding the Labour Party unless it shows some commitment to equity and social justice. The predicament we are in once again reinforces the truism that the dynamic in human well-being always comes from the bottom up rather than the top down.

"The sentence is absurd. But what should really concern us all is what this incident says about British democracy."

Most importantly this incident tells us nothing about democracy - a situation that can't be right either in some high-fallutin university site, or anyplace else in the UK, in my view.

This is because the context is like one of these black-box scenarios we find in modern management practices ie designed to keep us all dumbed down and blinded -lest everyone concerned should turn and sort the situation out properly.

One wonders what happened to the public equality duty - did it come in back in 2006 was it?