The NUS are a bunch of Trotskyite cunts
The university lecturers’ strike has finally ended, after several months. Or rather ‘action short of a strike’: the boycott of marking, setting of exams etc. The whole sorry incident left me extremely pissed-off. I’ll leave aside the fact that the lecturers’ unions are cunts for boycotting marking rather than research and thus holding students to ransom. No, the ones I’m really pissed-off with are the Trotskyite cunts at the National Union of Students who supported the action, despite the overwhelming majority of students opposing it.
What exactly is the NUS for? For most students it’s just about getting a card for cheap cinema tickets and clothes at Top Shop. They are supposedly there to represent the interests of students, but it seems that they’re far more interested in union solidarity. (How very quaint and early 80s!)
Only a minority of students actually pick up the NUS card each year, and that figure seems set to fall. The only real benefit of it was the discounts it gave, but now these are being removed, so that they can charge an additional £10/year for “NUS Plus” (or is it “NUS Extra”?) cards. These are meant to be a way of plugging the gaping, £1 million-plus deficit that the union has in its finances. I’m not entirely sure where all their money goes. Each student union pays the NUS tens of thousands of pounds each year in affiliation fees, and gets in return..umm..bulk deals on beer ordering..?
Unions are allowed to disaffiliate from the NUS if they have a referendum of students. I know a few have. Some Oxbridge colleges, some in Scotland. I forget which. Southampton too I think, and Bristol tried. It baffles me now why any union would now stay affiliated. We pay a fortune (I think Bath pays about £30k), are lumbered with the cost of administering their hare-brained new card scheme, but when an issue finally comes along that they could actually do something about, they sit on their hands. Kat Fletcher, the president of the NUS, is a foamy-mouthed Trot who was a member of the extreme-left Alliance for Workers’ Liberty when she was a student. Her statements on this action have actually used the words ’solidarity’ and ’standing shoulder-to-shoulder’. Student politics really is as about as hard left as they come. Just imagine if they were hard right rather than hard left.
June 7th, 2006 at 9:56 pm
Okay, when I first logged on, I read that as “the NUNS are a bunch of trotskyite….”
June 7th, 2006 at 10:10 pm
Well done, dude, the headline made me giggle. But then you knew that, cause you saw me do it.