Day: 9 December 2011

Ten people were beaten up and two students were left hospitalised after a group of masked men embarked on a series of brutal attacks in Leeds last week.

The news comes after 16 more young people were attacked by a similar gang in the Woodhouse area of the city.

One Leeds student who had been attacked described how he was punched in the back of the head until he fell to the floor and then had his jaw stamped on; after the muggers told him that “he hadn’t run away quickly enough.”

“They took my University keys and my University fob but the only reason they stopped was because a car drove past and spooked them,” he said.

A student who managed to run away from the attackers said that the attackers seemed to show no fear.

“It’s madness, I was with eight other decent-sized lads, and it was early in the evening when people were still walking round and it was still light, they didn’t care though,” he said.

A father of one of the victims of the attacks even went as far to say that he didn’t want his son to return university once he had recovered.

Leeds student, Jamie Fallows, said that he was “really concerned” by the recent violence.

“The University of Leeds has now put on a special student’s only bus going from their campus to halls of residence and I think that Leeds Met should be doing the same,” he said when commenting ion the university’s response to the attacks.

Local MP Greg Mulholland has demanded that talks take place between the university, the police and local councilors in order to stop the attacks.

Police have made six arrests in connection with the attacks; including two men, aged 14 and 16.

Manchester city centre was filled with over 25,000 striking public sector workers on November 30th, protesting against the planned changes to their pensions.

Picket lines were set up at dawn and teachers, health workers and social workers were among those who joined the mass two-hour rally, marching from Castlefield, down Deansgate and towards Oxford Road.  They were addressed by trade union bosses at Whitworth Park.

Public transport was disrupted and roads were closed. Manchester’s public services ground to a halt, with only five out of 158 schools staying open and just one trial taking place at the city’s two crown courts.

Rena Wood, from Manchester Unison issued rallying cries to those not on strike, saying, “Stand side by side to fight because everybody deserves a decent pension.”

David Cameron said of the negotiations, “we have to make sure that public sector pensions are good for public sector workers, but affordable for everyone else who is going to work and contributing to them.”

Figures from the Cabinet Office suggest that over 900,000 people were striking on November 30th.

Bristol will become the least affordable English Russell Group university for students from low-income backgrounds from 2012, research by a student newspaper has found.

Students from low-income backgrounds will have to find other ways of funding their degree at the university after the institution cut its bursary system for people from poorer families.

One-third of Bristol students currently receive a sum of up to £1,260 a year to cover the cost of studying at the university; but this system will be scrapped for next year.

The move comes despite the fact that all other Russell Group universities, including the University of Manchester, have committed to ring-fencing their bursary systems despite funding changes due to take affect next year.

In a briefing to University Council members on the new access measures, the university states that the purpose of the change is, “to send a simple message to students from the lowest income families that they will pay no more in fees than they do now.”

“Our Student Recruitment team believes the key message that has been heard by prospective students, particularly those from the poorest backgrounds, is about tuition fee debt and our fee waiver packages are intended to address this.”

However, it has been contested that since fee waivers don’t affect students until long after graduation they offer little support to students while they are actually studying at the university.

Bristol’s access agreement suggests that students who would have needed a bursary to cover their living costs while at university should find part-time work to make up the shortfall.

While the access agreement used to state that students eligible for state support would have sufficient funding to cover “normal maintenance costs”, the new agreement instead says that, “state support…and some part-time working should comfortably ensure that eligible students have sufficient funding at their disposal.”

It has been argued that poor students shouldn’t need to work in order to live and study in Bristol because this unfairly benefits wealthier students, who will be able to dedicate more time to their studies and participate in clubs and societies.

Stephen Williams, MP for Bristol West, told Bristol University’s student newspaper, “Students should be able to take part time jobs while at university in order to supplement their income, but it shouldn’t be necessary for them to work in order to meet the basic costs of studying at Bristol. Working for long hours would be to the detriment of study and it would not be fair for students from richer backgrounds to be able to devote all the time that they wish to study and so obtain a better degree result than their poorer compatriots.”