Monday, January 10, 2005

Rock on, Emma Block…..

I knew it would happen – and it’s about bloody time.
I knew, sooner or later, the blinkers would be ripped from tunnel vision eyeballs. I knew that some day a Uni’ student would stir, wake up, smell the coffee and cry "Racism"….

Today is that day….. Halle-bloody-lujah

For Glasgow University student, Emma Block is suing the Scottish Executive for discrimination – because she is English.

Because she is English she has to shell out a pile more cash in fees than her Scottish student counterpart – or for that matter, any other E.U. student studying at a Scottish University.

She’s got a big shot lawyer – and he’s packing a big shot Magnum 45 – lots of awkward questions are about to be asked…… His first stop is the Commission for Racial Equality.

I have to say, I’ve already been there – but I didn’t have a big shot lawyer to back me up. Just me, my computer, my lexicon of vicious invective….. and a bloody great dollop of self righteous indignation for good measure.

Pernicious fee charges for my Son’s Uni’ course was the subject of my email. If you go to a Uni’ in England, it costs more than anywhere else in the UK. If you are English (unless your parents fall below an income threshold) you support yourself. If, for example you are a Scottish student attending an English University – then the Scottish Executive pays the fees – and may even give ‘Grants’ to their students to boot.

I cried ‘foul’

Tax rates are the same all over the UK. Tax is collected and counted at the Treasury in London – ergo, everyone should have the same treatment in Health, Public Services and Education…..

Of course, the CRE ‘couldn’t help me’ – basically because "they could not interfere with the education matters within the UK"…… Whatever that meant….. They seemed to admit that ‘it was wrong’ – but because the discrimination was being exercised within the UK, then it was ‘permissible’…….

Maybe, just maybe, with a big shot lawyer holding a big shot Magnum 45 to their collective big backsides, they will take Emma Block’s email a little more seriously.

Maybe, just maybe, this will be ‘the start’ – the start of something big, when the big Country in the Union stops getting kicked around by the little ones – and an equal and mature, mutually beneficial relationship will break out instead….