Thoughts on today's events...

What a day it has been, both for me and for students. Well was it students or an angry mob who decended on Millbank and thought they would turn themselves into sheep pretending to be students. From what I have heard the majority were indeed students but the outcomes were ridiculous.



I completely agree with the right to protest and if I was still at university I would have considered joining the 52,000 protesters, but what turned from a silent protest to the gradual attempted destruction of the home of the Conservatives was just insane, what kind of people do that. They were hardly covering themselves in glory and if I was the tax payer paying their fees I would be embracing the Tory proposals. However there were only around 200 'students' who took part in this and the stand-off with the police. Maybe some randomers took this as an opportunity to try and attack the Tory headquarters and obviously had no idea what was going on. I am not a fan of the Conservatives, and I'll admit that I voted for labour despite the scrapheap they were turning the country into, I felt that they could turn it around (based on the grounds that they threw Brown into the River Thames.....well okay, got rid of him as their leader) but going to those lengths in a protest was just so unnecessary.

As for my day, I too wanted to protest. However it wasn't at the rise in student fees, but at HP'S laptop manufacturing. I have had endless problems with my HP laptop, although it is 2 and a half years old now and have had to restore it to it's original factory settings around 6 times in the last month. It isn't just my laptop either, our family touchscreen PC (Mum's farmville appliance) has also failed miserably revently and it has been sent away twice now for repairs. Their customer service is awful so do not buy HP from now on, buy the sauce by all means, just don't buy the laptops. I was mid-way through my last blog post this morning for the damn machine to spasm on me and reset itself showing my a lovely cross-stitch pattern on the screen before it dived into darkness. I guess it was the laptop's way of its' life flashing before its' eyes/screen. Well I was far from impressed and spent the next 5hours trying to narrow down my choices of a new one. I travelled over Somerset like a blue-ass fly all afternoon and eventually rattled down to a Dell and I have to say I am very impressed. I  did dwindle over a Sony, Packard Bell and a Toshiba before setting my sights on this beautiful machine. I might even take it to bed with me tonight.....sorry Amy!!!

All the best,

Ben x