A Tale of Tuition Fees

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times", especially if you're a Liberal Democrat. On one hand, high profile members of the party such as Nick Clegg and Vince Cable occupy cushy Cabinet roles. On the other hand, failure to back up their pre-election pledge on tuition fees has seen support for the party collapse. A YouGov poll from this weekend puts the Lib Dems on a miniscule 10%. Compare this to their pre-election highs of 20%+ (when they were boosted by the live TV debates) it's been a spectacular fall from grace.

A lot of the press regarding the tuition fees protest last week quite

rightly focused on the damage to the Conservative party's HQ at

Millbank. What the press didn't focus on so much was the chants from the crowd before the violence. Among the more polite was: "Nick Clegg we know you, you're a fucking Tory too!"

It's fair to say that students feel as though they've been betrayed by the Lib Dems. This fact was compounded by the leaked documents that revealed that the Lib Dems wouldn't be able to maintain the tuition fee pledge if they were elected. To say that Nick Clegg is, politically, a dead man walking would be one heck of an understatement.

To make matters even worse for Clegg and the Lib Dems, the National Union of Students have revealed they will launch a campaign to remove Clegg and other top Lib Dems from office. Even IF the coalitions lasts the distance and survives five years and IF these dreadful past few months are forgotten by the public, it sure as hell won't be forgotten by the Labour party. They'll ensure that there's no easy ride and all this will get dragged back into the limelight to show the the Lib Dems can no longer be trusted.

For Nick Clegg, life is bleak. Hated by students, not trusted by his party, seen as a lapdog to the Tories by the public and little more than a teaboy to the Tories themselves. Clegg's political life, which promised so much before the election, has now stumbled its way to a masochistic dead end.

WINOL Election Coverage!

WINOL's first ever election broadcast was a fantastic success. It wasn't flawless, but nothing is. What we have to look at is what we accomplished and the context in which we managed that.

To an outsider, the task we set ourselves would have seemed insurmountable. Here we were, a collection of students, giving live election coverage with outside broadcasts and news packages to provide context for the viewers.

This is, as far as I can tell, no different to what Channel 4, the BBC or Sky News provided for their viewers. The only difference was the failings of modern technology. In terms of journalistic integrity, we were no worse off than any of the big guns.

I think we may have tried to go a bit too far with our Skype link to Austria. While a nice idea in principle, the technology wasn't good enough and having an expert who couldn't speak English also proved to be a bit too much of a hinderance.

Presenting was a consistent strong point. Graham Bell is a total pro and Claire did excellently, especially considering she had no script and everything went a bit Pete Tong around then. On a personal note I was absolutely bricking it about being on camera, but as soon as I answered that first question I felt far more comfortable and even wanted to answer more questions!

It seems likely that we'll be having another election soon. If that results in another WINOL election night, I think we can bank on another success and hopefully an even better show!