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WARNING, I am NOT unbiased in writing this. I will attempt to be as much as I can in the following moments, but give no guarentee to do so. The situation touches me just too much. I am writing this for your outlook on the subject.
We have social healthcare, social retirement, social schooling. Comes from being a former Yugoslavia country...
I come from Slovenia, a nice little country smaller than NYC. A while ago (week or 3), the parliament has presented a draft of a law that may or may not be implemented, called small work. It has been presented due to budged deficit and an attempt to fix it, as well as shrink the growing amount of student work, which is tax free. It basicaly says that any student or other non-full time jobs would be limited to 14 hours a week, that any and all scholarships for highschool would be eliminated and the amount given to parents in the form of child relief, no child relief for any at-home child that is not in prime or high school, as well as quite a few others that are not as important right now (a bit too frustrated to translate it all. I can do it later on if you wish.)
As a reaction to this, highschoolers and students organised a peacefull protest. They were announcing the protest around town for a week. The day before, they were anticipating something around 8.000-10.000 protesters to show up (final number was 10.000). As they gathered at a local meeting spot (Prešernov trg), you could already hear provoking shouts from the organisers. They then made their way to the parliament and started peacfully (if loudly) protesting the new law. The plan was, as far as I can tell, to egg the place, in an attempt to show their anger, but it turned into throwing bottles, signs and lastly granite blocks (ornamental sidewalk markers) at the building and the police guarding it. There was even a fire in front of the building. Around 30 protesters were held, no one seriously hurt. As soon as the bottles were flying the ogranisers started shouting for everyone to stop (10.000 strong mob and they had 10 megaspeakers) and then quickly exited to a safe distance. Th organisers are being pointed at by the whole country as the ones that should pay the 27.000 euro damages for the 50 broken windows (oh, and the burnt plant). The whole country is decrying the actions of the students.
Personaly, the only thing I have a problem with is the amount of violence. My thoughts about the protests before was "I hope they break a window or two" (heh, got way more than I wanted I guess). Politicians in our country are building their 3rd vacation home, living in villas and have arms collections, each piece worth over 1000 euros, while the average pay for the whole country is ca. 950 euros a month (median being WAY less than 800, closer to 600). The work that students are doing is payed 3.5-5.5 euros, 10 for academic instructions, an hour. Rent and costs usually amount to 150 euros a month, food you can make it with 50 if you can cook (not ability, but availability of a stove in the house). The conditions they were trying to throw students and most unemployed would be slightly hard to bear. Worse still, becouse of the riot, the law is most probably going to be passed now.
I shall try to ammend this post with usefull links (all news reports that I can find are realy spotty and show only the damage done afterwards). Let me know if I should clarify anything else. Again, sorry for any mistakes, but Im still tense in general (probably aged 2 years in these 2 days becouse of this mess).
One of the reports.
http://www.siol.net/slovenija/novice...in_dijaki.aspx
Un commented video showing the ending
http://www.slomedia.si/video/9ce8aaa90f00e9110c5
Commented video, near the ending
http://24ur.com/novice/slovenija/stu...ice.html#video
We have social healthcare, social retirement, social schooling. Comes from being a former Yugoslavia country...
I come from Slovenia, a nice little country smaller than NYC. A while ago (week or 3), the parliament has presented a draft of a law that may or may not be implemented, called small work. It has been presented due to budged deficit and an attempt to fix it, as well as shrink the growing amount of student work, which is tax free. It basicaly says that any student or other non-full time jobs would be limited to 14 hours a week, that any and all scholarships for highschool would be eliminated and the amount given to parents in the form of child relief, no child relief for any at-home child that is not in prime or high school, as well as quite a few others that are not as important right now (a bit too frustrated to translate it all. I can do it later on if you wish.)
As a reaction to this, highschoolers and students organised a peacefull protest. They were announcing the protest around town for a week. The day before, they were anticipating something around 8.000-10.000 protesters to show up (final number was 10.000). As they gathered at a local meeting spot (Prešernov trg), you could already hear provoking shouts from the organisers. They then made their way to the parliament and started peacfully (if loudly) protesting the new law. The plan was, as far as I can tell, to egg the place, in an attempt to show their anger, but it turned into throwing bottles, signs and lastly granite blocks (ornamental sidewalk markers) at the building and the police guarding it. There was even a fire in front of the building. Around 30 protesters were held, no one seriously hurt. As soon as the bottles were flying the ogranisers started shouting for everyone to stop (10.000 strong mob and they had 10 megaspeakers) and then quickly exited to a safe distance. Th organisers are being pointed at by the whole country as the ones that should pay the 27.000 euro damages for the 50 broken windows (oh, and the burnt plant). The whole country is decrying the actions of the students.
Personaly, the only thing I have a problem with is the amount of violence. My thoughts about the protests before was "I hope they break a window or two" (heh, got way more than I wanted I guess). Politicians in our country are building their 3rd vacation home, living in villas and have arms collections, each piece worth over 1000 euros, while the average pay for the whole country is ca. 950 euros a month (median being WAY less than 800, closer to 600). The work that students are doing is payed 3.5-5.5 euros, 10 for academic instructions, an hour. Rent and costs usually amount to 150 euros a month, food you can make it with 50 if you can cook (not ability, but availability of a stove in the house). The conditions they were trying to throw students and most unemployed would be slightly hard to bear. Worse still, becouse of the riot, the law is most probably going to be passed now.
I shall try to ammend this post with usefull links (all news reports that I can find are realy spotty and show only the damage done afterwards). Let me know if I should clarify anything else. Again, sorry for any mistakes, but Im still tense in general (probably aged 2 years in these 2 days becouse of this mess).
One of the reports.
http://www.siol.net/slovenija/novice...in_dijaki.aspx
Un commented video showing the ending
http://www.slomedia.si/video/9ce8aaa90f00e9110c5
Commented video, near the ending
http://24ur.com/novice/slovenija/stu...ice.html#video
Comment