Hold it Right There, Porch Hippy…

Estimates suggest that half a million public sector jobs will be dissolved by 2015. The DWP is looking sadsack. VAT is in the ascendant. House prices are in the descendent.  The cost of day to day living is growing. The graduate job market is shrinking. Every second week the unions cry industrial action, and, only recently, an entire generation was told that their education is no longer a right, but now a privilege.

Lord Browne’s fees reform has created a three-tier higher-education system: premier universities – Cambridge, Oxford, Imperial, LSE and all the others – will be able to charge top-dollar for their services, turning them, effectively, into public schools for the moneyed elite; other universities – Manchester, Bristol, Leeds et al – will be able to charge premium fees to their students; ex-polytechnics like London Metropolitan University will have to keep their tariffs low to beat the competition. You don’t need me to tell you all this, but there you go, that’s where we stand.

It’s legislation that prices most people out of the good-education market, and a sad day for social egalitarianism. That we’ll see less doctors, lawyers, engineers, architects and nurses graduate is, obviously, dangerous and disgraceful. If nobody can fix broken bones, mend a pipe, cure cancer, balance the company books, fly a plane, design buildings that are structurally sound, present cases in court or any of the other myriad things that make our world function on an operational level, then things will get very weird indeed. And if we’ve less people contributing to the intellectual and cultural life of our country, we’ll atrophy until we wither away. But if we stop for a moment and look past our pinko outrage, the Fees Crisis highlights another, broader problem. One that is less about our right to an education, than how we use it in the first place.

Last year 52,382 people matriculated as students of Creative Art & Design in the UK.[1] The Arts are the second most subscribed of all subject-groups, after Business and Administration, and represent well over ten percent of all accepted places. Subjects like Medicine, Science and Architecture look anaemic by comparison.

To look at the figures, then look at the world in which we live, then, finally, back to those figures, one’s prompted to ask: just what the fuck is going on?

Illustration agents are losing money. Six year-olds know how to use Adobe Creative Suite. The ‘art economy’ is one giant, dipshit mirage. The film council has been dissolved for good reason. Television will eat  itself. The entire textile design industry consists of five people who use ‘lush’ as a positive exclamation. Fashion, since Karl Lagerfeld devoted his life to vomiting up pellets of mental illness onto his Twitter account (quote “I think I’m going to have a dinner party where no one speaks” unquote[2]) now belongs to Top Shop, Dov Charney and his chain store, the humdrum-but-wearable American Apparel. The music industry is buoyed up by the prayers of A&R men – it’s still haemorrhaging money like it’s cool. And, let’s face it, there are just no jobs left. Anywhere.

It’s almost a given, nowadays, that if you study a nichey craft – like painting, music, sculpture or any of the others – you won’t end up practicing that craft to make ends meet. The Arts are among our most popular subjects, but they’re also the ones that have no application in the workaday reality of adult life. They don’t teach skills that are transferable – like the humanities – or that are useful on any kind of functional level. So why do we devote our lives, and now money, to studying them? Is there some kind quirk in our brain chemistry that demands we go forth and create? Is this some kind of protest en masse? A big, generational slacker-love-in, a la John and Yoko’s Bed Peace?

Answer: probably not.

When people think of the death of collectivism, they think of the 1980’s. And they’re right, in a way. Yup,  it was a horrible decade – a cultural mulching machine that valued the accumulation of individual wealth and individual power above everything else – but it was in the 1990’s that the cult of The Self reached full maturity. That was the decade that gave us Chicken Soup For The Soul[3] and legitimised Meditation; but it was also the decade of personal development programmes, image consultancy and entrepreneurship, Thai green curry, balsamic vinegar, olive oil and the last great art boom. It was 1980’s ‘Me-Me-Me’ culture regurgitated, remodelled and shot through the prism of Hippy Sentimentalism and the ‘second summer of love’. It was also the decade that most of us were born into, or came of age in, and the decade which shaped and informed our expectations of life.

What looks, in retrospect, like a time of much creativity and touchy-feely attitudes, saw, in fact, the rise of ruthless Individualism as a viable political and economic position.

(Evidence: Do you remember Natural Born Killers and the coded ‘we’re all in it for ourselves’ message it espoused? Do you remember the giant, glitter-ball lemon built at great expense for U2’s Zooropa Tour[4]? Do you remember Starbucks first incarnation, as a rebellious Seattle coffee-shop that accidentally went global, and just how much we loved it? Do you remember New Labour? Do you remember Cool Britannia? Do you remember Damien Hirst? All of them are quite quite strange, when you move in close.)

The 1990’s was singular in its ability to mix the left hand path with the right, and creativity was pegged to material wealth in a way that it never had before: Executives introduced beanbags and mood-boards to their offices; they collected art; they adopted the collarless shirt and hemp-trainers as a de facto uniform. People started using rollerblades to get to work. The Think Tank came into it’s own. Everyone ­ across the board ­ loved scented candles. And in exactly the same way as executives were made to feel more artsy, the creative industries were weaponised to become just as hard and cutthroat as their equivalents in the business world. The Art Fair was born, the music festival was revived, Damien Hirst turned the business of making artwork into exactly that, a business, and just about all the money that could be squeezed out of creativity was, eventually, wrung out of it.

It was a bubble of wealth and consumption and creativity and pseudo-culture, that repeated, again and again, “express yourself, because that’s how we make money”. So is it any wonder that we grew up believing we were special?

But those days are long over. The economy was false. What we grew up thinking of as the status quo was, in fact, little more than a misleading bubble, a set of circumstances that existed for a short time and in a very strange period of our recent past.

So now that it’s all gone, we should adjust our expectations accordingly. The arts are dead. The party is over, and we’ve been left to pick up the beer cans and mop up the sick. We were tricked into believing that creativity was not just a bonus, but a bona fide human right. Then we were encouraged to spend – as I did, for many years – our time playing and experimenting and finger painting in the name of Late Capitalism. But it didn’t really work. And now 52,000 of us graduate each year, with barely a qualification  to our names.

I’m not saying that you should put down the pen, or pull your chubby fingers from the clay, but I am saying that you need to stop thinking of the arts as a viable career unless you’re certain – and I mean positive – that you’ve got the talent to pull it off. This feels, I know, like you’re being robbed of something. It feels unfair. You probably want to discredit my opinion and defend your art, publicly, in the comments box below. But face facts – there isn’t enough money left in the world to sustain our creative impulses. Besides, the whole thing’s getting dull – everyone’s got a Deleuze and Guattari Reader nowadays so go get a degree in accountancy, it won’t get you laid, but it’s much more radical.

THOMAS VINEY

There seems to have been some confusion about what, exactly, we were criticizing in our article. Which is annoying, because we think it’s pretty clear.

So, again, here’s our position: we like the humanities, we like the sciences, we like university in general, fuck, we even like the arts… but we don’t like the fact that 52,000 people go to art school every year, thinking they’ll enjoy a modest career exercising their creativity, but 51,965 of them go on to make their living selling cappuccino.



[1] I deliberately exclude subjects like Media Studies, here, because it’s just too obvious and easy a thing to shoot them down.

[2] If one Lagerfeld quote isn’t enough… feast your eyes on these: “I have no scene. I go everywhere. I adapt”; “What I like in Monte Carlo is that I feel liked, I feel wanted, but I can walk on the street with nobody grabbing”; “I only wear the latest thing. It’s my job”; “My dream? Transparent fur…”; “I envy Zaha Hadid her vision of new shapes and forms, and her ability to sketch on computers.” ; “Florals are for middle-aged women with weight problems.” ;  “Believe it or not, I love rap.”; “The best Christmas gift I received this year? A platinum pogo stick.”; “On this day each year, I soak the previous year’s calendar in my mother’s favorite perfume and then set it ablaze.” *

*And if you’re hungry for more Lagerfeld gold, seek out his diet book. It’s an object lesson in not being published while mad. It’s available here.

[3] Salient note: the authors of CSFTS, Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, turned their self-help propaganda into one of the most successful publishing franchises in the world, with over 200 ‘Chicken Soup’ titles in its list. Most notable among them are Chicken Soup for the African American Woman’s Soul, Chicken Soup for the Soul: Thanks Dad and Chicken Soup for the Prisoner’s Soul. Hansen has just written a book called The One Minute Millionaire and Canfield’s son recently published a childhood memoir in which he describes his father as cold, distant and cruel, debunking the whole self-help industry in the process. So there you go – it’s not all roses.

[4] I actually attended the zenith production of the Zooropa* Tour, at Wembley, when I was about ten years old. About halfway through, Bono stopped singing, produced an early-model mobile/satellite phone from his pocket, and phoned Salman Rushdie.The conversation was broadcast to his congregated fans. At an earlier concert he’d phoned the pope. Earlier still, he’d phoned Mother Teresa.

*’Europa’ – the etymological naissance of U2’s ‘Zooropa’ – was Adolf Hitler’s moniker for the pan-European Fascist state he tried to architect. Nice.

Discussion

  • Richard 5:32 pm

    Hate to point it out, but Manchester, Leeds and Bristol are all Russell Group unis… (http://www.russellgroup.ac.uk/our-universities.aspx).

    I’d also question how exactly this new situation prices anybody out of anything… as far as I’m aware, no one’s being asked to pay anything up front (unless they can afford to do so) and loans only have to be paid back when graduates are earning enough to afford to do so. Some never will so will never pay any of it back. Where’s the problem?

    Otherwise, decent article.

    • Thomas Viney 5:39 pm

      Um. You’ve got a point about the Russel Group thing. Soz. Sloppy research on my part.

      Consider it ammended.

      Having said that, your second point is a bit more opaque: when you stand to leave Uni with a debt in excess of, what, £40-80,000 (that’s mental arithemetic, so don’t quote me) I think it does price people out. Or daunts them, at any rate.

      • Jess Gough 3:52 pm

        hell no i’m not in agreement with the Platform that “thinks those guys are just bored, spoiled kids showing off”. i’m pretty sure people could find a better way out of boredom than being kettled for 8 hours. it’s massive generalisations exactly like this, focusing only on the destructive rather than constructive elements of the protest, that completely demean the cause for the kids who are actually going to be effected.
        those that are going to get their EMA scrapped and see a huge rise in tuition fees are mostly under 18. if they can’t vote then how the fuck else are they meant to voice their opinion other than through demonstrations?

        • Thomas viney 5:19 pm

          I’ll second that. And say I don’t agree with Bob Foster’s anti-rioter comments. (Sorry Bob.)

          Riots, protests and demonstrations are vital to the democratic life of a nation, and however ugly they might look, they’re the only effective response to this legislation.

          Please ignore my ‘look like dickheads’ comment below, it was flippant.

        • ‘Let it be said that Platform thinks that those guys…’ – was removed by a Platform Admin. Robert Foster’s comments do not in any way, represent our feelings on this matter.

    • Robert Foster 5:41 pm

      “I’d also question how exactly this new situation prices anybody out of anything… as far as I’m aware, no one’s being asked to pay anything up front (unless they can afford to do so) and loans only have to be paid back when graduates are earning enough to afford to do so. Some never will so will never pay any of it back. Where’s the problem?”

      I’m actually behind you on that, Richard. And either way, rioting looks incredibly childish. ***Those guys are just bored, spoiled kids showing off. That’ll piss folks off, but show me one of those kids who’ve been doing the actual rioting who isn’t from a perfectly comfortable financial situation. diiiiiickheads

      *** Part of this comment - ‘Let it be said that Platform thinks that those guys…’ - was removed by a Platform Admin. Robert Foster’s comments do not in any way, represent our feelings on this matter.

      • Alberto 5:58 pm

        Interesting blog on the BBC website that points out that many of those at the heart of the protests are actually kids from sink estates in Pecknam etc. Kids for whom the EMA meant they could go to college and have the chance to work towards the grades necessary for university applications/acheive vocational qualifications where university is not an option.

        http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/paulmason/2010/12/9122010_dubstep_rebellion_-_br.html

        • Robert Foster 6:42 pm

          at the heart of the protest maybe, but throwing bins etc? probably not

      • Will B 4:14 am

        I rated platform but the comments regarding the rioting are such small minded crappy shit for brains remarks. For the people who did get educated before the conservative scum wiped their cocks all over it… We know that this is not just about education cuts its about making a stand against posh cunts who will do whatever pleases them and the wider meaning of their political stance.. and all the poor and middle class (kick you in the head when your down types cos they were fucked too aka Robert Foster) join in especially given they actually believe what they see in the media reports as yourselves I might add. Hmm what does that make you guys on this blog.

        The tosser who doesn’t believe any kids who are from disadvantaged backgrounds will be affected need to re- educate. Try doing some basic fucking research you stupid twat. Watch the footage you will see kids not from middle class background who will be very affected and all those young kids from fucked up families can expect a lot more shit as the cuts effect the basic support for those types of families. This all goes way beyond the education cuts its only the stupid cunts who are that far up their own arses not to realise. How about one of the kids who doesn’t go to school cos mummy and daddy enjoy beating him or his or her uncle likes to play more than tiddly winks or who’s brother is the local hood and the drugs smear the family or who’s disabled mother can’t fucking walk or their parents are so into the bottle they just don’t give a shit. What do you think will make that kid turn their life around when the very fundamental resources for the baseline services for the dispossessed are being made even less accessible how the fuck is that going to effect our society. Its going to get a whole lot shitter and maybe one of these kids will come and visit you one day or meet you in the street. Everything has a knock on effect but the stand being made is the only thing thats making people think oh shit we can’t just fuck them they will fight back. David Cameron and his posh boy gang will fuck you and you wont know it. The people who are educated in the creative industry may also touch on philosophy, sociology, psychoanalysis, politics the days of sticking your thumb in clay are over mate maybe thats what you were doing but for the rest of us we use the time to expand our minds and think out of the fucking box.

        • @Will B ‘Let it be said that Platform thinks that those guys…’ – was removed by a Platform Admin. Robert Foster’s comments do not in any way, represent our feelings on this matter.

  • Thomas Viney 5:45 pm

    Not sure about that, Bob. That kind of debt hanging over you is no way to start life. We didn’t. Why should they.

    Rioters do look like dickheads, though.

    X

  • Isaac Eastgate 5:49 pm

    three tear? its not all that depressing is it? (LOLOL)

  • Nathan 5:57 pm

    Typo, 2nd paragraph: three-tear should be three-tier though perhaps the author was exercising his creativity with a poetic turn of phrase.

    • thomas viney 7:57 pm

      It was written in haste, Nathan, written in haste.

      Sorry for the homonym mix up. A fiver if you can spot the other typo.

  • Sam 6:35 pm

    Research shows that the introduction of grants will actually benefit the bottom 10 to 20% financially but completely fuck over the lower middle classes, who can’t financially support their children like they have been used to in the past 10 years since New labours education, education, education policy. This with the removal of child benefits is going to put the new middle class back in the working class. In other news what about the miners? Good article.

  • da bishop 6:39 pm

    Neo-Cons

  • Alex McGowan 7:19 pm

    Yes Dad, will only pursue “career” in arts if absolutely sure I have the talent to “make” it.
    If not absolutely certain will get accountancy job, even if I’m not absolutely sure I have the talent for it. Might still get laid if I wear a funky tie.

    It’s not only about art students, it’s about all higher education. Pre-election the current government said the won’t raise fees and now they did. Rioting looks very good, actually.

    But, thanks for an article pointing out other sides to the argument.
    Alex

  • mgx 8:41 pm

    how are you meant to find out if you have the talent to make it if you don’t try it out? i mean most great artists studied art on some level and might not have had a 100 percent certainty they would make it. i don’t think anyone can know that for sure at 18 or even 25. if people think like that thne logically no one will do art. the only way you can know that you have the talent to make it is in retrospect, once you’ve actualy made it. that’s impossible to predict. no?

    • thomas viney 11:36 pm

      So what you’re suggesting is that we all play in this lottery – which is now worth a HUGE amount of money – on the off-chance that we become the next Picasso?

      OK. Lambs to the slaughter.

    • Alex McGowan 1:21 pm

      Be an artist or otherwise creative if you wanna. Who gives a fuck whether you’re studying it or not. If you’re driven enough you can’t help but doing it. “Making it” as an artist is a matter of definition. Also it’s not a matter of talent only… there are enough examples where people “made it” after their death. Also, it is obvious with some artists who have made it, that their talent lies more in their networking and PR skills rather than artistic skills.

      All this is irrelevant. The tuition fees are not that important for artists. They are, however, existential for academic careers.
      If you want to be a lawyer, doctor etc you must study at University.

      Come on Thomas, nice try at being antagonistic and non-PC,(which is why I love PLATFORM) but you were wrong in focussing on the arts in this context. By the way, the government would have still removed the cap on tuition fees if unis had produced 1000s of Picassos a year.

  • dan 9:16 pm

    robertfoster - You need to go back to mother in Richmond. Or is it Barnes? i think you are a posh boy yourself. you are a shrimp of a man - FUCK the posh boys! its a shame the platform office isn’t next to top shop - and the vice one next door - tey’d both go up like a pair of shell suit trousers with all the posh rude boys and their little lap tops

    this is only the start - lets fuck the royals over with the posh boys from Barnes and Richmond! robertfoster you need to give a little thought into what you are writing - these people protesting are only about 5 years younger than you - they are genuinely angry - most people are genuinely angry - you put your name on here! the world is changing and you’re missing the boat .

    • Bob 12:16 am

      Oh dan, you’re adorable. All those offices are kind of close…

      Good luck smashing the state. Are you sure you won’t just come out of this looking like a retarded adolescent?

  • J/PDF 1:24 am

    I spent three years at university and all I got taught was how to market my transferable skills.

  • apple seed 2:10 am

    Hello

    A few questions.

    Could the author possibly unpack for me his understanding of what precisely defines a useful skill in our day and age? Some further clarity with regards to the ‘functional level’ of a skill-use (as opposed to what is for me the much more interesting prospect of a dysfunctional level) he speaks of would be nice. Especially, I should add, as it seems inform in totality his understanding of the conditions of possibility for a proper education.

    Might I preemptively further the dialogue by stating that I entirely disagree with the author’s insistence that commerciality is and should be the singular scale by which the value of an arts education is assessed. This point I believe remains a constant point - regardless of fluctuations in the economy.

    For you, then, the only reason to study art would be to become a professional artist? And, ergo, the act of studying art leaves a graduate completely unable to do anything else other than produce art (which may or may not be good or bad according to the market - a moot point with regards to my own question concerning the extra-artistic value of an art degree).

    Hmmnnn. Is this really what you’re saying?

    As an adjunct - well more a trifling fancy really - might I ask the author to inform us of exactly how writing online copy (for free) intersects with his own sense of the workaday reality of everyday life? Especially when that copy is for a magazine that adopts a model of happy cultural exploitation (you write for free, or dj pro bono … yeah … then we get paid fucking loads by hosting Budweiser adverts on our site and hosting rank parties in condemned Dalston warehouses … YES BRUV).

    You should read the co-signed letter linked here:

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/dec/10/get-off-learn-to-earn-treadmill

    For your reading pleasure check out the full list of signatories at the bottom of the article. It ranges from campus occupiers, trade and student union heads, MPs, think tank leaders and more professors than you could wave a neo-ironic-whatever-appropriated for use at a Platform party glowstick at.

    But of course you, Thomas Viney, with your cute job writing for free for an online magazine know better than this lot, don’t you mate?

    PS - A message for Robert Foster (your editor, guard dog, immaterial labour oppressor). Were you at the protests yesterday? Hmmnnn. I think not. Yeah, because if you were you would have noticed the ‘feral’ teenage nutter estate kids and gangs leading the way…

    I know.
    I was right behind them.

    • Robert Foster 7:43 am

      do you not think the feral estate kids might just have been up for a scrap, perchance?

      • apple seed 11:09 am

        “do you not think the feral estate kids might just have been up for a scrap, perchance?”

        Sorry Robert, since when has protesting for a good reason and having a scrap been mutually exclusive?

        a) a lot of those feral kids were out against cuts to EMA
        b) a lot of those feral kids were throwing missiles, charging kettle lines, etc.

        As we have already established, you were not at the protest on Thursday. Why, then, do you think you can pass judgement on participants, their socio-economic background and their reasons for protesting and fighting?

        I should add that the binary of ‘peaceful’ / ‘violent’ protestor is rendered very blurry under the sign of intensive kettling.

        Come out next time. Have a look for yourself. Then put pen to paper.

        • Robert Foster 4:24 pm

          protesting’s fine. rioting’s for diiiickheads. please chill out and recognise that, all of you. it only makes you look like retards

    • thomas viney 12:42 pm

      How do you know I write for free? As it happens, I don’t. I’m paid. And that’s how it intersects with the workaday reality of adult life – by keeping me in rent money, clothes, food etcetera.

      Furthermore, I work 50-60hrs a week doing workaday things for a publishing company. So there you go. How’s that?

      Re your other points: There is no extra-artistic value to an arts degree. Unlike the humanities, arts degrees don’t teach rigorous scholarship. If you’re one of those rare art students who wander the halls of St Martins with fat stacks of theory under your arm, you should probably be studying something else. Because you’re not going to flourish intellectually there.That’s a promise.

      Besides, if you’re of a creative, theoretical bent, why can’t you read all that stuff in your free time? It’s what I did.

      Jesus Christ.

  • Will B 4:28 am

    I rated platform but the comments regarding the rioting are such small minded crappy shit for brains remarks. For the people who did get educated before the conservative scum wiped their cocks all over it… We know that this is not just about education cuts its about making a stand against posh cunts who will do whatever pleases them and the wider meaning of their political stance.. and all the poor and middle class (kick you in the head when your down types cos they were fucked too aka Robert Foster) join in especially given they actually believe what they see in the media reports as yourselves I might add. Hmm what does that make you guys on this blog.

    The tosser who doesn’t believe any kids who are from disadvantaged backgrounds will be affected need to re- educate. Try doing some basic fucking research you stupid twat. Watch the footage you will see kids not from middle class background who will be very affected and all those young kids from fucked up families can expect a lot more shit as the cuts effect the basic support for those types of families. This all goes way beyond the education cuts its only the stupid cunts who are that far up their own arses not to realise. How about one of the kids who doesn’t go to school cos mummy and daddy enjoy beating him or his or her uncle likes to play more than tiddly winks or who’s brother is the local hood and the drugs smear the family or who’s disabled mother can’t fucking walk or their parents are so into the bottle they just don’t give a shit. What do you think will make that kid turn their life around when the very fundamental resources for the baseline services for the dispossessed are being made even less accessible how the fuck is that going to effect our society. Its going to get a whole lot shitter and maybe one of these kids will come and visit you one day or meet you in the street. Everything has a knock on effect but the stand being made is the only thing thats making people think oh shit we can’t just fuck them they will fight back. David Cameron and his posh boy gang will fuck you and you wont know it. The people who are educated in the creative industry may also touch on philosophy, sociology, psychoanalysis, politics the days of sticking your thumb in clay are over mate maybe thats what you were doing but for the rest of us we use the time to expand our minds and think out of the fucking box.

    • Robert Foster 4:19 pm

      i think you’ve all got a little ridiculous… no one’s saying it’s a bad thing to protest, but rioting is retarded. re-read the article and our comments before you start crying ‘classwar’, you’re embarrassing yourselves.

  • Will B 8:10 am

    ‘Perchance’ you need a real good arse fucking! Do you have any friends who are living in the real world rollmop? I suggest you get out a bit more and see the world. x

  • Ellie 9:17 am

    Sentences like, “there isn’t enough money left in the world to sustain our creative impulses”, are a good indicator as to why no-one really bothered to comment on this piece.

  • L. 9:55 am

    I don’t think being successful is only about talent, one also needs to WANT to succeed and as long as I feel determined to do what I want to do, nobody can change my mind. It’s pretty simple.

    I have to agree with Apple Seed - we should not assess education by how much money it’s going to get us after graduating but it goes beyond that, doesn’t it? Arts education is not only for creative people pursuing their passion, it’s also people seeing arts industry as something glamorous they’d want to be a part of and too often it is what seems as an easy option for lazy people. So no, people should not give up studying whatever they want to study for any given reason, however, Viney is right and not all of these people will be able to support themselves later on in life… these won’t be the people with the passion, these will be the people who studied something because it seemed cool or easy and these are the people who should reconsider their reasons and perhaps make a change.

  • Louis Pilard 11:21 am

    I think this article, although showing a lot of sad truths about the system we are living in and are going to live in for a while, let me down because of its stand point. What you’ve just done is submissed to the changes the conservatives are making and basically telling students to change their beliefs because times are changing.
    I was expecting an article about how students have been free-riding off cheap education and not taking it anywhere, but in the way that in these times we need to realize we should all be politically involved to the extent that we could stop the government making changes that the majority of young people in the country oppose.
    This article is briefly summarised in the phrase, “if you can’t beat them, join them”, you’re saying that instead of fighting the cuts, we should all just become accountants and lawyers who back a system that doesn’t work apart from the rich, it’s a cop out which implies that the divide between rich and poor which has been taken to a whole new level is okay because the poor should just strive to become the rich.
    The stance that all young people, and by young I mean anywhere between 14 and 40 or even older, young spirited enough to want change, is to realise that university is no longer a dignified institution about working hard and earning an education but working as little as possible and spending excess amounts of money on excess amounts of alcohol. The attitude of student life no longer revolves around solidarity and learning but indiviudualism and competition, this needs to change, students instead of paying more fees should be made to feel useful by doing community service or taking part in politics, but this is something that the elitist government would never stand for because people would realise that there are other, harder options that would bring out more good than simply rinsing people out of all their money.
    Again, i repeat, this article let me down, because all you’ve said is that now that this is how things are we should face up to “reality” and allow what is happening and let the individualist capitalist spirit live-on, this “reality” is not “the” reality, but the reality they have created in order to make people like you submiss. It’s disgraceful that this is the opinion platform have decided to send out to all its subscribers and I hope this attitude won’t spread, because if that happens the future will be full of depressed accountants and lawyers working jobs that they don’t believe in, in an economy that repressed all poor families into an endless cycle where all the money will stay in the hands of the same few people. In other words, this article is a product of the society we are living in, a natural occurance and nothing special.

  • thomas viney 12:24 pm

    OK, first-year humanities students. Please re-read the article, with particular emphasis on the following sentences:

    “a sad day for social egalitarianism”

    “if we’ve less people contributing to the intellectual and cultural life of our country, we’ll atrophy until we wither away”

    You need to learn deep reading.

    I’m not saying University is a bad thing, or that the cuts and education reforms are a good thing – I wholeheartedly oppose them, and think they’re dangerous. Rather, I’m saying that a disproportionate amount of people want to pursue educations, and careers, in the creative arts… And that’s not good.

    Do you not think it’s odd how many people want to walk this path? I do. That’s why I wrote this article.

    If you want to do four years of art school, that’s fine by me. But don’t be surprised when you end up like these people:
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p007cvfp

    And, finally, I’m not saying you should all become accountants and lawyers (though, actually, those are interesting professions, and have been discredited unfairly these past twenty years) but I am saying you shouldn’t ALL become creatives. Is that so hard to grasp?

  • Celia 2:25 pm

    What are you saying exactly then Thomas?

    Do a degree that is perceived “useful”, useful in the eyes of people who are obsessed by money (tories).

    I think that you will find that the arts is far more useful. useful in the creation of ideas and ideas are more beautiful than business.

    To use the deficit as excuse to justify the (education) cuts just don’t add up and everyone knows that and I could see why articles like this are mailed out to 10000′s of subscribers, when you are trying to run a cosy capitalist venture like “Platform” you’ll want to tell the readers to give up dreams and aspirations to make sure that only Tommy, Blaise and his pals are on hand to spread right wing propaganda and exploiting youth culture to the masses and ensuring that the creative jobs only remain accessible to those within the elite.

    Platform Magazine is part of the establishment, right wing and elitist. Just remember that kids.

    • thomas viney 3:16 pm

      Yaaaaaawn. Didn’t you get the memo? Read the article properly, Celia.

      Oh, and FYI, I’m a fully paid up member of the labour party, read the New Statesman religiously, come from a Left Left background, and oppose this legislation.

  • dan 2:47 pm

    robert foster is a posh boy, on the teet -

    have you seen a picture of him on google images!

    who the fuck is blaise?

  • Celia 4:30 pm

    I am sorry Thomas I never meant to accuse you personally of being right wing but reading your other article (http://www.readplatform.com/grow-the-fuck-up/) I see you’ve come from a decent background and these EMA kids do not have so much luck.

    You are looking at the arts in a capitalist context, where the work is only produced for commercial gain and where people make massive amounts of money. Now if we weren’t living in such a system them maybe less people would aspire to do arts based courses, and that is where you could get the numbers down but I totally disagree that people should give up, especially people who rely on their EMA to get them through their A levels and into art school and still hold my view that magazines like Platform are here to exploit youth culture and spreading these messages is positive thing for them, especially when it antagonises readers and generates more hits (advertising revenue).

    Anyway this isn’t meant to be a personal attack I am just pointing out perhaps editorially this is why this point of view is advocated, when you started the article well, then just ended it… so badly and irrationally.

    • Thomas viney 4:57 pm

      Cool, Celia. Obviously, I have nothing against EMA kids, but, rather, a culture which associates creativity with cash. I think these kids will be sorely disappointed, disaffected and downtrodden when they graduate into a world that doesn’t want them.

      I’m an associate editor here, and I can promise you that advertising revenue is pretty insignificant to our editorial decision-making. Well, it’s pretty insignificant full stop.

      Re my background, yeah, I wasn’t born in a box, but my little brothers

      • Thomas viney 5:05 pm

        (sorry Celia, pressed return mid-sentence there)… my brothers are due to go to university any time now, and this issue really does effect them. We’re not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination. Far, far from it.

        Besides, all this talk of maintenance grants is tangential. The grist of my article was quite different.

  • Will B 8:41 pm

    Look at this tossers comments on his background. He is a first class wanker. How the fuck he can begin to comment on those who choose to go for it at uni or wider issues. So his mummy and daddy bought a north london ‘fixer-upper ‘ and are lefties. He lives in hackney and dropped out of uni in his first year. Look at this quote from the article mentioned above.

    Look now at your friend who had a tough childhood at the hands of an abusive parent. Now look at that friend’s choice of partner in later life. I guarantee you they’re still enthralled to the same patterns and demands – seeking out, however subtly, carbon-copies of that childhood abuser. Love and affection, in your friend’s mind, are permanently associated with pain and trauma. There’s simply no escaping it. The same, of course, is true of more benign habits. If one has always picked ones nose, and always eaten it, the chances are that one will remain a nose-picker and eater until death.

    Only a complete cunt could think he could comment on those who are abused and then parody that with picking your nose as a habit that will be with you for life…. Fuck me mate you are a disgrace.. You honestly think you can qualify to make statements on big issues when your so floored in life and personality. I really hope people read this blog and hold you to your crappy self. Those friends of yours who have been abused and are by your own words cursed for life I hope they wake up to who you are and shun you. You should quit and go jump of a very high building then maybe you’ll understand what it is to be really fucked. There are so many people out there who are completely screwed and people like you exist and use a position to broadcast complete bile.

    Its not funny and its certainly not clever its shitting in the mouth of society and sucking your own cock.

  • S 9:05 pm

    People can’t go through life doing exactly what they want, people do need to think practically. If you feel passionately about something you don’t have to pursue it at a degree level, take not art students. If everyone went through doing exactly what they want without any thought about the future then we would live in chaos.

    • Will B 11:53 pm

      Fucking chaos!!!!!!!!!!!!! What planet are you living on you arse hole. Doing exactly what they want? Did you not read what i said. This represents more than just fucking the kids who can’t handle massive amounts of debt. Do you not listen to the fucking news you twat fuck. Support is being taken from everywhere. Fuck me you really don’t know shit. Left or right the attitudes of our shit arse government are simply a good indication of the cluelessness out there. Do you know they are still unsure whether a student incurring massive amounts of debt may effect their choice in studying. What kind of shit for brains cannot work that one out. I’m telling you things need to change quick as we are all going down a very dark fucking hole. When your next out walking your poodle start fucking looking around and maybe you’ll begin to notice the shit thats coming up and is consuming our society. They are fucking coming!

  • Will B 9:16 pm

    Oh dear Tommy Vinegar please give us more of your great knowledge in life. We all really need the education. Shit it really is that bad to think you get paid for this. So lets put everyone off from studying in the arts and then slag off those who have the guts to stand up to the major changes that are taking place and will only get much worse. You are scum

  • Helen of Troy 12:08 am

    @Robert Foster

    Are you Karl Lagerfeld? Why are you so worried about people “looking like dickheads”? At least they don’t look like dickheads all the time like you with your shit hardcore tattoos and crap clothes. You still look like a little 15 year old provincial who never grew up. Maybe you should take your sneering head out of your arse.

    Education is a public good…everyone benefits in some way from others gaining a university education so we should all pay for it collectively. The same way we pay for healthcare, policing etc…TOGETHER. The largest protests in British history failed to stop the Iraq war. Our political representatives lied to get into power and then betrayed us. It is time to riot.

  • Billu 1:42 pm

    Can only be a good thing that people like Robert Foster and his chums are pussying out of the ‘ART’s cos theres no money in it. Perhaps the arts can return to not being some kind of cop out for rich people’s children who aren’t very clever.

  • Robert Foster 2:54 pm

    right, explanation for my comments coming up in a blogpost. Sorry I wound you all up, trolling my own website is a weird move. I completely agree with the cause, but I don’t think having David Gilmour’s millionaire son hanging off the Cenotaph is particularly good PR for it all.

    (although, Billu, I think the arts has always been like that, sorry)

  • Tuvshin Bolor 3:44 pm

    Yo I just did like 5 press ups and I’m swoll as fuck right now. Thought y’all should know.

  • Alex 4:46 pm

    Most of the artists I’ve met (excluding the graphic designers and illustrators) are living on the fringes. A fine art degree will get you no-where corporate or comfortable in life but if makes you content and happy to create and you don’t mind buying nettos own brand baked beans then it shouldn’t matter.

    And also I was more pissed off that Nick Clegg did a complete U turn on his policy towards education.

  • chris 8:59 am

    so if collectivism is dead (which I am not disagreeing with social conscious did take a big hit in the 1980s) and the rabid individualism of the 80s and 90s is dead what comes next and where do the student protests fit in, undead collectivism ?

  • david cameron 11:45 am

    If someone sees Robert Foster in Hackney please force fuck him.

  • david cameron 11:46 am

    Just kidding! HA HA HA!

  • Alex 1:51 pm

    Who studies the arts because they think of it in terms of a ‘viable career’ that’s gonna earn them loads of dolla? Let’s talk in less capitalist terms. A degree in music, painting, sculpture etc isn’t dedicating 3 years to a ‘nichey craft’, it’s about exploring and honing your skills through academics, peers and facilities. Sure, doctors save lives and plumbers save our water supplies but art saves souls. The government may have given up but we don’t have to.

  • david cameron 1:55 pm

    Fucking well said!!

  • dan 6:23 pm

    platform: If you had any traces of credibility in the first place, now you don’t. Ha Ha, i believe the word is either gunned or rinsed

  • Jon 11:21 pm

    This has honestly been the final nail in my coffin of a day. Found out my family can’t afford for me to go to college for the next two years. My parents have asked me to look for work in Malta, basically telling me to fuck off and pay them for raising me, and I am failing in school. All the while the rich get richer. Capitalism makes me want to cry, obviously there’s millions worse off than me by far but I’m in a sad bubble

  • mary winehouse 1:19 am

    Jon they sound like twisted fucks. Why Malta are you maltese? Mate all you can do now is man up which is a pretty shit prospect for you I’m sure. Me well when my dad decided to come down heavy by attacking me when I was on a low ebb, never brought up like that always caring but the bastard had an evil irish side. He needed to beat the youth out of me cos he was a mouldy old git and his daddy never really loved him. My way out was to fight back then go fucking nuts cos I felt so guilty get sectioned cut my wrist and jump off a tall structure… not the best route…..
    I guess what I’m saying is those things you call parents are merely two slimy shit bags who will make it their goal to insure you don’t become who you really want to be. The only thing left is to build yourself up. Get out of your current mind set and fucking get strong and fuck those mother fuckers off create a new life and then in time you will be happy to simply be who you are. Never go back they are fuckers. Do some fucking press ups….. Then get laid…. Then maybe consider gassing them in there sleep….

  • mary winehouse 1:24 am

    You know thats fucking funny!!!!! Don’t really gas them just tell them to fuck themselves then get a video camera and film it and sell it to a porn factory. That will pay for your uni. Or become a crack dealer and a pimp. I once new someone like that. He seemed to enjoy what he was doing. It takes all sorts. If your really good looking you could try male modelling or be pin up down kings cross. It might hurt but it could cover your fees. Good luck.

  • Thomas Tabouli 1:41 am

    Um, dude, Europa is just German for Europe

  • Thomas Tabouli 1:50 am

    ummmmm actually Europa is like every language for Europe

  • mary winehouse 1:51 am

    We are all going to die…. Oh shit better get laid quick! Jon just fucking rob them steel all their money then fuck off to Malta start a porn business next to one of the catholic churches or better still in one then you’ll make loads of dosh. Studying will be the last thing on your mind. Come on man lighten up.Malta is fucking shit who the fuck wants to go there anyway. Its either muff diving or scuba diving unless you want to pretend to be Jesus on one of those religious processions they do all the time. By the way you know they all inter fuck over there. Just look around when you go over to do your job…!!!! Man seriously rethink. Maybe join the army or better still ask one of the boys on Platform if you can sweep their floors. My dad always said stacking shelves is something everyone should do…. Nice girls in some of those Tesco shops… or boys if thats your deal. You’ve got the store room too so could always set up a porn business in there. Or shit just start filming yourself at home.. Then try selling the dvd down Brixton with some of those weird hippy religious types. You could make a few quid. Then move from filming your own arse to filming someone else’s arse then invest in some lighting get an assistant and you’ve got your own production company. Mate you will be rich in no time. Just make sure you wax your arse hole first mind as its not in vogue to have a hairy snatch.

  • mary winehouse 1:58 am

    Tabouli is french for pasta?

  • martin luther king 2:14 am

    I was once walking back form a mates in Hampstead. It was late I’d had a few lines of shit clueless rich boy coke. Passing the gay pub on the high st…. A young teen runs out.. Comes over to me and just starts begging me if he can suck my cock. ‘Oh please let me suck your cock, oh please, please let me suck your cock.” I’m not gay.. maybe Bi like Freud… Anyway I’m standing there in slight shock thinking oh come on mate go away. Being nice an all but then once I’d convinced him that he really didn’t want to suck my cock right there in the street, I thought shit. Actually what if I let him suck my cock! I didn’t… I carried on walking but in my mind I did still consider what it would have been like to have just got my cock out and shimmied into a dark shop recess and let the little ferret of a boy suck my love stick. Well one can only wonder. sweet memories of lost youth and lost opportunities. We only have one life.. Fucking live it now as your only going to end up dead and fucking forgotten.

  • martin luther king 2:14 am

    He was over sixteen!!!

  • will B 1:48 pm

    Accountancy is radical!!!!! WE ARE ALL DEAD…..!!!.X ?> !

  • will B 1:58 pm

    You state that this site is for 18-24 yr olds. What the fuck! Is this really an example of the status quo? I think not… I fucking hope not… Shit we really are all fucked!

  • Tom 3:47 pm

    Best article on platform ever!

    If we want to exist as a luxury state of artists and poets living on the sweat and blood of the third world, we need to be willing to back it up with ruthless military force so we can screw over the less fortunate.

    everyone hates the old oligarchy, but they all want to live in that same luxury. the marxist movement in brtian isnt so much a celebration of the dignity of labour as it is an expression of lazy people who dont really want to work.

  • Sophie 12:28 am

    Wow. Re Tom’s comment, December 14th - re read what you just wrote. Do you honestly believe that the creative arts are intended to capitalise on the less fortunate and exploit the third world? That anyone who decides to enter the industry is ‘lazy’ and ‘doesn’t really want to work’?

    As I live in Australia, I’m going to ignore the financial issues raised in this article as it would be unfair of me to assume I can understand. But I will say this.

    As someone who has always been looked down upon/insulted for my choice of university degree (B Digital Media which will eventuate in film production, scriptwriting, etc) it has always amazed me that these stereotypes continue to exist. People want to slot you into a category that makes them feel more comfortable. It’s easy to believe that anyone doing a fine arts course isn’t going to make it, because you don’t really want them to succeed. You want them to fail, so you can say ‘I told you so’, so that you can say ‘Look at how much money you just wasted! Now you’re going to be making cappuccinos for the rest of your life!’

    A lot of people pride themselves on being open minded, politically aware and socially just. And from a writer, I expected less condescension and more support. Thomas, you are simply continuing the notion that kids should undergo courses that are ‘valid’ to ensure financial stability, or to justify how much they spend on uni fees in the first place. Valid in the eyes of who? I know there are people who really love medicine, law, mathematics etc, and they do the courses that match their interests. And no one seems to belittle them for their choice. Instead they get a pat on the back and raised eyebrows because their ‘intellect’ is so great.

    I am so tired of being told off for simply doing what I’m good at, and what I want to do. ‘The arts are dead’? Thomas, how naive are you? You think fine arts students don’t learn anything? That what we learn could be accurately understood in the free time between doing something ‘real’ like writing condescending articles? Could be understood by a six year old? Oh no, Thomas, I see what the problem is. You’re one of those people who think the study of the fine arts is linked to people who blog/self style/get instant reality show fame/do yoga/etc. No. All of those are valid if you want to indulge them, but don’t require a university degree. There is an immense amount of history and depth in the broad world of fine arts that’s best used when studied, a knowledge that is finessed over time. Guess what? Some people still actually take the long road to success, university and various career paths and hard work included. And some of those people are fine arts students.

    I have friends, like you might, who have traveled the world. They’ve seen extreme poverty, incredible landscapes, eaten utterly foreign cuisine. They’ve immersed themselves in the world. They comment on local issues with gusto, they read the paper enthusiastically, they are very left wing.

    And it’s these people who have the maturity of a spoon. Who have seen it all and yet understand nothing.

    Your education is what you make it. If I choose to enter fine arts, to study how history, and human behaviour, and science, and culture, and technology, have supported and enriched the film industry, then so be it. We need a broad range of thinkers and creators in this world to continue the evolution of the human race. If you are prepared to suggest the culling of fine arts students - when law and medical students and the like are already running low in the UK - then where exactly does that leave you? Out of a job, perhaps, as I doubt I’m the only one who considers ‘author’ or ‘writer’ a creative profession.

    I would rather take this path and fail than spend my years in a limited field, self righteous and ignorant, pitying the naive fine arts students their joy because little do they know, it will amount to nothing. Obviously your uni fees were spent wisely. Congratulations on becoming yet another person who feels it’s in their right to generalise the intelligence levels of fine arts students, as well as their talent and potential. It’s because of creative arts ‘porch hippies’ that you’re able to write on Platform, that Platform even exists.

  • will B 3:20 am

    At last we have lift off!

  • lome 4:18 am

    Art is what i’m good at, and frankly i would be fucking miserable if that wasn’t what i was doing. I work very hard to make it happen, so stop telling me it’s the easy option, because it’s not.

  • Thomas Viney 10:11 am

    @Will B

    Sometimes I feel like you’re more than just a strange commenter who, subject to the strange geometry of lithium/anti-depressants/mental illness, has been trying to hijack this comment board to his own unknowable ends… sometimes I feel like you’re my friend. I think we’re really connecting, you know?

    Anywaaayyyyyyzzz, would you like to go for a drink/meal/date sometime?

  • will B 1:36 pm

    NO currently I only do pussy. Sorry X

  • emma 2:50 pm

    “robfos”it’s so easy for you to say that as yr the one that probably went to a very expensive school (say bedales) and whose parents probably bought a house say in peckham or wherether the fuck it is
    im disgused
    + bloody hell those werent riots uve never been to france mate AND YES I AM HAPPY THAT PEOPLE ARE RIOTING makes a change
    emma from france duh, that’ll probs never go to uni in england now

  • will B 3:03 pm

    Hey Emma do you fancy meeting and going for a drink/meal sometime and maybe a bit of ‘in-out in-out’ ? I’m reasonably well hung! I wash too!..!!!>!!>!>!!!!!

  • emma 3:17 pm

    hey Will i know u

  • will B 3:47 pm

    That is interesting! Hope its a good know and not a bad one. X

  • Thomas Viney 3:49 pm

    @ Will B + @Emma

    You guys…. So sweet.

  • martin luther king 9:08 pm

    I love Platform!

  • David Cameron 9:10 pm

    Me too!

  • huntley 11:51 pm

    i dont know why everyone is boying off the bre who wrote this article. you false elitists mugs this guy has a point, you cant assume your doors will be open to a carrer in the snobby media indsutry were in reality your some batty part time blogger whos on the cheecky dole. this country is all ready fucked up anyway. i just had diarrhea splattered on a mans anus.plop plop.

  • Charles Hendy 9:35 pm

    Education derp de derp, but now, fees herp derp de derp.

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