parents of average income groups striving to achieve top A-level grades when they can never hope to afford the vast debts now envisaged by the permanent changes to higher education? The students won't pay it back until they're earning at least 25k, at which point it is fair to say that they will be able to afford it. First, the police tactics on resorting to kettling at the first sign of trouble are completely counterproductive. Perhaps, but the traditional way of dealing with trouble makers and vandals was to club them senseless with truncheons and this is an age old practice that is generally extremely effective. That is now deemed to be socially unacceptable however some people still get aggressive and destroy property - hence kettling, which in effect punishes everybody for the crimes of the few and often causes tempers to rise. Still, take your pick. Personally I'd go for a more targeted version of the traditional approach, but I suspect many would consider that barbaric - so kettling is the alternative. Yes, but we live in a Parliamentary democracy, where policies are decided by a universal franchise, electing Members of Parliament, who form governments and pass laws. It would be a very bad thing to live in a country where mobs of demonstrators were able to overrule the will of the electorate. The violence of the poll tax riots was a pretty minor factor compared to the bureacratic inefficiency of the tax, which was near impossible to collect