In response to Andrew Kirbys post on Pay Rise Protests

http://soveliss.blogspot.com/2009/04/protesting-for-pay-rises.html#comments

This is always going to be a topic which will be hotly debated. Purely because in a fair world, we all believe that teachers deserve to be paid more, as well as doctors, surgeons, police officers, firemen and nurses, in fact pretty much most people! But we also need to remember that we don't live in a fair world. If we did then we wouldn't have some footballers on 120,000 pound a week while a lot of the people in jobs listed above earn little more than 12,000 pound a year!

I think protesting can be regarded as bad behaviour. It causes a disturbance, very often results in some type of vandalism and can involve threatening behaviour. The people who do this though, clearly feel they have to protest to be heard, maybe because their previous, more civilised attempts to be heard were being ignored. We all know what its like to feel strongly about something, to then be ignored by those who have the power to do something about it. Protesting makes you more difficult to ignore, therefore increasing the chance of the desired changes.

It is strange how bad, uncivilised behaviour such as this can be the best option to encourage changes such as increased pay. Our world is surely in a sad state when we feel the only way forward is to protest and riot!