THERE were reports of scuffles in our capital this week as students went on the march to protest against tuition fees.

The ‘grants not debts’ protest sought to end the situation that many of our academics find themselves – being in thousands of pounds of debt in their early twenties.

I had the same issue when I was at university, and I’m still paying it off now. I didn’t agree with it then – so, 12 years ago, I took to the streets to protest.

It’s a shame that nothing has changed in that time, that students are lumbered with debt for seeking to further themselves, with the previous generation being educated for free. That’s not fair.

Motivated by the injustice, myself and a group of fellow students jumped on a union-subsidised coach from Sunderland to London at 5am, and joined universities from all over the country.

We covered about a mile, singing “Tony Blair, shame on you, shame on you for turning blue” and waving placards all over the place.

Then, we spotted a Tube station, threw our placards away and slipped out of the protest to go drinking.

We felt guilty for a bit, but it turns out that loads of people do it. Apparently, the buses back from London are always quieter as so many people fall by the wayside.

There was no chance of that happening. We couldn’t afford to get back to the North-East from London, so we made sure we didn’t miss the bus home. Our excuses were prepared carefully, but our union rep was three, if not four sheets to the wind and could barely remember his own name.

That day, we learned a valuable lesson. Students are highly politicised people. But they are also motivated by cheap or free things and never ever turn down the opportunity to go drinking. And as long as that remains, the chances of effecting political change are slim.

THE protests this week are not the only course of action that the students will take.

The National Union of Students plan a nationwide strike next year.

Students will skip lectures for the day, stand outside and bray loudly about the injustice of life.

Isn’t that just any given day in the life of a student?

I STARTED a minor war of words last week when I described the Halloweens of my youth.

I mentioned that instead of pumpkins, we used swedes that had been hollowed out and decorated.

I had initially written ‘turnips’ as that was what they were called at the time. However, it was pointed out to me – correctly – that turnips are small, white vegetables and swedes are larger with orange-coloured flesh.

But when I published last week’s column online, there was a backlash. “It’s TURNIPS, not swedes!”, people shouted at me.

My wife calls the orange variation a swede, the small white version a turnip. My mam calls the smaller ones swedes and the big one a turnip. Both insist they are correct.

It turns out they are. Because while my wife, whose family come from the south, are correct in their assertion that swedes are the larger vegetable, those from the north and Scotland have traditionally reversed the names, calling a turnip a swede and a swede a turnip.

I’ll leave the argument of which end of the country is backwards for another day.