‘Sorry, I Had This Essay To Finish,’ Says Fresher

Keep the noise down, chaps, I've got a hangover

First-year politics student Ed Miliband apologised to fellow students today for failing to turn up for Wednesday’s nationwide fees protest, claiming that he would certainly have offered his support but for an essay he had to finish.

“You know how it is with all these deadlines,” gushed the young School Of Navel Studies undergraduate, who was wearing his best new Che Guevara t-shirt. “I suddenly realised, shit, I had to get this essay handed in by nine this morning and I hadn’t even given it a second thought, so I got up really early on Wednesday morning - which was jolly hard, as the only morning lecture in my entire timetable is at eleven on a Friday! - took a couple of Pro Plus, went to swot up in the library and spent the afternoon typing it up.”

“The title we were given was: ‘The Unemployed Should Be Forced To Work. Discuss’,” he explained brightly. “It’s all about forcing all these bone-idle layabouts to get out of bed before lunchtime and do some proper bloody work in return for all the pots of money the taxpayer is handing them.”

“Look, I’m ever so sorry about missing the demo,” he added. “After all, one day I might be somebody really important, so I why should I have to pay thousands and thousands of pounds when it’s the country as a whole that benefits from my education?”

Fellow students are singularly unimpressed with Mr Miliband’s feeble excuses, however, pointing out that his essay bears an uncanny resemblance to a model answer posted on the internet by Westminster Business School postgraduate David Cameron.