Online debt petition pulls in students

Website protesters Chris (left) and Craig

Students in the UK have been signing an online petition protesting about debt at the rate of one every few seconds.

By Tuesday night, more than 10,000 names had been entered on the "PayUpTony" website - logging a combined debt of over £110m.

"The general public aren't really aware of the amount of debt that students build up," said one of the two student organisers, Craig Norris.

"We never expected it to take off like this."

He and fellow media technology student Chris Brobin are in their second year at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Rogue names

They have used the web design and database handling aspects of their course in producing the site.

While some of the names of those signing up are clearly fictitious - Osama Bin Laden for one - and some are abusive, many appear to be genuinely those of students at UK higher education institutions.

Craig said they were planning to automate the process of weeding out obviously silly names - at the moment they have to do it by hand.

Parents and guardians are also invited to lodge their protest at the way students are funded.

"Our aim here at PayUpTony is to create a petition substantial enough for the government to take note of the injustice suffered by thousands of students and their parents," the site says.

Under review

The Tony in the site's name is the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who instigated a review of higher education funding following the general election last year.

The issue is said to have caused many Labour MPs grief during their canvassing and Mr Blair himself was tackled about it on a university visit.

The outcome of the review has not yet been published. There have been suggestions the government is backing away from its initial idea of paying for a return to limited grants in England by imposing a graduate tax.

"It has already been proposed that in the year 2004 student fees will be abolished, this does not however help those students who due to this government 'blip' find themselves leaving university thousands of pounds in debt," says the PayUpTony site.

Some have suggested the website is merely a scam to log people's e-mail addresses with a view to selling them to "spammers".

Craig Norris emphatically denied this, and said that in any case visitors do not have to give their e-mail addresses.

The Liberal Democrats are also running an online petition to "scrap tuition fees" in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

It collected its 10,000th name last May and now has more than 13,500.