h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

My memory of the 1990's, at least the early part of the decade, is one of feeling particularly "got at" because I was - horrors - a student. In what seemed to be an indecently brief period of time, the Student Grant and Housing Benefit were taken away, the Poll Tax came in, and I graduated from university into an employment marketplace hit by the recession.
Bear in mind that the Student Grant and Housing Benefit were what had helped me, and many others like me, to be able to go to university in the first place - my parents not being rich by anyone's standards. Bear in mind as well that most students were already paying rates as part of their rent, but the rents were not adjusted after the introduction of the Poll Tax. Bear in mind that the sudden reduction in our finances meant that most of us went from having part-time jobs to pay for luxuries like nights out to having part-time jobs to pay for necessities; in other words, the 1990's was the beginning of the end of the image of students as drunken freeloaders and the beginning of the reality of overworked, overstretched debtors.
I am sure that there are many who will point out that these changes were a long time in coming; the same people who will wonder why there is a staffing crisis in public health and education...