Cruel student expelled by Tories for burning £20 to taunt homeless man

A Cambridge student has been expelled from the university’s Conservative Association for trying to burn a £20 note in front of a homeless man.

Ronald Coyne, a law student and distant relative of Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, was ejected from the association after footage of the incident was published. It showed him, dressed in white tie and tails, trying to set fire to the money.
Mr Coyne’s mother, Sandra McLaughlin, said: “I don’t really know why he’s done something so thoughtless and cruel. He did two years of volunteering at Stockbridge shelter homeless shop in Edinburgh when he was still at school. It’s very surprising. We’re just a normal family. We’re not toffs, he’s not a toff.”
Mr Coyne, of Pembroke College, is also said to be a member of the university’s law society. He had been the communications officer for the Conservative Association’s executive committee, which said he was not on his way to or from any of the association’s events when the incident happened.
The footage was published by The Tab, an online student publication, after having been uploaded to social media last week. It was filmed after Mr Coyne had been at a formal dinner at Pembroke College, according to Varsity, one of the Cambridge student newspapers.
A spokesman for the Conservative Association (Cuca) condemned Mr Coyne’s “private behaviour”. He said: “There is no room for people who behave like that in our association, any other university association, or frankly our university. This disgusting and abhorrent behaviour occurred completely independently of Cuca. We determined the appropriate response to be to permanently revoke his membership and bar him from all future events.”
A spokesman for Cambridge University told The Times: “The university is committed to respecting the rights and dignity of all members of our community. We expect our students to treat others with respect, courtesy and consideration at all times, and the university takes allegations of unacceptable behaviour very seriously. We do not comment on individual cases.”
George Clarke, the founder of Embrace Cambridge, a charity that works with homeless people, said there was a “disturbing precedent for intoxicated Cambridge students to abuse rough sleepers in the city, but as well as calling out this disgraceful behaviour wherever we find it, we can and should remember that there is a real heart for charity at this university too”.
A Cambridge student who saw Mr Coyne soon after the incident told The Tab: “I was blocked from getting into my college as some chap in white tie was being excluded by the porters.
“I saw the videos of what he did the next morning and am utterly shocked and appalled. I’m sure I speak on behalf of the student body when I say that we condemn such actions.”
Burning money in front of beggars is claimed to be part of the initiation ceremony for joining the Bullingdon Club, an all-male dining club at Oxford.
A spokesman for the Scottish government said: “The individual is not a direct relative of the first minister or her husband.”
He is thought to be the nephew of the former husband of Mrs Sturgeon’s sister-in-law.

IT’LL NEVER CATCH ON...
David Cameron and Boris Johnson were members of the Bullingdon Club, at Oxford. In 2013 recruits allegedly had to burn a £50 note in front of a beggar as an initiation.
Members of the K Foundation, formerly the electronic band KLF, burnt £1 million in cash in 1994 on the Scottish island of Jura.
The Royal Society of Chemistry advises on how to burn money in school experiments to stimulate discussion. It says the new polymer notes are not suitable for the experiment.