Academia, Bizarre, International

Cambridge Student Denounced After Taunting Homeless Man By Burning £20 Note

A Cambridge University student with Pembroke College has become persona non grata after a disgusting display in front of a homeless man.  When unemployed crane operator Ryan Davies asked for money, Ronald Coyne burned a  £20 note in front of him as a taunt.  The video was posted on YouTube and Coyne is now internationally despised.

Coyne was dressed in formal clothing when Davies asked him and his friends for any change.  Coyne responded by burning the money and saying “How’s that for change, I’ve changed it into flames.”

 

Coyne later apologized and said that he “abused his privilege.”

Even when drunk, it is hard to imagine why anyone would think that such a gross display is funny or clever.  What young Coyne will find out is that the Internet has a long memory.  His own mother publicly chastised him.

For someone who claims to be related to Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, he may now eclipse his relative in sheer infamy.

96 thoughts on “Cambridge Student Denounced After Taunting Homeless Man By Burning £20 Note”

  1. Fake news, CNN is the worst, I’m a tremendous success: just ask my role model Donald Jagoff Trump who paid himself through his own charities. Fake news! Now where’s my daughter, she looks good today.

    1. Dave, have you not noted the salaries of people that run large charities? They can be in the million buck range and it isn’t even their money. The government has a provision for charities to pay the one managing the charity for his time. Tell us Dave 137, how much money have you given to charity? Donald just gave $1Million for Harvey victims.

      1. A seven-digit salary is (IMO) acceptable in select contingencies for philanthropies with exceptionally large workforces and for philanthropies which must draw on the medical profession. If the President of the American Red Cross or the President of New York University or the President of the Cleveland Clinic is drawing seven-digits, I’m not going to complain. The problem is when you have the superintendents of quite modest outfits guzzling donor money. The man who ran FreedomWorks (I think his name is Kibbe) was paying himself north of $450,000. I’ll wager you FreedomWorks has fewer than 40 employees.

        There should be incorporated into state and federal tax law a formula which states what the expected compensation for the chief executive of a philanthropy should be, and what the sum of compensation should be for (1) the 15% or so most handsomely paid employees (or the 50 most handsomely paid (for agencies employing more than 330 FTE); and (2) for the 8 most handsomely paid employees (for agencies employing more than 330 FTE). The argument for the formula would be the nominal compensation per worker in the economy as a whole, so the expected compensation of philanthropic executives would increase pari passu with wages and salaries in the economy. You could add in a mulligan for licensed physicians running providers of medical and nursing services. Any philanthropic concern in contravention of these guide lines would be severely fined by tax authorities each year.

        We could institute such a regulation in lieu of the shizzy controversies over which philanthropic corporations merit ‘non-profit’ status. Leave them all in peace, bar smacking them if they refuse to keep their executive compensation in line. Personal fines levied on trustees would be sweet too.

        1. DSS, I am not referring to the propriety of the salaries rather that they exist in large numbers for Dave’s benefit.

          However, since you started a new discussion on charities many are scams and many have CEO where the CEO’s are making more than their value in running the non profit. In many cases the prices paid to non profit executives has to do with their ability to bring in donations or because they are doing something a major donor wants done.

          Aside from doing away with non profits another method of getting them into line would be to see what percent actually goes to the intended charitable funding and only permit the charitable giver to get a tax deduction on on that portion of the donation which goes directly to the recipients of charity. That percent would have to be filed with the IRS and clearly posted by the charity.

          1. It’s bog standard for philanthropies to be required to file audited financial statements with Secretary of State where they are incorporated. The IRS 990 form is generally accessible online via outfits like Charity Navigator and ProPublica. There is usually state law which renders trustees liable for failures of fiduciary duty, though I cannot say how likely it is that a malefactor will be taken to the cleaners by the state attorney-general.

            I’ve no clue what share of philanthropic donations would be directed to ‘scams’. The Better Business Bureau and others do monitor philanthropies and publish reports. I suspect their methodology can be gamed by the canniest operators. The $PLC hardly pretends to be anything other than a scam, but I think it slips through the grid. Of course, there’s the Clinton Foundation. The Don Stewart Assn. is one of which I’d be very wary.

            1. DSS, I am very aware of Charity Navigator / tax returns along with the non-profit’s fiduciary responsibilities as well as other organizations that are paid to help large donors find the right charities. I offered a way for the ordinary person to know what they are giving to. I would rather not have such a wide berth of charities getting donations that are tax deductions, but if we have to have them I would prefer if the tax deduction was proportional to the amount of money that actually reached the end user.

              1. You can just eliminate tax deductions and exemptions of all kinds.

                Calculate personal income tax liability by sssess a flat rate on income from which you subtract a per person $ value credit. You’d have a general credit which applied to anyone and a supplemental credit which applied to the elderly and disabled in addition. Some share of the population will be due a net rebate. You cap the rebate at a certain % of earned income, but relax the cap for the elderly and disabled. You could scrap every consequential means-tested federal welfare program bar Medicaid if you enacted such a tax. Charitable giving would occur out of people’s personal disposable income and you’d quit subsidizing a miscellany of commercial and industrial sectors (real estate in particular).

                1. “You can just eliminate tax deductions and exemptions of all kinds.”

                  Yes, completely overhauling the tax code to end a lot of gaming is a good idea.

          2. Aside from doing away with non profits a

            You shouldn’t imbibe this early in the day.

        1. Autumn, You are consistently on the mark. I worked in a disaster area as a college student. The Red Cross are surly and uncaring, like DMV employees. The Salvation Army won my heart over during that summer working hurricane relief. Great people!

        2. Allan, the Red Cross is one of the worse. Mismanagement of funds –

          And she knows this because Tyler Durden told her so.

      4. He’s a supposed billlionaire who’s made money off us taxpayers by holding events at his clubs and and buildings: so that million dollars is our own money going back.

        Secondly, the amount I give to charities each year, proportionate to my net worth, is quite likely far higher than what the orange moron gives.

        Also, do shove the ad hominem.

        1. Apparently you have no understanding Dave, of how economies prosper. Trump made money. Money doesn’t grow on trees. He provided a large number of jobs in construction and in running the places he built. Additionally he helped employ all those people that produce things for his projects. The public gained from the tax revenues all his places brought into the city, county, state and federal government. Finally he paid personal income taxes plus the workers share of their 15.6% social security, medicare etc. After all that the public had places to go for entertainment and homes.

          “the amount I give to charities each year, proportionate to my net worth,”

          Thank goodness we have people like Donald Trump who provides wealth and money for if we were left with what you earned the nation might end up as a second class nation. He is one person with 24 hours a day and you are one person with 24 hours a day. Why aren’t you giving what he gives? You have the same amount of time to work. You just didn’t produce like he did. That’s al, so don’t complainl.

          “Also, do shove the ad hominem.”

          There was none in my note to you, but I do note your use in your replies.

  2. The photo is the epitomy of a total dork. Put that photo on the British 20 Pound note.

  4. Cambridge has a fraternity or club, as they are known there, called the Sybarites, of which I am an honorary member, being a close friend of one. Initiation includes a dinner in the Wordsworth Rooms where one has to drink an eight ounce concoction called an African Snowball. Everyone is dressed in evening wear and the meal is catered. The club is designed around golfers and routinely plans trips to courses developed on old estates, particularly in Ireland. The members are composed of those such as my friend who had his education paid for by the government based on insufficient income from his parents but exemplary grades and intelligence on his part, and those who were brought up in privilege. Everyone must have the grades. They drink a lot but seem to retain a certain degree of mobility and wit.

    My understanding of fraternities in the US is somewhat different. However a**holes are to be found on both sides of the pond. This particular a**hole was obviously born into wealth, given a nanny, sent off to boarding school early, home on vacations if mumsy and daddy’s schedule permitted, and enjoyed a freedom greased with money and connections. In the rearing department, this mutt is short many bricks. The closest ‘prank’, I am aware of, in an American fraternity is when a like sort sh*t in a girls purse.

  5. Even when drunk, it is hard to imagine why anyone would think that such a gross display is funny or clever.

    Newsflash! Brits are twits. (If they’re in the chatterati). It’s a reasonable wager that Mr. Coyne is (a) the issue of Britain’s ‘public’ schools and (b) was on a trajectory that would have taken him to a career in journalism or academe.

    I do find it interesting that he’s being shunned. I can’t figure whether it’s because of authentic sentiment or because Brits of a certain sort are generally inhibited and dislike personal display or because Brits of a certain sort have a regard for appearances.

    I bet Princess Anne has been tempted to do this from time to time. Prince Charles, no.

      1. Your point is what? I’ve never trusted Posner and (reading reviews and accounts of his antics, not his voluminous output) I’m biased toward the view that if he ever made a positive contribution to public life, it wasn’t done recently.

        Whelan’s article is suggestive of something he does not explicitly state: that Posner is senile. That is to say, mildly demented and unaware of his impairments. Being unaware of your impairments is characteristic of Alzheimer’s.

    2. DDS

      Knee jerk reaction to link this behavior with a specific group, Brits. Kind of takes the focus off of similar happenings here, where the panhandler would have been set on fire or dragged behind a truck until dead. But, hey, point that finger.

  7. Trump would have asked someone else in his party for a 20 pound note and then burned it, smiling, taking the credit, or whatever it would be called.

    1. Obsession like I’ve not seen in quite a while. Truly Rain Man..definitely Rain Man.

      1. Gumshoe

        I readily admit that I am focused on the idiot we are stuck with for a President. My response to the mistakes to be found ‘out there’ in America is to rant and include a solution. However, for a more appropriate linkage of the term obsession and posts on this blog, we would be better served if we regarded those by such as you. You corral everything progressive, liberal, Democrat, and some into one yuge herd of targets for your vitriol. If I am a ‘rain man’ in my repeated attacks on the biggest mistake made in the history of this country, then you surpass me by far with your vitriolic obsessions against any and everything that would lead us forward in a societally evolutionary sense. If I am to be parodied by someone in need of a caretaker, you should be in a straight jacket. In other words you are regressive, a retrograde, and nothing akin to what the founding fathers envisioned when they began this experiment. You offer no solutions but only erratic and for the most part pathetic remarks which include your credibility as a super sleuth and connoisseur extraordinaire of the human condition. You’ve seen it all from your perch as and expert and as a result, you’re done. You have finished to learn. This is what is truly sad, but unfortunately the case with too many Americans. The great experiment of those that conceived this country has ceased to exist for far too many Americans, including you and a superfluous and supercilious far too many on this blog. The result is Trump and the word ‘again’. Those that put that imbecile in office don’t have the spine to evolve forward, not back to ‘again’ but forward to the solutions. The prick of a connection between an errant word or phrase and the festering and mindless anxieties of so many of these posts illustrates your condition of ‘rain man’ to a T. What is far more obvious to those with any memory at all is that ya’ll have met the ‘rain man’ and the ‘rain man’ is ya’ll. And by the way, I have sipped and supped on all of the purported ‘best ribs to be found’ in these here United States, and I maintain that the best I have had were to be found in France.

        2. LOL! I’m in your head, dude. That’s what I do. That’s how I get people to expose who they are. We all know you hate this country. The BIG question is why you continue to reside here? Will Canada not let you return? They do have much stricter immigration criteria then do we.

    3. Issac…. And a leftist Atifa protester would tie a ball and chain to anyone who disagrees with them and throw both in the water. You would then hypothesize on the situation while watching the person drown.

  10. My guess is, a despicable brat like that, is probably going to need that 20 Euro, before he dies, or leaves this World. What goes around, sure does come around.

    1. Guinness – you and I both know that at 20 he would have just spent the 20 on booze, because we would have. 😉 It would have never made it into his savings account.

      1. Paul

        Didn’t you know that gentlemen don’t have ‘savings accounts’ and certainly don’t know how much money they have?

  13. not all British have what it takes to be a Churchill. Some…..grow up as Chamberlains,some Chamber Maids and some Chamber Pots. Much the same as our own ersatz aristocracy. Some end up as Kerry -ers of chamber pots.

  14. It says he is a freshman in the Law dept. So he’s on his way to becoming a soulless lawyer. No surprise there…..

    1. In the USA it is exactly that Money is Free Speech and one is free to buy as many votes as are for sale. IF one is rich enough. Should the lad ever seek other pastures he would make an outstanding member of our classless societies ruling class fit to serve with the likes of Pelosi, Schumer, and the other uppah crust. Say did Obama ever get accepted? Even some token recognition?

  16. Well, this cad deserves an Irish Poem! And NOT a very nice one! The frigging little prick!

    Coyne of the Realm???
    An Irish Poem by Squeeky Fromm

    There once was a very spoiled kid,
    And you never will guess what he did!
    When a beggar asked, “Please?”
    This well-to-do skeeze,
    Lit a match and burned up 20 quid!!!

    Squeeky Fromm
    Girl Reporter

      1. If Squeek is Irish, my bet is that she is Scotch Irish. We know she is a Southern Baptist. The Scotch Irish settled in Texas.

            1. I’ll buy that frankly, but wouldn’t that mean they moved to Texas rather than settled there and wouldn’t that include the offspring of settlers rather than settlers?

          2. Correct Allen. The Scots-Irish arrived primarily on the East Coast – Virginia, Georgia, North and South Carolina. The majority were dirt poor and despised by the English landed gentry and were not suited for plantation life. So they left — most settled in the Appalachians or foothills – TN, KY, VA, GA, SC, NC, KY – hill bilys. “The Mind of the South” by John Cash is an excellent read.

  17. Looks like the the cash is not the only thing getting burned.

    And rightfully so.

  18. This is sometimes the end result of cultivating social elitism in students. Mr. Coyn could benefit from lessons in egalitarianism.

    1. No, he could benefit from some manners and a lively sense of the good fortune he’s had in this life, as well as an appreciation of human frailty. You don’t need to be egalitarian for that. (And egalitarianism can be a hindrance at times).

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