Dumb Britain

[TigrisLeicesteris]

And their we have it, resorting to infantile name calling.

I have shown the respect to acknowledge Fleabane's point of view but there are always those who lack the respect to acknowledge other. I have agreed to disagree, I don't expect to be called dumb because of it, I can fight my corner equally well.

Welcome to bigoted Britain, we're dumb teachers but we good enough to look after your kids and educate them, look after the ones in need but hey, what do I know I'm dumb right?

If it makes you feel better, I didn't strike Thursday, I'm of an opinion that we need to compromise, I fully understand we can't go on like this, but the measures right now are unfair, their are other ways. More importantly the needs of my pupils come first.

As said previously you don't destroy a civilization because it's more advanced than your own, you work together and raise the standards for all.

[kpb]

The decision IMO was 'Dumb.'

If i was to keep my children of school for no reason,unless they where ill,i would be classed as irresponsible,i would also no doubt get called in by the head.

We have it drilled down our necks all the time from teachers how important it is for our children not to miss a day of school.

My wife is a Governor at our children's school,and the feeling was the same for the majority of parents and she received many complaints at what action was going to be taken.

What would the reaction be of the teachers if next week us parents decided to strike and didn't send our kids to school for the day?

TigrisLeicesteris,you obviously made the correct decision not to strike,however my children's teachers didn't which meant they have lost a valuable day of school and my wife lost a days pay in order to stay at home and look after them.VERY VERY POOR SHOW.We have plans in place for school holidays but our school didn't know how many teachers were striking until 1 week before it happened.

Like i said,teachers just like all of us should be grateful of having a job at all,and try compromising without dragging us all down with them.

[Skin_and_Muscle]

For a start, it wasn't just the teachers, was it?
Secondly, "for no reason"? Striking over a hike in pensions that will not see a return (added to a hike in things like student loans to come) is not no reason.
Thirdly, the ridiculous hypothetical of parents striking and not sending their kids to school would be resistance to nothing in particular and is your poor response to a discussion about an uncommon occurrence of people sticking up for their conception of what their rights are when it comes to work.
Because people choose not to or might not have the opportunity to doesn't mean that they should have the prerogative to look down on someone who does choose to.
The tax argument is also pretty poor. You don't moan about paying for the NHS when someone may be in need of much more care than someone else because they choose to smoke and drink and you do not.
Just because you had a bad experience doesn't mean you have the right to say whether someone else is right or not to strike. There are merits to both arguments but if someone feels the need to, they should be able to publicly voice their grievances.

[Rizzo]

I think we should make the point that not all teachers went on strike, and not all the strikers were teachers. I get more irritated with the civil servant lot. As I said before, personally I have a lot of respect for most teachers, it isn't as easy a job as some make out, and it may also be worth considering that militant union people put pressure on some to stay off work even if they are not parading around with placards. Take into account that the media will always find some ranting radical from one side or the other to get their soundbites and quotes.

What I'd like to do is take one or two of the militant banner waving slogan chanting head-in-the-clouds young women who were on the news and say to them - Okay, here's a week of MY life. Live on my earnings, get my non-existent pension and 4 weeks pro-rata holidays, do all I do to run my own household & job plus do an old man's laundry & errands, see to his needs and spend time listening to his complaints about how you don't do enough for him, and then tell me you're hard done-by.

[kpb]

For a start, it wasn't just the teachers, was it?
Secondly, "for no reason"? Striking over a hike in pensions that will not see a return (added to a hike in things like student loans to come) is not no reason.
Thirdly, the ridiculous hypothetical of parents striking and not sending their kids to school would be resistance to nothing in particular and is your poor response to a discussion about an uncommon occurrence of people sticking up for their conception of what their rights are when it comes to work.
Because people choose not to or might not have the opportunity to doesn't mean that they should have the prerogative to look down on someone who does choose to.
The tax argument is also pretty poor. You don't moan about paying for the NHS when someone may be in need of much more care than someone else because they choose to smoke and drink and you do not.
Just because you had a bad experience doesn't mean you have the right to say whether someone else is right or not to strike. There are merits to both arguments but if someone feels the need to, they should be able to publicly voice their grievances.

Sounds like you are contradicting yourself a bit there!

[Skin_and_Muscle]

How might that be?

[Kinoulton]

Since I started the thread, and it's spiralled into something else entirely, I would point out that I AM ENTIRELY IN SUPPORT OF TEACHERS (sorry for shouting), in so far as they are expected to take in people's horrible fat anti-social children and somehow in a few short lessons transform them into fit eager and active learners who have magnificent social skills, a fine command of our language and a perfect bedrock on which to deal with sex, drugs, alcoholism and violence.

This is, I suspect why people like myself and Rizzo could not become teachers. People should learn how to bring up children first, before popping them out of their baby-chutes, cooing over them like it was a Christmas puppy, and then send it off to school for the teachers to deal with.

I think the ire directed at teachers is purely an economic one. We are having it very tough in the private sector. This month I can't invoice any clients and the ones I invoiced last month seem to regard paying me as an option. So I quite literally can't even go to Costcutter to buy a lettuce today.

This sort of harsh reality would not even occur to most teachers, civil servants or other public sector workers.

[TigrisLeicesteris]

Since I started the thread, and it's spiralled into something else entirely, I would point out that I AM ENTIRELY IN SUPPORT OF TEACHERS (sorry for shouting), in so far as they are expected to take in people's horrible fat anti-social children and somehow in a few short lessons transform them into fit eager and active learners who have magnificent social skills, a fine command of our language and a perfect bedrock on which to deal with sex, drugs, alcoholism and violence.

This is, I suspect why people like myself and Rizzo could not become teachers. People should learn how to bring up children first, before popping them out of their baby-chutes, cooing over them like it was a Christmas puppy, and then send it off to school for the teachers to deal with.

I think the ire directed at teachers is purely an economic one. We are having it very tough in the private sector. This month I can't invoice any clients and the ones I invoiced last month seem to regard paying me as an option. So I quite literally can't even go to Costcutter to buy a lettuce today.

This sort of harsh reality would not even occur to most teachers, civil servants or other public sector workers.

I appreciate the clarification Kinny, it's been a long week, and I was in self defence mode after being accused of being a money grabber and incapable of doing the job all week by a selection of parents, not aware of the circumstances, and the fact I didn't strike

[Old Hob]

I refer you to my earlier point that all of you by shouting at each other have missed the real villains.

[Kinoulton]

There is a polarisation within society going on, which is potentially more corrosive than youth unemployment, as bad as that is.

previously, people who earned high salaries were presumed to be capable of earning those salaries for life, hence were encouraged to take out big mortgages, spend on credit cards, acquire nice cars on long term loan/lease deals and buy properties abroad as an extension to their pension plan.

In a complete lottery of chance, hundreds of thousands of these earners were made redundant in 2008 or just after and are viewed by hirers as unemployable due to their age or the length of time spent at one company.

The result is long term unemployment of as little as £60 per week, repossessions, CCJs, and the sort of trap that means that even a menial job will simply deliver any earnings to debt-collection agencies and none to the empty family purse.

However, if the lottery of life has made you an actuary with knowledge of the very complicated Solvency II regualtions, you can comfortably earn £1,000 per day by working for, you've guessed it, a Financial Services company.

So Old Hob is right, the argument is not about teachers v private sector, it's about needing a government which, rather like the French, refuses to ebb and flow at the whim of monetarism and will actually try to create a society with some degree of fairness and security.

Thatcher's laisser-faire attitude and Tebbit's get-on-yer-bike toughness had brief success when we all had red ties and dodgy mobile phones, but in these hard times it's no good.