TEACHERS STRIKE WILL HURT NO ONE BUT THEMSELVES

It is with great amusement that I read that the NUT has voted for a campaign of industrial action against proposed cuts to their pension arrangements.,

Let's be absolutely clear about this. No teacher, or other public sector worker, will lose any entitlements already accrued; anyone who is close to retirement will almost certainly find that their position is entirely unchanged. What is being proposed is that future pensions cannot be sustained at the rates of current pensions without their being substantial changes to both contributions and pension types. Given that the population is ageing dramatically, this is obvious and is inevitable, even without considering the dire financial position in which the country has found itself.

The antediluvian attitudes of trades unions such as the NUT is only to be expected. They automatically resist every change that doesn't actually give their members more money for fewer hours, in a way that resembles the behaviour of a Black Hole; everything goes in and nothing comes back. These organisations once served an important social function and achieved much but they are now outdated, self-defeating dinosaurs, wedded to a philosophy that is long gone.

The country cannot afford to maintain the bloated State that currently exists - 1 in 4 employees now works for the State, something more normal in a Communist State than in a Western Democracy. This means that changes have to be made. Most companies have already changed their pensions schemes due to the unaffordability of what went before; the State now has to do the same and to argue against this is to play the part of King Canute.

There was a time when being a teacher was a vocation. People entered this profession, not for the financial reward, but for the joy of passing on their knowledge to the next generation; they worked for decades, often in the same school. only too happy to have served a genuine public good. Now, they argue about money and conditons; teachers today work far fewer hours than they did when I was the recipient of their, often, invaluable knowledge and insights. It is no longer a vocation, it's simply another job.

In my days, teachers actually taught children. The children took worthwhile examinations and left school with useful knowledge, qualifications and / or experience. Today. most of them seem to learn very little and the examinations appear to be largely pointless, aimed more at producing statistics for Government use than anything else. Teachers going on strike for a day, a week, a month or even a year, will, in no way, incommode their pupils; many may even benefit from stand-in arrangements. The people who will be inconvenienced will be the parents who have abdicated all responsibility for their children and left them to the mercy of the State system; they will have to look after their own children for a change, which is about time.

Teachers' strike ? BRING IT ON ! Let's show these greedy self-obsessed individuals that anyone can be a teacher; let's teach our own children, and we'll do a much better job than the schools currently do.