school closed...teachers strike

[Andy Allen]

my kids will be off from school on thursday due to the teachers strike, were having to get my parents to have them for the day, anyone eles having the same problems finding child care, and do you agree with the teachers strike.

if this is going to be an ongoing thing then i can see it becoming a major issue for some peeps.

 

[DHTiling]

Nowt been said yet... i knew it was happening but not sure if all schools were taking part.

 

[doug boardley]

yep, our kids are off thursday too. I do sympathise with the teachers though.

 

[Deleted member 9966]

I don't have this issue yet but I can see it becoming a very bad irritant for parents.

Maybe one day I'll ask my dad about what he thinks of teachers pensions, as he has one, and has been retired and claiming it since 2003 I'd be interested to find out his views.

 

[White Room]

Heard a smidge on the news but did'nt know when though..

 

[Dan]

If I were in charge I'd tell the teachers and dole staff to sod off and we'll get staff that do want to work. Nobody has good pensions these days so why the hell should the tax payer have to suffer by paying for their special treatment.

Though should sort out their own pension at a competitive rate from any broker and just pay it like any tome dick and harry does each month.

The unions are just after more sign-ups and cash IMO. The money the unions make should go in a pot and then distributed when they're 67 or whatever and that'll sort 'em out till they're 120 if they live that long.

It's cheeky IMO. Most teachers only work about 200 days a year. They should get another job for the WEEKS off (not just days!) and save that cash for when they're wrinkly.

Rant over. haha.

 

[Deleted member 9966]

And union membership is on the decline. The declining trend is always the same when there's a recession on because people can no longer afford the monthly membership subscriptions and choose to cancel their membership to pay for other things.

 

[DHTiling]

If I were in charge I'd tell the teachers and dole staff to sod off and we'll get staff that do want to work. Nobody has good pensions these days so why the hell should the tax payer have to suffer by paying for their special treatment.

Though should sort out their own pension at a competitive rate from any broker and just pay it like any tome dick and harry does each month.

The unions are just after more sign-ups and cash IMO. The money the unions make should go in a pot and then distributed when they're 67 or whatever and that'll sort 'em out till they're 120 if they live that long.

It's cheeky IMO. Most teachers only work about 200 days a year. They should get another job for the WEEKS off (not just days!) and save that cash for when they're wrinkly.

Rant over. haha.

I once said to a teacher.. bah you have it ok with all those holidays each year..:lol:.. She went mad.. DO YOU KNOW we have to work in the holidays.. with sorting assignments/home work and planning each term out... OOOO i wish i said nowt..

 

[Andy Allen]

welcome to the real world i say.....were all having to make sacrafices and tighten our belts at the moment..

 

[Deleted member 9966]

I once said to a teacher.. bah you have it ok with all those holidays each year..:lol:.. She went mad.. DO YOU KNOW we have to work in the holidays.. with sorting assignments/home work and planning each term out... OOOO i wish i said nowt..

my dad was a teacher for 30 years. he was old school. he never worked during school holidays apart from taking it upon himself to do all of the teaching timetables across the entire school, cos he had that kind of mind to do it. and as for marking homework, he never set it so never had to mark it :smilewinkgrin: he liked the easy way.

 

[grumpygrouter]

My kids are off from friday....holidays start up here then. As for the strike, not heard anything up here at all..... and yes, teachers do have time off over summer, but they do actually put in a lot of their own time (and money) doing class preparation and marking which they don't get time to do in class time.

 

[Dan]

Recently become friends with a primary school teacher and she said that she doesn't do school work during personal time at all as they don't get paid for it. She said if things are not being marked or done in school time due to there being too much to do then they don't do it at all and next year don't even do the work for there to be something to mark.

So I think if teachers are working in their own time, it's probably because they've got too much of it. haha

And "class preparation" - what the hell is that?

 

[Deleted member 9966]

And "class preparation" - what the hell is that?

under the set curriculums and for Ofsted reporting, teachers are required to plan lessons. my Dad never managed this and hated it when jumped up suited people walked into his classroom telling him he had to do this.

 

[Dan]

Can't they plan them in school time though? What's all the sitting in the teachers room about?

Okay okay so if they do have to do a couple of days work out of their 180 they have off then perhaps they should get special super pension schemes that are above the going rate right now and the self-employed don't get that work 350+ days a year sometimes. My bad. haha

 

[doug boardley]

Lou has 22 hours teaching and 17 hours lesson planning but still has countless meetings, interviews etc to get in too.

 

[user123]

I taught various German levels at College and the amount of unpaid hours required was unreal, just like Doug said Lou has to do, it was absolutely ridiculous. Teachers have it tough here, they don't get the respect like they do in other countries where they have an image a bit like doctor or priest or judge, here they get all the aggro, endless stupid paperwork, class preparation - Dan, if you think those projector slides, science experiments, art projects and language sessions create themselves out of thin air, you got to be kidding. You the ofsted examiners, teaching room politics same as any other office politics, can't do a thing to discipline ever rowdier kids any more, and the support from the parents is pretty nilch as well, it's a really tough and draining job, depending especially what age range you are teaching. I understood the strike across the board of various service industries is to give a message that the ordinary people in ordinary jobs did not cause this banking crisis, and that the cuts are totally unjust when millions of pounds are still found for those in the upper 5%? They have my support for sure.

 

[One Day]

My kids are off this Thursday too.
TBH it narks me when the media spin it out as "evil teacher" inconveniencing hard working parents.
One mum on the news this evening was moaning about it costing her money.
My wife is glad of the extra time spent with the kids.
Without getting on my high-horse (too much:lol I moan inwardly when I see parents both working flat out to maintain a "life-style" and their children in pre-school and after-school clubs from 8:00am til 5:30pm.
You only have your kids once. Do without the new car / foreign holidays / designer goods / expensive mortgage.
It's the greed and pursuit of this debt-fueled "life-style" which has fed the greedy banks and ultimately caused the strike on Thursday anway!

Of course, many parents are struggling to simply make ends meet and HAVE to both work - but why are they in that situation? Inflation caused by....... yup, you got it!

Personally, I quit the rat race several years ago. Quit a well paid career, downsized house and now my wife is quitting her part time job.
It cost us 1000's in lost income, but the increased time as a family is blinkin' priceless.

Also, I think teachers, nurses, emergency services should be ring-fenced. They are building lives and saving lives.
Civil servants and ridiculous quango non-jobs should be cut.

 

[CJ]

One job I'd hate to do........constant abuse from the ickle gits nowadays. I don't think they have it easy, but who's gonna be next.

The govenment are just clutching at straws and messing about with peoples live by changing the rules, whilst they all sit in there big houses getting paid ridiculous amounts and getting a nice payoff/pension at the end of it.

 

[Dan]

My kids are off this Thursday too.
TBH it narks me when the media spin it out as "evil teacher" inconveniencing hard working parents.
One mum on the news this evening was moaning about it costing her money.
My wife is glad of the extra time spent with the kids.
Without getting on my high-horse (too much:lol I moan inwardly when I see parents both working flat out to maintain a "life-style" and their children in pre-school and after-school clubs from 8:00am til 5:30pm.
You only have your kids once. Do without the new car / foreign holidays / designer goods / expensive mortgage.
It's the greed and pursuit of this debt-fueled "life-style" which has fed the greedy banks and ultimately caused the strike on Thursday anway!

Of course, many parents are struggling to simply make ends meet and HAVE to both work - but why are they in that situation? Inflation caused by....... yup, you got it!

Personally, I quit the rat race several years ago. Quit a well paid career, downsized house and now my wife is quitting her part time job.
It cost us 1000's in lost income, but the increased time as a family is blinkin' priceless.

Also, I think teachers, nurses, emergency services should be ring-fenced. They are building lives and saving lives.
Civil servants and ridiculous quango non-jobs should be cut.

Touche, sir. Touche.

 

[Deleted member 9966]

Of course, many parents are struggling to simply make ends meet and HAVE to both work - but why are they in that situation? Inflation caused by....... yup, you got it!

who caused the rise in inflation then Impish?

 

[One Day]

who caused the rise in inflation then Impish?

Many factors have caused inflation but one of the main ones has to be house price rises. That's where most feel the pinch - myself especially! House prices rose through the "boom" years as they stopped being a home and became a "property" and "investment". I'm not going to argue the rights and wrongs and morality of it all. Just pointing out the facts as I see 'em! You can't deny that a society which wants it all, wants the best and wants it right now hasn't used cheap loans, credit cards and mortgage equity release to fuel inflation, hence feeding the greedy banks and helping to create the mess the system is now in.

 

[Deleted member 9966]

Also what people need to remember is that we are all living longer.

The current welfare state we have was set up after the second world war in the late 1940's. We created an NHS system from scratch, money became available due to worker's national insurance contributions to out of work servicemen and women, they were given housing and money to set themselves up. And the state pension was created with a pension age of 65 because back then, life expectancy for a man was a mere 66 and a half years. So the government of the day thought they would be quids in if the majority took their pensions at 65 and then people died the following year.

But with the rise of good quality nursing and medical care, people started living longer. Average life expectancy for a man is now around 79 years and a woman around 82 years. But since the 1940's no government has dealt with the fact that people are living longer and therefore would be taking more in the way of state handouts at the end of their lives. The governments since the second world war failed to increase pension ages in line with life expectancy and so people have enjoyed the last 70 years without any pain whatsoever.

The legacy we have left is that the current government now need to balance the books and cannot do so because there are more older people in the UK population than younger people and so more are taking out of the system at the top (and bottom because youngsters are unable to find work too) and there's a small portion of people in the middle (aged between 25 and 55) who are now being burdoned with changes to pensions to accommodate the longer life expectancies.

 

[Deleted member 9966]

Many factors have caused inflation but one of the main ones has to be house price rises. That's where most feel the pinch - myself especially! House prices rose through the "boom" years as they stopped being a home and became a "property" and "investment". I'm not going to argue the rights and wrongs and morality of it all. Just pointing out the facts as I see 'em! You can't deny that a society which wants it all, wants the best and wants it right now hasn't used cheap loans, credit cards and mortgage equity release to fuel inflation, hence feeding the greedy banks and helping to create the mess the system is now in.

the rise in house prices was because of low interest rates though. like you say, people were able to access low rate loans and credit cards like never before. interest rates were deliberately kept low by the Bank of England to stimulate economic growth. unfortunately, you can't have it both ways. so to get the economy booming, interest rates are low, people are encouraged to spend and companies take that profit for re-investment (well they should do, but not many did).

inflation is now increasing because the Bank of England have still not yet raised interest rates. if they do raise interest rates, people will be encouraged to save and not spend and money will be taken out of circulation and the economy will take longer to recover. This is a mistake the government had to learn from in the early 1990's. Hence why the Bank of England now control interest rates via monetary policy and not the government.

The whole economic situation is not as easy as people make out. There are fat cats in both public and private sectors who get enormous salaries, generous pensions and just pay lip service to the general public. Although I did not vote for the current coalition government, I admire them for tackling long avoided issues head on. This is going to be a very painful process to redress the balance.

 

[Andy Allen]

My kids are off this Thursday too.
TBH it narks me when the media spin it out as "evil teacher" inconveniencing hard working parents.
One mum on the news this evening was moaning about it costing her money.
My wife is glad of the extra time spent with the kids.
Without getting on my high-horse (too much:lol I moan inwardly when I see parents both working flat out to maintain a "life-style" and their children in pre-school and after-school clubs from 8:00am til 5:30pm.
You only have your kids once. Do without the new car / foreign holidays / designer goods / expensive mortgage.
It's the greed and pursuit of this debt-fueled "life-style" which has fed the greedy banks and ultimately caused the strike on Thursday anway!

Of course, many parents are struggling to simply make ends meet and HAVE to both work - but why are they in that situation? Inflation caused by....... yup, you got it!

Personally, I quit the rat race several years ago. Quit a well paid career, downsized house and now my wife is quitting her part time job.
It cost us 1000's in lost income, but the increased time as a family is blinkin' priceless.

Also, I think teachers, nurses, emergency services should be ring-fenced. They are building lives and saving lives.
Civil servants and ridiculous quango non-jobs should be cut.

when you say civil servants and ridiculous quangos non-jobs should be cut, would you include in that the 37 union chiefs each pocketing more than 100 grand a year in pay and perks.

perhaps they should donate some of there wealth to the teachers cause.

 

[Mike]

the kids 2 doors away were arguing today as one of them is off but the other is in school as only 1 of their teachers are on strike. the other must be a blackleg :lol: