Today I'll mostly be on strike.
Wish us luck. Back tomorrow.
In the meantime, watch This is not the Daily Show. Thanks to Adrian for drawing my attention to it. If only teachers were as good as writers with teh funny...
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Best of luck mate. I think your strike is just the start.
Oooh! Will you be wearing a donkey jacket, warming your hands on a brazier, and shouting "SCAB!" at truckers who try to break the line?
Coverage on Radio 4 seemed to focus on the problems working parents would have looking after their kids. As if schools are little more than glorified child-minding services. (Although, to be fair, one mum said she was going on a demo alongside her child's teachers, which was heartwarming.)
good for you!
While I sympathise with your cause, sadly I think all public sector workers are screwed for the next decade. The gubberment is going to use whatever money it's got left in the coffers to keep the property market bubble from popping just long enough to try and scrape through the next general election.
This means huge bailouts for badly run banks and all manner of ill advised schemes to help out dozy home-owners who bit off more than they can chew. This will contribute to massive inflation so your salary will be worth even less in real terms, but that's OK because nobody really understands inflation and in any case it's laughably easy to fudge the figures, so it won't worry the voters.
My advice - find a job in the private sector, or be prepared for some serious belt tightening.
Good luck Slammers! Right behind you (or as near as possible from Barcelona).
All the best, Annie. I hope the bastards cave in under pressure.
With the government on the run at the moment, a series of strikes could have a genuine impact. Bring to their knees, comerade!
Best of luck. And that video is magnificent.
Thanks, my friends.
Tim, that is very heart-warming. I've heard nothing but positive stuff from parents, and nothing but negative stuff from the media (except for the Economist, who were fairly positive about it.)
LC, Oh, I intend to. Though if we follow that through, let’s picture how it would be if everyone thought, sod this for a game of soldiers, I could make more in the private sector, and all left.
Teachers left, nobody to educate kids/provide bargain childcare; nurses left, nobody to patch up sick people; firemen left, nobody to put out fires; police left, nobody to fight crime; coastguards left, nobody to rescue people at sea...
Result, an illiterate, innumerate, unskilled, unsocialised, sick, vulnerable workforce - wouldn’t the economy be more fucked – they’d save a lot of money on those pricey public sector wages though.
On the other hand, we could refuse to siddown and shutup – stay and make our voices heard until the value of the people who make society actually function is recognised. How long before this happens? Probably it will never happen, but governments trade on the fact that people in these kinds of jobs aren’t doing it for the money but because they have a social conscience. That doesn’t mean they should be able to take the piss, however. And I find the ‘we’re too poor to pay you properly’ argument very, very hard to swallow when they’ve
poured billions down the toilet on unworkable and hardly vital IT projects in the last 7 years, just to quote one of many examples.
Anyway, today we were serenaded by Billy Bragg, which makes my sixty quid loss of earnings this month all worth it.
I've long had a romantic view of striking, which is pretty stupid really. I'm more of a "work to rule" man myself.
Fair play to you, I don't believe you'd do it unless you had to, especially when you consider the loss of earnings.
My dad used to be a teacher, and a rather militant one at that, and I'm sure he was involved in a teacher's strike back in the 80s.
If there was some way I could assist, I would.
Thanks, Billy. It's just good to hear people being positive after all the stories on TV and in the paper. Work to rule, don't even get me started on the issue of unpaid unacknowledged overtime...
It is very interesting watching the news when you’ve been inside events. Has given me a whole new perspective on the BBC for example. I fondly imagined them to be unbiased and impartial and disinterested and all that…
Ed Balls said he was ‘disappointed’ and condemned the strike - well he would say that, wouldn’t he? When have you ever heard a politician in government support a strike? He’s schools secretary, for God’s sake.
They don’t give any voice to the teachers. Instead, they lead the story by interviewing a woman in a nurse’s uniform.
‘They’re not thinking about us single parents, who can’t afford to take the time off work. They’re just thinking about themselves.’
The irony of this doesn’t seem to strike her.
First love, we’re protecting public sector salaries across the board by striking – when they come after your pitiful wages by fiddling the inflation figures don’t look for sympathy from the teachers.
And second, aren’t you lucky you get FREE CHILDCARE AS WE SIMULTANEOUSLY EDUCATE YOUR KIDS, FOR FREE – yes, that’s right, we are in loco parentis as well as teaching them – wonder what the going rate for a private childminder would be? How much would private childcare cost if your kid wasn’t at school? In other words, teachers make your working life possible.
And when teachers start to leave the profession because they can’t afford their fuel bills or their mortgages anymore, and schools can’t find anyone to teach their classes, that’s going to be just a bit more disruptive for single parents than a one day strike for which you had 3 weeks’ advance notice. ALRIGHT? Grrrrr…
You should have your toes rubbed with unguents by civil servants at the end of every working day. Decent pay would be good too. Hope you get both eventually.
Annie, The Glasgow University Media Group
http://www.glasgowmediagroup.org/component/option,com_frontpage/Itemid,1/
has some interesting things to say about the coverage of strikes in the press. For example unions always "demand" while employers "offer"...
Thanks, Arabella! Arabella, we miss you :-(
Thanks Marsha, that is very interesting reading.
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