Breaking news....

[Psychosplodge]

........UK public sector goes on strike.....


....Nobody really notices.

[Tzeentch's Dark Agent]

........UK public sector goes on strike.....


....Nobody really notices.

And on that day, not a single @*&! was given!

Seriously, I've had enough of the Public Sector, they protest ALL the time. Maybe they should get jobs where they are on minimum wage and actually have to do some work, then they can see what 'scraping a living' means. Schooling isn't work. I teach kids things all the time.

[Wolfshade]

Would explain why work is so quiet today.
(The office I work has a heady mix of public and private sector workers)

[Morgan Darkstar]

And i am having a nice day off....

seriously i dont care if you support the strike, however dont pretend you know what my job is like..

all you know is the bollocks fed to you by the government and the media.

I peform a job and provide a service that deserves respect regardless of sector public or private!

/RANT

[Tzeentch's Dark Agent]

I provide a service also, I make sure that your plumbing and heating works properly. I don't strike every 2 minutes however.

I've worked in the Public Sector, I just get on with whatever job that I'm doing. If times are hard then whining about it won't help, especially not if it causes massive disruption to the people you serve.

[Psychosplodge]

To be fair my dealings with them have been limited to the councils student finance people, and then later for two periods of time the job centre staff, and based on their demonstrated levels of competence they're lucky to have any sort of job...

[Morgan Darkstar]

To be fair my dealings with them have been limited to the councils student finance people, and then later for two periods of time the job centre staff, and based on their demonstrated levels of competence they're lucky to have any sort of job...

And I have had some "experiences" with plumbers. e.g. taking 3 weeks to source a part I found in a day. to trying to charge 300 quid for a toilet repair

using your logic... all plumbers must be lazy cowboy's ?

[Tzeentch's Dark Agent]

I should probably apologise for my poor attitude/manners, rather stressed out today...

[Morgan Darkstar]

I should probably apologise for my poor attitude/manners, rather stressed out today...

no problem no offence taken :)

it just annoys me when people criticise, without seeing 'or wanting to see' the problem from the inside.

[Tzeentch's Dark Agent]

Just for the record, I backhand our Plumbers who mess the customer around. (not literally)
I can't stand pissing off customers. Bad for business, bad for reputation.

I was a Medical Intern for about 2 years.

[wittdooley]

Maybe they should get jobs where they are on minimum wage and actually have to do some work, then they can see what 'scraping a living' means. Schooling isn't work. I teach kids things all the time.

You mean, because teachers make SOOOOOO much, right?

This is the sort of attitude that abounds in the US as well, and is quite frankly, so insulting it almost doesn't warrant response.

Almost.

Today, teacher's are: Educator, Parent, Psycologist, Doctor, Motivator, Mediator, and for the younger levels, Cat-Wrangler, all at the same time.

And you know what they're rewarded with? Phrases like, "Those who can't do, teach." It's insulting.

And you know what my wife does with "all the time off" she has in summer? She tutors her incoming students that have reading deficiencies FOR FREE so that they can be as comfortable with her as possible for the next school year. Oh yeah, that's in addition to working a summer job so we can try and make a bit more money and not have to "scrape a living" because she's on a pay freeze for the next three years.

[eldargal]

Agree with Wittdooley on this one. Teachers in particular are horribly treated, have immense responsibilities and stress placed upon them then get rewarded with vitriol whenever they ask for better conditions which will ultimately benefit students. Even the humble bureaucrat gets a rough time. Bureaucracy gets blamed for everything, and hwo governments respond not with reducing the amount of regulation, red tape and 'burueacracy' but by cutting the number of public servants so there are fewer people overseeing said regulations, red tape and burueacracy. So it gets more inefficient.

[Tzeentch's Dark Agent]

I should probably apologise for my poor attitude/manners, rather stressed out today...

Read the above.
I apologise for my comment, I didn't really think about it.
I can promise you that there aren't many teachers here that would do what your wife does, my stepbrother has had literally NO support with his difficulties at school, he's just expected to get on with it.

[Wolfshade]

Just remember that they are not striking because they are under paid for what they do, but because of proposed changes to the pensions.
*They will have to pay more into their pension pot
*Work longer
*Have a career based average pension rather than a final sallery scheme
So they will have to pay more in to get less out essentially.
Most private sector schemes are based on what an employee puts into their pension pot (with employer match funding to a certain threshold) to what they take out, these are usually invested in the stock market/bonds and with the current low returns on the markets most peoples pensions are not performing as well as they expected so will either have to pay more in to make the shortfall or take a cut in their pension.
As the government plans to raise the state pension age to 68 (one of the highest ones in Europe) then all workers will be affected by that not just public sector workers.
I can certainly see why they are striking, I just wish I was a civil servant rather than being in a PFI...

[Psychosplodge]

To be fair my dealings with them have been limited to the councils student finance people, and then later for two periods of time the job centre staff, and based on their demonstrated levels of competence they're lucky to have any sort of job...


And I have had some "experiences" with plumbers. e.g. taking 3 weeks to source a part I found in a day. to trying to charge 300 quid for a toilet repair

using your logic... all plumbers must be lazy cowboy's ?

Until proven otherwise, it's a reasonable viewpoint.

http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m2zm52PeSr1rnrw64o1_400.png

Nah just messing with you, I just have had unsatisfactory dealings with them is all, statistically speaking there has to be somebody competent there somewhere...

[Morgan Darkstar]

statistically speaking there has to be somebody competent there somewhere...

unfortunately i was on strike today. :p

[MaltonNecromancer]

Just remember that they are not striking because they are under paid for what they do, but because of proposed changes to the pensions.

This.

In a nutshell, we teachers pay for our own pensions (which is held in the Teachers' Pension Fund). All teachers in the UK pay into this unless you choose to opt out, which no-one does.

The UK government runs and owns the Teachers' Pension Fund. They have used the money from it to gamble on the stock market.

They gambled away £64 billion of our money - none of it was taxpayer's money. We teachers earned that money, through teaching long hours.

Now, when the Average Working Man says things like


Maybe they should get jobs where they are on minimum wage and actually have to do some work, then they can see what 'scraping a living' means.

I would respond with:

Firstly, not all jobs are equal. Teaching is a highly skilled job, and frankly the reason we're paid more than minimum wage is because we deserve more than minimum wage. I work 8.30 until 7.30 most days, as well as weekends, and it's not manual labour. It's demanding, emotionally draining, intellectually challenging work. Could you trawl through four pages of poorly scrawled writing, trying to decide if a person had used enough adverbial clauses at the front of their sentence combined with an overall sense of structure where openings refer back to closings, with well-judged vocabulary and an implicit understanding of purpose and audience? Because that's what marking year 7 work takes. It gets far more complicated with year 11 and sixth form. And that doesn't even include working ceaselessly to personalise learning, making a lesson on some sometimes bloody boring topics interesting and engaging for a massively disparate group of individuals who at best quite like you and at worse actively want you to die. Teaching is outrageously hard, and how dare you suggest that it's not


real work

Whatever your fatuous and tenuously defined little concept is. The day that being a manual labourer is somehow harder work than beaing a teacher (and I've done both) will never come. Teaching is far harder in every way but the physical.

Now, rage at facile insults at my profession aside, imagine you've paid in thousands of pounds that you earned. It was not given to you: you worked for it. Then the government stole it from you, and had the audacity to run a smear campaign, in which they call you a thief. And everyone believes them (because in their heart, everyone hates teachers. That's something I've come to realise. The masses at large hate us. We're a tolerated necessity, nothing more.)

How would you take that?

How does an Average Working Man respond to his government stealing his money?

From the responses here, I'd imagine he knows his place, realises that it's his job to be his government's victim (because it's been going on for the last 80 years in the UK - the Teachers' Pension Fund has been a source of easy cash for every government, Conservative and Labour, so "Voting them out" won't help because they all do it.)

Maybe the Average Working Man is spineless enough to take that massive hit (which in real terms is going to cost teachers about 20% of their pay packet - could you lose 20% of your pay each month? Because I sure as hell can't), but I kinda doubt it. I think he'd get good and angry, and start looking at legal action. Like us.

Spouting off annoyingly macho nonsense like


I don't strike every 2 minutes however.

serves only to illustrate

a.) You have NO idea what you're on about and
b.) No seriously, you have no idea what you're on about. In simple terms: we've been stolen from; we're not happy about it; voting will change nothing as it is the system at fault rather than a single political party, and thus striking is the only option we are left with.

Now, you might roll over and play good little serf. Fair enough - I suppose it's fine, "so long they don't take the yam from your savouring mouth" to quote Niyi Osundare. Well we refuse to. These people are not our lords and betters; they're just thieves with good PR.

Anyway, when they come for you, and steal from you, don't worry - we teachers will remember the lessons you taught us: to tell you to shut up and stop complaining, and maybe do some real work, like say marking 187 exams in your spare time.

[Wolfshade]

Don't forget that not all public sector workers are teachers and as of 2008 1 in 5 of the working UK population were employed within the public sector, this figure would also exclude those on PFI (or similiar) contracts, who while their activities are for public sector bodies e.g. the Ministry of Defence, are employed by a private industry e.g. BAE Systems so should arguably be slightly higher.
(Also that not all teachers are public sector workers).
Too often this issue is directed solely at teachers and they get banded with the "get a real job" attitude as mentioned by previous posts.

[Psychosplodge]

unfortunately i was on strike today. :p
lols

[Tzeentch's Dark Agent]

Egads, a lot of hate coming my way! :/

[Aldramelech]

The Economy is all *ucked up, the country is in so much debt its unimaginable, most people can't afford any kind of pension but as long as you lot are alright?

I'm not saying your job is easy but it is certainly no harder then anybody else's, try getting shot at for a living.

The country does not have the money, and that's down to the previous government not the present one, you know, the one YOUR unions supported and still support. So lets give you exactly what you want, who needs healthcare for everybody?

[Wolfshade]

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has predicted that the cost to the taxpayer of providing public sector pensions will more than double to £9bn by 2014/15. Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15925017
This strongly suggests to me that the public sector pension pots are underfunded. My sympathy for the cause becomes more stretched, if you can't afford something, you cut back until you can.
I do not understand why either tax payers in general should have to be penalised to pay for this deficiet or why money that could be used to pay current employees should be re-directed to pay for those who are no longer providing a service.

[Drunkencorgimaster]

I think when TDA said "I am sorry" two times previously he was trying to "apologize."

a·pol·o·gize   
verb (used without object), a·pol·o·gized, a·pol·o·giz·ing.
1. to offer an apology or excuse for some fault, insult, failure, or injury: He apologized for accusing her falsely.
2. to make a formal defense in speech or writing.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/apologize

We educators can continue to blast him of course, but I suspect he might possibly have been trying to retract his original statement.



This.

In a nutshell, we teachers pay for our own pensions (which is held in the Teachers' Pension Fund). All teachers in the UK pay into this unless you choose to opt out, which no-one does.

The UK government runs and owns the Teachers' Pension Fund. They have used the money from it to gamble on the stock market.

They gambled away £64 billion of our money - none of it was taxpayer's money. We teachers earned that money, through teaching long hours.

Now, when the Average Working Man says things like



I would respond with:

Firstly, not all jobs are equal. Teaching is a highly skilled job, and frankly the reason we're paid more than minimum wage is because we deserve more than minimum wage. I work 8.30 until 7.30 most days, as well as weekends, and it's not manual labour. It's demanding, emotionally draining, intellectually challenging work. Could you trawl through four pages of poorly scrawled writing, trying to decide if a person had used enough adverbial clauses at the front of their sentence combined with an overall sense of structure where openings refer back to closings, with well-judged vocabulary and an implicit understanding of purpose and audience? Because that's what marking year 7 work takes. It gets far more complicated with year 11 and sixth form. And that doesn't even include working ceaselessly to personalise learning, making a lesson on some sometimes bloody boring topics interesting and engaging for a massively disparate group of individuals who at best quite like you and at worse actively want you to die. Teaching is outrageously hard, and how dare you suggest that it's not



Whatever your fatuous and tenuously defined little concept is. The day that being a manual labourer is somehow harder work than beaing a teacher (and I've done both) will never come. Teaching is far harder in every way but the physical.

Now, rage at facile insults at my profession aside, imagine you've paid in thousands of pounds that you earned. It was not given to you: you worked for it. Then the government stole it from you, and had the audacity to run a smear campaign, in which they call you a thief. And everyone believes them (because in their heart, everyone hates teachers. That's something I've come to realise. The masses at large hate us. We're a tolerated necessity, nothing more.)

How would you take that?

How does an Average Working Man respond to his government stealing his money?

From the responses here, I'd imagine he knows his place, realises that it's his job to be his government's victim (because it's been going on for the last 80 years in the UK - the Teachers' Pension Fund has been a source of easy cash for every government, Conservative and Labour, so "Voting them out" won't help because they all do it.)

Maybe the Average Working Man is spineless enough to take that massive hit (which in real terms is going to cost teachers about 20% of their pay packet - could you lose 20% of your pay each month? Because I sure as hell can't), but I kinda doubt it. I think he'd get good and angry, and start looking at legal action. Like us.

Spouting off annoyingly macho nonsense like



serves only to illustrate

a.) You have NO idea what you're on about and
b.) No seriously, you have no idea what you're on about. In simple terms: we've been stolen from; we're not happy about it; voting will change nothing as it is the system at fault rather than a single political party, and thus striking is the only option we are left with.

Now, you might roll over and play good little serf. Fair enough - I suppose it's fine, "so long they don't take the yam from your savouring mouth" to quote Niyi Osundare. Well we refuse to. These people are not our lords and betters; they're just thieves with good PR.

Anyway, when they come for you, and steal from you, don't worry - we teachers will remember the lessons you taught us: to tell you to shut up and stop complaining, and maybe do some real work, like say marking 187 exams in your spare time.

[Tzeentch's Dark Agent]

I think when TDA said "I am sorry" two times previously he was trying to "apologize."

a·pol·o·gize   
verb (used without object), a·pol·o·gized, a·pol·o·giz·ing.
1. to offer an apology or excuse for some fault, insult, failure, or injury: He apologized for accusing her falsely.
2. to make a formal defense in speech or writing.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/apologize

We educators can continue to blast him of course, but I suspect he might possibly have been trying to retract his original statement.

Thank god that someone read my posts. Everything is getting a little bit heated here for my liking.

[MaltonNecromancer]

I should apologise.

It's been a really hard time to be a teacher lately. Especially when you're up late, desperately stressed about getting coursework marked, and then you hear the head of OFSTED say that teaching isn't stressful, and that any teacher who claims to be stressed is simply making excuses for a lack of effort.

I had a bit of a cry over that one.

Sorry TDA; you got a full-on blast of hate you didn't really deserve there. You had already apologised, and I was up late and already angry. My bad.

...


You know, I've been teaching for nine years now, and back when I started, it was the greatest job in the world. It used to make me so happy. It was crazy hard work, but it was so worth it.

I wouldn't recommend teaching to anybody any more. :(

[Emerald Rose Widow]

This strongly suggests to me that the public sector pension pots are underfunded. My sympathy for the cause becomes more stretched, if you can't afford something, you cut back until you can.
I do not understand why either tax payers in general should have to be penalised to pay for this deficiet or why money that could be used to pay current employees should be re-directed to pay for those who are no longer providing a service.

While cutting back when you aren't able to afford things makes sense, it is annoying how education seems to always be one of the first things cut, despite its importance to society. I know in America when they began Austerity measures education cuts were one of the first things proposed instead of cutting back on bloated defense budgets and wasteful spending on projects that have not been working for years.

As I understand it things arent that much different over there in the UK financially and budget cuts wise, am I correct?

[Wolfshade]

The civil service was the first place to get "streamlined" with a number of agency's being shut down or merged.
Not terribly different, but it is not just teachers that the proposed changes are affecting. Trouble with alot of these public sector pension schemes is that they are underfunded, so the money they receive in (from contributing members and returns on investments) are less then they are paying out. This shortfall is then made up by taking money from the treasury, for instance £2.5x10^9 was injected into the teachers' pension scheme 09-10.

[MaltonNecromancer]

I do not understand why either tax payers in general should have to ... for those who are no longer providing a service.

Because the government stole their motherfrakking money. We have overpaid our pensions to the tune of £64 billion. This $64 billion was spent by the government on risky investments during the boom years (both Labour and Conservative governments did this).

They shouldn't have used the money, but they did. Now they've lost it, they don't want to pay it back.

Imagine three kids: Dave and Tarquin, Timmy. There's also Dave's dad, Phil.

Dave is friends with Timmy and Tarquin. He offers to look after Timmy's favourite toy.
Tarquin and Dave play together while Timmy is away. They have some toys of their own.
Tarquin, being an idiot, breaks his toy very quickly, and asks Dave to get him a new one.
Dave, knowing that Tarquin is rich, buys him a new toy quickly, and the two remain bestest friends.
Well, Tarquin will occasionally ask Dave for stuff that he immediately agrees to, just to remain his friend.
Now, Dave is a lot like Tarquin- he is also a clumsy, stupid oaf, and breaks Timmy's toy while playing with it, but doesn't want to spend any of his money on it, so he tries to hide what he's done.
Timmy finds out Dave has broken his toy, and is really angry.
Timmy asks Dave to buy him a new toy, like he did for Tarquin. Dave refuses because he can't really afford one. Also, because Timmy's quite poor, and so can't offer Dave anything.
Timmy gets angrier, and asks for a new toy.
Dave goes to his dad, Phil, and whnes that Timmy broke his own toy, and that Timmy is now bullying Dave into buying a him a new one. Dave says that he needs his money for really important things that will help other people. Dave is actually still using his money to try and win Tarquin's friendship, but Phil doesn't know this.
Dave shows up and starts having a go at Timmy, abusing him and insulting him, all while Dave stands in the background, rubbing his hands. There's nothing Timmy can do to take Dave's precious money.

Dave is the UK government.
Tarquin is the banking system.
Timmy is the education system.
Phil is the general public.

[DarkLink]

I don't want to sound disrespectful to teachers, but at least in California they seem to complain about their lot in life more than anyone else, even though they actually get relatively decent pay and benefits. Here, we have a relatively long summer break, so considering teachers usually work about 9 months a year, significantly less than the average full time worker, they're making a fair amount of money. And while you can talk about having to put in extra hours after work, I can't think of many white collar jobs that don't require you to do that. Teachers here also have absurd job security, thanks to a massive union. Once you've worked a couple of years, you practically have to be arrested on drug charges or something to get fired.

I don't know how that compares to teaching in the UK, but frankly I don't have too much sympathy for teachers complaining about their pay when there are plenty of other professions that are just as important getting paid just as poorly. I mean, if they were a soldier then instead of three months of vacation most summers they would be shipping to some foreign country to potentially get shot at for a year instead, and getting paid less to do it. Heck, my dad works for the state as an engineer, and literally makes half of what he would in private industry. The benefits used to almost make up for it, but California's budget is... really messed up, so for the last five years there have been no raises, furloughs, etc.


And pensions as they exist currently in general are pretty much unsustainable. The math just doesn't work out as people live longer and longer after retirement. Aside from government mismanagement of money, there's going to have to be some widespread change to that whole system, and similar systems such as the US's Social Security.

[Wolfshade]

Because the government stole their motherfrakking money. We have overpaid our pensions to the tune of £64 billion. This $64 billion was spent by the government on risky investments during the boom years (both Labour and Conservative governments did this).
They shouldn't have used the money, but they did. Now they've lost it, they don't want to pay it back.
The fund is under funded, the liabilities out weigh the assets as can be seen in the audits.
On average for every £1 a teacher pays into this fund the government matches to the tune of £2. This means that either you have to have two people paying in for every one taking out, continually, or you have to invest the money to try and gain the money back.
Technically yes any investment is a gambled, but, how is that any more of a gamble than investing your that maximum money in your ISA and expecting a 8.0% return and only getting 3.5%, the person who is responsible for investing that money did't steal it, its just that the returns were based upon market forces. How is this different to any other investment? If what the government did with the teacher's pension fund (which I don't know) why not opt out and have a private pension?
This is before we even touch on any of the other public sector works final salary schemes that are solely funded through general taxation...
What I have said is that I understand why they do it, and if I were in the same position I would not be happy (understatement). Unfortunately, the levels of sympathy in the private sector is going to be low as they compare their pension options with public sector and are arguably jealous of the conditions, they seem their funds not performing as expected and wondering why they should pay out because some one else's isn't. You could also say that the government shouldn't have bailed out Northern Rock for very similar reasons

[Tzeentch's Dark Agent]

Let's all just kiss and make up!
Brohugs all around!

(apparantly the make-up sex will be fantastic?)