Stop gabbing. Start doing.

[Mr Mystery]

How do?

This is a thread dedicated to the little political rumblings and ruminations that those in the game mention, and then seem to forget about (or at least fade quickly from the public consciousness). Which ones do you want them to just crack on and make real?

For me, it was the discussion of outright banning 'no win no fee' Solicitors. With Legal Aid existant, they serve little purpose other than to bring ever more spurious and ridiculous cases to court. Stubbed your toe in the shopping centre? SUE THEM! Had the car in front gently roll back into your vehicle? YOU'VE CLEARLY GOT WHIPLASH! SUE THEM! Feel someones joke, even though it's not aimed at you, or indeed involves you, has offended you? SUE THEM!

Utterly, mindlessly stupid. You simply should not be able to sue people without some kind of risk or stake in it, beyond making some cashmonies. Now, reclaiming all costs from the other side when you win? Yeah fair enough. Makes sense, and means those on limited means with a more or less open and shut case (to go back to car accidents, someone stacking it into the back of you, causing you to break a leg for instance) can still pursue this. But when it's some cockamanie 'whiplash' claim? No. Sod right off. In order to suffer whiplash, it has to be a decent speed involved, catch you otherwise unawares, and ideally involve you sitting in a car seat with no headrest, which by it's very presence prevents the motion needed to create the torsion involved in whiplash...

Clamp down on this, and watch insurance costs tumble. Even just tighten up the personal injury laws. The average whiplash payment is £2,000.00, which shunts up everyones premiums. And a Doctor is not allowed (no, really) to say you are not injured. Is it any wonder people try it on? With no-win no-fee there is literally NOTHING for them to lose. So I say get it tightened, and get it tightened now. In Germany for instance, you cannot make a PI claim where the speed involved was less than 10kph (or thereabouts, exact figure may not be 10kph!).

But what about you? What 'that's a good idea, so just get on and do it' political things appeal too you?

[Mud Duck]

Hows about cutting the size of the Government.

[ElectricPaladin]

We need to pay teachers more, and we need to achieve this by decoupling the budget of local schools with local property taxes. Teacher pay is the single biggest predictor of academic success, because (surprise!) if you pay teachers more, you get better teachers, who then do a better job of educating kids.

For that matter, I think that it's morally abhorrent to say that children deserve a cr*ppy education because their parents haven't done well economically. Sorry, kid, but all of your teachers are going to be Teach for America n00bs who are further hindered by having no operational budget. This makes perfect sense because it's totally your fault that your dad left right after you were born, your mom's on drugs, and your family is supported by your older brother who works at minimum wage because he had to drop out of high school to help take care of you. Oops! Better luck next time.

Say what you want about public assistance and people on it, but I think every kid deserves a chance. The way our system works right now, that "chance" is pretty freaking slim.

On the other hand, if we make public education a state expense, rather than a local expense, and arrange for all schools to be funded equally - and funded adequately, but that's a different story - then everyone will start with a level playing field. Well, except for the kids who get sent to private schools, but if teachers were getting paid what they deserve, there wouldn't be as much of a difference.

Oh, and while I'm on it, we need to dissolve local school districts. The way the system works right now, when I eventually get burned out on teaching in Oakland the only way I can take a break, maybe spend a year or two working with some easier kids, would be to quit my freaking job and find a new one. And when I'm refreshed and ready to work with at-risk, high need kids, I need to do it again. It's insane. If every state had a unified school system, I could just put in for a transfer. I might not get it right away, but at least it would be possible to move from hard districts to easy districts and back again. I think if it were possible, a lot of teachers would do it.

[Wildeybeast]

See, I agree on the pay us more thing, though I think it works differently over here. We have a national pay scale, so everyone in their first year of teaching gets paid the same (though with an extra bonus for those living in and around London), everyone in the second gets the same etc. Pay isn't set by schools of local authorities, though the cretin we have for an Education secretary wants to move us to that model.

[Mr Mystery]

If I'm right in thinking, he wants to link pay to houseprices in a given area. Which as Electric Paladin points out, will simply cause the best teachers to become localise, as they naturally seek the best wage possible. This means the areas currently poor just now, are likely to remain exactly the same way.

It's like those idiotic school league tables. My old Secondary School had a truly awesome special needs department, with a highly specialised and successful partial hearing unit. This meant it attracted a higher proportion of special needs students. In come the league table, and guess what? The school shows up poorly. Funding is reduced, because it's ostensibly failing, and now can't attract the smarter pupils. Never mind that thanks to the tireless special needs unit many kids were doing far, far better than you could reasonably expect. Just not enough A's and A*'s. End result? They closed down the Partial hearing unit, and drastically reduced the special needs unit. Utterly self defeating.

[Lukas The Trickster]

Ban Saturday evening TV

[Wildeybeast]

If I'm right in thinking, he wants to link pay to houseprices in a given area. Which as Electric Paladin points out, will simply cause the best teachers to become localise, as they naturally seek the best wage possible. This means the areas currently poor just now, are likely to remain exactly the same way.

It's like those idiotic school league tables. My old Secondary School had a truly awesome special needs department, with a highly specialised and successful partial hearing unit. This meant it attracted a higher proportion of special needs students. In come the league table, and guess what? The school shows up poorly. Funding is reduced, because it's ostensibly failing, and now can't attract the smarter pupils. Never mind that thanks to the tireless special needs unit many kids were doing far, far better than you could reasonably expect. Just not enough A's and A*'s. End result? They closed down the Partial hearing unit, and drastically reduced the special needs unit. Utterly self defeating.

What he wants to do is cut teachers (and other public sector workers) wages. Regional pay means everyone outside of London gets shafted, because based on this system people in London are paid appropriately (yeah right) and everyone else doesn't need to be paid as much because they don't live in London. By his reckoning, as a teacher in Derbyshire I'm paid something like 13% too much. How in god's name can you expect anyone to take a pay cut like that? The further north you go, the more you get shafted. It's not even been worked out properly, it takes no account of cost of living, and is based on a nonsensical 'average house price' as far as I can tell. I also agree entirely on the league tables thing.

[Sean_OBrien]

That is the way it is handled in the US to some extent...though far from completely. In fact, one of the big gripes for a lot of us who pay large amounts of taxes is that so much of it gets carried away. Although the specific means and schedule vary from state to state - the common budget breakdown works out to be a little like so:

8% of a schools funding comes from the Feds.
48% of a schools funding comes from the State.
42% comes from the Local district.

It will vary some from state to state and district to district - but that is the average across the board here in the US. The pay for teachers is then largely based on the total funding for the state and districts within the state. In most cases though, there are not substantial pay differences between a public school teacher in one district in the same state versus another district within the same state (barring things like locality and seniority related pay adjustments which are worked in by unions).

In reality, it is illegal for one district to spend significantly more than another district in the same state on eduction (several court cases going all the way up to Federal district courts). The crap hole in the projects is getting the same dollars per student as that nice public school in the burbs. The difference comes in the way the community supports the nice school versus how the community neglects the crap hole. You may have a new score board donated to the nice school, new paint done by the PTA during the summer, discounted services provided by former alumni. The crap hole though sinks deeper through neglect - not for lack of money. There generally isn't sufficient oversite through active local community to attend school board meetings and say it is dumb for the Superintendent of a School district to have a provided car and to jet off to three or four conventions a year on the tax payers dime.

For example. in the Bay area - one of the less well off school districts - Oakland Unified (48,000 students with a budget of around $700M - roughly $14.5K per student) - happens to have one of the highest paid Superintendents (Average Teacher salary of $54K a year while the Superintendents brings home $265K). Compare that to St. Helena Unified (1343 students with a budget of $22M - roughly $16K per student) which is just a short drive up Napa Valley and you see something different. There with active voters keeping the school board under control - you have teachers who have an average pay of $91K (including locality and seniority adjustments) and a Superintendent who only makes $189K. If you were to examine the books more closely in each district, you would likely find a higher incidence of wasteful spending in the Oakland Unified district as well.

Just a cursory glance though should tell you that the problem isn't with funding or anything like that. The money is there already - the problem is the corrupt institution which has been built up over the years prevents it from being used wisely. Dismantle the bureaucracy starting at the top and don't stop till you have thrown the bums out. Teachers are not off the table either. Once you have removed the machine, you can rebuild it in a manner which actually spends the money wisely - however that needs to be done at a local level, otherwise you will end up having the same thing happening all over again in another 20 years time.

As far as quitting and restarting though...that is what the rest of us do all the time.