Thursday 30 June 2011

Wot, no skool?

Despite some predictably lurid headlines today's teachers strike hasn't really made much impact on me: I haven't got any school-age children, and didn't see hordes of them marauding around the neighbourhood today either. Hardly much of the "Dunkirk Spirit" in evidence anywhere, though!

I can't help feeling that the teachers have jumped the gun a bit - egged on by other unions who are quite obviously spoiling for a fight over this. Although at the moment they're still enjoying a reasonable modicum of public support, what I would suspect is eventually going to happen is that some sort of compromise will be reached whereby existing accrued benefits will be safeguarded, but increases will be phased in over the next x number of years.

At the same time, it has to be said that successive governments have made a fair-sized rod for their own back here. It's not as if someone suddenly looked at a set of figures last week and thought "OMG - look: people are living ten years longer - we haven't got any money to pay their pensions!" When I was still at work six years ago there was a growing shortfall identified in the Local Government Pension Scheme which looked likely to result in us paying more into it, and working longer before reaping the benefits - and it was consequently already causing industrial unrest back then.

As ye sow, so shall ye reap.

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