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We sure about this, are we?

Nearly a million public sector workers will be given inflation-busting pay rises as a reward for their efforts during the coronavirus pandemic.

Teachers and doctors will see the largest pay rises at 3.1 per cent and 2.8 per cent respectively, which the government said is to recognise their “efforts on the frontline during the battle against Covid-19”.

Teachers have, largely, been doing sod all. They’ve been at home on furlough.

For this, a pay rise?

44 thoughts on “We sure about this, are we?”

  1. Have teachers been on furlough? I thought they were basically just mothballed on full pay.

    At my daughter’s school, after the first few weeks during which the teachers issued desultory WhatsAppy videos of themselves singing about how much they missed the children, we lapsed into a routine of Google classrooms providing about an hour’s school work a day and, save for a 15 or 30 zoom ‘chat’ per week, no teacher input at all.

    There’s an Ealing comedy lurking somewhere in all this …

  2. They’ll take the cash, not even say thanks, and still call you a Tory C*nt, so it isn’t even political.

  3. Not true. Teachers have all been in looking after Key worker and vulnerable children which has not prevented the Idiot Party suddenly discovering a passionate interest in educational disadvantage (having cancelled almost all funding directed at it for the last ten years ) as means of bullying teachers and schools into risking their lives still more.
    That said this has zero to do with rewarding the Public sector it is just anther way of boosting demand by plunging the country even further into debt .
    You do know whats coming next year right ..and you surely are not so stupid as to think those wankers care about anything but their own jobs right … and you have surely realised that every decision is coloured by trying to keep recession away form Brexit …
    Right …? I mean whatever our politics we are all adults …please tell me I am not the only one to work out that they do not give a fuck how many old,ladies due in care homes if they get Brexit done in some way they can pretend is not a disaster.
    That is what is behind everything including this hand out- fat arses reaming on green leather and large salaries.

  4. Edward Lud’s experience is so uncannily like mine – down to the last minute detail – that either our children go to the same West Sussex school, or there is a national conspiracy among teachers to make us feel like mugs.

  5. Sounds like you’re in Newmania’s part of the world, Mr Vara.

    And he’s telling you you’re not a mug, so obviously you can relax.

  6. When are we going to admit that schools are a woefully inefficient, antiquated system that needs to be phased out?

    Since it’s basically State institutionalised childminding, just give the parents enough money to hire a sexy au pair. The educational material is all on the internet.

  7. I think this is about inflation. We haven’t had enough for a long time and we need to kill off some inefficient businesses, especially when the market is correcting itself now that everyone realises that the high street is an awful place to buy things. If you give the public sector enough of a pay rise it will force the private sector to respond in kind, thus creating the inflation we’re so desperate for and ending the plague of poorly productive high street retail employment.

  8. At least the under-utilised nhs staff have kept themselves busy making Tik-Tok videos. Teachers can’t even be bothered to do that.

  9. Ian B, I am all in favour of sexy au pairs. But having seen probably dozens of them, I can tell you they were all munters.

  10. “bullying teachers and schools into risking their lives still more”

    So teachers risk their lives when they go to work in normal times? Thanks for the information, Newmy.

    What has changed to put them more at risk now? Surely you cannot mean a deadly disease that seems both hard to catch and not very deadly. Maybe we should test the vaccine on them

  11. You meant reaming Facepaint–because that what you remain scum have been trying to do to the UK all along. Time all remainiacs were punished. A 95% treason tax on capital and income should do nicely.

    As others say above this is Blojob vitru-signalling.

    Teachers–or Marxist agitators as they should better be known–hate his guts so no votes there.

    Doctors–well they are heading for the dereliction of duty scum bucket as well. UK govt own report says 200,000 dead from LD NOT C19. Pretty bloody disgraceful. Allowing –indeed helping fearmongering and telling cancer patients to fuck off. No reward due in my book. Punishment instead.

    Of course the costumed thugs get a payout to keep them sweet.

    Only the military might deserve this cash.

    Worse still is that Bloj still thinks printing money is the way to go.

  12. Friend of mine is a teacher. Called me a few weeks ago, asking if I’d got any rocks, as he was spending his time off work remodelling his garden. When he and his wife came to collect some, I asked him where his daughter was. ‘Oh, she’s at school’ he said. Seeing my quizzical look, he continued ‘I’m a key worker you see, so she’s entitled to go’…………

    Its good to know that unemployment is rising to 1980s levels (all from the private sector) and that the public sector who have fucked up this covid situation royally will be getting a nice bonus…..

  13. Edward Lud,

    By definition, sexy au pairs are sexy and cannot, therefore, be munters. Those with a munter fetish may well, of course, consider munter au pairs to be sexy.

  14. Teachers have been preparing work for online learning and for parents to collect for homeschooling.

    I’m a clerk/techie in a school and I’ve been in nearly every day since the end of April. There is a lot of preparing and copying of work for students to do at home. Most teachers were off, but the school was open for half a dozen students.

    I bet I don’t get a pay raise, though. Or any of the office staff who manned the phones and distributed materials to parents, or the tech who maintained the laptops we loaned out to students. There’s a lot of admin work to do at this time of year that has to be done regardless.

    But, the teachers are the first string (and a lot of them on the fiddle), so they get all the attention and pay raises. They’ve been on a work to rule of sorts here in NI for about five years, refusing to do some admin work they’d been doing since time immemorial,

  15. I know that “anecdata” isn’t, but… At a friend’s school, they have had “key workers” children but virtually no teachers. All the work has been done by the TAs who appear to have turned-up in normal numbers, unlike the “professionals” who’ve been conspicuous by their absence.

  16. With the government sending signals like compulsory mask wearing, I can’t see much chance of a return to normal schooling this year. The teachers (unions) can just point to it clearly not being safe (the govt can’t argue, logically) and the long holiday can continue.

  17. The local state schools near me have had a few staff working to look after the children of key workers. The staff car parks are always nearly empty. Local teachers I know have been taking day trips, walking their dogs, gardening, etc.

  18. Mr Lud
    Does your significant other select the au pairs? My wife employed nannies for our progeny. All three were selected by her, and each one was a munter. I can’t think why…

  19. Teachers? Their pay should be stopped if the schools don’t open in the autumn.

    Doctors? Interesting article in yesterday’s Tel by an NHS GP: ‘the NHS has singularly failed in its mission to “protect lives”, particularly those of the most vulnerable’. When doctors start being frank you wonder whether they are approaching retirement but that may be too harsh on Dr Fitzpatrick – maybe he’s just an honest man who wanted to get that off his chest.

  20. Ian B,

    “When are we going to admit that schools are a woefully inefficient, antiquated system that needs to be phased out?”

    Since it’s basically State institutionalised childminding, just give the parents enough money to hire a sexy au pair. The educational material is all on the internet.”

    Primary school education is useful and delivers most of what kids carry through to adult life: reading,writing, maths, basic stats, and some basic science. You could get more than half of all kids to leave school at 13 and it would make no difference to GDP or their lives. Secondary school is an utter waste of time for most kids. Even quite bright kids. We leave school and get jobs that use precisely none of what we spent 3 years doing. Almost no-one solves a quadratic equation. And it’s not like I feel enriched by whatever I was supposed to learn about potassium permangenate or something in technical drawing.

    A tiny number of kids are the geeks who solve Fermat or go and work in Bayer labs, and we know who they are by the age of 13. You catch up with people later in life and almost no-one is a surprise. The kid who did great art is a graphic designer, the math geeks are in computing, the violent thug did 10 years for armed robbery.

    And many kids would be happier just getting out and making money, doing something they were interested in and creative and productive at. I’ve met all sorts of senior management who left school with almost nothing, who started life on a till in WH Smith, and 10-15 years later they’re a regional manager.

  21. I went into engineering and used maths geometry tech drawing and metalwork in my job, so I did learn some useful stuff at secondary school. There was a load of stuff that I never used of course. One observation I would make was how subjects were taught at such a snail’s pace, I was a reasonably intelligent kid but by no means a genius, but I could have learned stuff much faster.

    When I first went out into the world of work I was pretty hopeless at managing my money. Maths classes that covered this would be far more useful than the stuff that they do teach. Being good with personal finances makes a big difference to your quality of life.

  22. So Much For Subtlety

    Actually now is a great time to fire all the teachers and deunionise their replacements.

    Governments can’t fire teachers because the Unions. They can’t get rid of the Unions because a teachers’ strike would be electoral suicide.

    This is a once-in-a-thousand-year chance. Fire them all. Let them go on strike.

    Hire replacements.Refuse to recognise the Union.

  23. The reason you can get a CT scan tomorrow instead of after a six month wait is because cancer referrals are down about 50%.
    Save Our NHS they cried, and we did. Might the NHS return the favour and save the sick? Dream on.

    The state does not exist to serve us (with security, welfare insurance, roads, sewage). We exist to serve the state, and in particular the shibboleths of the NHS “front line workers” etc.
    It’s Murphy’s fascist wet dream made flesh, if only the spud had eyes to see.

  24. Stoneyground,

    “I went into engineering and used maths geometry tech drawing and metalwork in my job, so I did learn some useful stuff at secondary school. There was a load of stuff that I never used of course. One observation I would make was how subjects were taught at such a snail’s pace, I was a reasonably intelligent kid but by no means a genius, but I could have learned stuff much faster.”

    My point isn’t that some kids don’t learn something useful at secondary school. There’s certainly kids that do. But huge numbers don’t. Maybe they should be doing things more like skills training, or just weird subjects. Would it be any worse for a kid, bored with chemistry and geography to just choose to perfect their skills with Mario Kart? Or maybe playing a bass guitar better?

    We observe that adults make these sorts of choices and quite wisely. They pay for driving lessons rather than RE lessons. My wife does various craft courses (knitting, crochet etc) because that’s what she likes.

  25. “I’ve met all sorts of senior management who left school with almost nothing, who started life on a till in WH Smith, and 10-15 years later they’re a regional manager.”

    Except that path is increasingly shut off to those who start life on the tills, because management requires a degree. So the till operators must know their place and never dare to think they might be better suited for the managers job than some 20 something who studied ‘Business Management’ at some third rate former poly. Its educational apartheid.

  26. Jim,

    “Except that path is increasingly shut off to those who start life on the tills, because management requires a degree. So the till operators must know their place and never dare to think they might be better suited for the managers job than some 20 something who studied ‘Business Management’ at some third rate former poly. Its educational apartheid.”

    I hear this banded around all the time, and it’s a myth. It seems to linger around conversations and in the media, but there’s no evidence to support it and I’ve only once, in 30 years, in many companies, seen any example of not hiring non-grads. I suspect it was started by the universities just to boost their numbers.

    Most companies don’t care that much about degrees. OK, they care if the degree education applies (like biomed in pharma). They care if you have a degree and the next guy doesn’t and you have similar experience. Beyond that, it’s about how well you do the job. Company owners want to make money. Senior managers want good, reliable people who can do the job rather than people who give them headaches.

  27. Actually now is a great time to fire all the teachers and deunionise their replacements.

    That’s what I initially wrote this morning, but deleted as an Ecksian fantasy. In the real world there is no political will (or even clue) to do this. We can see the government making things better for the teachers (unions), not worse.

  28. I remember at primary school there being six of us, three girls and three boys who basically educated ourselves in maths and English. We were given Alpha text books with exercises at the end of each section and were expected to work through them on our own while the teaches concentrated on everyone else with their Beta books. We used to competitively rush through the work, trying to be the first to finish sections and race up to the teacher for marking. Interestingly, one of the girls failed her 11 plus, I recall her opening the brown envelope and bursting into tears. There was a boy who was not part of the group who, to everyone’s surprise, did pass his 11 plus although he didn’t do well at grammar school.

  29. Rob Moss,
    Be careful what you are desperate for. Covid has popped the ‘everything bubble’ that has been blowing for the last 20 years or so. A great inflation is coming.

  30. It’s the former Missus Lud what had the au pairs, Mr Phrastus. What her reasoning for hiring swamp donkeys might have been, I cannot say. I assumed that was the talent pool!

  31. Secondary school and sixth form meant I had five years access to loads of computers to program and interface, developing and maximising my skills. I actually *lost* access to comparable programming tools and equipment for several years by going to university, and leaving school at 13 would have lost all of it. It took me almost a decade to replicate the programming environment I had when I was at school.

  32. “Actually now is a great time to fire all the teachers and deunionise their replacements.”
    Problem is, those in charge of hiring and firing the teachers are themselves controlled by the unions.

  33. Jim/BoM4

    The CEO of Public Health England, Duncan Selbie, joined the NHS after school (possibly without even A-levels) as a clerk and worked his way up.
    Incompetence, ignorance and cluelessness does not seem to have hindered his rise.

    School leavers turned managers and graduates in management/business are often equally poor. There’s no ideal background for a good manager: some have it, some can learn it.

  34. BoM4 “They care if you have a degree and the next guy doesn’t and you have similar experience.”

    Maybe the company and it’s managers don’t care, but first the applicant has to get past HR.

    Start at the bottom and work your way up: it may work if it is a job for life in a not to formal company, it may work in an industry where recruitment is by reputation and informal contact, it probably works for most seld employment. But for ordinary people not having the bits of paper is a severe disadvantage.

  35. Theophrastus,

    “School leavers turned managers and graduates in management/business are often equally poor. There’s no ideal background for a good manager: some have it, some can learn it.”

    Absolutely. If anything, I’d say that in general graduates are better, although I think that might be more about correlation nowadays.

  36. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/20/inflation-busting-pay-rise-public-sector-workers/
    Inflation-busting pay rise for public sector workers
    Teachers and doctors will see pay increases at 3.1 per cent and 2.8 per cent as reward for efforts during pandemic

    “Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, said: “These past months have underlined what we always knew – that our public sector workers make a vital contribution to our country and that we can rely on them when we need them.

    “It’s right, therefore, that we follow the recommendations of the independent pay bodies with this set of real-terms pay rises.”

    The pay rises will also apply to senior civil servants, the judiciary and prison officers….”

    Teachers refuse to work, most NHS staff on holiday, most Docs & Nurses dancing in empty wards & surgeries, civil servants and judiciary on holiday and refuse to work. The few of each that are working are doing their job, nothing more

    Gutless, socialist Tory MPs yet again trying to buy Left votes. Left reaction, “Not Enough” “We Won’t be bribed”

    Will Tory MPs never learn “You can’t appease blackmailers”?

    Red Bull nails it:
    http://voxday.blogspot.com/2020/07/deconverging-red-bull.html

    Our public sector workers make a vital damaging contribution to our country:
    – 200,000 non C-19 excess deaths forecast by Gov’t due to lockdown & ‘Save NHS’

  37. djc,

    “Maybe the company and it’s managers don’t care, but first the applicant has to get past HR.”

    And in most companies, HR has no power. That is, companies under 300 people. They do the payroll and assist managers if there’s a disciplinary and so forth. But above that, how many companies have a HR policy against non-graduates that you know?

    “Start at the bottom and work your way up: it may work if it is a job for life in a not to formal company, it may work in an industry where recruitment is by reputation and informal contact, it probably works for most seld employment. But for ordinary people not having the bits of paper is a severe disadvantage.”

    I can tell you that what we value most in the world of software development and it isn’t pieces of paper. It’s experience, interest and determination. I would rather talk to an 18 year old kid who has spent his spare time building an app, website or game, than a computer science graduate with nothing else. The people teaching computer science in universities never left, have never deployed something used by thousands, had to correct damn stupid bugs. You spend time learning about sort algorithms, something almost no programmer has cared about for 20 years.

  38. BoM4, ‘the world of software development’ is a small world, one of creative, often self-employment. Even in the computing field, beyond software development getting past the gate-keepers is difficult.

  39. Bloke on M4 said:
    “in most companies, HR has no power”

    Formal power, no. But when there’s lots of applicants for a job, it gets passed to HR to wade through them and do a short-list. The HR bod doesn’t really understand what’s needed, but is trained to operate a “fair process”, so they look for something that can be seen as an “objective criteria”* to thin out the applications – such as binning any that don’t have a degree.

    * [yes, they’d use the plural; they’re generally trained but not educated]

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