Teachers' strike - what do you think?

If the teachers really wanted to punish the government they should introduce compulsory economics lessons for all pupils. Future governments wouldn't be able to get away with 'oh it's the deficit' arguments for every policy if people had even the vaguest grasp of what causes deficits and how you can pay them off.

'Remember when teachers, nurses, doctors and lollipop ladies crashed the stock market, wiped out banks, took billions in bonuses and paid no tax? No, me neither.' I totally agree with Terence. The cheek of the government in attempting to blame teachers for screwing up our children's futures is breathtaking.

Those reckless investments in the Lollipop Lady futures markets.

I don’t really know much about the issues involved in this particular dispute but isn’t all going to be pretty much the same for all the countries that are struggling to find money to replace all that which seemed to evaporate in the last recession? You can either print more money and call it ‘quantative easing’ or you can tell almost everyone that they have been spending too much and now its time to pay the piper. Unless, as an economy, you are ‘too big to fail’ (essentially only America) then printing money is unlikely to work, so that leaves the single option of the Inverted Robin Hood Financial Redistribution program which gives more money to the bankers so that they can afford to pay themselves the bonuses that they negotiated with themselves. How on Earth can anyone be upset about that ;O) Actually, I have missed out the final option, the Greek option, but no-one has tried that yet and I suspect people will wait until Greece, inevitably, defaults to see what the consequences are and whether it might be a viable option for their country too.

madou Well, to me I am in favour of the teachers’ side of argument, even though I don’t really know the full scale of issue, but from what I have leant from other unions who have expressed similar frustrations and anger over how far the government taking so called “cuts”. Government can’t go around picking and choosing teachers, NHS, police punishing them around as if they were the architecture of the problem caused by deficit government says they are tackling. Everyone in the country has agreed that something need to be done to reduce the deficit, but no one agreed with the government on how they want go about doing this. It is really preposterous to break one part to repair other; to balance it would be a fair action. It is concern if the country has debt of this scale, it also a concern if people are being made redundant, with no other feasible plan. There is no quick fix for this problem because it is not one or two years problem; instead, this has been in the making for past two decades.

It's a fact. Life expectancy is something like ten years more than it was forty years ago. Celebrate it and get over it.

Hi Alex :) all :) There is no easy answer to this one, only that I agree we all have to do something to say to the government, yes our country's in a mess but lets not rush any more in to cuts and look at other ways and to blame the any one but them selves is sheer strategy to get the fact that the government who came in to power last year mainly is to blame we asked them look after our money and then made a mess of it, would we still keep a accountant we were paying stupid money to look after our finances if he/she kept on doing what the government are doing NO. I feel for the unions/workers and if we all did what they are doing maybe government may slow down cuts and look at other ways.

Everyone agrees with the government plan, but almost everyone is also having problem with method, path and speed at which they are taking to implement this plan. I think they should slow down bit and thought properly through all the plans. It is a great idea, but I disagreed that it is a great way to execute it.

emm too2020 everyone does not agree with the Government plan. It's just plain stupid. During a recession the government should build up the infrastructure. It's cheaper to borrow and wages are lower and the multiplier effect insures that any investment made is multiplied. This is not some new crazy wheeze I've thought up. It's called Keynesian-ism. This Government plan is called Dickensianism. It's all about making sure that the poorest are made to pay for being poor. Listen to the hoooooray Henrys when any particularly nasty piece of legislation is being put through The House. The teachers going on strike at the end of the school year. Yawn. It's like students going on strike. Nobody really notices apart from those, like David Cameron, that can't afford child care. We used to have 85 000 coal miners. The media is gearing up to demonize those taking part in strike action. Many in the Tory Party would welcome it. It brings back the Thatcher spirit c1984. It's a win-win situation for them. David Cameron can show he has the balls of Thatcher. In the interest of fairness I don't know which Tory I hate more. Thatcher or Cameron? emmm I think it's a face-off.

union walking into a trap a la 1980 steelworks in consett. what else can they do though.