striking teachers.

[broadway]

The 1911 Llanelli railway strike, 2 shot dead by soldiers of the Worcester Regiment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llanelli_railway_strike

[LANDSURFER74]

pete75..
Yes ..totaly unreasonable ..... we live in a country where evidence is all .... where is the evidence that police killed pickets ... ?? Where !!
I spent 2 weeks of my time during the strike on leave, at Silverwood pit, Sunnyside, Rotherham ..... With my father - in -law Cliff, a miner from 14 years old ..he started as the pit pony boy ..did'nt see any of you there ...not a posh bicycle or a scrap of lycra to be seen!!!

[irc]

Six pickets were killed during the 1984 Miners strike presumably by the police

b
Where's the evidence for that statement? Or is it just a knee jerk anti police comment?

The Justice for Mineworkers Campaign lists the deaths during the strike. Two on picket lines. No suggestion of police involvement.

http://www.justiceformineworkers.org.uk/

According to wikipaedia the two deaths on picket lines were caused by a flying brick during a riot and by being hit by a truck. No police involvement in either.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_miners'_strike_(1984–1985

I was working from memory but just looked at Wikipedia and it says "Ten deaths resulted from events around the strike: six pickets, three teenagers searching for coal, and a taxi driver taking a non-striking miner to work." Given the level of violence shown towards pickets by some police officers(mainly from forces well away from mining areas) and not just on the picket lines is it unreasonable to presume pickets deaths were caused by the police?

Is it unreasonable? Yes.

If the police had killed anyone or been suspected of killing anyone during the strike it would have been front page news. It wasn't. As for levels of violence - the only people convicted of homicide during the strike were miners.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_David_Wilkie

The actions of some members of both the police and the miners during the strike can be criticized. If you are going to allege anyone caused deaths then I think a bit of evidence is required.

[Mick F]

Dear Mr Cameron,
Please find below my suggestion for fixing the UK's economy.


Instead of giving billions of pounds to banks that will squander the money on lavish parties and unearned bonuses, use the following plan.

There are about 10 million people over 50 in the work force. 

Pay them £1 million each for early retirement with the following stipulations:


1) They MUST retire. 
Ten million job openings - unemployment fixed.
2) They MUST buy a new British car. 
Ten million cars ordered - Car Industry fixed.


3) They MUST either buy a house or pay off their mortgage - 
Housing Crisis fixed.


4) They MUST send their kids to school/college/university - 
Crime rate fixed.


5) They MUST buy £100 WORTH of alcohol/tobacco a week. - There's your money back in duty/tax etc.

[Hemipode]

.


5) They MUST buy £100 WORTH of alcohol/tobacco a week. - There's your money back in duty/tax etc.

6) With the increased mortatility rate that'd probably go some way to fixing the pension deficit too !

[pete75]

pete75..
Yes ..totaly unreasonable ..... we live in a country where evidence is all .... where is the evidence that police killed pickets ... ?? Where !!
I spent 2 weeks of my time during the strike on leave, at Silverwood pit, Sunnyside, Rotherham ..... With my father - in -law Cliff, a miner from 14 years old ..he started as the pit pony boy ..did'nt see any of you there ...not a posh bicycle or a scrap of lycra to be seen!!!

Are you sure lycra had been invented back in '84?

[pete75]

[quote="Mick F"

2) They MUST buy a new British car. 
Ten million cars ordered - Car Industry fixed.
[/quote]

Are you sure Morgan have the capacity to make that many cars ?? Apart form them there is no British car industry.

Jag Indian
Landrover Indian
Aston Martin Kuwaiti
Ford American
Vauxhall American
Peugeot French
Nissan French
Bentley German
Mini German
Rolls Royce German
Honda Japanese
Toyota Japanese

[PW]

I'll retire, the house is paid for and I don't want another, I object to unnecessary car use/ownership so I won't be going there, the kids are grown up, though one is doing a PhD and a bit of teaching at a nearby Uni and the other's a military copper so not contributing to the crime rate (I hope!) and I gave up smoking in 2006. Looks like I'll be having a merry time in the pub then.

[thirdcrank]

I'd suggest anybody planning for the future might be well advised to get some sort of high-capacity racing barrow, ready for the not too far off time when that's what will be needed to leg it down to the shops with a load of £1 Zillion notes to buy anything that might be in the shops.

[PW]

Someone remembers the Weimar Republic!

[thirdcrank]

Someone remembers the Weimar Republic!

I presume you are referring to the greater part of the population of Germany whose leaders are being criticised for stubbornness in refusing to try to sort out the € by printing money. They are the people with the nightmare inflation memories. The entire developed world owes sums of money too vast to imagine. Our economy is being kept going by the government borrowing more money at the market rate and lending it internally at artificially low rates. Since this leads to increasing indebtedness which can never be repaid in full, creditors get uneasy, requiring higher rates of interest, which means repayment becomes even less likely. So-called quantative easing where the government creates more money to buy back bonds (ie repay some of its debts) eventually leads to a reduction in the value of that money AKA inflation. The only question facing us IMO is whether that inflation is fairly gradual but painful - remember in the 70's and early 80's we had inflation edging up to 25% - or astronomical, measured in zillions of percents.

We are going to see all sorts of unusual figures emerging here as house prices continue to fall and retailers sacrifice margins to maintain a semblance of market share, but the long term trend with inflation won't be benign.

[PW]

I was referring to the hyperinflation in 1920s Germany where the "Pay off the mortgage with a weeks wages in a barrow" syndrome actually happened. Sorry TC, it was a (gentle) dig at your age.

[thirdcrank]

I was referring to the hyperinflation in 1920s Germany where the "Pay off the mortgage with a weeks wages in a barrow" syndrome actually happened. Sorry TC, it was a (gentle) dig at your age.

Sorry PW. I got the point but then got carried away, but I really do believe that significant inflation is inevitable.

(PS Although I do tend to come the old soldier, I am "only" 66 going on 67 )

[pete75]

A Banker, A Tory, A Daily Mail reader and a Teacher are sitting in a cafe. The waitress puts down a plate with 12 biscuits on it.

The Banker eats 11 of the biscuits before anyone else can get to the plate.

The Tory leans over and says to the Daily Mail reader "Watch out - that teacher has his eye on your biscuit".

[Vorpal]

IMO, The sad aspect of a thread like this, is that it's not really about teaching, but rather the subsidiary role of schools which is to provide childcare. Let's suppose that teachers had decided to take industrial action by not teaching, but had decided to continue to report to their workplaces and look after their pupils. The apparent impact of the industrial action would then be zilch so it might run undefinitely, just so long as teachers could exist without pay. The real result of anything that went on for longer than a day or two would be harm to the children, especially 'deprived' children, and it would increase as the 'strike' dragged on.

In the meantime, top people's children would benefit from 'charity' meant for the poor in an earlier age. Teachers may not be poor, but I doubt if there is another country in the developed world where they are treated so badly as in this country, simply because the people most able to raise standards opt out of the state system.

In the USA, teachers are treated just as badly, and paid even worse. What's more, most US American teachers have not been able to rely on public funds for their pensions for some 20ish years. Now, the self-sustaining pension funds are being robbed to fill shortfalls in gov't spending & the politicians selling this to the public are *blaming* teachers because they somehow get a better deal than everyone else.