Ed Miliband on the strikes. He’s just using one answer for all questions - #1 video on BBC News website today.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-13971770

As does Gideon:
http://liberalconspiracy.org/2010/10/27 ... f-4-times/

Meanwhile, singing bowls make a more pleasing sound - #2 video on BBC News website today,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13976598

Jesus [LIFTED] christ, what an idiot (Milliband).

I can't believe my eyes and ears. It's as if it was a joke video that someone had cleverly edited.

Broken record anyone? This guy is a complete pile of fail. I can't believe he won the leadership election after his involvement with the Blair/Brown years.

I can, though I, like most others, expected the other Miliband to win.

We’ve got a shower of weak politicians - in all parties. The natural order has always been for top flight politicians to take about 10 years to mature. The Milibands had about that time to go - the expectation was that Brown would win the last election, and as the Blairites retired, moved to the Lords or settled down as advisors and consultants to oil and defence firms, the next batch would start to rise through the ranks. This system works through all parties - again, Cameron was probably not expecting to be PM, I think he would have been better off in opposition for another term to ensure he’d got a proper grip of his party. The old guard survives in the Tories in the guise of Ken Clarke who, oddly, seems to the the only Tory who speaks sense these days.

But Brown was a disaster. His failure to win an outright majority in the last election forced changes to happen far too soon. We get a coalition led by two weak characters who are propped up by bluster and pretence, and an opposition party led by someone who seems to have the constant expression of a scared rabbit dazzled by headlights.

This may be the result of them all being career politician - no real taste of proper jobs and life on the streets. All have privileged educations and have been through similar, if not the same, Oxbridge courses. I think this shows that the mess will only get worse, not better.

I cannot see Ed Miliband as PM. Unless some kind of epiphany strikes him in the next few months, his party is doomed until it can reinvent itself. Miliband seems scared of everything - even Socialism, and I think this video speaks volumes about the way his team are attempting to manipulate the media, but it’s backfiring horribly on him.

The surprising thing for me was that the Coalition were pushing through these reforms on the teachers even though the Hutton report said that they were not important. The teachers will have to accept a higher retirement age as that should be the same for everyone. Though one suggestion is that you get it after 45 years so if you start working early then you can retire early, and vice versa. As for contributions they need to go up for all concerned. It should not be a race to the bottom as the Tories want.

AFAIK it was only a few years ago the teachers renegotiated a more reasonable pension scheme.

The coalition talks of negotiation but will not give any figures from which the Teachers Unions can negotiate on.

Let's put it this way, the pension and working package would have to be far more desirable before I would ever consider working as a teacher.

Erm what?

So a B.Ed graduate who starts teaching at 22 won't be able to retire until 67? If you start at 25, you can't retire until 70?

Besides which, the b*ll*cks being spouted is colossal. The Sun recently reported that the average teacher's pension is £24k - complete ar$e.

The teacher's pension is your highest final salary times your service length divided by eighty. The maximum calculable service length is 33 years.

• At the maximum Band D Salary £36,756, the maximum pension is £15,161.85
  
• At the maximum Band A Salary £45,000, the maximum pension is £18,562.50
  
• At the maximum Band A AST Salary £64,036, the maximum pension is £26414.85

Remember that those are the maxima - most teachers will never manage 33 years service. The average teacher's pension is £10,275 after 23 years service.

Meanwhile, the average MP pension is £21,364 after 13 years service. A bit f***ing hypocritical that

I do think that the 45 year rule is fair especially if you have a hard manual job.

I also think that the real gold plated pensions are for MP's and no one else. Maybe we should lower MP's pensions to those of the average working person? I would support that.

I'd also suggest increasing their wages to a realistic level and removing all expenses. That way they would know what it feels like when energy prices go up.

Yes that works for me, though give them a constituency office and enough money for 4 full time paid staff to deal with constituency matters as well, but paid directly from the government so there is no fiddling.

I'd suggest fixing MP's salaries to fixed multiple of the minimum wage. Want a pay rise, then everyone gets an uplift at the same time.
As for pension, whatever their pretensions, MP's are civil servants and should be subject to a composite of the same pension rules and provisions that apply to other civil servants and local council workers.

As for Francis Maude, he hasn't read the Hutton report. linky

Evan Davis apparently asked him this on an interview on Radio 4. He had to ask at least 4 times and the Conservatives lodged a complaint about him asking the question repeatedly within 10 minutes of the end of the program. The government is quite happy to bring up the Hutton report but they clearly haven't read it properly and have no interest in whether or not the contents is in agreement with their policy because the policy has naff all to do with the affordability of civil service pensions, it's about hammering civil servants, cutting their numbers and establishing a pretext to further restrict the rights and abilities of trade unions to protect and represent their members.

It would also help teachers if they didn’t feel the need to keep subsiding schools out of their own income. I’ve seen teachers buy supplies - pens, books, materials for classrooom activities out of their own pocket and not reclaiming them. I’m sure some go further than others, but when my other half does something like this, I remind her to reclaim the expenses. Schools need better funding and budget management. They certainly should not need to be subsidised by the staff.

I wish that rather than strike, they just worked to book.