13-year-old girl crushed to death during teacher strike

[lightblue]

If that's what you agreed to when you started your job, fair enough. Changing the goalposts midgame is a different issue though. Many teachers will have accepted that they achieve lower wages than the average graduate (mainly in maths and science, history graduates it is a bit different), but looked at the pension plan as a way of catching up with the private sector.

Similarly, I (also a teacher in the UK) don't mind the pension age rising. We are getting older, and staying fit longer. My main problem is that the employee contribution also went up by 50%+ at the same time (from about 6 to over 9% of income), and that you will get less for it in the end. If you work longer you should pay more in during that time, and take less out after retirement, so I don't see why it all has to come at once.

If many of the people complaining had their overall wage packet reduced by £100 per month you'd complain too, especially with current rates of inflation. The teachers' pension scheme is not even in debt, so it is just a way for the government to quickly raise some more revenue to bail out greece/bail out banks/increase their own wages and pension provision. MPs work an average of 10 years and get a £21000 p/a pension on average plus a lump sum, teachers work 30 years and get an average of about £10000.

[Hauldren Collider]

MPs also do a lot more valuable work than teachers. As KH has pointed out, teaching is actually pretty low-value. Which doesn't mean it's unimportant, by the way.

[rah]

Most people that are doing a job they love, don't retire until they are unable.
Most people aren't doing a job they love. Jobs can be mentally or physically damaging. The only reason we're doing them is the goal of not having to do it until the day we die.
When I was younger, I was doing it to secure a good life for my daughter. Well she's now old enough that that's her problem. I'm only working until I don't have to anymore.
As you get older and your body starts to fail, you may have a slightly different perspective on the subject.

[lightblue]

MPs also do a lot more valuable work than teachers. As KH has pointed out, teaching is actually pretty low-value. Which doesn't mean it's unimportant, by the way.

If we cut the number of MPs by a third, would we notice? Probably not. Constituencies would be larger, but voting doesn't make a difference in most anyway. I also don' see how most do valuable work, the work is mostly done by civil servants and consultants behind them.

If we cut the number of teachers by a third would we notice? I'd say so.

That said, I am moving to the private education sector from September (more money, smaller class sizes, similar pension). Kids pay £20k per year to go to school, so you might say that their parents consider the teachers at the school as producing value, as they wouldn't pay it otherwise.

[Asher]

MPs also do a lot more valuable work than teachers.

Oh, you can't be serious.

All MPs do is shout at eachother like children all day then vote how their leaders tell them. They are worse than worthless because of their expense.

[kittenOFchaos]

Oh, you can't be serious.

All MPs do is shout at eachother like children all day then vote how their leaders tell them. They are worse than worthless because of their expense.

At times such as these, I merely need to quote Jim Hacker from 'Yes, Prime Minister':

"Being an MP is a vast subsidized ego-trip. It's a job that needs no qualifications, it has no compulsory hours of work, no performance standards, and provides a warm room, a telephone and subsidized meals to a bunch of self-important windbags and busybodies who suddenly find people taking them seriously because they've go the letters 'MP' after the their name. How can they be underpaid when there are 200 applicants for every vacancy, you could fill each post 20 times over even if they had to pay for the job."

Hopefully HC can learn something from this quote.

[Hauldren Collider]

If we cut the number of MPs by a third, would we notice? Probably not. Constituencies would be larger, but voting doesn't make a difference in most anyway. I also don' see how most do valuable work, the work is mostly done by civil servants and consultants behind them.

If we cut the number of teachers by a third would we notice? I'd say so.

That said, I am moving to the private education sector from September (more money, smaller class sizes, similar pension). Kids pay £20k per year to go to school, so you might say that their parents consider the teachers at the school as producing value, as they wouldn't pay it otherwise.

Okay, sorry, I assumed MPs were more similar to US representatives.

Legislators in the US (at the state and federal level) are actually usually pretty involved in the legislative process and aren't always rubber-stamps for their leaders. And even when they are, they often do valuable work in committees.

Also, holy crap. 650 members in the House of Commons? That's more than in the US House of Representatives and Senate combined.

[Kuciwalker]

Retiring is fine. If you've saved enough money to live out the rest of your life without working, there's nothing wrong with doing exactly that.

But it's not okay to save money in any asset more complex than stocks or bonds? People who want to buy deferred annuities are just whiners?

[Hauldren Collider]

I'm not discussing anything with you, so long as you insist on pretending what I say means something that it clearly does not.

[Tupac Shakur]

Why should people retire/why should people expect to retire?

I never understood this.

I sorta expect that people should work until they are unable to.

[MikeH]

Okay, sorry, I assumed MPs were more similar to US representatives.

Legislators in the US (at the state and federal level) are actually usually pretty involved in the legislative process and aren't always rubber-stamps for their leaders. And even when they are, they often do valuable work in committees.

Also, holy crap. 650 members in the House of Commons? That's more than in the US House of Representatives and Senate combined.

They are similar to US representatives, and many are good constituency MPs too...

but yeah, we don't need 650 and that's not counting members of House of Lords. 789 members, and we have ~1/5th the population.