The usual Abfall from Brian and a few other German words I remember well but won't mention here.

Teachers lives have changed in the last few decades. They have to work long hours to deliver a much more complicated curriculum with more stringent standards and a heap more criticism awaiting them if they make mistakes. My partner is a teacher and on average he works 10-12 hours per week in the evenings and weekends catching up on marking and lesson planning. Thats almost two whole days extra, but I say that with a pinch of salt as a day for him starts by 8am and finishes at 6pm- thats 50 hours per week plus 10-12= over 60 hours. Did you work 60 hours a week as a matter of routine, then Brian? I suspect not. Thats almost twice the contracted hours. Work out what the hourly rate for that is. I;m sure your teachers taught you how to add up if seemingly not to think critically and present logical well informed arguments.

All this in the context of fairly low salaries in the first place with little scope for progression especially now that budgets are restricted and schools are looking to cap teachers pay locally and are asking them not to move beyond the main scale as they can;t afford to pay them. Pensions are deferred salary and many people chose to go into professions with traditionally lower salaries because of the prospect of secure and reasonable pensions. However gold plated is something that few people will recognise as something coming to them.

Londondrz, you may pay into a private pension, but you probably still benefit from tax breaks and National Insurance savings so I would be wary too as people like you might be next on the Governments list.

I also went to school in the late 60s and 70s and do in fact remember teachers going on strike, so I don;t know where you lived Brian- a different planet perhaps.

I also work in a local authority where I work overtime for which I do not get paid, to achieve outcomes in public service on which many members of the public rely. I work in the same building as social workers who were still there at 8pm when I left the office this evening and who get paid around £34k for fairly arduous responsibilities and workloads. All this talk about goal plated anything is a load of rubbish-both I and my partner will be extremely lucky to get anything like £10k a year when we retire so I don;t know where this comes from. People are very lucky anyway to have been able to have worked long enough and consistently to acquire any sort of decent pension

In addition, teaching like a lot of public service work is hard work and the prospect of having to hang on to 68 is a joke as it simply is not an option for many people due to the difficulty of the work. Employers in any sector dont really want people of 68 hanging around.

All of this extension of peoples working lives is also ridiculous as there is so much ageism around that keeping ones job until your in your mid 60s is extremely difficult. Having been around for a bit it has become apparent how often people over 50 are booted out of any organisation on some pretext or other as they cant be controlled in the way that younger people be as they are not so easily intimidated or bullied. The other issue of course is reducing the disposable income of a fairly large group of people is not going to help the economy.