DJKillaQueen

Well interest rates are expected to go up. Combine that with job losses, increased reposessions, increased pressure on housing following that and HB cuts....suddenly there's no guarantee of anything. I agree there is a necessary evil to be had, but not one where the result will be an increased lack of social mobility for the lowest paid and a growing gap between rich and poor. Much of what has been proposed has nothing to do with generating a fair and balanced and stable economy and everything to do with the same old core Tory values of survival of the fittest, put into place by people who have absolutely no concept of the impact of low pay, unemployment, homelessness, and so on.

I think it's too early to say. We need to see the impact of public sector cuts on jobs before we can say for sure the recession is over.

I do not think it is feasible or sensible to have teachers grading students when there are financial implications at stake. Teachers are professionals and I think we should give them more credit than that, to exercise good judgement. It wouldn't need to be teachers anyway. How hard is it to have an end of term exam or practical assessment marked by an external assessor? External assessors already do that at most Universities. That is what decides if someone passes a course or not. And it CAN be applied to any subject. It's a fact that some courses are full of students that are never going to pass them, for various reasons, one of which is sometimes that they can't be bothered to learn. And don't even get me started on the impact of that on those that ARE there to learn. I speak to teenagers attending FE colleges regularly and they all tell me that is the situation including the colleges and courses where it goes on. That is NOT helping students, or teachers, or employers, or tax payers either. It's just keeping some young people of unemployment figures. Colleges (at fault) need to be returned to places for those who WANT to learn and we need to find other ways to help those that don't/ won't or can't engage in education/ training with something that improves their prospects for employment.

I found the following explanation particularly galling. "Sometimes, van drivers deliver lots of packages to the same address. If they're constantly trying to deliver and not getting an answer, they might assume people aren't ever in," he told the BBC. "The driver might fill out a form and give it to the postman to deliver on his round. If the postie delivers the form and the person's in, it can be embarrassing when they don't have the package on them." Another situation is when the van tries to deliver the package in the afternoon but no-one is in, so they give the form to the postman to deliver on his round the next day. The form refers to the attempted delivery the day before, but people think the postman should have the package on him. On every occasion that I've caught the card with no parcel postman, on NO ocasion was there an attempted delivery the day before...so that is bs for a start and what amazes me is that they don't seem to understand that when someone pays the extra postage for delivering their parcel they are paying for DELIVERY not collection. Just do the job you are paid to do guys and if you don't like it, look for another ffs.

I cook soups/ stews/ bolognese and pies and stuff like that from scratch and then freeze them....and it takes a whole day every two weeks to do that and you have to be pretty disciplined about it. Once done though, it doesn't take long each evening to have a really good meal...so definitely worth doing.

I never give anything to those letterbox fliers. Most of them are companies reselling clothes in Africa for personal profit. Best to take any unwanted items to a known charity or one of their shops.

Has anybody changed their minds or switched allegiance since the start of this debate? I was ambivalent to begin with...but I am now coming down on the side of management, if nothing because of the use of the words 'being sacked'. Being sacked means you no longer have a job. This is not what is happening. The management simply want to change contract. It's a very different thing altogether. So what we are really looking at is termination of contract, and replacement with a new contract. The employer has every right to do that. I'm not saying I like that practise but it's the reality for most people who are employed I'm afraid.

Firefighters are not being asked to work for free. There are simply being asked to work different hours for which they will be paid as normal. Every employer has the right to do that. How long is an employer supposed to take to negotiate before they can make a decision? The real question is what is the purpose of changing the shifts/ hours. If we agree one consequence is to improve efficiency and therefore reduce cost, then the next quesion has to be if that is a good thing or not and for who. I can't see from the documents posted by MM and so on any evidence that the claims that Londoners will have a less effective fire service as a result of the changes in shifts are true. Now that may be a failure of the Union to make their case but that is something that fire fighters have to take on board. FFs are losing the support of the public. They need to understand why that is. Striking on Bonfire Night will further alienate those people whose taxes keep ffs in a job. Yes we should be grateful that anyone wants to do a job that puts them face to face with a danger that can kill them, but it's tax payers who fund those jobs, not the government.

That's not true. Exams and test papers are set according to a central curriculum. It's a system that has measured what children do and don't know for decades, and pretty sucessfully at that. If I show a child how to do a sum they either learn how to do it or they don't. I can test that by giving them another sum and asking them to do it on their own. That's what teaching and learning is. Easily measured. Of course there are some children that need extra help or different teaching methods but the procvess will be the same...I show you and then you show me YOU can do it. At the moment you have kids leaving FE colleges with bits of paper that say they have studied a certain curriculum and reached a certaim minimum standard of knowledge when they haven't. It matters because if an 18 year has a qualification in motor mechanics then he should be able to tune a carburettor. Employers increasingly are saying some of these kids can't do anything they are supposedly qualified to do. Standards of maths and written english come under particular criticism, not just from employers but also Universities who increasingly are using entrance exams to determine which students are a true reflection of the qualifications they present.

They've just covered it on London Tonight - explained in simplistic terms as a dispute about shift patterns being unresolved and resulting in the employers action to cancel contracts and re-employ under new conditions. That seems pretty clear to me that the dispute is about shift patterns (whatever the rights and wrongs of each side's arguments are). They also mentioned the behaviour by some pickets trying to stop engines from going out during that last strike. Engines that were responding to emergencies.....hard for me to condone that behaviour.

Hmm dangerous killer foxes? I think not..... Were they cubs? Because most foxes come off worse against a cat and they learn pretty quickly not to attack them. Where I live there are tons of cats and foxes and no dead cats.

It could be done by means of continuous assessment (which is a process already well used within our schools and Universities). So my suggestion would be end of term assessments...which means four a year, and if the required minimum standard isn't reached for two consequestive terms, the EMA is stopped. All teachers and examiniers by the way have straight forward ways of assessing students. You either know how to do something from your lesson or you don't. You can't fabricate that. If large numbers of pupils are failing under a particular teacher then that can be looked at but again, when you look at education stats you find pretty even levels of pass rate year on year. After all, when I did my degree, my grant depended on my passing each years end of year exams. Fail any of them and don't pass a retake, don't get to continue. There is no point throwing money at a young person if it yields no results.

I think the essence of his point (although he'll have to confirm that) was that given that they have been given some improvements in pay etc that they have no excuse for delivering poor service (or cutting corners)?

HA HA.....

Well quite....faith is a cultural label not a way of life (for many people) and the census question aids that. It's a good point because I've done it too. Ticked the CofE box because that's the culture I was born into. I don't do that now because I don't know what my religion is or if I have one. I do have spiritual belief but it fits no religion I know of, although someone told me my views might be those of a Quaker (at least they didn't say Scientology)! So there you go.....maybe I do have a religion after all....do they even list Quaker on the census form?

There is a point though to this when you consider that no-one really has ever measured the level of Atheism. We monitor for various religious preferences (and that data might be accurate or not) and then just make the assumption that everyone else is of no religion. I think it would be interesting to know what the level of Atheism/ Agnosticism is and within that what the thinking is. I'm sure for example that a humanist may have a different view/ philosophy to that of say Richard Dawkins. I also think far more people have faith than any survey shows.

Being sacked before agreements are made is! And do you really think strike action is going to change that? The only thing that will cahnge that is if the management are breaking some aspect of employment law in doing so. Have the union explored if there is some angle of illegality. I'm guessing they have and found there is none. After all it is not the first time an employer has ended a contract only to re-advertise the same job with a differnet contract/ conditions. Happens all the time in other sectors. Strike action is going to achive absolutely nothing - but it might cost someone their life. Well done.

but both DJKQ and zeban seem to be saying that they disapprove of the EMA completely We didn't say that at all H. I was making the point that as a scheme it fails because the only requirement to get the money is to 'turn up'. That in turn tells me that it is a scheme designed to keep young people of the unemployment register as much as anything else. We have very high youth unemployment in the UK. It's a specific problem. It isn't helped if we don't make sure that young people are actually learning anything at college. So my solution would be that college/ course funding should not be performance linked but that the EMA payment should be. I totally support facilitating disadvantaged people into education (and totally agree with the earlier comment that many young people get part time jobs to do that) but education means education. Employers need to be assured that if a young person has a qualification in mechanics, they really can strip an engine and put it back together. This unfortunately is often not the case. So for me, make he EMA dependent on performance, and make the course funding not.

I just want to make one point moflo. Many of us do the jobs we've always wanted to do and some of us train for far more than three years and on no pay whilst doing so. I find this kind of arguement emotive and totally irrelevant. Pay is always a difficult one. We have a minimum wage and most of us would like to be paid more. I think I read in an earlier post that firemen can earn ?37K in London. Well that's above the average wage and more than most earn. I do feel that sometimes there is a lack of perspective from unions with regards to salary. The transport union are the same. Some tube drivers earn very good salaries up to ?40K....and yet they feel they don't earn enough. You can not expect a public where many really are underpaid and undervalued by their employers to be sympathetic in every case. Personally any emergency service using strike action is never going to get my support. The only people risking anyone's lives are those professionals who choose to put them at risk by striking.

There are many reasons why people steal. And theft has always existed and some thieves have always got away with it.

To be fair though, postmen are paid to do a job and some of them aren't doing it. It's hard to have any sympathy for that.

Cher will sell loads of albums to the same youngsters that buy N-Dubz, Plan B, Giggs and so on. Love her or hate her she is totally 'current'. She will get a recording contract.

It is widespread H. Many FE teachers will tell you so. And that was what my post was about really. A system that won't fail students for fear of losing funding. It's wrong and no-one gains anything from it....least of all employers who increasingly are finding they have to test prosective employees to find out just what they DO know or have learned.

The fire service have had five years to negotiate. Truth is they think they can hold their managers to ransom until they get it their way.

In many cases the EMA has only served to send people to college with no interest in learning anything.