Strikes are, of course, almost becoming an entirely public sector phenomenon. You still sometimes get them in large former public sector organisations, such as British Airways and British Telecom, but it is almost always only the people in the public sector who think they have a right to force out higher salaries from the back pocket of the taxpayer, without even considering withdrawing their employment permanently, and risking the free market, like the rest of us have to.
I read the worthy pretensions of one such martyr, this morning in the Torygraph. Obviously, I sent him an email, immediately:
Hi Simon,
If you don't like the terms and conditions in your job, resign, and go and get another job doing something else, where you do like the terms and conditions. Even better than that, start your own business selling your services.
I'm sure a man of your obvious talent would easily be able to command a salary at least three times what you're currently earning, on the free market.
What? You don't agree? Well then shut up and get on with your job the taxpayer is currently being forced to pay you, regardless of your merits.
Rgds,
Jack Maturin
As someone forced to pay his wages, whether I want him or not, if Simon deigns to reply, it should be interesting to hear what he says.
3 comments:
I could not agree more.
I have varied work experience which includes lecturing / teaching in higher education.
Everywhere I've worked, if I have been irked by my terms and conditions, I've sought an improvement and if that has not been forthcoming I have walked.
IMO, for what it is worth, too many lecturers like others in the public sector literally consider it a job for (whole working) life. I must also say that I found the money OK (and I have worked for big money in the City) but what razzed me was the endless pc bull.
The internet was invented by academics and is a wonderful invention. Unfortunately for all it's great points, it does allow the easy publishing of utter shite like the two posts above.
Lecturers go on strike again? Yes what a bolshie lot, ALWAYS striking. As for your "get on yer bike" advice, very sensible - lets denude HE of it's staff that'll show em' we're worth it.
The second post "I've made big money in the city" and found academic pay "ok". Well quite simply - you're a liar.
Oh dear, poor anonymous. Great at insulting people. Terrible at revealing a name. What else have we got? A superiority complex, a martyr complex, an inability to avoid swearing despite such IMMENSE intelligence, and also some kind of belief that without the vast raft of psychology lecturers we have in this country, the whole nation would simply revert back to the stone age. I don't know why. Everyone knows all the best psychology research comes from the States, anyway. I don't even know why we bother doing psychology research here. It would be better to take the money and invest it in the private Universities over there to get a more worthwhile return.
Everyone in Higher Education, and especially anyone with tenure, ought to get down on their knees and thank the Lord that they are able to spend their time doing a job that they want to do, on the back of the taxpayer, and they ought to be grateful - if they really don't like it, why don't they all just walk? I won't miss them. They're not doing me any favours I give a flying toss about. Yes, Tim Berners-Lee of CERN might have contributed something to society, but I the last time I looked, I don't remember the Psychology department of Surrey University, that well-known academic hotbed, creating anything anyone ever heard about, except a lot of self-satisfied smug lecturers, most of them incapable of earning half of what they currently get as lecturers, in the outside world. That they may not be able to earn a real living in the free market, as anonymous suggests, should tell them exactly what they need to know, that the salaries they're currently getting, for doing a job they want to do rather than, in their eyes, money-grubbing (i.e. doing something other people are prepared to pay for from their own pockets), are well above what they would earn if they had to satisfy a market. So they should just shut up and get on with it; or get on a boat to Sweden. What's stopping you anonymous? This country obviously doesn't want you. Leave, then. See if we care.
If they were any good they would have disappeared to the U.S. long ago anyway, to the Ivy League. The ones we have left here are just the flotsam and jetsam who never ever fancied getting a job, and who think a hard day is posting twenty grant applications to a government pork-barrel committee.
I have some advice for you, anonymous. Why don't you go on strike permanently. See if anyone notices outside Surrey University. I know I won't, except perhaps my taxes paying your salary might go down a bit.
Neither will anyone else notice you've gone, except the students whose lives you wreck in your bid to get your hand further into my pocket, via the tender ministry of the Inland Revenue.
The entire higher education establishment in this country should be privatised, immediately, to rid us of these arrogant ingrates.
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