30 January 2023 , 22:30
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After years of plummeting wages, teachers will strike tomorrow feeling exploited and undervalued by the Tories.
No one wants children to miss more lessons after the disruption of Covid, including the staff who educate the future of our country.
And that is why the action by the National Education Union must be a signal for meaningful negotiations.
A failure to table a decent pay offer by the Government, which seems to relish confrontation rather than reach common ground, would be a disaster for children.
Firefighters voting to strike and tomorrow’s co-ordinated action, also involving train drivers and civil servants, is a national workforce demanding a reasonable wage rise.
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Union leaders are ready to negotiate. Missing at the table are the politicians we blame for the industrial strife.
Taxing times
Nadhim Zahawi (Alastair Grant/AP/REX/Shutterstock)Does the Conservative Party think tax is only for the little people to pay?
The question must be asked when sacked Tory chair Nadhim Zahawi isn’t the only key member of Rishi Sunak’s team accused of not paying their fair whack.
The disclosure that property tycoon Graham Edwards, hired to run the party’s finances, faced his own bill over a tax avoidance scheme is setting alarm bells ringing.
So too is the party’s chief executive Stephen Massey, working on the side for a firm urging clients to use another tax avoidance scheme.
Senior Tories are looking after themselves during the bitter cost of living crisis.
But raising taxes to post-war record rates for the rest of us proves they are not fit to rule.
Blast from past
Neil Kinnock (PA)Neil Kinnock’s warning not to be ordinary, young, ill or old under the Tories is as resonant today as it was in the 80s.
The Labour titan re-recording his blistering speech about Conservative rule will send hope soaring and have people demanding a general election to kick them out of government.