Lie Back and Think of the Children

The Government is worried because the cost of paying for teachers' pensions is forecast to double to about ten thousand million pounds in the next ten years, and the Government is not interested in paying that kind of money to support a lot of non-bankers who did nothing more than provide an education for people who weren't at private schools. Accordingly, the former Labour apparatchik Honest John Hutton has recommended that public sector workers should be compelled to work longer for less; and, given that there is so much clear blue water between Labour and the Conservatives nowadays, Daveybloke's Cuddlies have decided that the Hutton treatment is just the thing.

However, since the present Secretary for Education labours under the handicap of being Michael Gove, it has fallen to the Minister of Ministerial Administration, Francis Maude, to register the Government's moral indignation at the teachers' vote to strike. Maude struck a charmingly comic note by accusing union leaders of acting in their own interest rather than those of members or the public; Government ministers, of course, act in their own interests only insofar as such interests are compatible with the requirements of Rupert Murdoch, Lord Ashcroft and various gamblers in the City. Maude also raised the problem of demarcation, condemning the unions for asking their members to sacrifice a day's pay at a time when the Government is so busy reducing their salaries and destroying their job security; which is almost enough to make one wonder if Michael Gove, even despite being Michael Gove, might not have done better after all.