Addressing an all-encompassing diatribe

After reading H Marjorie Gill’s rather rambling and all-encompassing letter (“Teachers should show restraint and responsibility”, Yorkshire Post, November 19), I feel that several points need to be addressed.

I am unaware that the debate concerning pensions is because, as the author implies, teachers want to be retired for longer than they spent working. I understood that the reason for them, and others, being unhappy about new pension contribution costs and benefits is rather more down to earth than your correspondent suggests and is, I suggest, based on their paying more for a longer period and getting less than they would have done previously.

Your correspondent then throws in the belief that the new rules should apply straight away and that, contrary to much advice given by a variety of bodies, one should not plan, either financially or socially, for one’s retirement. This, we are told, is because people “prefer not to retire until they are past their best”. What silly twaddle.

We then move on to the strange case of the hard-pressed “industrial managers” who struggle with recalcitrant school-leavers “without basic skills” who resent having to work “long hours”, before jumping to yet another well-worn argument about “people in other countries” who put in long hours and work harder.

Then comes the plea for the poor capitalist who “finds work for say 1,000,000 employees” (where is this person?) and who should be rewarded accordingly.

Is this the same employer who is, as your correspondent said earlier in the diatribe, paying shool-leavers “the minimum wage”?

Finally, we are exhorted not to blame the bankers for their irresponsible lending to irresponsible borrowers, before linking the financial woes of Greece and Italy “and all over Europe” to the teachers, who ought not to strike but show “restraint and leadership with responsibility”.

In conclusion, all I can say to your correspondent is this: work to live, not live to work.