I see we have reached the CAPITALISATION stage.

You say that I ‘HAVE SINCE SAID [I] DON’T ARGUE THERE HAS BEEN A REAL CUT!’, that the ‘whole argument about cherry picking above was that [my] selection of figures was dishonest, because it suggested a cut’ and that I have ‘now CONCEDED THERE HASN’T BEEN A CUT’ (3.11:03pm, 12/3).

I have been through this already. I did not argue that there had been a real cut overall in teachers’ pay (though I discovered and reported that a teacher with seven years experience is actually paid less in real terms now than such a teacher was in 1975). I did not suggest a ‘cut’ in real terms. I argued from the beginning that there had been a cut in relative pay. I have explained umpteen times my choice of 1975 as being simply because I had that year’s data from a VSTA salary case that used that year, that had I wanted to cherry pick on relative pay, the whole point I started with, I would not have chosen 1975 but an earlier “much better” year” and that, while 1975 seems to be the best year to use for CPI comparisons, the CPI was not part of my original argument, but simply dealt with in response to longweekend’s raising the subject.

Now, if you want to argue that the VSTA cherry-picked 1975, you have to argue that it thought the CPI part of its case was the most important because, had it thought the relative pay part of its case the most important it too would have picked a different year. However, it is not necessary to express an opinion either way about the VSTA to discuss the topic.

I skimmed your first 3 irrelevant posts, the substance of which is unimportant now that you’ve conceded there has not been a decrease. I’m not going to encourage you to drone on about something irrelevant further, the only reason those statistics were even being discussed was because you kept citing them in the context of a discussion about salaries dropping in real terms. You concede they haven’t dropped in real terms. Moving on to the issue you are (apparently) willing to argue for, that a relevant cut matters…. and in response to my many posts about it… you say nothing, nothing at all.

Observant readers will notice the above paragraph is so similar to my previous post (and probably the post before that) it could have just been pasted several times. That’s because your replies are rarely in any way related to what your critics have said. You have so many throwaway arguments at this stage, you should be prosecuted for littering. I tried several weeks ago to nail down the 6 key points you needed to cover, but you still haven’t responded to any of them, and this without the dozens of additional arguments you’ve abandoned. I pasted your 4 posts into Word, and was unsurprised to discover it amounted to less than 1000 words, which means despite your rambling on a now irrelevant subject, you could easily have answered some of the pertinent questions put to you, such as why MAWOTE matters (a question you’ve been asked over and over to the point it’s embarrassing at this stage). It’s impossible to take you seriously at this juncture. If you’re not going to reply to any of the points you’ve missed (I’m happy to list them for you if you like), then don’t bother to reply at all. I have no use for a geriatric parrot stumbling over a keyboard and clutching his AEU stats like a drowning man at sea, while ignoring everything else. Feel free to take this excuse to try and desperately grab the moral high ground and run from the argument.

Riddler,

You say, ‘if you never thought there had been a salary decrease in real terms then you were wasting everyone’s time by posting all those (bad) stats on real wage drops’. I have not posted ‘all those (bad) stats on real wage drops’. (6.20:25pm, 13/3)

First of all, my stats are good, as has been demonstrated again and again.

Secondly, they have not been about ‘real wage drops’. Here is my very first post, yet again:
‘Male average weekly ordinary time earnings were $1343.90 ($70,123 pa) in August of last year, according to the ABS. In 1975, after seven years, a teacher reached the top of the unpromoted scale and was paid 166.6 per cent of MAWOTE - $116,825 now.

‘The new top level, which now takes ten years to reach, now pays $81,806 – a relative cut of $35,019 or 30 per cent. To put it another way, an eleventh-year-out teacher needs a 42.8 per cent salary increase to restore his or her salary’s relative value to that of an eighth-year-out teacher 33 years ago.’ (6/2)

Note, yet again, the words I used, ‘salary’s relative value’

Then in answer to longweekend, who made the same false claim about what I had said, I said, ‘I did not say, “teacher salaries have dropped 30%.” I quoted figures re percentages and average earnings and said that teachers had a “relative” pay cut and that restoring the “relative” value of their salaries would require an increase. The wording makes it clear that I was never talking about purchasing power.’ (9/2)

When I looked at real pay, I said, ‘In other words, in a period in which the average employee received a 55.8 per cent increase in real ordinary time pay, the majority of teachers received a 13 per cent increase in real pay’. (12/2)

Note again ‘the majority of teachers received a 13 per cent increase in real pay’. Try to get this phrase to sink in, ‘increase in real pay’. It was more than a month ago.

You say, ‘Your continued quibbling that an impractical choice is still a choice is intentionally naïve, and I don’t say that lightly in your case. It’s like me saying that you have the choice to drive a gold Ferrari to work next week. A hopeless choice, or totally unrealistic choice, is not a choice, and for almost all parents the “choice” you attribute to them is non-existent, for the reasons explained.’

It is not quibbling. It’s not about gold Ferraris. It’s about legal requirements. The department does not choose schools for parents to send their children to.

You said, not that there were practical obstacles to choice, but that the parents did not have a choice at all: ‘The AEU opposes league tables, opposes myschools, etc. They clearly oppose more information for the public, and want to restrict it as much as possible, which is why they don’t even allow parents to choose where their kids go. The department does…’ (4.54:04pm, 26/2); i.e., the AEU does not allow parents to choose schools; the department does the choosing for them; in other words, the AEU is powerful enough to prevent parents choosing schools and the department is powerful enough to tell parents which schools their children must go to.

Yet, when we examine the details in six of the eight jurisdictions, we see that the department does not actually choose where parents must send their children. It guarantees a place in a local school and allows parents to choose any school with room or subject to other conditions. Now, those conditions may or may not be reasonable, but it is simply untrue to say that the department chooses the school to which parents must send their children.

The practical difficulties apply across the board. Unless you are suggesting that the government fully pay for any child’s education at any school, even if the fees are $30,000 a year, you are not supporting your own definition of choice, yet I suspect you would not support the government paying the full cost of any school for any child.

Yet again, you make a ridiculous extreme statement and then back away from it by pretending you meant something else, twisting words away from their plain English meaning.

It is commonly believed and reported that there is monolithic education department that totally controls schools (which was close to the truth 50 years ago), you fall for the myth, repeat it and then look for a get-out clause when the precise evidence shows that you are wrong.

You just don’t know enough abut education. You simply serve up the myths widely propagated in The Australian.

Riddler,

You say, that I’ve ‘conceded there has not been a decrease.’

You are really difficult to get through to.

Yet again, I have not ‘conceded’ there has not been a decrease. As I never said there had been a decrease in real pay, as from the very beginning I made an argument about the decline in relative pay, there can be no ‘conceding’. Now, I can tell you hate to be proved wrong and thus change what you have said and pretend I have said things I have not, but the priority remains. I will not allow you to go unchallenged when you say things that are untrue.

I did not keep ‘citing [statistics] in the context of a discussion about salaries dropping in real terms’. I cited statistics about the decline in relative pay first and them moved onto to statistics re real pay in response to longweekend who raised the subject of real pay by falsely claiming that I had said there had been a decline in real pay.

You say that I have said ‘nothing’ in response to your many posts about relative pay. That is also untrue. I said something in response to you about it 9/2, 10/2, 11/2, 20/2 and perhaps on other occasions, so ‘nothing’ is simply untrue.

You say that my four posts ‘amounted to less than 1000 words, which means’ that I ‘could easily have answered some of the pertinent questions put to’ me. Indeed, I could, but as I have explained, I am dealing with my first priority before I move onto my second. When I have finished correcting the untrue things that you say, I will discuss what you say you want to discuss. I’ll even pause and deal with grammar and classics if you like. However, if you persist with false claims, I will persist with correcting them.

I am not ‘run[ing] from the argument’. I am refusing to do what you tell me.

I don’t need to ‘grab the high moral ground’. I’m standing on it.