You never once showed how there was a link between falling standards of teachers and falling pay (now limited to relative pay), despite often being asked to. It is an argument that would evoke credulity in the most bovine peasant, that people on entering the profession would be offered the exact same real value they were previously offered (or higher), but would decline to take up the profession because someone somewhere else in an unrelated industry, say mining, is making more money than them. I'm going to go out on a limb and assume the people involved in mining aren't more suited to teaching than the current people we have teaching. I'm going to go out on another limb and assume that when asked most teacher's couldn't even tell you what the average male wage is, or what the relative pay difference is, because this is not the sort of thing people research before they choose their field of study and employment. A young student pondering whether to take up teaching does not look up the relative pay difference between occupations in 1975 and say "my gosh, teaching has gone down, I'm not pursuing that profession anymore! I'm going to move to WA and take up mining!"

Riddler,

I have explained to you again and again that I am posting in priority order. I have explained again and again that my first priority is ‘to correct the untrue things you have said in response to me’. It does not matter how rude you are, what names you call me, how much you invent about what I have or have not said. I will stick with the priority I have set.

When you say that I ‘trying desperately to stall, and/or invent an excuse to get out of the argument’, you are not telling the truth. You are just making something up. I have not stalled or invented any excuses. I am doing what I told you on 2/3 I would do. I am correcting the untrue things you say. When you stop saying untrue things and I have finished correcting them I will deal with teacher pay.

I do not’ "beat" most people by wearing them down, talking loudly, and stalling’. I don’t talk loudly at all, and, in so far as I wear people down it is by remaining calm and factual in the face of attacks.

Thus my latest post ‘refuses to explain why relative pay matters’ because it was to correct untrue comments form you, just as this post is not about teacher pay because it is to correct more untruthful comments from you.

I could have explained why MAWOTE maters but I chose not to because you replied to my earlier post with more untruthful comments. I am not going to waste my time on a new point only to find I have to return to my first priority.

I don’t think I ‘remind everyone here of the values, intelligence and cause of the teacher's union’. I am not speaking for the teachers union, and while I support the work they do for their members, I do not support some of their political stances, and I suspect almost no one is bothering to read this thread now.

Falling teacher pay is not ‘now’ limited to relative pay. Anyone can go back to my first post and see that I said, ‘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.’ The key word is ‘relative’. You just can’t get away with pretending it wasn’t there.

For you to say that I have ‘exhausted the last dregs of [my] credibility’ is just funny. You don’t have the moral authority to question my credibility. I’m the one who posts the facts and the figures. You’re the one that resorts to abuse and bullying – ‘stupid’, ‘rambling, irrelevant, unthinking posts’, ‘you intentionally ignore the stuff you can't respond to’, ‘you're a joke account’, ‘take yourself off’, ‘your rants’, etc .

For you to hide behind your anonymous screen name to resort to calling me a ‘lying weasel’ is not surprising, just as it is not surprising that I have to continually correct with specific facts the things that you say that are not true; e.g, the actual CPI increase between 1975 and 2011, the fact that education departments do not decide where parents send their children, the fact that I never said teachers had experienced a real salary drop but a relative one - and the list just goes on. Of course, it is easier to apply a label than deal with an argument.

If you can restrain yourself from replying with more inaccurate information and untrue claims, I will deal with MAOTE in my next post.

Here's how your post reads "I would have had an awesome reply for you, but then I got mad and didn't write it, even though I totally could have". It's pathetic.

Is there an explanation for why relative pay matters in your post? Of course not.

Riddler,

No, that is not how my post reads.

It corrects untrue statements that you made in your previous posts and says that I will deal with teacher pay when you stop making untrue statements. It does not imply that my reply would be awesome, nor have I got mad. You just make it too easy for me.

There is no explanation for why relative pay matters in my post for the reason that I have given so often that I do not intend to repeat it yet again.

If you can restrain yourself from replying with more inaccurate information and untrue claims, I will deal with MAOTE in my next post.

You don’t even have to apologise for your abuse or your untruthfulness. You don’t even have to withdraw your false accusations. You don’t even have to actually admit you were wrong on any of the points you were wrong on. All you have to do is stop saying untrue things.

If you're not going to bother to answer a question like "why does relative pay matter" after quoting stats that use it repeatedly, you may as well not bother replying. We get it, your last reply was actually awesome, and you may deign to give an even better reply soon, even if actually reading your reply people were unimpressed. Either explain why relative pay matters, or quote the part where you explained it, or go away.