Black Knights Vs White Knights...Teachers Strike Wheelers Corner 28 30th May 2019

This week the black knights [Government Neo lib's] do battle with the White knights [Teachers and Principals] While I cast my shaddow at the bottom right hand corner

This massive chess board set up in the Square along side the Council Building clearly represents the two forces at logger heads on the issue of Education and the rewards attached to it...

Oh I hear you mutter, teachers are just stirring...after all they are paid pretty well for what they do...

Do you really believe that, when was the last time you actually talked to a teacher? Have we become so thick and ignorant, that we've forgotten how we got our education for free... 

Now if you want to be teacher, an apprentice, almost any thing that involves a university or Polly-tech means that you end up owning thousands, before you collect your first pay check...In fact the teaching profession is simply shrinking by the day...who wants to be a bloody teacher and be lumbered with all that debt...I thought education was free...alas today we've brought into the idiotic US system of education...at a price! I wonder when Chris Hipkins and Paula Bennett plan to pay back the money they got from the state to fund their education... 

The teachers started their strike for better wages and conditions on Wednesday morning at eight am...and the hundreds of cars headed toward or comming from the Manawatu river city bridge...

beeped their horns and waved in support...

If only these same teachers / Principals etc had attended the students strike for the climate that took place a few days earlier...

So what was missing from the teachers strike were the very people they profess to be striking for... The Students... 

Their signs were well worth a read and it would appear that the motorists inthe main gave them support.

It was a pity that the very morning the minister of education, an ex student leader 'Chris Hipkins' had publically stated that nothing the teachers can do will achieve the desired goal of a better offer.

According to the line 'Hipkins' hard line that he is pushing...of take what we offer or take nothing...and I must admit that sounds so "Roger Douglas" 

which is odd comming from an ex protester like Hipkins.

But hey whats new! say one thing but do another...

Still the striking teachers and their supporters continued to make their point, supported by hundreds heading south toward Massey and Linton or heading North toward the city.

The Strikers then united in the Square.

Made a few speeches then commenced the movement around the Square

I am fully supportive of the teachers claims for a decade National ignored them as their wages and conditions were bit by bit reduced via the policies of Neo Libs like Roger Douglas,[Later knighted by the Nats, now that tells you something]

Future students and want-to-be teachers were hit with massive student bills and loans...they had no increases for seven of those ten years... and while wee Chris Hipkins is attempting to make some slight headway...austerity is still his main weapon...as preached by Douglas and Prebble and our loving Ruth Richardson and her neo lib mates in the national clan.

Go to the Manawatu Standards brilliant report on the march and watch the vid it is most enlightening...https://www.stuff.co.nz/manawatu-standard/news/113028028/manawat-mega-strike-sends-mega-message-as-teachers-walk-off-the-job

Maybe just maybe the Neo Lib's still existing in the labour party will now get the message...and be bold and fprget light fingered Roger Douglas and his anti-worker behaviour...wipe his memory...let him rot along with the Act Party and all its weird political fans, like Don Brash, Richard Prebble...Labour these days is more RIGHT than are the Nats...

Its time to change, to grow some guts, tax the god dam 1% and lighten the load of the working class...the ones who actually create the wealth...close the gap between the rich and the poor...