Victorian schoolteachers are threatening industrial action if not granted the pay rises they want.

They’ve been offered 7.5 percent increase over the next 3 years. But they want 10 percent.

Failing that, says Australian Education Union representative, Mary Bluett, they will consider going on strike.

The teachers must feel encouraged by the fact that the government they are trying to pressurise only a matter of days ago caved in to similar threats from the nursing profession.

M. Bluett says, “It (going on strike) is not something we like to do. We don’t like to leave our students . . . .”

If they don’t like it, why do it?

They must like it a little bit.

* * *

If the teachers’ demands are just . . . .

(Are they? If granted, they would make Victoria’s teachers the highest paid in Australia . . . .)

Anyway, even if the demands were just, aren’t there other ways to influence the government?

Could they not try non-cooperation with paper-work of some kind — or refuse some forms of non-teaching duties normally undertaken outside classroom hours?

If you are a teacher, you are teaching all the time.

If you go on strike, you are still teaching . . . .

. . . teaching students that the way to get what you want is to inconvenience others however much it takes to get them to knuckle under.

Englishman, Tony Nicklinson, 58, has “locked-in syndrome” following a stroke in 2005.

Locked-in syndrome means being  totally paralysed (except for eye movements) while remaining fully conscious.

Such person are incapable of carrying out their own suicide.

Mr Nicklinson has been granted permission by a High Court judge to take to a full hearing his request for legal protection for any doctor who agrees to kill him.

The Ministry of Justice opposes granting this request — because it would would authorise murder, bypassing parliament and changing the law.

* * *

It’s hard for the rest of us to imagine what the syndrome would feel like.

Moments of death-wish would be natural — we all become fretful when unable to get our own way.

However killing an innocent human being is wrong.

Our responsibility is to make the existence of persons like Mr Nicklinson as tolerable as possible, sparing no effort.

In 2008, Victoria’s Labor government passed its “Abortion Law Reform Act” (ALRA) legalising late-term abortions up to, and including, nine months.

Plus abolishing a doctor’s right to exercise a conscientious objection to involvement in abortion:

“If a woman requests a registered health practitioner to advise on a proposed abortion, or to perform, direct, authorise or supervise an abortion for that woman, and the practitioner has a conscientious objection to abortion, the practitioner must . . . refer the woman to another registered health practitioner . . . who the practitioner knows does not have a conscientious objection . . . .” (Section 8, ALRA 2008)

* * *

What about Victoria’s Charter of Human Rights (VCHRA) — doesn’t it provide that:

“Every person has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, religion and belief . . . .” ? (VCHRA section 14)

Keep reading . . . .

VCHRA section 48 says: “Nothing in this Charter affects any law applicable to abortion or child destruction . . . .”

Snookered.

The Coalition parties, in government in Victoria for 15 months now, still haven’t bothered to restore doctors’ freedom of conscience.

The concept of International Women’s Day (IWD) was invented just over 100 years ago by Communists in USA and Germany.

The choice of March 8 was made by the Russian Bolsheviks after the 1917 October Revolution.

Since 1977, the United Nations has promoted IWD — this year nominating its theme as “Women’s Empowerment”.

IWD organisers, even in non-Communist countries, love employing Communist-style policies and lingo when boosting it.

* * *

The Australian Labor Party used IWD 2012 to promise, yet again, state recognition of homosexual coupling — terrible news for a future generation of children if they succeed.

The Liberal-National Coalition likewise used the occasion to promise a “paid parental leave” scheme which will ensure that next generation’s toddlers won’t see much of their mothers.

The annual March 8 event might be better called, not IWD, but IACD (International Anti-Child Day).