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There’s been a lot of talk about public-sector pay this month. The latest three-year deal for NHS staff has been criticised for being well below inflation, Gordon Brown has turned down a pay rise for MPs, while his attempts to restrict pay for teachers and the police have continued to raise people’s hackles.

The government clearly want to be seen to tighten a few belts in response to the worrying economic situation – even if the effects of such a policy on controlling inflation are seen by economists as marginal at best.

But if Gordon really wants to save money, why doesn’t he look at the countless millions poured into public-sector pensions? They cost the taxpayer more than £21 billion this year. To put this in perspective, it’s more than all the rest of the workforce put into their pensions – even though the public-sector only represents 18 per cent of all working people. A large proportion of private sector employees pay more (through their taxes) for the retirement of civil servants than they do for their own retirement.

The supposed pay ‘restraint’ in the public-sector is nothing more than empty posturing when the vast majority of its staff, including MPs, are retiring at 60 for a comfortable few decades living it up at everyone else’s expense. Meanwhile, many of the taxpayers funding this will have to work until they’re 70, or simply until they drop dead. Our baby boomer political leaders don’t have any interest in solving this inequality because they will all be long gone by the time the young people in this country start feeling the pain.

I for one would happily give everyone in the public sector a whopping pay rise in the present if they would accept more realistic pension plans that are even in the same ballpark as what the rest of us have to deal with.
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One of my colleagues, who is normally a clean-living and honest sort, has recently developed the urge to gamble. Apparently she wants to take a bet on the TV show “The Apprentice” because she is so sure she knows who’ll win. The other lunchtime she was seen hot-footing it to the local bookies with a wodge of notes, only to be turned away on the grounds that the series was filmed several months ago.

Sceptics might suspect that her enthusiasm for picking Sir Alan’s protégé had less to do with the pre-eminent skills of the candidate in question and more to do with inside information. But after such an exhaustive selection process, with weeks of tests, exercises and interviews, shouldn’t it be obvious to all concerned who is the best person for the job?

Not necessarily. Everyone watching The Apprentice has a different opinion of who they would hire if they were the boss. But their opinions count for nothing. His Sugariness will be the only one with the power to make the decision, and he’ll do it based on who fits into his company culture, and whom he personally admires.

It only goes to show that, from an employer’s perspective, recruitment still often comes down to a matter of “gut feel”. If such a long and drawn-out process does not produce a clear winner, what chance does the average firm, limited to two interviews of half an hour each, stand of getting the right candidate?

The answer is that, objectively, there is no right candidate – only the right one for you. In that sense, recruitment is a bit like dating; you have to keep on meeting people until you find the one you click with. If somebody was trying to predict who you’d choose as a girlfriend, the chances are they’d have a hard time trying to bet money on that as well.

Come to think of it, perhaps that might make a good concept for a new reality show?

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So, the government have given all UK employees the right to request time off for training. They’ve also given parents of children up to 16 the right to request flexible working. This is in addition to parents of disabled children and carers of elderly and vulnerable adults, who already have the right to request variable hours and flexibility.

How generous – all these people given the “right to request” good things – and the employers can’t complain, because they have the right to turn the request down!

Everyone’s happy, so why not extend the concept a little further? The right to request a pay rise, perhaps? The right to request extra holiday? The right to request gym membership? The possibilities are endless.

The truth is that everybody already has the right to request anything they like. What is important is how employers respond to that request. And an employer’s response won’t normally be dependent on the age of that person’s child or the other details of their home life – it will depend on the dynamics of their team.

Because here’s the thing: not everybody can work flexibly. For everyone working part-time or from home, there’s someone tied to their desk in the office answering the phones. Neither can everybody have regular time off, even if it is for something as worthy as a college course.

In recent years, bosses have been increasingly prepared to be reasonable when faced with parents who want to work part-time to accommodate small children. The government’s legislation seems to be predicated on the idea that there are others queuing up to be treated in a similar way - only they are too scared to ask. So they wait for good old Gordon to come along and give them the right.

But are we talking about rights or privileges? If you have the right to something, you don’t have to request it – you expect it. A privilege, on the other hand, is something you are granted.

A line has to be drawn somewhere, and the government’s legislation still allows employers to be the ones to draw it. So don’t be fooled, if you get to work flexibly, don’t thank the government for giving you the right – it’s your employer who has given you the privilege.

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The best teacher I ever had wasn’t really a teacher at all. For most of his career he had a proper job – well, if you count being a journalist as proper – and had only been tempted to run a postgraduate course in his latter years to give the next generation the benefit of his experience.

And for us up-and-coming journalists, that was what made him such a good teacher. He had only recently departed the newsroom of a national newspaper, and knew exactly what it was like. He told us stories that inspired us to want to follow in his footsteps – and told us about the mistakes he’s made along the way. He might not have had much experience of teaching, but he gave exactly the kind of advice that we all wanted to hear.

The best vocational teachers are like that. If you want to learn how to be a nurse, a mechanic, a fireman, a carpet-fitter, or even an HR professional, it’s best to listen to people who have done the job. And because it’s a fast-changing world, ideally you want to listen to somebody who has done the job recently, not 20 years ago.

But when you start talking about academic qualifications rather than vocational ones, it’s a different kettle of fish. The lecturers who are most respected in universities are people who are immersed in theory. They have spent decades tied up in books and research and, in the eyes of most academics, that is what makes them worth listening to.

It’s this contrast that comes to mind whenever I hear the view (frequently expressed by the government) that there should be more vocational skills taught at university.

Many university courses are taught with a vocational slant, even the often-derided media studies could be a great success if they were to be taught by people like my old journalism tutor, ie. people who have got their hands dirty in the real world. But too often they aren’t, because they’re set up and run by academic people in an academic environment, they lose touch with the job they are supposedly teaching students to do.

And the sad thing is that, since cash is king in this world of tuition fees, these failing courses are judged not by the number of students they get into jobs but by the number of paying punters they attract.

The last time I heard from my journalism tutor he had given up teaching his postgraduate course. Maybe I got in there at the right time.

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