Comment: the teachers' pointless strike

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Today's teachers' strike will inconvenience a great many London parents, even if their children rejoice at a day off school. The NUT will not, however, achieve its real objective, which is to persuade the Government to think again about the pay increases awarded teachers in the coming round - a 2.45 per cent rise this year, followed by a further rise of 2.3 per cent in 2009 and 2010. The increase the teachers want is 4.1 per cent. This is the level of inflation recorded by the Retail Price Index, a measure that includes housing costs and council tax; the Government's preferred index is the Consumer Prices Index.

But as teachers - and everyone else - know perfectly well, real-life inflation rate is considerably above the official rate. According to one estimate this week from a website that tracks prices in supermarkets, the rise in average family food bills this year is likely to amount to £800. And as family budgets contract, the amount spent on basics, food and fuel, accounts for an ever greater proportion of household expenditure. Small wonder that teachers and police want these increases reflected in their wages.

Equally inexorably, the Government cannot yield to their demands: there is simply no public money available to fund them. There is a squeeze on tax revenues and the vast sums that the Government committed to public spending when Gordon Brown was Chancellor mean there is no slack in the system now. The teachers, like other public-sector workers, will simply have to accept that their wage increases will not match inflation. They can at least take comfort in their job security and generous pensions settlements: most people in the private sector have the same problems, but none of their compensations.