Why are we not surprised, folks?

It seems that 73 percent of young teachers consider jacking in their new careers before the end of the first year.

That’s barely enough time to acquire a slanderous nickname based on some random physical characteristic or an unlikely rumour about their private life.

For young male teachers, it’s not even enough time to wear out the first set of leather elbow patches on your jacket.

Meanwhile, over in the NHS hospitals are spending more than ever on buying in agency nurses.

It’s moments like this that make me glad that education and health, which are among our most vital services, are ultimately in the hands of the brightest people our nation has to offer.

To ordinary folk like us, the reasons for the shortages have seemed blindingly obvious for years, and have remained the same irrespective of the political make-up of the House of Commons.

That these reasons have been largely ignored only goes to show we must be wrong, and that we should stop pestering those in charge about them.

It should be obvious to us by now, for example, that the shortage of young teachers has nothing whatsoever to do with the pay and conditions offered to new teachers.

No young teacher ever reflects bitterly that their old mates from university are now in entry-level private sector jobs on two or three times the salary. Nor do they ever reflect that, whereas a young teacher has the future of hundreds of children in their hands, all their former university classmates have to do in exchange for megabucks is attend the odd training course, make the tea and go on the lunchtime sandwich run.

No young teacher ever minded going home to a bleak little flat or bedsit, or miserably calculating that it’d take them 20 years to pay off their student loan and 40 to save the deposit on a house.

Nor do teachers mind their entire profession being used as a political football forever.

They don’t mind running the risk of ending up in a school where image and league tables are everything. If they do end up in such a school, they don’t mind running the risk of their bosses calling them incompetent if they fail to secure brilliant grades for every kid, even the ones who might – just might – on a good day beat a tangerine in an IQ test.

They don’t mind being obliged to deal with kids who turn up to classes either not at all or with a rotten attitude and enough weapons to meet the props requirements of a 1970s Kung Fu film.

They don’t mind being all but powerless to sling offenders out of the classroom for fear of affecting the statistics and bringing bosses’ wrath down on their heads.

They don’t mind being threatened with violence, legal action or both by parents who are just this side of the Missing Link.

Obviously, the same sort of thing can mostly be said about the shortage of nurses.

If the shortage had anything to do with pay or conditions, the people in overall charge of the NHS would have addressed the issue as long ago as the 1970s.

Nurses clearly adore the prospect of being in wards where there are three or four times as many patients per staff member as there should be. They positively relish exhaustion, anguish and stress. They love wrangling abusive drunks.

What they enjoy even more, though, is being first in line for criticism, public shaming and blame when something inevitably goes horribly wrong. In fact, the only thing they enjoy more is the fact that the bosses then scuttle for cover like cockroaches on the kitchen floor of a bad restaurant when the lights are suddenly turned on.

The real reasons for shortages of teachers and nurses must be so complex that we lesser beings can’t understand them.

I can’t think of any other reason for the obvious ones to have been dismissed for so long.

A few of my fantasies

A NEW and emphatically non-sexual escort agency has been established in Swindon.

I must confess that I used the services of a different agency a few years ago, even though I was in a happy relationship.

There were certain activities I wanted to explore with my partner, but I was scared to ask her in case she reacted by laughing, sneering or throwing me out of the house in utter disgust.

When I saw the advert for an escort agency I called and arranged a series of meetings, but sadly it was a doomed experiment.

After only two get-togethers, the agency called and cancelled our agreement, saying the staff were simply too horrified by my strange requests to continue.

Apparently the traction engine rally and the Fred Dibnah Appreciation Society’s marathon DVD screening had already left the women traumatised, but they drew the line at a ‘Teach Yourself Dry Stone Walling’ weekend near Doncaster.

SUPER-rats are heading for Swindon.

Fed generously thanks to our tendency to leave tasty morsels around our homes and businesses, and increasingly resistant to poisons, they’re seemingly about to turn the town into a 1950s monster flick if we’re not careful.

I suggest we should declare the rats a very wonderful thing indeed, and a vital part of the town’s history and infrastructure which must be nurtured and preserved at all costs.

In fact, special focus groups should be set up to maintain their welfare and an official should have the term ‘Super-Rat Champion’ added to his or her list of titles.

As I’ve pointed out before, in this neck of the woods that’s usually enough to guarantee doom.

• THE council is considering adding solar panels to its housing stock.

  This is a great idea. Indeed, any idea that loosens the grip of the cynical vampires in charge of major power companies is a great idea.

  I only hope the local authority finds a way of offering the service to all households, perhaps at a slight profit in some cases.

  This would generate some much-needed cash for other services – and knacker those solar panel con artists who phone up and pretend we can get the things for nothing.