We thus lose some of those with the best practical skills.
David Blunkett’s proposals for super-teacher scales are fine, except that they will be awarded to bright young things. The pay in both nursing and teaching has been distorted by the callings on the various pay scales which mean that, after their mid-forties, nurses and teachers can only earn good salaries (ie comparable with non-public services activity) by moving into “management”. It makes neither business nor environmental sense to insist that customers continue to separate plutonium against their wishes.PETE ROCHECampaignerGreenpeace UKLondon N1. Sir: David Aaronovitch’s article on public sector workers made some well balanced comments (“What’s the point of spending a fortune on nurses and teachers?”, 28 January). BNFL should seize the opportunity presented by the German decision to get out of reprocessing, and diversify into nuclear services such as waste storage, clean-up and decommissioning which its customers actually want. In the meantime, the plant continues to increase the international stockpile of weapons-useable plutonium.
On the other hand, BNFL is a major world player in dry storage technology and decommissioning and radioactive waste clean-up work.

If BNFL approaches the forthcoming talks with Germany in a constructive and conciliatory manner, it can expect to be able to capitalise on these areas of expertise and gain new work from the German utilities.It is clear that reprocessing is a dying industry. German utilities have contracts with Sellafield’s Thorp reprocessing plant for around 1,900 tonnes of spent fuel, which represents around 18 per cent of the Thorp order book (by weight). In the unlikely event that the plant were able to get back on schedule following recent breakdowns, Thorp would still only have enough work to keep it going until 2009 unless it wins new orders. Sir: It is a travesty of the truth to suggest that the German government’s decision to delay cancelling reprocessing contracts will save “thousands of jobs” at Sellafield (report, 27 January). Wanting both sides to play well.Professor Einstein may have been a very clever man, but he could also have been a very rich man if he had gone beyond relativity and thought of the concept of time-sharing…Nobody can recognise himself from behind.Taken from `The Great Book of Albanian Proverbs’, 1999 edition.. It follows, therefore, that all unsuccessful books are collector’s items This is an idea worth pursuing In fact, someone once wrote a book about it. But nobody bought it.The best way to unsettle a pedant is to open a parenthesis “( ” and then never close it.The presence of so many football goal posts standing alone in so many fields proves that the public WILL accept modern abstract art – so long as it is functional.Whoever named the swimming style known as the butterfly stroke had probably never seen a butterfly trying to swim.Three things to avoid: shirts marked SLIMFIT, sports sections of newspapers and books on diets by famous actresses.There are three stages in the love of sports 1 Wanting your own side to win 2 Wanting the better side to win 3.

So why has nobody ever dreamt of harnessing the power of thunder?No politician ever gives his speechwriter a knighthood.If books do not sell, they do not get reprinted Therefore all unsuccessful books are first editions. Isn’t the spread of education a wonderful thing?Nobody ever made a fortune by selling children models of UN peace-keeping soldiers.When a tattooed person dies, who owns the tattoo?Man has always dreamt of harnessing the power of lightning. Which is, as it happens, an old Albanian proverb.
Here we go, then…Before we die, our bones begin to ache and break After we die, they remain intact for hundreds of years. Either God has a sense of humour, or his hobby is archaeology.Never act on a proverb which you don’t understand.Even a continent is an island.A letter bringing tragic news and a letter containing a cheque for pounds 1m travel at exactly the same speed.At a funeral, all the people left happily alive dress mournfully in black, while the late lamented is joyfully wrapped in white.When people talk about the ancient wisdom of Chinese medicine, ask them what is so wise about the gentle art of chopping little bits off live tigers and bears to feed to patients.In a country ruled by young people, the age of consent for sex will be a maximum age, not minimum.When someone tells you that all things are relative, the only possible answer is: “Absolutely”.Of all the things that are hard to throw away, the hardest to throw away is a dustbin.No matter how long a person lives, he always pegs out just too early to catch his obituary.In the old days, family mottoes were always written in Latin so that everyone could understand them, no matter what his own language was Nowadays nobody can understand them.