Today will see the first national teachers’ strike for 21 years. Around 8000 schools will be disrupted, either partially or fully closed.

Teachers are skilled professionals. They do a tough job, working long hours and often enduring difficult working conditions. They also play a key role in society, so it’s important to attract good staff to the profession.

On the other hand, teachers are already well paid. According to Jim Knight, the Schools Minister (admittedly not a neutral source), the average salary for a teacher is £34000.

So there’s an interesting argument to be had about teachers’ pay.

However, for the most part that isn’t the argument that’s being had. Instead, the argument from the NUT (the teachers’ union that’s called the strike) that we’re hearing most is all about past levels of pay. Christine Blower, the NUT’s acting head, put it like this:

What we’re saying to the government is, if you really do value teachers, then make sure that they’re paid at least at the level of inflation - which we take to be the RPI [Retail Price Index], which is 4.1%.

The NUT’s argument is that the 2.45% pay rise that teachers have been offered is below the rate of inflation. If teachers’ pay rises more slowly than the rate of inflation, then their salaries will buy less than they used to; in real terms, teachers will have had a pay cut. And the NUT won’t stand for a pay cut.

There’s nothing in that argument about why a pay cut for teachers would be such a terrible thing, though. It doesn’t argue that teachers deserve more than they’ve been offered, or that a fall in teachers’ pay would hit recruitment, or anything like that. Instead, it’s a straightforward appeal to history, arguing that next year’s pay should be the same (in real terms) as last year’s pay.

Appeals to history are, of course, fallacies. That things were a certain way before doesn’t prove either that it was right that they were that way or that they should continue to be that way. The NUT needs to shift their focus to a better argument.

It probably wouldn’t be a great idea to try to explain that to your teacher, though. Except, perhaps, your Critical Thinking teacher.

We hear a lot about climate change and what we need to do to reduce carbon emissions and so preserve the environment.

One suggestion is that we should replace fossil fuel consumption with biofuel consumption, moving from burning coal and oil to burning ethanol and biodiesel.

Biofuels are liquid fuels made by fermenting plant material such as corn and rapeseed. Although they release carbon when burned, this is carbon aborbed by the plants when they’re grown. Fossil fuels, on the other hand, release into the atmosphere carbon which would otherwise be stored in coal and oil desposits underground. The impact on the environment of burning biofuels is therefore less than the impact of burning fossil fuels.

Or is it? Critics of biofuels point out that to fully understand their environmental impact we need to think more carefully than this.

The process of growing the crops used to make biofuels can be polluting, as can the process of converting the crops into fuel. Areas of rainforest, which act as a carbon sink, are being destroyed to make room to grow biofuel crops; whatever carbon would have been absorbed by the rainforest but now isn’t is a carbon cost of biofuel production.

It may well be that all things considered, biofuels are greener than fossil fuels, at least when they are produced in the right way. What we can’t do, though, is generalise from biofuels being greener than fossil fuels in one way (whatever carbon is emitted into the atmostphere when biofuels are burned is first absorbed when the biofuel crops are grown) to the conclusion that they are greener than fossil fuels full stop.

Student pub crawl specialists Carnage UK have come under fire for encouraging students to binge drink. According to students seeking to promote a responsible drinking campaign at the National Union of Students (NUS) annual conference, nights like those run by Carnage not only damage students’ reputation but also put their safety at risk.

Carnage’s response to this criticism was to list official university events that also encourage students to over-do it. Speaking for Carnage, Paul Bahia said,

‘At Liverpool University the union used to have a flagship night called Double Vision which offered a double spirit for £1, while York University student union promotes treble shots when you purchase a single shot, via their union website.’

Several of the student unions defended themselves, claiming to have changed their policies on discounted drinks. That, however, is beside the point; Carnage’s argument is a bog-standard tu quoque and in no way defends what they do.

Even if the student unions are being hypocritical, doing the very thing that they’re telling Carnage to stop doing, that doesn’t make what Carnage does any better. If Carnage are promoting irresponsible drinking, and the student unions are promoting irresponsible drinking, then they should both stop.

Carnage’s only other defence against the accusation that they promote excessive drinking was that they don’t discount alcoholic drinks at their events, that they are ”not a cheap option”.

That argument, though, confuses promoting excessive drinking with discounting drinks prices; there are plenty of other ways of encouraging people to drink more than is good for them. Carnage’s critics complain about the tone of the advertising of the event, and the peer pressure to drink experienced by students on them, not about the prices.

Both of the arguments offered by Carnage fail as justifications of their actions.