The eponymous Mr Balls and the PR battle

I thoroughly enjoyed the 24th and was in a splendidly good mood after the London march. All this was swiftly destroyed by anger when I heard a load of Balls from the man himself - all that stuff about only 10% teachers wanting to strike, how we ruined peoples' lives with a one day strike, how we all earned £40,000, oh, and those endless holidays when we all sit around doing no work at all..
Can't remember which bits were actually said by Ed, and how much by the BBC and their very one-sided reporting - I can only assumed Ed had been briefing them.
I for one would gladly strike again tomorrow - the amount of casework I picked up while strolling down Whitehall is in itself proof that far too many teachers are overworked and underpaid.
We must keep up the PR battle and work swiftly to counter the half-truths, downright lies and negative images generated by Balls and his cronies. Petitions and writing to MPs etc are all very well, but please let's have more and better materials to explain simply to parents and the wider public why we need to take action. If we are to get a bad image in the national media, we need to work locally to counteract it. Off the top of my head, what about getting young teachers leaving the profession to write open letters to parents to be distributed ad school gates - letters that spell out that low pay and high workload mean that young teachers can't afford to stay? I am sure there are many other and better ideas out there - let's start collecting and distributing them NOW, so we go into the next round with more parents and public understanding why we are doing it.