As chief executive for a company that is 70 percent owned by the government, a 9.6 million pounds pay package is quite a tidy sum.

It is a package that makes Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive Stephen Hester almost as well as paid as the Real Madrid-bound Cristiano Ronaldo.

True the package has caveats - it is dependent on targets including shareholder return and absolute share performance - and is line with other British banking chiefs.

But in these more frugal post-global downturn times does that make it right? In trying to get itself shipshape, RBS has slashed over 15,000 jobs as it received its £20 billion pounds government bailout.

As details of the pay package were revealed it also emerged that RBS, which has been pilloried over the pension awarded to Hester’s predecessor Fred Goodwin, will be spending £300,000 on corporate entertainment at Wimbledon over the next fortnight. Doh!

Given the taxpayer-funded bailout of RBS is Hester worth £9.6m?

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Hundreds of thousands of council workers are striking over pay in the biggest bout of industrial unrest in years.

Members of Unite and Unison are protesting over deals to increase their pay by 2.45 per cent, which is below the rate of inflation and which they say means an effective pay cut.

How are you affected by the strike? Is the council workers’ action justified?

Thousands of schools are closing on Thursday as teachers hold their first national strike in more than two decades.

The members of the NUT, as many as 200,000 teachers, say the action is to teach the government a lesson for offering them an unacceptable, below-inflation three-year pay deal.

They say it will deter young graduates from joining their ranks in the future while sapping the morale of current staff.

But it is not only the government which disagrees with them. Other teaching unions, such as the NASUWT and ATL have, albeit reluctantly accepted the pay deal, which was recommended by an independent organisation, the School Teachers’ Review Body. They point out that teachers have fared better than other public sector workers such as the police.

So while the NUT says enough is enough, the government argues that it will be children who suffer in the run-up to the summer exams.

Do you think teachers are right to strike on principle or are they being selfish? Send us your comments