Answer. if you listen to some unions potentially even further away than we were at the start of the year. this is notjust about pay, it is also about conditions. in the case of teachers it is about workload and in the case of nurses it is about just how much they have an applet on a daily basis. the government constantly tells us it is prepared to talk about conditions and talk about workload and some of the talks actually seem to have been fairly productive with some proposals being put on the table. but pay is the big sticking point with the government at the momentjust refusing to budge. if you listen to ministers they will tell you that they have a fear that if you give a high pay rise at the moment the inflation that we are seeing across the economy could be baked in and it could get worse and last longer and make the economic recovery last longer. that is not a uniformly ....