Reforming for financial reasons with the Ryder brothers Shaun and Paul drummer Gaz Whelan backing vocalist Rowetta and new members Wags -

Reforming for financial reasons with the Ryder brothers Shaun and Paul, drummer Gaz Whelan, backing vocalist Rowetta and new members Wags - from Shaun's last group, Black Grape - and a rapper called Nuts. Lead man Ian Brown, recently jailed for "air rage", is now solo. John Squires is in the Seahorses; bass player Gary `Mani' Mounfield left to join Primal Scream.HAPPY MONDAYSFormed in 1984 in Manchester Disbanded early 1993. "From being pronounced dead by the cognoscente of the house scene, rock embraced dance and dance embraced rock."The Mondays also provided a new spin on the old rock 'n' roll excesses."Music pundits need characters to renew old articles of faith and refresh old values."John McKie, the editor of Smash Hits, said: "Baggies will greet the reformation of the Mondays with uncontained glee, although the under-20s will probably wonder what all the fuss is about."STONE ROSESTheir eponymous debut album sold 500,000 copies and they are credited with originating the "Madchester" sound A second album took five years to record and disappointed. Well, pounds 500 and a free T-shirt."The Happy Mondays collapsed in March 1993 when in-fighting, prodigious drug consumption and a chaotically recorded final album brought down its record label, Factory Records - another key component in the Madchester scene."Their legacy is massive because it was the first time that rock music embraced dance culture," says John Molvey, deputy editor of the music magazine, NME. Crucially Mark "Bez" Berry, the band's non-singing, non-musical mascot, who merely walked around on stage with his hood up, will be joining the tour Shaun Ryder claims Bez asked for pounds 50,000 "We got him down to pounds 500. But the guitarist, Mark Day, and the keyboard player, Paul Davis, are no longer in the band.

If it turns into rock and Status Quo we'll have to finish it."Shaun's brother, Paul Ryder, and the drummer, Gaz Whelan, are playing on the tour, and backing vocalist, Rowetta, is back. The group has yet to decide whether to make a new album: "We'll put a show on, play some tunes, and hope it sounds good," said Mr Ryder yesterday "Hopefully the tour will be rock and roll. The former heroin and crack addict faces a large tax bill and his last band, Black Grape, split acrimoniously in 1997.The band will play a four-date tour starting in Manchester in April If the gigs go well, more are planned. It even made the cover of Time magazine. Then, like all youth trends, it was quickly gone, leaving behind some great music, a bastard child called "Britpop" and some very frazzled brain cells.Infamous lead singer Shaun Ryder has decided to reform the band for financial reasons. The Mondays, with the Stone Roses and the Hacienda nightclub, were the epicentre of the Madchester or "baggy" scene.

A fusion of ecstasy, Acid House beats, rock music and some of the worst haircuts seen in Britain since the Plantagenets, the Madchester phenomenon peaked between 1989 and 1992. But they will have to sign new contracts giving up restrictions on the length of the working year. According to the Green Paper, a majority will pass, but a "substantial minority" will not.Senior government sources said it would be "extraordinary for a teachers' union to suggest to its members that they should oppose arrangements which would enable them to gain a pay increase of around pounds 2,000 a year."Effectively, a union which aims to block this appraisal system is telling its members they should settle for lower pay.". SIX YEARS after they packed up their baggy flares in a whirl of street drugs and recriminations, the Happy Mondays are back.

The Hacienda may be closed and the quality of ecstasy diminished, but the fast turnaround of musical trends means the band is reforming to cash in on "Madchester" nostalgia just six years after it split up. Headteachers will recommend who should pass, but nationally trained assessors will have the final say.Teachers who pass stand to gain a 10 per cent pay rise, and access to salaries up to pounds 40,000. To pass, teachers must be judged against annual targets, both for their own work and the exam performance of their pupils.Once teachers get to the top of the classroom pay-scale, currently pounds 23,000, they can apply to take a tougher test to pass a performance and pay "threshold". Under the proposals, teachers will only progress up the pay scale if they pass an annual appraisal by their head teacher.

The Tower of London is not big enough to contain all the refuseniks."David Blunkett, the Secretary of State for Education, said the Government was proposing a "modern performance system, based on a range of factors including, but not exclusively, targets and results".Writing in The Times Educational Supplement, he said: "Most parents - and teachers - would rightly say that teachers should, can and do make a big difference to the achievement of their pupils."At stake is the most fundamental reform of the way teachers are assessed and paid for 100 years. If that can only be achieved by direct action, then so be it."Headteachers and employers also attacked the proposals as unworkable, while the other major classroom unions hardened their position.Peter Smith, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said: "I think that there will be widespread civil disobedience in schools unless the Government listens to the teachers' points of view. There could be half-day action, one-day or rolling strikes in the hope that between September this year and September next year the Government will change its position."Nigel de Gruchy, the general secretary of NASUWT, said the union would negotiate over the changes, but warned: "It is prudent to prepare plans to defend teachers against the totally unmanageable impositions which seem, unfortunately, to be emerging from the Green and technical papers. Doug McAvoy, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said the union would take the action to stop annual "MoT" tests for teachers being turned into a way of imposing performance-related pay. The National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT) also threatened a boycott of the annual appraisal, claiming yesterday that it would "swamp schools with bureaucracy".Mr McAvoy said: "If the Government is determined to ignore the views of teachers, it will antagonise teachers.