Now, please explain why you believe that public sector workers should continue to have a pension regime of a type which has been taken away, in my case long ago, from the majority of private sector workers - namely the (rather inaptly named, but we all know what it means) 'Final Salary' scheme. The vast majority of private sector workers who had a 'Final Salary' scheme (more aptly termed 'Defined Benefits' scheme) found it withdrawn and replaced with a 'Defined Contributions' scheme, because the latter is more affordable (and the downside, of course, is its unpredictability in terms of the benefits provided on retirement).

If "we truly are all in it together", why do you support a structure in which one group is entitled to something that the rest are not?

Final salary schemes in the private sector were withdrawn because of gross mismanagement. When times were good and profits were huge, companies took pension holidays in order to inflate profits even more. And guess where those extra goodies went. Not to future pensioners, that's for sure, but to shareholders in dividends and to top executives in bonuses. So when times get hard and investment returns go down, big holes appear in the pension funds. Duh. So what you want now is for the public sector to join the race to the bottom, all because capitalism screwed it up once again. Well we've already baled out capitalism once, thank you. Leave our bloody pensions alone!