Savaged by a dead sheep

Oh dear, I appear to have awoken the ire of the self-appointed spokespeople for all taxpayers by daring to defend the Local Government Pension Scheme and being (horror of horrors) a socialist.

With their wild-eyed right-wing co-thinkers at the Evening Standard busily trying to turn private sector and public sector workers against each other over the question of pensions, the TPA reveal their motives by describing taxpayers in such a way as to exclude public sector workers.

In fact of course public sector workers on PAYE are regular taxpayers just like other workers. The Standard stoops to a new low in the devaluing of an important word by describing the difference between pension provision in the public and private sectors as “apartheid”.

It is absurd to blame public sector workers for the decline of pension provision in the private sector. The fault lies with private sector employers and the reason that they have been able to get away with it says a lot about the relative weakness of trade union organisation in the private sector.

The crocodile tears of the Evening Standard would be plausible if I could remember a single time that paper has supported workers organising to better their lives. The idea that our pension schemes in the public sector cannot be afforded is nonsense. Economic output has nearly doubled in the UK in the last thirty years.

If as a society we chose to prioritise decent defined benefit pension schemes for all workers we could do so. We should. We don’t have to accept that this economic crisis means working people must pay for the crisis – instead this could be the occasion for us to articulate an alternative and do something about it.