Sir,

Having never been tempted to write to the Beacon in eight years, I now find myself composing my second letter in a month.

Recently I have watched with bemusement the latest bout of strikes by public sector workers, mainly teachers it has to be said, over planned changes to their pensions.

Although paying more for longer to receive less does at first glance seem reason enough to down tools and besiege Downing Street, I'd like to think that such a highly-educated white collar work force could also, for once, take a breath and try to see the bigger picture before manning the barricades.

The fact is we're broke. The country owes so much that the debt interest alone costs us £35 billion a year, and that's at the lowest cost AAA interest rate that the Greeks and Irish can only dream of, and is equivalent to our entire defence budget.

By 2014, even with the coalition's aggressive plan to reduce the structural deficit, this figure is set to rise to £60 billion a year at which point our total national debt will be roughly £1 trillion (£1000,000,000,000).

If you are struggling to conceptualise the scale of the UK government financial incompetence then try this: Imagine on the day Christ was born you started spending one million pounds a day, every day, and that you kept on doing that for the next 2011 years.

By the time you read this letter you still wouldn't have spent £1 trillion. That's the hole we're in.

In short, even without the banking disaster, we have been living beyond our means for some time and public sector workers must come to terms with this the same as everyone else.

People are living longer and retiring earlier and the money to fund it all has simply dried up. But if they are feeling glum about their pensions and still feel robbed and abused, they might find cheer in reminding themselves of the perks they still get even in these supposedly austere times.

As the MCC website proudly boasts, council staff can look forward to competitive rates of pay and holiday, family friendly policies, local government pension scheme, staff discount scheme, childcare voucher scheme, discounted membership at the council's leisure centres, confidential counselling service, car leasing scheme, car loans scheme, Welsh Hospitals Association, training opportunities and creche facilities. Can private sector workers expect as much?

We all have a right to be upset about what is happening to pensions in this country but we should also be upset with ourselves collectively because we voted the people responsible into Westminster.

We sat back and watched as they steered the economy off a cliff while simultaneously lining their own pockets.

We barely grunted when Gordon Brown raided our pension schemes and allowed the banks to play roulette with our money.

We hardly think about the countless billions we earn as a nation that are frittered away on debt interest rather than being spent making this country a better place.

Sadly, at the next election many millions will forget all this and vote as they always have done.

Perhaps if we thought more deeply as we approached the ballot box these sorts of thing wouldn't happen.

Gareth Dunn

(Monmouth)