Makes my blood boil

It can be spun any way you like, but it is extremely clear that with just 5M out of 30M of the UK working population and their predecessors having made little direct contribution to their own pensions and expecting the taxpayer to fund unexpectedly high longevity risks, your public sector pensions are unsustainable not just mathematically, but also morally and politically.

Sooner or later those in the public sector will have to accept less than they think they will get.

Then they'll be in the same boat as the private sector - mercilessly manipulated to suit the prevailing politics.

I note almost none of those who are expecting or already receive public sector pensions are engaging here with the enormous numbers involved. Whether senior, middle, or lower paid types, they all generally demonstrate a rather ugly picture of "entitlement" which is just as ugly to any that is implied of those commonly said to be spongeing off (totally inadequate UK levels of) welfare benefits.

As we have broadly already discovered, by any measure, the immediate cash debt equivalent of UK public sector pensions liability resting upon the government and therefore the taxpayer is around £1,000,000,000,000.

Other government debt published as national debt is a further approx £1,600,000,000,000.

There are big questions about what further "other" national debt is obfuscated by HMG's current chosen style of reporting.

That £1.6T figure oft mentioned as the national debt is exceedingly worrying enough to the likes of Cameron and the Chancellor - so much so that they have been pulled up before now for suggesting that they have managed to start to "pay it down" when they have done no such thing. It keeps rising.

The £1T it would cost to securitise the public sector pensions liability is simply not talked about at all. The country continues to pay it, a bit like a well meaning low paid parent is prepared to risk early bankruptcy in order to subsidise their undergraduate children in order to give them the best possible start despite the awful student loan and grant system. A risk similar to that of some animals which die immediately after reproducing - their prime role in life over.

Well I am sorry, but the general populace does not have a prime responsibility to risk bankruptcy by continuing to assist public sector workers in ever more comfortable retirements compared to their 5x more numerous private sector peers.

It has to stop.

The fact that behind the scenes the government annually spends more than 3x on pensions than on defence in some countries wold be laudible, but in fact we spend so much on defence compared to many countries that government pensions spending sticks out like a sore thumb.

Because it has not been securitiised, public sector pensions liability is pure hot air. A one legged entry in some books the government hates to talk about because there is no sensible answer but to begin to renege upon the pension promises so rashly made to the public sector, or at least so rashly tolerated since the writing about longevity risks appeared on the wall.

There should be a national referendum on this question. No doubt about it.

It could be in the form "Do you agree that public service pensions payments should now start to be subject to a special additional rate of income tax in order to offset the unexpected windfall effects of outdated "for life" pension promises made when pensioners lived on average only half as long in retirement?"