Standing up for pensions

As a former public sector worker and union member, and of course as a service user, I went to our county town today to join the march and rally in support of the public sector workers who are facing higher pension contributions and a longer working life. Several hundred people turned out from 30 different unions: county council staff, social workers, probation officers, teachers, care workers and staff from the local hospital which is itself threatened (some would say doomed) by reorganization of medical services in West Wales. All this against the background of George Osbourne's latest flagrant plundering of the budgets of the lowest paid which, among other consequences, will cast a further 100,000 children into poverty.

Here I'm focussing upon the physiotherapists, just one group of professionals who will be forced to work until the age of 68. Their strenuous occupation is one that requires personal strength and fitness to lift and manoeuvre frail or disabled patients. Here are ordinary people with ordinary faces, mainly women, a far cry from the privileged classes that continue to benefit from Tory tax breaks. No wonder bones are rattling.