Here’s the latest instalment in the Irish Examiner’s ongoing war of attrition against the selfish, vile and evil people also known as public sector workers:

http://www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/editorial/day-of-protest–marching-wont-rescue-the-economy-104922.html

And a reply sent off this morning:

“And so another Irish Examiner editorial completely misses the point about why public sector workers are marching and striking. For the record, we are trying to secure demonstrable fairness for ALL workers, not just for ourselves. The inequalities that your leader writer points to in the private sector are an abomination. The solution to them is not to inflict the same misery on public sector workers – the vast majority of whom are not well paid in any case. We must work together to rid ourselves of the outrageous sense of privilege and entitlement at the top of both the public and private sectors. It is a barefaced lie to insist that the savings that need to be made cannot be made other than by inflicting poverty and deprivation on the majority. There are hundreds if not thousands of measures that could be taken without doing that. But private sector vested interests have the ear of government and our fat and pampered politicians concede to every request they make of them. We will write whatever cheques are necessary for them, says Brian Cowen. Your columnist Ivan Yates, who also never tires of lecturing public sector workers on the need for pay and welfare cuts, could nevertheless be heard on Matt Cooper’s radio programme in recent days forcefully defending massive subsidies for horseracing which the government had timidly suggested might be cut back. Yates and his fellow worshippers at the Irish Church of Gambling were incandescent and the idea has been dropped. Could anything be more offensive and provoking? The fact is that the crisis is being deliberately and needlessly exploited to usher in a severe economic ideology designed to maintain a system of privileges for the rich propped up by a sub-class of dirt cheap and powerless labour: that’s the prize which the plotters at IBEC have firmly in their sights. Indeed the policy wonks at the IMF have been advising governments everywhere that the crisis represents a great ‘opportunity’ in this respect. Notice too how we are being prepared for the idea that the measures being taken against us will be permanent. We will fight and resist the miserable fate that is being coldly planned for us with every legal means at our disposal – no matter how the recklessly divisive and big-business dependent media attempt to spin it against us. ”