“The last thing we want to do is disrupt or endanger the public.”

That’s the lie that winds me up the most when I hear union leaders whining on about the injustices of modern life in austere Britain.

My friend Mr Serwotka was just on Radio 5 bemoaning the potential loss or reduction in some public sector pensions. I honestly feel that this is a man who needs to wake up and smell the recession. The fact that workers in the public sector have pensions to worry about in the first place puts them streets ahead of me. I don’t make pension contributions at the moment for the simple reason that bills need paying and my car’s fuel tank needs filling so that I can drive to my over-paid private sector job.

Don’t the unions realise that all they are succeeding in doing is stirring up a hornets’ nest of resentment and hostility?

In the past, when things were good for some and excellent for others, union officials could get away with tugging on the heart chords of people who only got close to the issues of the day when they picked up their morning paper. But now the sympathy well has dried up. And why? Because we’re all in the mire. We’re swimming in empathy and it’s as much as most of us can do to stay afloat. I can hold my hands up and admit that when times were good I made some bad credit choices. I’m probably not alone there. In the past year or two, after taking stock of my own finances and the economy in general, I’ve come to the harsh understanding that pay freezes, long hours, and a fair degree of uncertainty are the price I, and many others, have to pay for the mess we made of the good times. Sitting around feeling sorry for myself isn’t going to solve anything.

Why on Earth would I – working as hard as I can to do my bit to keep my family in hot meals and my career on track – give a damn about a bunch of moaning, whining malcontents who have absolutely no appreciation of the trouble the country is in, and not the slightest intention of contributing anything remotely constructive to the process of restoring stability.

Don’t tell me it’s difficult out there, Serwotka and Co.; I know it’s hard. I’m out there every day working hard, counting every single last penny, looking for the next opportunity in a market full of equally ambitious (desperate?) competitors. But here’s the difference between me and the average placard waving protester: I don’t need an over-inflated, self-important union representative fighting my battles for me.

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