MONEY is the root of all evil, they say.

It is certainly looking like that at the moment.

There is talk of the country being a whisker away from a new recession, debt measured in eyewateringly high billions and dire predictions of any kind of growth being another three or four years away.

Depressing stuff.

So there were mixed reactions all round when some public sector workers chose to strike this week.

You got the sense that nobody was really sure what to think.

There was a lot of talk about the disruption, mostly about how the walk-outs by teachers were inconvenient for people who had to find somewhere else to send their children.

There was a sense of injustice among private sector workers that the public sector was defending pension privileges not enjoyed by them.

And above all there was a feeling that it was all a bit pointless because, as we were clearly told in George Osborne’s autumn statement, the cupboard is bare.

It is a bleak situation we all – public and private sector – find ourselves in.

But the saddest thing of all is that it seems to have pitted ordinary people against other ordinary people.

I doubt that this strike will make a huge amount of difference in the long run but I don’t believe strikers chose to do it lightly.

Some could see the arguments being made by others – but felt they also had to stand up for their own interests.

You can’t blame them for that because nobody else was going to.

So, right or wrong, I think those who genuinely believed they had a point to make should have been able to do so – without being made to feel like they were somehow bad people.

Jeremy Clarkson apparently said strikers should all “be shot.”

I’m sure he just thought he was making his point in an amusing way but it does illustrate the type of abuse that people have had to put up with for trying to stand up for themselves.

If you don’t agree with the strike, fair enough. By all means say.

But just say it in a reasonable way because I don’t think any of us are enjoying this.