Parents across the county face serious inconvenience on Thursday if the public sector pensions strike goes ahead as planned.

As revealed in today’s paper, 94 schools in Worcestershire will close or partially close.

An interesting question is: who gets blamed?

There’s some evidence that the Government is struggling in the public relations battle on this one.

It’s perhaps indicative of the sensitivity within the coalition that Michael Gove came up with the rather desperate idea that parents should take over and keep the schools open themselves. Seriously?

The Government, of course, wants annoyed parents to put the responsibility at the door of the teachers but the argument about it being a plot by the ‘usual suspects’ looks a bit weak when lined up on strike are teachers from the moderate Association of Teachers and Lecturers, which has never been on a national strike before.

That points to a genuine anger and a feeling of unfairness among teachers and other public servants about the Government ‘imposition’ of increased pension contributions and reduced benefits.

Most ordinary public sector workers are hardly looking at a fortune when they retire – more than half are below £5,600 a year. So the Government is pushing the other argument – that these pension changes are no different to those undergone by millions of private sector workers.

For those employees in the private sector who have already had pensions benefits cuts there may be a tendency to think: If I have to put up with it, why not those in the public sector?

But the Government needs to be careful here. Because whatever public and private sector staff think of the other’s pension arrangements, or the argument of Britain’s pensions timebomb, both seem pretty convinced and annoyed that MPs aren’t subjecting their pensions to the same scale of austerity that the public are subjected to.