Sir - The Government thinks Christmas has come early with public service strikes providing the ammunition to fire at what they predictably present as selfish workers inconveniencing the majority of hard working people.

The cynical divide and rule opportunism is straight out of the 1980's Tory tactics manual but you cannot compare the demands and disruption of the trade union movement then with the strikers of today.

Public Service sector workers have seen their pay effectively frozen for a few years now and shocking numbers have lost their jobs.

County Hall was once a safe option for long term employment and now its a 'death row' of a workplace.

No-one knows whose post will be eliminated next.

David Cameron wants to be re elected and with the economy out of intensive care he tries to present the sensible even desperate demands of public sector workers (plenty of whom are forced to pay day loans and food banks during crisis times) as though they jeopardize the recovery whereas in reality freezing pay and taking away the spending power of a large number of workers is itself damaging.

Downing Streets spin spiders quickly weaved the line that these workers are inconveniencing the public.

Yes, just for one day they were ! But the public is even more impacted by the real story that is the ongoing decommissioning of public services that they are stuck with ad infinitum. Depressing too was that the Labour leader said that strikes show failure on both sides. What drivel from Red Ed so desperate to appeal to the zillions of parents who had to take a day off to look after their kids because of this anarchic one day disruption.

Strikes so often arise out of a rough deal for workers where the employers have been unrealistic or provocatively inflexible, and all this propaganda from parliament is nauseating when it is they who tend to award themselves healthy increases with no need of a picket line.

Andrew Brown

WORCESTER