I don't know if Matt is a member of the LGPS or of UNISON, I guess, as a law abiding citizen he must be if he's going to be on a picket line. But I certainly am, of both. And I was one of the (pitifully) few that voted against the strike on Tuesday. Indeed whilst 80% voted in favour, only 28% of those eligible in this ballot bothered either way which to my mind makes the whole campaign a bit toothless.

Now, I didn't vote against because I dislike the idea of taking action. I will not be crossing any picket lines on Tuesday, that's for sure. I voted against for wholly "positive" reasons. Reasons that I am surprised that the Greens do not also support.

First, there is a crisis in pensions. Second, I agree that LGPS pensioners are not typically well paid and the pension is part of that reduced remuneration.

But...the ability to motivate a million workers into action should not be used as an opportunity to highlight divisions between one type of worker and another. Especially where this can cause such resentment because those paying for these pensions are the taxpayers while many of them are seeing their pensions provision going out of the window.

No, the Anglo-Saxon system of pensions is terminally sick and this campaign was a lost opportunity on the part of one of the biggest parts of the labour movement to whip up a storm to change that system entirely, to cause governments to look differently at the monetary assumptions on which the Anglo-Saxon pension system is so flimsily based (such as about the creation of money I blogged earlier).

We need this pensions crisis to create a new chartism that unites workers to fight against the broken system we are all in, not a strike that will make some people have to take a day off work to look after the kids that won't be at school and the like.

I thought "Green economics" was more than populist support for the status quo...:)