If strikers really are grasping, they learned it from their betters

"The price of this financial crisis is being borne by people who absolutely did not cause it (…) I'm surprised that the degree of public anger has not been greater than it has."

- Bank of England Governor Mervyn King

Nurses, teachers, doctors, none of whom were responsible for mess we're in, are being asked to sacrifice 15% off their pension by the index switch, and pay more from wages that have been frozen for years. This must be done, we are told for 'the good of the country.' The government has said that public sector pensions are unaffordable, despite the fact that the Hutton Report says they are projected to fall as a share of GDP. When workers take issue with having their pensions mucked about for political purposes, they are called grasping and greedy.

I don't believe that's true, but then again, so what if it is? Our culture now celebrates naked, amoral greed as a virtue. The most powerful pursue their own enrichment at ruinous expense to everyone else (remember that whole financial crisis thing?) and the hardest pushback they get is the government pleading with them to show restraint on bonuses. The banks responded the same way that biggest failure on the planet Fred the Shred did when asked to give back his pension after wrecking one of the largest companies in the world: 'A contract is a contract. Now pay me.'

If ordinary people have turned greedy, then they've learned from the best.