WE understand the sense of injustice felt by the thousands of public sector workers who went on strike yesterday.

Proposed reforms of the Local Government pension Scheme are divisive, with some public sector workers - police officers, firefighters, civil servants and teachers - being protected from the changes while others are adversely affected.

It means that some workers in the public sector still have the privilege of retiring at 60, while others will have to work on until they are 65.

It is that basic unfairness which has led to such resentment and the biggest strike in Britain since 1926, with further industrial action being threatened.

But while we acknowledge the cause of the strikers' frustration, sympathy for their actions will be extremely hard to find because it is ordinary people who are being hit hardest: ordinary people being stopped from getting to work; ordinary people having to make child care arrangements; and ordinary people having to wait to bury their loved ones.

And the irony is that if striking proves to be successful, it will be those ordinary people who have to bear the cost of protected pension rights that they themselves will not enjoy.

With Britain's pensions crisis mounting, those earning a living outside of the public sector face the prospect of working well beyond 65.

We do not pretend there are any easy answers but what is abundantly clear is that we have a system which is fundamentally flawed and the reality is that the national wave of resentment is only just beginning.