THE Government’s painful squeeze on public-sector pensions is the right policy – being forced through at the wrong time and in the wrong way.

It is a tough message for teachers, council staff and others to hear, but there is no alternative to significant curbs – to reflect people living longer and pension misery hitting the rest of us.

So, the unions should accept a switch to “career-average” pensions – instead of finalsalary deals, that reward the best-paid – and a rise in the retirement age, to 66 by 2020.

The most controversial part of the package, higher employee contributions, is also justified. Some staff pay as little as five per cent of their salaries – compared with the 12 per cent recommended for those in the private sector.

However, that is where I part company with a government apparently hell-bent on inflicting this pain when public-sector workers are already suffering their biggest fall in living standards for a generation.

It is that rush to turn the screw that makes many suspicious that the true motive here is not book-balancing, but naked politics.

Any parent cursing today’s teachers’ strike should remember the context: a two-year pay freeze – while inflation is at five per cent – and average family disposable incomes plunging by £60 a month, according to one report yesterday.

For ministers to impose a 3.2 per cent hike in pension contributions – rising to five per cent for the better-off, it is hinted – at such a dreadful time is little short of sadism and should be condemned.

It is worth remembering that the Government’s public sector pension report, by Lord Hutton, found they would not be an ever-bigger drain on future taxpayers – contrary to David Cameron’s claims.

Also, remember, when contemplating public- sector rewards, the £7bn thrown at the very rich in the scandal of higher-rate pension tax relief.

So why aren’t ministers prepared to slow down the rise in contributions, particularly as their plan could backfire by tempting millions of town hall workers to quit their (fullyfunded) pension scheme altogether?

Well, I can’t help but remember how the Coalition has skilfully turned a private-sector crisis – the financial crash – into an assault on a “bloated” public sector, where your taxes are wasted.

Ditto, the drip-drip of stories in the Conservative press about union “barons”, on “gold-plated pensions”, ruining our lives through strikes – a convenient distraction from an economy that’s tanking.

Ministers believe they can undermine Ed Miliband – voted in by the unions, remember – in the same way Neil Kinnock was skewered by his support for the miners.

Yesterday, the Prime Minister was a little too gleeful in taunting Labour for its discomfort on strikes, crowing: “Because they are all paid for by the trade unions, they can’t talk about this issue!”

The pension squeeze is too much, too soon.

But the unions should accept their members must work longer and pay in more – when better times return.

IWILL not be taking up the Government’s daft invitation to become a teacher today – to keep my daughter’s school open – but I can make this offer: count me in if ministers want emergency Tube drivers the next time the London Underground is hit by strikes!

What fun!