A very lively debate took place on BBC 1’s Question Time recently on the question of the strike by public-sector workers.

I do not agree with public-sector workers being able to strike and hold the country to ransom when their pensions are already far in excess of the private sector. The private sector does not have striking as a weapon to help them in this dispute and they have certainly been left behind over the years. Nearly all pensions for everyone in this country are below par, but striking is not the way forward.

It is obvious that to meet all the demands on society of the fact we are all living longer we are all going to have to pay for this longevity, and the sooner public-sector workers appreciate this, the better. The Government may not have approached this issue in the most effective way and more negotiations are required, but please let them get on with it. We are all in this together and strikes do not achieve anything.

A young man in the audience said that striking was the only way that private-sector workers would be able to have any dispute settled. I would remind him that the reason we do not have a shipbuilding industry, car industry, a steel industry and coal industry is due to the continuous spate of strikes that plagued this country in the 1950s to the 1970s.

Ray Theakston, Greenshaw Drive, Haxby.