From the Guardian:

A pay freeze should be imposed on Britain’s six million public-sector workers, the head of the government’s spending watchdog says today. He also accuses party leaders of failing to be honest with the public about the need for cuts, even in health and education.

In a blistering attack, Steve Bundred, chief executive of the Audit Commission, says he has not heard any politician admit that “severe pay restraint” is one of a number of measures necessary to rebalance public finances, which could also include job cuts. “Nothing should be off limits,” he warns.

“At a time when inflation is likely to be between 2% and 3%, a pain-free way of cutting public spending would be to freeze public-sector pay, or at least impose severe pay restraint,” he added. “This is especially true if real wages in the private sector are still falling.”

[snip]

Public-sector unions reacted angrily last night to Bundred’s intervention. Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT teaching union, said the investment in education was to redress decades of underfunding.

Keates added: “The idea that you have to have some equity of misery, that because the private sector is suffering the public sector must too, is disgraceful. What it is doing is not understanding the role of public services in a recession – to sustain and rebuild the economy.”

Classic left-loony economic idiocy. Public services sustain and rebuild the economy. Tell me, how does some bureaucrat whose job it is to enforce government regulations, "sustain and rebuild the economy"? Virtually everything that the bureaucracy does interferes with the functioning of the economy. You’re not allowed to manufacture or import product X, you can’t sell product Y, you must hire Z members of government-approved minority A. What is truly disgraceful is the idea that workers in the real economy must continue to sacrifice in order to support the parasites in government. Britain stinks. America is following the same path. Government über alles.