It may have been acceptable to provide local authority staff with index linked pensions when their pay was demonstrably lower than in the private sector, but now this is not the case and local authority pay is comparable to the private sector, so the main plank of justification for better pensions than workers in the private sector has now vanished. Instead, homeowners and council charge payers are paying a quarter of their council charge to provide far better pensions to local authority staff than they can provide for themselves. It has to stop. What has Brown done to this country?