Well, they do actually have a point here on taxing public pensions

It actually is a fair point that is being made here:

The highest paid public sector workers are demanding pay rises worth tens of thousands pounds to compensate them for new pension taxes, the Telegraph understands. A group of 12 trade unions representing hundreds of thousands of workers including doctors, police officers, head teachers and civil servants have held private talks with David Gauke, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, demanding loopholes that would spare them the tax. Staff most likely to be seeking this extra cash will already have pensions worth in excess of £1m - and their calls for "compensation" have been condemned as "displaying breathtaking gall".

It's not gall at all. Pensions are simply deferred pay. If their pay, that they've already earned, is now being reduced then they've every right to scream blue bloody murder.

However, let's do this properly shall we? Let's now seriously, when comparing public and private pay, include the full value of those pensions in our calculations of that public pay. For when we do so we find that the public sector gets paid very much better than the private sector. Which is, of course, why those unions scream blue bloody murder when we point this out, the effects of those pensions.

But, sauces for ganders being sauces for geese we here are entirely happy with this original complaint here. Yep, your pensions are indeed part of your pay. And we're going to count them as such on proper actuarial grounds from now on.

Meaning, roughly speaking if our back of the fag packet calculations are correct, future cuts of perhaps 30% in public pay to bring it into line with that in the private sector.

Can't say fairer than that, can we?