A fox in the henhouse

They all had axes to grind and almost the first axe-grinder was the Business Services Association, which represents vultures hovering around the public sector waiting for juicy contracts to privatise public services.

This association, led by chief executive Mark Fox, rushed to push its agenda with the Chancellor and, by the look of it, was extremely successful in doing it.

Desperate to gain advantage, Mr Fox claimed in a letter to the Chancellor that "the lack of a level playing field between private sector and public-sector bidders creates a completely unfair commercial environment."

The implication being that the public sector somehow retained a competitive advantage over the private sector and Mr Fox wanted none of it.

Well, by the sound of it, Mr Fox was pushing at an open door because he is now bragging that "in line with private discussions we have been having with what were then shadow and now are actual ministers," he has secured the abolition of the Fair Deal provisions on pensions secured in the Warwick agreement.

What this means is of huge significance to public-sector workers. Fair Deal secures, in the event of a transfer of their engagements to a privateer, workers' rights to a "broadly comparable" pension scheme to their public-sector one - pensions being one of the few advantages of working in the public sector for low-paid workers.

What the abolition of the Fair Deal provisions could mean is that there would then be no compulsion on a privateer to match those previous terms and conditions.

This would hurt the workers enormously and, notwithstanding Mr Fox's pleas for a level playing field, would hand privateers an enormous concession and a huge commercial advantage over the public sector, because public bodies bidding for the work would still have to provide a half-decent pension and the privateers would not.

Which would certainly affect the bid levels and skew costs to the enormous advantage of the privateers.

It certainly wouldn't help the workers in their search for a decent pension and it would also accelerate the rate of privatisation to an almost indecent speed.

And it would hand a licence to print money to some of the most expoitative bosses in Britain.

That is disturbing and will need to be fought to a standstill by public-sector unions, with all the help that the rest of us can give them, but what is worse is the hotline to government that the bosses now possess.

As Unison general secretary Dave Prentis points out: "It's totally disgraceful and unconstitutional that multinational companies should be given details of what is to be in the emergency budget.

"This is a clear indication that we are not, as the Cameron mantra goes, all in this together."

And no-one can argue with that. All in it together except working people, who are merely required to lose out, would be a more accurate formulation.

The worst of it is that this cannot be represented as any sort of real economy. The country doesn't stand to gain a brass farthing. All that would happen is that the privateers would be able to stash an ever bigger profit away than is already the case.

So this is not a cut for economies' sake, it is a blatant attack on the terms and conditions of public-sector workers for a mere sectional advantage, a class-based assault by this class-ridden government.

And to add insult to injury, they are tipping off the bosses even before the Budget announcement.

Well, that tells you a great deal about the Con-Dem vision of fixing a "broken society."

In their eyes it was only broken because they weren't getting a big enough slice of the cake. They want it all and they are setting out to get it.

And because their nannies brought them up nicely, they are sharing it out with their little posh mates.