The public sector pensions dispute is rapidly brewing up into Scargillian proportions, with ministers on one side and the unions on the other squaring up for a scrap – just as over 25 years ago, Margaret Thatcher took on the miners.

Part of this is due to pent-up pressure arising from a year of budget cuts. Most observers this time last year would have put their money on a winter of discontent 2010/11, followed by a bonfire of Tory council seats during last month's elections. In the end, the strikes never happened and the Conservatives actually emerged intact from the polls.