<b>Business News: </b>Public sector pension liabilities nearly £1000 billion. By Dawn Smith

I see this posting was made on 9 March. In the five itervening days nobody has contributed to the debate. That's a real shame because this is a really important subject.

It is sobering to realise we all have debt of approximately £40,000 over and above our conventional debt.

It seems the private sector is gradually facing up to the problem. Companies and employees are increasing their contributions to try to ensure that promises made are promises kept. That is good. It is self financing. It requires no subsidy from taxpayers in general.

The trouble with the public sector is that the employer contributions come from us, the taxpayers. So we find ourselves in the invidious position of having to finance our own pensions and also those of the public sector. This is particularly unsatisfactory for the self employed. They have no employer to contribute for them. They have no 'final salary' type guarantees.

We cannot expect the politicians to hike up taxes in order to to resolve the problem. Nor would we want them to. But that runs the risk of storing up even greater problems for the next generation.

Let us hope the Stock Market will continue its recovery and this problem gradually become more manageable.

Maybe immigration will play a part too.

In the longer term the answer has, I think, to be the replacement of final salary schemes with money purchase schemes.

With final salary schemes some idividuals gain at the expense of others. One generation ends up paying for the pensions of another. That just isn't fair.

With money purchase what you invest is yours and nobody else's. No actuary can take what is yours and give it to somebody else. No employer can use money contributed by you to pay for the pensions of others. Yes, you run the risk of losing money if markets perform badly but most people are mature enough (post 2000 and Equitable) to accept that.

Let us hope the problem is resolved one way or another. Then perhaps Taxzone subscribers and the rest of the UK taxpaying population who choose to ignore the problem can claim there never was an elephant in the room at all.

Channel 4 recently commissioned a report from a pensions expert on the proportion of Council tax that went into funding public sector pensions. He worked out a figure of 26%.

I am self-employed and am very angry at being forced to subsidise these public sector fat cats who pay themselves pensions far superior to my own.

Surely, the practical answer has to be that all public sector employees must retire at 65 - with immediate effect. The problem is that no politician will dare to go near this until people in the private sector start to protest at the injustice. AccountingWEB needs to give this topic wide publicity.