The true source of Ken Gulati’s grief about public sector pay (see [2009] Gazette, Letters, 26 March, 11) is readily apparent from his own letter. It was he who made the presumably informed choice of working for HMG as an independent contractor, and then later and repeatedly made the presumably even more informed choice of sticking with it. He is the author of his own perceived misfortune.

My first career was spent in public service, in which I eventually became a fairly senior mandarin. One of my private sector contemporaries took every opportunity to remind me that he was taking home a multiple of my salary, and that the personalised number-plate on his new Bentley was itself ‘worth’ more than my elderly Maestro. He still has a Bentley, while in my retirement the bog-standard family saloon that replaced the Maestro has just celebrated its 13th birthday.

Like Mr Gulati, he was completely missing the point. Very few public servants become rich from holding office, and those who do are invariably arrested in due course. The rest of us take the description literally, and get on with serving the public instead of pursuing wealth for its own sake.

When the private sector is cashing in during the good times, the sneering assumption is that the public sector doesn’t deserve to keep up because it is a bolt-hole for the incompetent. When the private sector feels the pinch in harder times, the sneering switches to the public sector’s protected pensions. I often wondered if only part of the package was intended to reward our work, with the balance intended as compensation for the sneers.

Nor should Mr Gulati have assumed he would have had a good chance of a ‘gong’ to follow. There are many outstanding career lawyers in the public sector, yet on their retirement only a minute fraction pick up the recognition they have well and truly earned. That rare recognition is only awarded for a level of public service far above the already meritorious norm.

Dan Lyon, Lytham