Falcon, give me one good reason why we should all level down to the level of the private sector, where people slave for years on very low wages whilst company owners rake in massive wealth and award themselves truly diamond-plated pensions? Leaving aside what sector someone works in, who really needs over £200,000 to live on? And I'm not even going into tax avoidance here. Successive governments go on about wealth creation and the 'trickle down' effect - seems to me the money does not trickle down at all, it gets sucked up into the bank accounts of a very few. There's something wrong in an economy which has a minimum wage where people can work full time and still need their income topping up by the state because they don't earn enough to live on.
And as for redundancy rights - once people meet criteria, the private sector too has to pay redundancy, and many pay more than minimum requirements. I agree that some public sector redundancy deals are stupid and should be reformed, but you may not realise this - as a person on a rolling 1-year contract, I was not entitled to a penny of redundancy until I had been in post (had my contract renewed) 3 years/3 times. This is a longer qualifying period than in many private sector posts.
Lastly, I said 'at least once'. This does not imply in any way that the people I know have been made redundant only once - though I have, and believe me, I count myself fortunate.