The council pension is a juicy plum

Whenever people are on the look out for savings, they look for juicy plums. Management types call them "low hanging fruits" - the sort of things that grabbing shouldn't hurt since it would be just a question of time before they fell of their own accord. And so the pressure will be laid on - bit by bit - so that council pensions fall from the tree. 

It will happen this way. First, it will be both hinted at and rejected. The possibility will emerge in the public sphere and ministers will jump to the defense of pensions. "No", they will say. "Never". Etc, etc. 

That will be enough, though, for the right wing press to get the bit between their collective teeth. Numbers will emerge. How many pensions, how much, how much every week, what the money could be spent on and so on. No-one will rise to defend them because doing so would trigger a reaction similar to that experienced in the Fred the Shred case. At some point, ostensibly to take off some of the emerging public pressure, some insider will confirm that pensions are being looked at - but only inasmuch as all options are being looked at. Unions will then be obliged to get into the argument and staunchly defend them. But the briefers will allow all sorts of stories of public sector profligacy to emerge, the implication being that pensions are just another one of those things. 

In time, an options paper will be published - a gun to the head paper - either you work until you drop or we change your pensions. The soft messages will be: we all have to make sacrifices, the greater good, the public sector shouldn't be exempt etc. 

Ministers will continue to deny vehemently right up to the point where they reach up, eyes glinting in the sunshine, and grab the juiciest plum you ever did see.