Dear Home Secretary, I am a police constable of eight years employed by Sussex Police and as such have just been issued with a medal ‘celebrating’ 60 years of her Majesty’s reign.

For those of us with at least five years’ service this gesture is to honour our dedication and service as public sector workers. Many of my colleagues are selling their own trinkets on eBay, I prefer to send mine to you and with it my genuine hope that you are mortified to receive it.

To hold such a pointless, inappropriate and ostensibly worthless hunk of polished metal in my hands while the vilification of the public sector continues as gratitude for my service seems to me ironic.

While the whirlwind that is the Winsor Report threatens the very core principles of British policing and you and your Government press relentlessly, remorselessly, dispassionately ahead with changes to pay and conditions across the public sector, there aren’t many of us that feel that this coalition Government are in anyway grateful.

In fact, I find it patronising to the point of being insulting that the best we could receive is this piece of costume jewellery, which is destined to be nothing more than a child’s adornment in fantasy role play.

And what will the parents of those children say when their child dresses up as a police officer like mummy or daddy?

Will they say they were proud to serve? Probably. Will they say they felt honoured? I doubt it.

Will they say that their children would be lucky to follow in their footsteps. Categorically no.

When those who make it to the sixty-year-old pensionable age, if stress or injury or enforced redundancy hasn’t claimed them first, will they look back at this Jubilee year and consider themselves appreciated? Or valued? Or simply that they were able to get on with one of society’s most demanding jobs knowing there was at least some semblance of support?

I would suggest not. And a medal received in these uncertain times serves only to compound the notion that this Government is utterly out of touch.

We don’t want medals or awards or accolades. We want to do our job without fear of perceived notions of failure and the implications therein.

We want recognition that ours is a service in its purest sense of the word; a service that protects, prevents, detects and saves.

We want openness, we want transparency and we want appropriate discussion with mutual consent on the future of policing that benefits society, not that benefits the coffers of the Government.

If we are to be brought in line with other services then give us the right to strike.

Allow us to be part of a proper, robust union. Respect us enough to have a say in our own destiny.

You treat us like unruly children and you impose your punishment while we sit inert on the naughty step.

Already the damaging effects of the austerity package is being felt up and down the country. Alarm bells should be ringing all over Whitehall, alarm bells rung by frontline public-sector workers.

My jubilee medal is an insult.

Yours etc.