Sore throat, back pain, stress: the list of excuses is endless.

The government is planning emergency measures on absenteeism

But these bogus 'sickies' are proving to be a major headache for the government.

The millions of working days lost every year through sickness and injury cost the country a staggering £6bn a year.

Now the UK chancellor Gordon Brown has launched a war on 'sickies' for workers in councils, hospitals and schools.

The government is hoping to stamp out the culture of taking bogus days off sick which has become rife in the public sector. Typically workers take an average of two week's sick leave a year - much more than staff in private firms.

A range of initiatives aimed at forcing those public sector employers plagued by employee illness to crackdown on absenteeism are planned.

And Mr Brown has announced a taskforce of top bosses and managers to stamp out abuse, which has been described as a national scandal.

Employers have been set targets to slash absence rates by a fifth within three years and by 30% within five years.

The government is concerned that absenteeism is a major threat to productivity and Britain's international competitiveness.

Public sector workers take two weeks off sick a year

But the chancellor has put himself on a collision course with Unison, the trade union that represents 1.3m public sector workers.

The union has warned the government that its initiative could force genuinely ill employees back to work and that employees should do more to tackle the causes of absenteeism by improving working conditions.

Rodney Bickerstaffe, general secretary of Unison said: "A major priority is tackling the causes of staff sickness, including poverty pay, workplace violence and stressful workloads and staff shortages. Public sector workers have higher than average sickness absence as they have face-to-face dealings with those sections of society with the most problems."

But the number of employees throwing 'sickies' remains a significant problem for British industry. And the phoney excuses given are becoming even more inventive.

E-mails sent to Radio 5 Live's Breakfast show illustrate to what lengths employees will go to to get time off work.

One employee rang work to say she had to wait in for a gas man, although she let it slip a week later that her house was all electric.

Another spent two weeks complaining about a bad back before taking off a week off to go on a free skiing holiday, making sure he packed the sun block.

So what do you think?

Click here to send us your e-mails on whether you think people take too may 'sickies' and what imaginative excuses people have used to take time off.