Friday, 16 September 2011

Pensions: demographic double dealing & the battle for public opinion

'The likes of Mr Prentis must count on public opinion being dynamic: if their lives are disrupted enough, voters may want the government to sue for peace' says the Economist, reducing the pensions dispute to an industrial trial of strength. For a magazine which aims "to take part in a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress” it might at least acknowledge that the reforms agreed in 2006 dealt with the same workforce demographic issues which its editorial writer and the ConDems (and Lord Hutton) are now using to justify the latest attack on our pensions:http://www.economist.com/node/21529070