I take your points, Hilltop, but in my opinion...

Firms took pension holidays when the times were good, then used a temporary low-performing stock market to cut the schemes. You can guarantee when the stock market rises again, they won't reinstate those schemes.

All sorts of expenditure is 'open-ended', including the NHS. It doesn't necessarily make it unaffordable because it's not ring-fenced. No government expenditure is.

The issue of the contribution to GDP by public sector workers is a minefield, and ways of measuring productivity are a joke. For example, employing an extra teacher, therefore splitting a class of 30 kids into two classes of 15, counts as a productivity *drop* (double the cost for the same 'outcome'). This of course is nonsense.

I think the pension age will have to increase to 68 for lots of the points you've made, Hilltop.

I just think we've thrown the baby out with the bathwater!

And baby ain't coming back