Aftermath

I only saw the last few minutes of Cameron's speech yesterday but I thought he finished it with a passion that I had not heard from him before. Like many, I am still not sure I get the 'Big Society' other than if we want things to be done we are going to have to do many of them for ourselves in future as the government is no longer going to try to do everything for us. Most people can surely live with that as this is flip side to closing down the nanny state which became so expensive and intrusive and was an abhorrent idea in the first place. A silly example I know but the happiness the eradication of Blair's soviet style bus lane on the M4 has brought is a wonder to behold.

Whether or not the withdrawal of Child Benefit is to be executed as fairly as it should be, its announcement has certainly brought it home to people that dealing with the deficit is going to have an impact on us all. If that was the intended effect of the announcement, and there is evidence that it was, it was certainly successful. Further evidence of the tough decisions coming our way is this morning's interim report from Lord Hutton. This makes it clear that public sector workers are going to have to work to a later age and pay more into their pension pot in order to try and fill its massive £1 trillion black hole. How did things get into such a mess?