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The next trick being :

Chancellor George Osborne said: ‘People who have worked hard and saved all their lives should be free to choose what they do with their money, and that freedom is central to our long-term economic plan.

‘From next year they’ll be able to access as much or as little of their defined contribution pension as they want and pass on their hard-earned pensions to their families tax-free


Ha ha ! Just another way to keep the money flowing and probably to allow parents and grandparents to provide substantial deposits on property for their offspring, endeavouring to keep the housing market buoyant. Where will it end ? If the housing market collapses again and interest rates rise, it's another disaster waiting to happen.
Once the resources of everyone have been bled to extremes, what will be left to fall back on in hard times? Just another sticking plaster so far as I can see, and as you say, a nation lost in consumerism of which the young generation have and will expect so much, which I believe is partly due to expectations placed and supported by the parents of my generation. We hoped ours would have better than we did, although in hind sight, we had it bloody good, bikes, horse and cart, welly boots the lot. Oh, and chicken on a Sunday.

End product of trying to develop and move far too quckly, more quickly than we can adjust to. That's where the Arab nations have got stuck. We were beheading people for adultery, theft, and heracy in Queen Mary reign late 1500's. Still hanging people in the 1960's. We shot conscientious objectors in the first world war and shut away the mentally ill, in institutions for 60yrs. The Arab nations were still in tribes 100 years ago, how can they develop at such a rapid pace to catch up with us. Many are just not able to culturally or even wish too. We can't deploy democracy so easily on nations who have not experienced it , and when they see the mess we are in, who would want it ?

Do you know, sometimes there is more common sense and good information provided on this forum than all the party political broadcasts put together.

Thank you sven, casper, granny and the others for your contributions

Like the chicken on a Sunday granny,never saw them days as bad times just normal what we were used too, parents did their best with what they had, some of the best meals I ever tasted, proper cooked meals sat around the heart of the house the kitchen table situated not far from an open fire,wont say coal fire because it was more often than not coke or wood not complaining look back on those days with great fondness, dont envy the alleged good life of todays kids, as you quite rightly say we are to blame in some ways by trying to give them everything we never had.

I think it's more a case of "we progressed and the arabs didn't" than anything else. Trouble is there are a crowd now who want to take us backwards to those days again. It's all evolution but would rather go forwards than backwards. Fundemental Christians are no different, they want to go backwards as well. The arabs were the most enlightened people going at one time, the knowledge they are responsible for is vast and we learned a lot from them. Somewhere down the line they lost the plot and we're losing it now as well.