Government fails the Bernard Levin obituary test

Or even the Bernard Weatherill one:

There's an old Bernard Levin line. He asked, rhetorically, whether it is better to have a tombstone marked “He always kept his word” or “He always acted from the best intentions”. He, as with Bernard Weatherill a couple of decades later, plumped for the former as being the more desirable.

Ahem:

Dear baby boomer, the government is coming for you and your store of wealth. The property and pensions built up over the past 40 to 50 years are, for the first time, in play. The triple lock on the state pension might be guaranteed, at least for the time being, but for the wealthier boomer, it looks like their private assets are being laid out on a chopping board, ready to be carved like a Sunday roast and fed to hungry government departments starved of funds for almost two decades.

So, you played by the rules we set down, did you? Saved from your income, delayed consumption and invested in building the nation. You’ve a pot now, have you? Ah, yes, we’ll have that.

Yes, yes, we know what we said. But, aha, aha, you didn’t really think we’d keep our word did you? Politics is about intentions, not truthtelling.

Look, get with reality here. You may have saved and scrimped to ensure you’re not shopping for meat in the cat food aisle in your retirement but we’ve got train drivers who need a pay rise. Cough up.

For, sadly, Weatherill was the last politician who believed anything so silly as words being bonds and all that.

Tim Worstall