Vr,
I am not going to defend state policy, I don't agree with much of it. Some from this parish will have worked with Tim Garden. His wife (Baroness Garden in her own right) addressed the Lib Dem conference this week and made more sense than most of them put together. But the reality is, as we start to come off QE especially, we have no money. I know the message is over egged, but the only way to get more is to borrow more (and thats what got us into this mess) or have fracking come good in an unimaginable way. The state pension age will continue to shuffle to the right, AFPS15 WILL come under further unsustainable pressure. There is no fair.
Do I think we should pay for those who have nursed us and protected us in their old age, and not waves of economic refugees, funded by the legions of angst filled, hand wringing, self loathing wets that seem to permeate Westminster? Of course I think we should revise our national priorities, absolutely, and I agree with your points about the NHS to an extent; we have become obsessed with extending life (the cynic in me thinks that it is the self perpetuating justification to justify cutbacks) but not the independent quality of it. The info that is only now coming out about how Germany, in effect, got rid of Silvio Berlusconi when he mooted the idea of Italy leaving the Euro, reminds me just how fragile this whole house of cards is.