In austerity hit Britain, Yes Minister provides clues of things to come

The Irish Times opined last month that Britain should come to grips with the fact that "if an entity that spends close to half of gross domestic product retrenches as the private sector is also retrenching, the decline in overall output may be so large that its finances end up worse than when it started" - I couldn't agree more with this. As the US experience across the pond shows, avoiding excessive austerity may have its merits. Perhaps then Britain needs its own version of the "sequester" and as Bernard Woolly explains to minister Jim Hacker from the "Yes Minister" series, having a scaffolding around hospitals and other welfare institutions and keeping up the illusion that things are "under construction" are a perfect way to introduce social cuts and implement austerity.Would your pension really be around by the time you retire?