One of the proposals to get control the UK deficit involves pensions: the age at which the full pension can be collected will be 67, and perhaps later, workers' pension contributions will increase; there will be no automatic age of retirement.

We can't afford pensions as they are, they say, and we all have to make sacrifices.

Let's remember the past for a moment:

(a) The Government, when pension receipts were in excess of pensions collected, put any unspent pension money into the government pot.

(b) In the early nineties, when the pension pot exceeded outgo, the Government gave employers (not employees) a holiday from paying employers' share of the payments.

So Government actions have something to do with the current shortfall.

Next point: retiring at 67. The Government says we all live longer. True, but some live a lot longer, and are in better shape, than others. Hard work is not good for the body. You don't live as long and you have a more painful old age. Working in a construction job at the age of 60 is not at all the same as working as a solicitor. Then there's the length of working life. People in lower paid jobs often start work at the age of 16. Professionals may not begin working life until their mid-twenties.

There's always been this kind of contrast in working life. The working class work longer, work harder, and make less money than professionals. At last they could see an end to it. No longer.

No automatic age of retirement: so there's not a natural stopping place, when the Company can give you your carriage clock and you can look forward to time in the garden or watching afternoon soaps. The Company may still want to get rid of you, but you can't afford to quit. So you continue working. It's not really a matter of choice. 

There are new demands in terms of benefits and work. The hardworking working class will no longer see their lazy unemployed neighbors sleeping until noon and spending the day watching tellie. Those in work may feel this resentment until they lose their jobs. Then they'll discover that five people apply for every job available. It is going to get a lot worse. Planned cuts will be translated into lost jobs - more unemployed seeking fewer jobs.

That includes mothers. New requirements oblige a woman to seek work when her youngest child is five years old. There are no accompanying provisions for affordable or free child care. So we have five year old latch-key kids, taking care of themselves or in the care of a ten year old brother: feral children, and it's not their fault.

Seventy-seven percent, according to news reports, comes from cuts in benefits or to public employees. That doesn't sound like sharing the pain to me.

The Con-Dems are gambling that the private sector will employ the people losing jobs due to their cuts. They won't. Losing public sector jobs means losing consumer spending which impacts on the private sector. I think unemployment is a far greater danger than the deficit.

If the deficit is as dangerous as they claim, raise taxes to pay for it. It is more fair to take more money from those in work than those without work.  Introduce a new tax rate of 60% on income over £350,000.  Tax the banks and the financial services that caused the crash. Capital gains tax was raised to 28%. Why not simply deal with it as income and require all income to be declared and taxed at the appropriate rate? 

This Government began with dishonesty. Dishonesty during the campaign, when Gordon Brown was blamed for the condition of the British economy - he had his faults, but the economic conditions in the UK were the result of a world wide crash. Then, the LibDem appeal: vote for us and keep the Tory out. Now the claim that their plans will not lead to greatly increased unemployment, that the private sector will take on new employees. And the biggest lie of all: they will protect the most vulnerable.

I don't know who will win the next election. I can bet on the Big Losers, though. Why vote Liberal Democrat if you like these policies? Just vote Conservative. They won't get any Labour voters supporting a LibDem candidate to keep out the Tory. The left of the LibDems, the voting party members rather than the politicians, will stay at home or vote another party.