If people are going to save more for their future, rather than 'fritter it away', then presumably that means less will be spent on the high street/web and on entertainment/eating out/drinking. Won't that in turn lead to greater unemployment and fewer people paying taxes, and therefore more needing some sort of State support?

It's an awfully big circle to square..........

So everything will surely turn out for the best. Hurrah!

I still haven't quite understood 'promoting inertia'. It sounds like a reverse form of inertia selling, 'I can't even be arsed to opt out' but presumably it's something else. But, no, thank you kindly Tommo or anybody else thinking of explaining. I can live, and die (only marginally more inertly), without ever knowing  .

But there are lots of games you can play in even the deadliest of seminars or meetings to keep yourself amused. One I never tire of is trying to steer the discussion in such a way that you can use an unlikely sentence or phrase previously agreed between yourself and an accomplice. This can also be played on a competitive basis with the two of you trying to steer the discussion away from their sentence and towards yours. You would be astonished how, even in the most grindingly soul-numbing of meetings, with a bit of skill you can slip in sentences like "Well I for one always fry mine in butter" or "But not in the case of wallabies I believe" and get way with it. There's always some simple pleasure to be had if you are desperate enough to seek it out.

If all else fails, contemplating the nature of perception can just about get you through anything. I speak from experience 

Tim, that's fantastic and I'll be using it. My favourite management-bonkers phrase from Higher Education is 'exit velocity', being the relative 'speed' of a student's improvement measured against progression and attainment across three years, ending with classification (the 'exit').

Having virtually lost the will to live just typing that, I now recommend to all Grumpers out there the following. A rant of world-class quality.

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/MovieSpeeches/moviespeechnetwork2.html

Funny, 'exit velocity' conjures up the opposite image for me. Something more like this:

Oh Bugler! he's spent a little too much time analysing Candide!

There were quite a few of them on the old boards, but most of them seem to have stayed there.