Adrian Boulding: Work longer? Maybe Turner got it wrong!

This two-pronged approach was convincingly advanced by the commission’s chair, Adair Turner, as the only way to avoid higher taxes or poorer pensioners.

And it’s now being implemented by the government via auto-enrolment and increases to the state pension age.

The Blair/Brown years are now seen as a period in which the country enjoyed a standard of living beyond our means.

And so the test presented to the Cameron/Clegg coalition is to increase productivity in order that we can afford the lifestyle we have become used to – which is why they are now talking ‘efficiency’ rather than ‘austerity’.

As Greece and France have shown, the electorate will not reward leaders that just tell us we can’t afford what we have already grown accustomed to.

Economists are starting to realise productivity is not the same as GDP.

Hiring another bunch of bureaucrats to measure how well pension schemes are implementing Solvency II raises GDP but does nothing to make us a more productive nation, which will be the challenge over the next 15 to 20 years if we are to afford the sort of pensions we want.

Maybe the answer isn’t to make tired 65-year-olds work a few extra years while youth unemployment remains worryingly high – at over 20%.

Perhaps François Hollande has it right when he says our future is the youth of today.

Our number-one priority should be to get today’s young into work, and not just any old work, but jobs that really will create wealth in the future – that’s what will pay for our pensions.

At least the Supreme Court has realised this.

In the recent Seldon case, the court recognised the merits of pensioning off an older partner so younger, promising lawyers could come through and be the productive future.

Maybe Alex Ferguson will reflect on the last season and question the wisdom of persevering with the ageing Giggs and Scholes?

Perhaps we need a U-turn in order to find ways of encouraging older employees to move over and free up career paths for the youth of today, so they can generate the real productivity growth our nation needs.

I don’t expect the government to have a Damascene conversion and move the pension age to 63 – but they could start by allowing early retirement from the new universal state pension, so those with some private and occupational pensions could access an actuarially reduced state pension for early retirement from, say, age 63 onwards.