Gold-plated pensions

I can hardly credit it, but I have checked and the following is absolutely true.
In year 2002/3, the cost of public employee pensions in Scotland was £211 million.
For next tear ( 2010/11) John Swinney's budget has a figure of £2,500 million.
In other words, within an 8 year period, the cost of pensions to the Scottish Government has risen more than 11 fold.
I can only assume that the UK Government figures are not entirely unadjacent to these - Scotland after all is about 10% of the UK, in terms of population, even though we have more public service employees than the UK average.
I can't help but think there will come a point where the people who are working ( whose taxes actually pay these staggering sums) won't be able to pay their taxes, and more importantly won't be prepared to pay them either.
Of course, when Bottler Brown ( remember that?) repeatedly says he borrows to invest, what he actually means is he borrows to bribe people to vote for him. Unfortunately for him, this option has now ended.
The one interesting thing is, there are definitely now some projects which I would invest in. There's no takers for the space, the banks won't give any money to undertake them - but all that means that maybe - just maybe - there's a bargain out there for those with some cash and a lot of balls.
You need to want to do it, and you need to be young enough to be bothered.
That lets me out then.