Newsflash: public sector cushy.

Public sector workers earn 7% more on average than their peers in the private sector — a pay gulf that has more than doubled since the recession began.

Official figures show that staff employed by the state are enjoying bigger pay rises, working fewer hours and receiving pensions worth up to three times as much as those in the private sector.

Well, it's not really news, is it? It's NuLab that The Times is having a go at but the truth is that this is just what we should expect to happen when all three main political parties wings of the ruling party are wedded to the idea of a big state overseeing practically everything. Labour got away with it because the Tories and iLiberal Democrats didn't really object much. Even more depressingly people must want it to be that way, or at least don't mind it being that way, because they carry on voting for the bastards. This is supported by some of the comments here. 'Cradle to the grave' has sunk in deeply enough that many people simply can't imagine things any other way and demand that wealth producers, many of whom can't conceive of a small state that mostly leaves everyone alone either, are squeezed to pay for it all.

There are now nearly 6.1m people employed by the British state — up 914,000 compared with 1997. They now represent more than 21% of the overall workforce, a higher proportion than in Germany, America and Australia, and four times as much as in Japan.

Only Norway, Finland, Sweden and France had a higher share of public sector workers, when the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) last published a report on main world economies in 2005.

I think the question is not whether one or more of them will hit the buffers as the drain of the parasitic public sector becomes greater than the ability of the wealth producers to feed, but which will be first.

I can't laugh or swear about this. It's so depressing I'm in misanthropic overload.