It is no faultof the workers that the state has not funded the pensions properly, or that a banking crisis has caused the stockmarkets to underperform.
Ed Balls, the National Institute for Economic and Social Research and some others think the weak stateof the economy is partly Mr Osborne's fault, or at least something he ought to have taken more account of in drawing up his original plan.
When Democratic Gov. Gray Davis was recalled a few years ago and replaced with Arnold Schwarzenegger, instead of galvanizing the state party, it revealed the cracks and fault lines up and down the state.