Commentary If politicians were held to the same standards of honesty as businessmen, all those in Britain would long ago have been imprisoned for such gross misrepresentation that it amounted to deliberate fraud. There is in Britain—or at least it is claimed that there is in Britain—something called the National Insurance Fund. This surely suggests to the average person (which is to say the voter), and is intended to suggest, that somewhere there is a something resembling my retirement fund, from which I hope eventually to draw an income when I am no longer capable of earning my living. In the case of the alleged National Insurance Fund, there is no such thing. The scheme is operated almost entirely on a pay-as-you-go basis from a compulsory levy on the income of people who are working. It is true that there is generally a slight annual surplus: more is collected than …