Looking after the pennies

This week's Analysis on Radio Four has more pertinent things to say about the current malaise than any number of Robert Peston reports. It's titled, a little lumpily, "The Threat Of Thrift" and it wonders whether we are likely to meet hard times as my parents (or your grandparents) might have done or whether we need to have things put in a new context. It exposes the way that governments from both wings spent like sailors while claiming to practise the housekeeping of the corner shop and the manse. It has interesting things to say about how cheap credit took the waiting out of wanting and in the process changed us as people. That's the big question to me. What are the chances of deferred gratification making a comeback?