Universally Beneficial

'Benefit' used to be a lovely word but has now been degraded by association and misuse.  It was wrong of Labour to  call the assistance that is offered by tax-payers to those who, from personal misfortune  or economic constraint are unable to meet their outgoings, benefits.  Assistance is not a benefit (except in the most generic meaning of the word); it is a helping hand when needed.  Not, note, when qualified to claim  - some make no claim on the rest of us because they do not consider that they need to, even if they are qualified to claim; although there are  others who seem to have made a practice of seeking all and anything they can lay claim to even going so far as to warp themselves, their families, and their lives to fit into  assistance-attracting categories.

Youth and old age are two unavoidable conditions (unless you are very unlucky).  The very young and the very old have absolute claims upon us all, as a society, not just on their individual connexion, for our support.  The old supported us all when we were the young, the young will step up when we are old.  These are universal statuses; they call into being exchanges between generations that involve everyone in our society, if we are to understand ourselves as social beings at all.  They are the stuff of which our society is made.

Eliding the status of means-tested assistance during temporary misfortune with that of exchanges between the generations is always a socialist objective - part of raising working-class consciousness socialists would argue; but what they are actually doing is lowering the tone.

The Coalition needs to consider more carefully what should be cut, and not take the boss-eyed view of the poverty lobby, so hard-working over these last decades,  as correct.