The New Samaritan
SIR,—We have now—recorded on the occasion of Labour's sit-up strike against Mr. Ncave's Bill to pay the old-age pension to men and women of an average age of eighty-four, who never yet have had a penny of it—a revised version of the story of the Good Samaritan.
The priest and the Levite did not pass by on the other side of the half-dead man; they stood by to stop the Good Samaritan, because he was neither priest nor Lcvitc. from coming to his aid. But in their own good time, when the man was dead, they came rushing to his assistance with a means-tested minimum income guarantee: 'Dear departed friend, whatsoever thou needest more we will pay thee.'
Though many things can be said in party pique on the subject of the very old yet old-age-pensionless, there is in decency one thing only to be done— promptly, to pay them the pension. 'Actuarially, old boy, at eighty-four you have less than eight pen- sionless months still to live.' Is that cold cynicism to be the country's last word? Let us give, and quickly, a copper handshake to those so soon to bid farewell to our welfare state.
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