LETTER : Collective security, not benefit scrounging

"RELYING on a monthly pay cheque to keep you going, and on the state to bail you out when the going gets tough, won't be enough for most people," writes Joanna Slaughter ("How to survive the 21st century", Review, 26 March).

When was it ever thus? Where do such silly ideas come from? We never thought that we were looking to the state to "bail us out". We were looking to forms of collective insurance based on the premiums that we knew we ourselves were paying. We were doing this in the belief that scale gave us clout (we actually thought we'd learnt this from the market), and that by ploughing surpluses back into continuing investment rather than using them for fat-cat salaries and shareholder dividends we'd all benefit in the longer term.

Old-fashioned maybe, but not benefit-scrounging. Why are so many taken in by the fatuous assertions of the right?

L F Moore

Wolverhampton