Periodically, the poor and disadvantaged are singled out for special treatment. Through no fault of their own, they find themselves in receipt of tough medicine. Sometimes they starve to death, such as peasant farmers have done on numerous occasions in China. Others, through want of food resort to petty theft and are variously executed or transported vast distances to penal settlements, there to linger at the pleasure of a monarch. Many of the poor are located in dangerous or vulnerable circumstances and are often the first to suffer when war or natural disasters strike. So it isn't a lot of fun being poor. You tend to die younger and lead a much meaner existence than those better off.

Having got all this learnt though a copious historical recording, it is a wonder that the modern poor should continue to come in for unsolicited attention from politicians. The little that they do get in welfare payments (should they be unemployed) is made to feel like a lot. In fact, it is too much, according to this line of thinking, for it stifles the will to succeed and kills the will to independently thrive. Every so often a malingering exception is found (such as someone unfairly claiming multiple benefits) and this sets aflame the passionate fire of conservative thriftiness. It is a thriftiness who sibling is a punishing zealot.

I see the poorest of the poor in my work and I have yet to meet a person who didn't want to get out of their circumstances and do better. Often humble, even timid, they are usually just looking for a way to make ends meet - a difficult task indeed when their rents alone total a substantial part of their income. So I have little time for the cigar-smoking, self-congratulatory, full-bellied politicians and their erstwhile pundits in the media. They have no notion of going without, or having to make the choice between feeding their children, paying the power bill or keeping a roof over their head. The poor may always be with us but there seems to be no good reason to punish them over and over again.