'One of my officers ..
Sir: As a self-employed free-lance editor with a gross income considerably below the national average wage, I find it difficult to sympathise with Marina Learmont (Personal column', 13 December).
On leaving my last fulltime job I had savings of about £100 which I spent in order to avoid drawing unemployment benefit, thus saving the fund at least £80 in this plus earnings-related supplement. Personally I think it is immoral to draw state social secur- ity benefits if one has any capital left at all, though I appreciate that not everyone takes this view.
Marina Learmont asks what the money she has paid in is being used for. The answer is that it largely goes towards paying current old age pensions. The money is not invested and so produces no income. Her diatribes against officials of the Social Security Minis- try may be justified, but she should remem- ber that many of them, too, are hard up, and the set of rules they have to administer are designed primarily to protect the taxpayer.
The payments she has made in the past count for sickness benefit, retirement pension, maternity, widow's and other benefits, but not for unemployment or industrial injuries benefit. There may be a case for self- employed people to be entitled to unemploy- •
ment benefit, but it seems hardly fair to blame officials for administering correctly the law as it stands.
George Chowdharay-Ben
174 Clay Hill Road, Basildon, Essex
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