We could get rid of all public services, put them up for bids in the open market, pay for their costs plus profits, and create an authentic class of takers. Is that it? Societies everywhere are against it.

Reading a Salvation Army publication the other day mentioning its goals and philosophy, I wasn't surprised to read a simple declaration that this much-respected organization "shuns the dependancy culture."

No one likes or wants an unwarranted dependancy ethos. Yet it continues to be attached here regularly and unintelligently to public services, particularly to citizens who make or made a lifetime career commitment to serving us.