May I take issue with some fundamentally flawed and downright pernicious assumptions lurking within the Argus editorial "More reforms are needed" (March 5).

For example: "Some single parents are idle and feckless but many want to support themselves rather than let the State do it all."

Pardon me, but State benefits are not handouts - that's for corporate business.

They are entitlements which people can claim as a fundamental right.

Why else do you think we have to hand over a significant proportion of our tax and National (social) Insurance to the State?

Come on, Argus, you can do better than that. You do us, the readers, a disservice with such dangerously woolly thinking.

-Richard W Symonds, Lavington Close, Ifield, Crawley