The notion that poor people cannot be 'undeserving' simply because they are poor exposes the amorality at the core of the church's position. It means that it draws no distinction between poor people who are honest and poor people who are dishonest; or between poor people who choose to work and poor people who choose to be idle. It draws no distinction simply because they are poor.

Yet moral choices are a key feature of being human. By its opposition to the IDS reforms, the church is showing once again that its treats the poor as if they were less than human – as an entire class apart. It reserves moral expectations solely for the better-off. And once again, it reveals the absolute fetish it has made out of poverty.

Far from wanting people to escape from poverty through working, it is content they should remain trapped within it. Because for the church, which constantly attacks the 'undeserving rich', the poor by contrast are always deserving – deserving, it would appear, always to remain poor. Because poverty is spiritually noble, it seems, while wealth is obscene.

If these opponents succeed in voting down the IDS reforms today, they will demonstrate that infantile leftism still has its thumbs upon the British windpipe – thus continuing to squeeze the life out of British society, along with the church it has managed to all but destroy.

If these opponents succeed in voting down the IDS reforms today, they will demonstrate that infantile leftism still has its thumbs upon the British windpipe – thus continuing to squeeze the life out of British society, along with the church it has managed to all but destroy.

It's just that sort of reasonable, well-thought out sentence, with no hint of hyperbole, that makes her such a sensible columnist.

Far from wanting people to escape from poverty through working, it is content they should remain trapped within it. Because for the church, which constantly attacks the 'undeserving rich', the poor by contrast are always deserving – deserving, it would appear, always to remain poor. Because poverty is spiritually noble, it seems, while wealth is obscene.

If national government treats impact assessments with the seriousness that local government does it won't be worth the paper it's written on.

Yet again we see a fundamental principle of Conservatism in action - you make poor people work harder by taking money from them and rich people work harder by giving them more.

Maybe these daft churchmen noticed that the recession (which makes it impossible to get work) was caused by these undeserving rich, Mel?

And the church don't think all rich people are bad by any means. And if they did, they'd be able to point to a certain holy book. One which you want put right at the heart of modern society.

Idiot.

I can't bear to watch.