AS Alf Garnett's son-in-law, Tony Booth often had to puncture the extreme right-wing views of his ranting father-in-law.

Who could have imagined that he would one day play much the same role when his real son-in-law was installed in Downing Street as a Labour Prime Minister - albeit having first slapped "New' in front of the party's name.

Smilingly dismissed by PM Tony as "a bit of grief'' - presumably akin to son Euan's post GCSE adventures in Trafalgar Square - actor Tony's call to Blair to restore the link between the state pension and earnings is a striking instance of a Labour supporter having to tell Labour Prime Minister to do what should come naturally: maintain the best of the welfare state.

For who will dispute that the state pension is among the best? Easily the most valued of all state benefits, it is perhaps the only one that enjoys virtually universal support. Even now, 20 years after Margaret Thatcher set in train the pension's devaluation by snapping the link with earnings, it still largely does its job of fending off poverty and hardship in old age.

Tony Blair coupled his "grief' jibe at Tony Booth with the claim that "if we were to re-link pensions to earnings the cost for future generations would be enormous''. This is the conventional mantra. But not everyone agrees.

Earlier this year an all-party select committee noted that, thanks to the Thatcher arrangement, by which National Insurance contributions remain tied to earnings while the pension is pegged to price, the NI fund now has a surplus of £5bn, set to double by the end of 2002.

More broadly, a recent book by economist Phil Mullan, The Imaginary Timebomb, questions the entire Doomsday scenario of a shrinking workforce slaving to maintain an army of of wrinklies.

If we genuinely fear a society top heavy with oldies, why are we dispensing with more and more working people in their fifties, even forties? A lot of self-interest, from insurers, private health providers etc, drives forward the Doomsday view. But, in the final analysis, a wealthy developed nation can afford what its chooses to afford.

At the municipal elections earlier this year candidates of all parties reported a black mark from almost every category of voter for last September's 75p pension increase. If New Labour, at the start of its term, had immediately restored the pensions-earnings link as a totem of its intentions, that single act would have created enough popular capital to withstand a hundred shocks on other issues.

A key yardstick of a society's humanity is how it cares for its old people. Like the "Scouse git' he once played, Tony Booth has got it right. And, while Tony Blair's slap down of his father-in-law might be more polite than Alf Garnett's, he is just as wrong.

WHILE I feel no personal need to join a road accident victim support group, I offer my deepest good wishes to the group with that purpose launched in Durham City.

My mother died last year from injuries received when she was knocked down the previous day while crossing the road at Normanby, Teesside. The early concern for my welfare shown by the authorities has not been maintained. The court case, at which the driver was fined, took place without my knowledge. Eleven months after the tragedy, I still have no official facts on how my mother died.

I defy anyone - police, coroner's office, prosecution service - to defend this, especially if they put themselves in the position of the person who has lost a loved one. As the founders of the Durham group doubtless know, road accidents bring far worse consequences. But there is a clear need for the next of kin to be kept much more closely informed