A CLOSE-typed list of Britain's welfare benefits would probably fill this page. Which is the most precious, the one most valued? No contest. The old age pension.

The brainchild of David Lloyd George, who, as Liberal chancellor, introduced it in 1909, the pension was noble in concept. Even more noble was Lloyd George's insistence that it be paid at once - its first recipients getting it for nothing. Over the next few decades millions paid less than the lifetime contribution's of today's and tomorrow's pensioners.

Almost a century after it was introduced, the pension remains the greatest bulwark against poverty. The anticipation of the pension by those approaching retirement testifies to its enduring importance as the final bridge to security.

Though not mentioned in the manifesto at the last General Election, the restoration of the link between earnings and the pension, shamefully axed by Margaret Thatcher, might have been expected as an early measure from a government anxious to demonstrate the principles by which it was operating. Instead of course, Tony Blair allowed the substitute link with inflation to dictate the miserly 75p increase last April. And while the other parties seek to make capital out of this, it is notable that not one is committed to restoring the crucial link with earnings.

Of course, many people today enjoy generous company pensions. But fewer will do so in future. Tony Blair wants people to take out so-called stakeholder pensions - smart term for fend-for-yourself. Truth is that millions will be unable to make sufficient commitment. Coupled with the further decline of the state pension, this will bring back the kind of grinding poverty in old age that disgraced Victorian times - and led Lloyd George to create the pension.

In a new book, Urban Future 21, Sir Peter Hall, a distinguished academic at University College, London, predicts worsening poverty for tomorrow's pensioners. "Old people will again become dependent on their families, who may be reluctant to shoulder the burden." That's not surprising since they will be burdened enough providing for their own old age.

The great tragedy of this situation is that the forthcoming crisis is not recognised by those it will affect most - today's young people. If those under 40 could see the bleak future that awaits many of them without a decent state pension, restoring the earnings link would be a major issue at the next election. And if Tony Blair doesn't heed the warnings of disaster by virtually abandoning a benefit that has proved its worth for 100 years, he is even less a visionary than we already realise.

BACK in public life after her confinement, Cherie Blair talks of the difficulty of balancing her busy career in the law and the demands of being a mother to a baby and teenage sons. Well, she could make more time for her family by not taking on such utter-waste-of-time roles as chancellor of Liverpool's John Moores University - a position that obliged her to travel to Merseyside, to present an honorary fellowship to Cilla Black. (Cilla apart, do we need honorary fellowships or degrees? No.)

TWENTY-TWO thousand officers and eight destroyers guarded them. They dined on lobsters and caviare. A thousand artists and musicians entertained them, on a floating shoreline stage in front of their purpose-built conference centre. All this to enable the leaders of the world's eight wealthiest nations to consider - Third World poverty. How can any rational person feel anything except despair? And, by the way, why was Bill Clinton's daughter Chelsea present at this jamboree? Presumably because that's exactly what it was.