How to address a middle-class audience

Deborah Orr, of the Independent, clearly knows her readership:

Yet in reality there are few people – unless they have a vested interest – who give a stuff about welfare reform. It's complicated, tedious and it doesn't bear too much examination…

I don’t know whether any of the few people in the country who receive benefits would be reading this fine newspaper, but if so, I hope they don’t feel left out.

(Imagine reading ‘there are few people – unless they have a vested interest – who give a stuff about breast cancer research. It's complicated, tedious…’)

This is a far cry from the Times’s grimly telling headline about the Cantle report in 2001 – ‘Blacks lead parallel lives warns race riot report’ – but it’s in the same territory, by suggesting a demographically exclusive conversation.

It’s a pity that a columnist of the liberal left seems to assume that people claiming welfare are to be talked about, rather than talked to.