Pensioners like me should switch from the Tories to Reform UK - Yorkshire Post Letters

Following on from your Friday, March 8, headline, and as I postulated on this page some time ago the Chancellor has ignored the plight of OAPs and has not increased the basic Tax threshold, or given us our own (say over 70) special tax code of about £17,000 which would bring us back to ‘normal’.

As it stands, come April I will be £498 a year worse off, not as much as the Resolution Foundation said the average loss was, but it did say he put workers before Pensioners.

I am a disabled Royal Navy Falklands Vet, have paid Graduated Contributions, Income Tax and NI all my working life. I have never claimed any ‘benefits’ such as the dole or whatever it’s called now, and my Pensions (OAP and 22 years RN) are not a ‘Benefit’ as the DWP called my OAP in its latest communication.

Sunak may believe that he ‘protects the triple lock’ and says that he cares deeply about us, however he will not have forgotten that Theresa May nearly lost her General Election by not coming out and saying that she would.

He cannot justifiably say that he ‘cares deeply’ when most of us cannot work to supplement what is the lowest State Pension out of 27 countries in the Western world, beaten only to last place by South Africa.

We don’t need handouts such as the laughable £10 Christmas ‘bonus’, nor the risible 25p addition when we become 80. If we needed those and the fuel allowances we did need, then surely those sums should be freely given in our pensions and not grudgingly because of the pressure applied by outside agencies or charities.

I for one, as a lifelong Conservative voter, have become increasingly disenchanted by the behaviour of our MPs and the way they throw our money at vanity projects…where is a down-to-earth, common sense Thatcher?

A lot have already jumped ship by declaring that they are not standing at the next General Election – no doubt lining up overpaid (for their obvious lack of talent) jobs in the private or charity sector.

It surely cannot be that Sunak relies on the older generation not to change the way they vote? No? After 60 years of voting Conservative I will be voting for the Reform Party and I urge the OAPs who feel like I do to vote likewise, after all we don’t have all that much time to scrape by on what this uncaring party allows us.