Impact on women of pension change

WHY aren’t women hopping mad about the State Pension changes detrimental to them (Rachel Reeves, Yorkshire Post, February 16)?

The 1946 National Insurance Act is quite explicit. This introduced contributory pensions funded through National Insurance payments. Men retiring aged 65 and women at 60.

The thresholds for obtaining a full State Pension were NI contributions of 44 years for men and 39 for women. Now women will be forced to work six years longer by 2020, equalising to men’s pension misery which rises to 66 by 2016.

Anyone who pays their full NI contributions before 2020 surely should be allowed to retire at the agreed ages of 65 and 60 set out in the 1946 NI Act. To do otherwise is contrary to the spirit and intention of this Act.

The Con Dems are acting dishonourably, even though Lib Dem Steve Webb is working on a flat-rate State Pension possibly enacted before 2015. This new pension is future orientated for people unaffected by the main thrust of the 1946 Act.

Anyone should be allowed to retire later but this should include a flexible pension and working hours for earlier retirement. If such flexibility isn’t added, what hope for youth frozen out of work by older workers?

Put up the petrol tax

From: Jeremy Kilner, Choppards Mill, Holmfirth.

I AM probably one of the few motorists who believe that petrol taxes should be much higher rather than lower. Our roads are too crowded and this would be improved if more people shared cars and lived closer to their workplace.

I watch cars in the rush hour, and most of them have no passengers. I am sure that most commuters could organise their travelling better. People should also be encouraged to live closer to their workplace.

As for building a new railway line from London to the north, the idea is ridiculous. The railways already get billions of pounds of subsidy every year, and the fares from the new line would come mostly from the existing lines.

The money raised could be partly used to raise the threshold for income tax, as it makes no sense to raise this tax from income that is regarded as being below the ‘poverty threshold’.

There should also be a tax on the fuel tank size on all vehicles coming into the UK - payable when their Cross Channel ticket is bought.

Industry built on hot air

From: David F Chambers, Sladeburn Drive, Northallerton.

through the recent cold period when demand for electricity was intense, the contribution of wind-sourced power coupled with other “green” sources amounted to less than one per cent.

On this flimsy basis, the economic fortunes of the Hull area are to be transformed by the introduction of an industry to build thousands more wind turbine generators, to be sited off our coast and to be exported to nations who, like ourselves, are convinced that the emission of carbon dioxide is leading to the extinction of life on this planet.

We are repeatedly assured that this conviction is based on the opinion of the great majority of scientists. In fact, this is untrue, but it may apply amongst those scientists whose questionable work provides the material for reports by the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change.

Even if any significant climate change is taking place, even if this is due to man’s activity, and even if our wind turbines could make any material difference to CO2 levels worldwide, this is no basis for committing billions of pounds to a new industry whose main effect will be to further despoil our coast and landscape and seriously increase our electricity bills at a time of economic hardships. Our succeeding generations will not be amused, or sympathetic.

Of course, every effort should be made towards providing useful employment in our region, but let this be for the renewing and expansion of nuclear power stations before the need for power cuts and reduced working hours becomes unavoidable.

Cameron’s big smokescreen

From: Robert Cartlidge, Storth Lane, Wales, Sheffield.

THE “Big Society” is nothing but a fake and a cover for cuts. Instead of focusing upon the devastating, diabolical cuts, we are digressing to a supposedly idealist venture of society that is, in theory, to bring about greater benefits to exhilarate all our lives – it is theoretically, an antidote to the profound misery of the dreaded cuts of cataclysmic proportions.

Using the term “people” is socialistic terminology – people’s ownership. However, it is meant in Conservative terms as “some people”, in the sense of private ownership, its strategy, breaking away from Government control; privateers’ jurisdiction.

It is, therefore, wrong to assume that Conservatives are on the people’s side; their aim is to divide and rule.

The connotation of “Big Society” being that we are all in it together, it is implicit that we are all going to suffer together.

There are those who will fall by the wayside, separating Government, and people and bordering on anarchy. How cunning and illusory a fox is Mr Cameron?

Premier prices

From: John Wilson, Wilsons Solicitors, New Road Side, Horsforth, Leeds.

I NOTE that Manchester United will soon be the first football club to break through the £100m revenue barrier.

I like I suspect, a lot of your readers, am far more concerned about how soon it will be before we break through the £100 tank of petrol barrier.