Views differ on Osborne’s Budget and life as a pensioner

HOW I wish pensioners would stop moaning about how hard done by they are.

We are really very lucky. I retired at 67 years but got my state pension at 60 and didn’t pay National Insurance after that age.

We get free bus travel all over the country, concessions on cinema and on coach and rail travel with our passes. We get fuel allowance in the winter and free prescriptions.

We know how to budget having been born during or shortly after the end of World War Two. We can enjoy free museums, libraries and take lessons on the internet for free

Let us stop complaining, accept our 5.2 per cent pension rise with grace and realise that, in this economic climate, we have to do our part to get the country back on its feet.

From: Tom Howley, Wetherby, Leeds.

CHANCELLOR George Osborne, explaining why he insulted the nation’s pensioners with his cruel decision to curb their allowances, claims that he was responsible for the very generous uplift in next month’s increase to the state benefit.

This “generous gesture” was not the act of kindness by Osborne, it was a result of the existing calculation for determining the weekly pension, just as the derisory 95p increase awarded by Labour’s Gordon Brown in his first Budget was the result of a formula devised by the previous administration.

Mr Osborne also attempts to fool the public with an explanation that the reduction in tax for the wealthy will be an incentive for them to cease avoiding their tax responsibilities.

If the Chancellor believes that, he will believe anything. The highly-paid tax consultants will already have plans which will allow their wealthy clients to continue to protect their disgusting salaries and bonuses.

Pensioners take note: If you have a state benefit and have made provisions for old age with a top-up private arrangement, you will suffer. The Government is determined to redeem the advantages you enjoy – the winter fuel allowance, the free bus pass, the TV licence, for example – by fair means or by foul.

From: R Billups, East Avenue, Rawmarsh, Rotherham.

THE OAP-bashing budget of this Conservative chancellor is in line with all his predecessors. The pre-election promises about the NHS, the poor and needy, the growth for jobs and the pensioners would be looked after and better off is the same rhetoric by every Conservative candidate at every election.

This man we have in No 11 Downing Street must think we’ve all come up the River Don in a colander. He’s spoken with all the fanfare that he’s going to help Yorkshire, but the amount of money for the biggest county is less than he’s handed over to Boris Johnson to get him re-elected as London’s mayor.

From: Barrie Frost, Watson’s Lane, Reighton, Filey.

IN the Budget, the Chancellor, George Osborne, has decided to “simplify” the pension system by withdrawing age-related tax allowances for new pensioners while freezing them for existing OAPs.

This “simplification” will result in pensioners paying around an extra £1bn per year in tax, approximately equal to the sum of money the Government feels is just and proper to give to India, China and Argentina in foreign aid.

Now, perhaps I’m mistaken, but I wasn’t aware the Chancellor needed an Oxford University education to come up with this wheeze, though if simplification can be so advantageous I’m at a loss in wondering why he didn’t go the whole hog and simplify; the Common Agricultural Policy; the Fisheries policy; the whole EU budget and accounts fiasco; the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; the hopelessly inefficient wind farms; the obscene level of fuel duties etc. etc.

But then, my loss in wondering why this is is probably due to not having had the benefit of such higher education.

From: J. Senior, Birchfield Grove, Skelmanthorpe.

AS a pensioner who has always been in the fortunate position of having his age-related tax allowance clawed back, I feel I can comment on the Chancellor’s gradual axing of the age-related allowance and the reduction in the top rate of tax without being accused of self-interest.

I find that the words the Chancellor and the Prime Minister have used to justify the changes unbelievable.

The people hurt most by the pension changes will be those on quite modest pensions and, while it is true that this year’s percentage pension increase is greater than the salary increase of most ordinary workers, there is still some way to go before pensioners catch up with the percentage salary/wage increases of the past 20 years.

With regard to the proposed decrease in the top rate of tax, this will affect the very people who last year saw increases in their total remuneration in the 40 per cent bracket. Yes we are all in it together but one end of the trough is much more rewarding than the other!

From: Bob Swallow, Townhead Avenue, Settle.

CHANCELLOR Osborne in his Budget has chosen to steal from the less well off to fund those already well heeled – his cronies. He would do well to remember that Robin Hood in a variety of guises will in the near future be looking to ambush him when least expected.