Unlike tax dodgers we pensioners have earned ‘perks’ - Yorkshire Post letters

I FEEL compelled to rectify a situation that is continuously being reinforced, that somehow pensioners are enjoying free ‘perks’ at great expense to the public purse; e.g. bus passes and the winter fuel allowance.

If the Tories try to ‘tamper’ with these pension privileges gained over many years of hard work, and all perfectly legal, they will face total annihilation, worse than their recent humiliation in the local elections, and will be consigned to oblivion for a long time.

This latest attempt at “Let’s get the pensioners” will be a real error and cost them dearly in terms of votes. Former Cabinet minister Damian Green ‘suggesting’ that the over-50s should pay an extra £300 towards care costs in old age is, in fact, a double whammy, expecting workers over-50 to fork out more with less. It is a tax in no uncertain terms, which erodes further take-home pay. Workers need improved wages, not less.

However, the Chancellor has suggested that he ‘may’ increase the minimum wage to £9.61 an hour – which would make it the highest in the world, apparently. The operative word is “may”.

He used that in his Autumn 2017 Budget over the issue of addressing longevity.

Pensioners are not getting any free perks out of the public purse. They are only getting what they have paid into during their working lives, which should have been properly invested; and any attempt by this, or any future government to reduce their standard of living, will – and must – be met by fierce resistance at the ballot box.

Stop bashing the elderly and tax the super-rich fairly and squarely, as Jeremy Corbyn has implied he will do if he ever gets in to Downing Street. It’s about time they contributed to the running of the country instead of using tax avoidance and similar methods.

From: Malcolm Naylor, Ilkley.

OUR politicians learn nothing from past experience and go round in ever-decreasing circles making the same mistakes time after time. Back in the 1950s, my wife attended Coldcoates Secondary School on Foundry Lane, Leeds.

In the last months before leaving, children went in a flat attached to the school. There they learned and experienced all the tasks required for adult life.

This was an established part of their education. Politicians learn and know nothing, and should be ashamed of themselves for their ignorance. And this applies not only in education. It is in everything.