YP Letters: May has become vote loser with her plans for social care

Social care has become a major election issue.

IT appears that the Prime Minister Theresa May has shot herself in the foot over her social care manifesto pledge.

She announced this proposal in Halifax where the BBC made the point that a two-bedroom property in the town averaged a value of £102,000. Thus someone taken into care in the town with few savings would after their death lose but £2,000 from their property estate. Folk in Maidenhead in a similar property must be spitting blood with property values down there.

It appears that if you are renting with few savings and need social care, you will receive this free.

Surely a more equitable way would be to put 1p or whatever on income tax with possibly more should you pay higher rate tax at 40 per cent? After well over 60 years, I am still paying basic rate tax.

My wife and I are both still very active pensioners with a busy and useful social life. We have not paid off successive mortgages to see the greater chunk of the equity stolen in the event of dementia or similar debilitating problems. We want it to go to our children to assist them become homeowners, once upon a time a Tory flagship policy.

I am not afraid of death, yet terrified of dementia, both having had to deal with aged parents fading away before our eyes. There is another option to consider – euthanasia. Or, as Dickens would have put it, ‘and thereby decrease the surplus population’. What a vote loser!

From: Sandra Ogden, Rayner Road, Brighouse.

WE have had the “bedroom tax”, forced the chronically sick and disabled to be “ re-assessed for work” and reduced their benefits if they don’t work and now it’s the “care and dementia tax”.

Council care homes have closed with the “cuts” hence high fees charged by private homes. There is continuing health care provided by the NHS, but even those who qualify for it can’t get it. The Conservatives have lost the ‘grey vote’.

From: Mary Wilcock, Horsforth, Leeds.

I HAVE have been listening to all these complaints about pensioners losing their winter fuel allowance. We don’t do badly – we have free prescriptions, TV licence and bus passes. I have been drawing a state pension for 30 years, all of which has to be paid for by the young.

We are far from wealthy, but the money could be put to better use. Those in genuine need should get it, but not those of us who can manage without it.