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Your support makes all the difference.DAVID WILLETTS MP tells the IoS, 'Most pensioners are asset-rich and income-poor. Many have paid off their mortgages. It should be possible to convert that asset into a flow of income' ('Pensioners told 'sell assets' ', 21 November). The only pensioners who can hope to be asset-rich are those with index-linked private pensions in addition to the state pension because they can leave other savings undisturbed and gaining interest. These are much the minority.
Presumably Mr Willetts thinks that owning even the smallest house means a pensioner is rich. On the contrary, repair and maintenance costs may become as much of a burden as the mortgage was.
Many pensioners have tried remortgaging their homes, some successfully in the days when property prices were constantly rising, but no financial adviser would recommend it today, particularly to people whose house is their only asset.
It is time this Government stopped trying to put the cost of running this country on to the backs of the poorest in order to save the rest of us from paying a little more income tax. I am a widowed pensioner with a good index-linked pension who can live comfortably without worrying about the cost of heating in this wintry weather. Each week at the post office I see the other old people spending, it seems to me, half their pension on stamps for electricity, TV, council tax, telephone, so that they can meet future bills.
Many elderly people like me, who realise our good fortune, would rather pay more income tax than have the less fortunate pay VAT on necessities like fuel.
K Cox
Llandegfan, Anglesey
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