Please stop peddling the myth that all pensioners are well off

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Not all pensioners are well off, one reader writes (Getty)

Please stop peddling the myth that all pensioners are well off (Andrew Grice, Saturday edition: “If Theresa May wants to avoid terrible legacy, she needs to take from pensions”). There are many pensioners still struggling on a state pension and a small occupational pension, particularly those who were in poorly paid work like care services, or who didn't work long enough in pensionable jobs to build up decent entitlement. If these people still have housing costs, and especially those who live alone, life can still be quite a struggle.

Let the wealthy retired make a bigger contribution to the general well being but it is still essential to protect pensioners on “just about managing” incomes.

Margaret Adams, Keighley

In order to “plug the hole” in the sadly inadequate social care budget I read that yet again this is to be funded by attacking those least able to defend themselves, those whose only income is their state old age pension. Having “benefited” from one of the worst state pensions in the western world the so-called triple lock was at least a step in the right direction, now to be reversed.

What is so unfair about this is the legions of young retired on state subsidised or funded index-linked pensions, which no one will even dare to question. Teachers, lecturers, local government workers, police, army, civil servants, BBC employees and a host of others who are actively encouraged to retire early, justified as a cost saving that allows the younger less-experienced to replace them, some as young as 50, who will live many years more in retirement than they have worked. Contrast this with the ever-increasing state retirement age leading to many of the poorest in society lucky to get a handful of years on their state pension.

Maybe all those in receipt of any form of state pension should have the same retirement age. Also, it could be argued that those in receipt of a state funded index-linked pension should not also receive the “old age pension”.

Geoff Forward, Stirling

There is much complaint about the cost of bus passes for elderly people. Many elderly people in our village would love to be able to use their bus passes, but we simply do not have a single bus serving this area. We are supposed to have a train service if Southern Rail ever sorts itself out. Accordingly, we are forced to use cars or Shanks's pony. Let us have some joined-up thinking about transport services.

Jonathan Longstaff, Buxted, Sussex

The suggestion that we need a nationally integrated health and social care service to deal with the problems of the growing number of elderly made by Andrew Grice and others is laughable. One of the key problems of the NHS is that it still has in place a large bureaucracy and decision-making process which is geared to national targets.

Integration can only be achieved at a local level where the council and its partners knows all the players, has a clear view of all the problems and is then able to bring together the players in holistic local solutions which meet real need in a realistic way.

Devolve power and money to local areas in some cases, as in Greater Manchester, composed of a group of councils and we can do the integrated and cost-effective work which the Government has shown itself to be incapable of for many years.

Richard Kemp CBE, Liberal Democrat Councillor, Liverpool

Labour’s economic failure

The Labour Party has long bought into the fantasy or orthodoxy that deficits are somehow in themselves morally bad and that reducing them must therefore be a wholesome policy objective, just as indeed it’s understood that a family or a business reducing its liabilities is doing the right thing.

Yet interpreting the economics of an entire nation through the childish lens of what amounts to sensible household finance is a travesty of all serious fiscal policy. Deficits are simply neutral tools.

Austerity ought to be understood as a deliberate political oppression based on fallacy and widespread public misunderstanding, yet Labour can’t properly challenge the numbers or the misconceptions because its imagination is limited by the very same orthodoxies that set the terms of the debate. Thus we find Labour attacking the Tory party for failing to meet its fiscal targets, while many serious economists are grateful that their failure has helped avoid yet another recession.

A Labour Party which understands the power of the fiat currency and can carry the debates can and should be bold because it can achieve real change; it can say we will abolish student debt and establish a jobs guarantee scheme, so that when the accountant foot-soldiers doing what they always do, pop up to pull down, they are blown away by the mood of what is possible.

Bill Haymes, Coventry

Quality of life

Winchester is indeed a nice place to live. Spoiled though by the terrible flat beer served. Better to move to Hambledon, Yorkshire, where the beer is far superior.

Richard Walter, Yorkshire

Thanks to the many correspondents who pointed out that the population of Orkney is about 21,000, rather than 27 as we reported on Saturday.