YP Letters: Today's pensioners earned every penny through hard work

Pensioners have earned benefits like the winter fuel allowance, say two readers. Do you agree?

From: G Cooper, Mill Street, Barlow, Dronfield.

APPROACHING 80 (as slowly as I can) I’m one of the “golden gneration”, in receipt of free prescriptions, a bus pass and a fuel allowance. And it’s true, we didn’t go to war and there were plenty of secure jobs (leading eventually to a decent pension) and housing was affordable and there was free university education.

But before deciding we’re all a lot of Brexiting freeloaders, consider this – we were born when the country was under attack by the Germans and many of our Dads (mine amongst them) were absent fighting them.

When we’d won (we did win, didn’t we?) there followed a period of austerity which makes our current difficulties look like a bit of a doddle. Food was rationed (some of it was sent to feed our former enemy).

I started working at 16 years of age, on the equivalent of 80p (that’s right, 80p) per week, five-and-a-half days per week and studied at “tech” in the evenings.

My generation worked damned hard to bring about that which our fathers fought and voted for, the welfare state. My generation got it up and running. We earned the benefits we now enjoy.

From: Karl Sheridan, Selby Road, Holme on Spalding Moor.

IT would appear that pensioners are now under attack, aided and abetted by statisticians who gleefully announce that pensioners are now far better off than ever before, adding that their income percentage is higher than that of the average working man. So what, I ask, is wrong with that?

Admittedly there are quite a few pensioners on very, very comfortable private pensions out there – some even smug enough to boast that their state pension isn’t required. However the vast majority are not better off at all because of constant price rises and, especially, extortionate heating and energy costs.

It’s all very well statisticians concocting these figures as they sit in warm and brightly-lit offices – but the elderly don’t have this luxury with most leading a sedentary lifestyle either through illness or circumstances, which means remaining indoors with the heating on in an effort to keep warm.

It is only through the efforts of pensioners that we now have the current standard of living.

Nearly all worked hard through their lives, unlike the many shirker who delight in exploiting the benefit systems today, and so why shouldn’t pensioners be respected and given a better standard of life?