PENSIONERS.

Evening Star, Issue 25618, 19 October 1945, Page 2

PENSIONERS.

TO THE EDITOR, Sir, —Quite a number of correspondents are airing their views on pensions. They all go into details of what one would get if one had so much invested, but tlje glaring fact remains that the lone pensioner does not get enough to live on. I am just on 70 years of age, and have got nothing but my pension of £2 a week J can’t work, but I like to dress decently when lgo out. I don’t drink and I don’t, go to races, but I have one awful vice —T smoke. I pay 12s a week for an old condemned .shack to shelter me from the weather; it costs me easily 8s for a week’s coal, wood, and lights, and. say, 3s 6d a week for smokes, which, i suppose, dear, kind, benevolent (Mr Nash would call extravagance That leaves me 16s 6d for food, and 1 have the habit of getting hungry, which is a very bad habit for a pensioner to get into.

People Say: “Why don’t you get your coal from the Mayor’s fund? No, Sir. I don’t want any charity., I want what Mr Peter Fraser said I am justly entitled to, and that is deferred pay, sufficient to put me beyond the fear of want. I have been a worker since I left school at 12 years of age; I never saved the amount of money a pensioner is allowed'to have (£500); I spent my money, on good food and clothes, and reared'a family of healthy sons, all grade 1., and they all went into the Army and did their bit. By spending my money like that. I helped to keep the wheels of industry turning Had I saved and scraped along as every worker had to do who saved £SOO, I would, like them, be holding up industry, for no worker in those days could save £SOO and at the same time have all the necessaries of life. ( Messrs Nash and Co. seem to look on tie pensioner as something apart from human beings; they bolster up the rich man by giving him everything free of a means test, but they keep their heel on the neck of the pensioner all the time, and if anyone squeaks they turn round with the old parrot cry: “ You’re getting more than the others gave you. ’ I think it is time something was done. It is quite all-right for the pensioner who is living with his son-or daughter, but I don’t believe ( in sponging on my family. I want what I am entitled to, and nothing more. As it is at the present time, with high costs, it is a disgrace for a Labour Government to ask , anyone who cannot work to live on a" miserable £2 a week.

—I am, etc., Ragged Joe. October 18. P.S.—I have always supported Labour, but it must do ! its job.