OLD AGE PENSIONS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XCVII, Issue 11225, 24 March 1897, Page 3

OLD AGE PENSIONS.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —As I am a colonist of forty years’ standing - and have no need to speak for myself, I feel that I may point out that sixty-five is too advanced an age for the commencement of tho pensions. It leaves no time for tho busy worker who has contributed his share to the revenue of the colony to enjoy tho closing years of his life. A man who has laboured without a rest for fifty years must in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred be a wreck tottering to the grave, and I think that every man who has fulfilled the conditions and reached sixty years of age should be provided for.—l am, Szc., •-GEORGE WILLOX.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, — Tho dread I have felt and feared all along is emphatically brought home to mo after reading “ Old Brigade’s ” letter. If the official Bumble has received directions to snub, harass and put difficulties in our way, then at once a third or half of those who are eligible will shrink from submitting to the indignities that would be practised towards them, and only the brazen and very necessitous would claim. Of course under such conditions the amount of money required would be shown to be about one-half what would otherwise bo the case, and the officials would havo carried out their instructions, and gratified their conceit; but to suppose that respectable folk will or can submit to treatment other than is reasonable and necessary is a mistake. Again, if these official Bumbles are- seizing this opportunity to gratify their petty tyranny, they arc defeating the objects and desires of tho people and tiieyGovernment. Depend upon it, thife official offensiveness and obstruetiveness will not ceaso until all who are eligible can claim by reason of age and length of residence alone. —I am, &c., OVER THREE SCORE AND TEN.