![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/gettyimages-81767835-1038x778.jpg\")
\n Photo by Chris Ware\/Keystone Features\/FPG\/Hulton Archive<\/p>\n
\n Photo by Chris Ware\/Keystone Features\/FPG\/Hulton Archive<\/p>\n
Andrew Marr\u2019s analysis (Inside Westminster, 17 October<\/a>) is spot on. But he doesn\u2019t follow through with the conclusion \u2013 to means test the old-age pension. Fairness demands it. Even if only 10 per cent of pensioners are wealthy, why pay them a pension? \u00a317.5bn per annum would be saved, and more in the future. Wealthy boomers didn\u2019t contribute to this pension by paying adequate tax (the UK has more debt now than ever before). They have benefited from rising asset prices, often have corporate-funded, defined-benefit pensions that hardly anyone under the age of 60 was ever offered and have enjoyed tax incentives to save that barely exist any more. Enough\u2019s enough. Welfare is for the poor, not the old. If this is unthinkable policy, why is other welfare means tested?<\/p>\n Labour needs a mission that cuts through with voters. It also needs an enemy, as any populist leader will tell you. If the mission is fairness, the enemy is middle-class welfare. Those who would miss out from a means-tested pension wouldn\u2019t vote for Keir Starmer anyway. Of all the choices facing the Chancellor, this is more palatable than most. Like Andrew, I\u2019ll likely be one who misses out under this regime, but if it is not implemented, there won\u2019t be any money left when I retire anyway. Out with the old?<\/p>\n Andrew Marr\u2019s admonition to Rachel Reeves<\/a> not to neglect our nation\u2019s youth is timely, given we are led to believe 16-year-olds are shortly to receive the right to vote. He points out that \u201coldies\u201d (like me) vote in much greater proportion than our youngsters: in 2019 only 47 per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds voted, compared to 74 per cent of those over 65. It follows that governments reflect this by favouring us with policies like the triple lock on pensions. One might suppose that if young people voted in greater numbers, they might find governments handing them a few goodies?<\/p>\n But I recently talked to a few dozen 16-to-18-year-old school pupils and found a worrying disengagement from anything political. Not one claimed to have any interest in politics and, assuming they do get the vote, not one intended to exercise it. As a pensioner who retired at 74, I pay tax on my modest state and small private pensions. I\u2019m fairly taxed on earnings. The real issue isn\u2019t pension income or taxable earnings; it\u2019s tax-avoided wealth which can disadvantage the younger generation. Andrew Marr suggests that pensioners wield disproportionate power by voting. The remedy for younger voters who feel disadvantaged by this subversive practice is obvious. As someone who, after 44 years of full-time work, is now semi-retired (I work part-time for my local parish council), may I be permitted to vote in local elections, where I have skin in the game, if I agree to abstain in general elections and accept whatever largesse the youth-conscious government of the future deems fair? Channel for despair<\/p>\n I read the letters in response to the 10 October Cover Story<\/a> about small boats (Correspondence, 17 October<\/a>). Were it not for the clear-sighted, dispassionate analysis of Andrew Marr, I could have been reading the Guardian! Care4Calais, the Refugee Council and similar organisations, along with a coterie of MPs, seem unable to tell us where resources are to be found to provide proper housing, jobs, healthcare and other welfare provision for the stream of asylum seekers\/economic migrants that arrive on our shores. So what of the needs of the families who already live here, call the UK their home, but who cannot find decent accommodation, work, schooling, medical and social care? That is, who cannot find a halfway decent chance in life?<\/p>\n Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only \u00a38.99 per month<\/p>\n To make such comparisons is to be labelled a \u201cracist\u201d, or a \u201cfascist\u201d, or a wild-eyed, violent member of the far right! This is the way a large number of decent, liberal people are labelled. The immigration fiasco is one part of the disillusionment, even despair, felt by ordinary folk. I read with dismay your Cover Story on the suffering in the pop-up camps around Calai<\/a>s. Added to the deaths of those, attempting to cross the Channel, I am left with a profound sense of grief. And anger. Anger at the failure of governments on both sides of the Channel that have created and propogated this tragedy. There is only one realistic way to end this continuously compounding misery: removal of all and any hope of remaining in the UK if arrival is via a small boat. Suggesting otherwise betrays an increasingly grotesque disregard of the reality of human nature. A fan of his early work<\/p>\n Will Dunn quotes from the Edward Thomas poem \u201cThe Combe\u201d (The Sketch, 17 October<\/a>), but makes a mistake saying \u201cit was one of his last poems before he was killed in the First World War\u201d. According to Edna Longley\u2019s annotated edition of the poems, Thomas wrote his first poem, \u201cNovember\u201d, on 4 December 1914, and \u201cThe Combe\u201d on 30 December of that year. That makes it one of the first of the 144 poems in the Edward Thomas canon. A Gove-able feast<\/p>\n Kevin Maguire notes Michael Gove\u2019s patronising of Pret (Commons Confidential, 17 October<\/a>). When he was education secretary, Gove was often seen walking to buy his own lunch \u2013 unlike most ministers. I, a civil servant, was told to vary my routine in case of attack. Gove seemed oblivious to such advice, though considerably more of a target. Lord, help the mister<\/p>\n As a Catholic who was taught by Catholic nuns, I so enjoyed Lamorna Ash\u2019s column (Contact, 17 October<\/a>). Who could blame these women for their desire to return to their convent? Thankfully, their saviours appreciated their homesickness and rescued them. You can take the nuns out of the convent, but you can\u2019t take the convent out of the nuns. May they reside there until they die, after lives well-lived, and so respected by the local community. Alan Faragetridge?<\/p>\n Steve Coogan\u2019s Alan Partridge (The New Society, 10 October<\/a>), with his Daily Mail views, \u201cold git\u201d wardrobe and politically incorrect verbiage, is surely a depiction of a Reform voter, if not the great Nigel Farage himself. Next, Coogan should make Partridge a satirical Reform politician. Discontent on the continent<\/p>\n Finn McRedmond\u2019s observations on London\u2019s pizza scene struck a chord (Silver Spoon, 17 October<\/a>). After a rewarding day spent walking Pompeii\u2019s ancient streets recently, it felt appropriate, in Naples that evening, to order a Vesuvio. While it wasn\u2019t flung at me like a frisbee (or discobolus), it was laden with so much salty formaggi that hours later, I was sleepless from a raging thirst \u2013 the same gasping insomnia had we frequented a certain PizzaExpress, Woking. Finn McRedmond\u2019s seasonal melancholy is tipping over into pure grumpiness. In our family, the Champagne Bar at St Pancras<\/a> is a totemic spot that has marked the start of priceless occasions. Expeditions to Prix de L\u2019Arc de Triomphe, Fondation Louis Vuitton exhibitions and birthday celebrations in Paris have all kicked off there. We have also discovered that in an overcoat I look exactly like John Betjeman. As for conducting extramarital affairs at Carluccio\u2019s, I couldn\u2019t possibly comment, but I have been made happy by their spaghetti alle vongole. On the other hand, Finn, if you want to wallow in grumpiness, come up here to Keighley. My word is my bond<\/p>\n I agree that if we want to solve the housing crisis we should look to the Victorians (Future Perfect, 17 October<\/a>). We should revive the social reformer Octavia Hill\u2019s idea of 4 per cent philanthropy. One of the barriers to high-quality affordable housing is governments\u2019 unwillingness to commit public capital to housing. However, I would be willing to buy housing bonds, attracting a modest rate of interest, if I knew my money would be spent on good-quality housing, offered on secure terms to people in need. If it worked then, it could work now. Matters of the heart<\/p>\n
Matt Hammond, London NW3<\/p>\n
Bill Jones, professor of political studies, University Liverpool Hope<\/p>\n
Sally Litherland, Salisbury<\/p>\n
Steve Kerry, Alveley, Shropshire<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/dl6pgk4f88hky.cloudfront.net\/2021\/09\/TNS_master_logo.svg\"){kind=logo}
<\/a><\/p>\n
Brent Charlesworth, Lincoln<\/p>\n
Julian Lyons, London SE14<\/p>\n
Chris Moore, London SW4<\/p>\n
Martin Post, West Sussex<\/p>\n
Judith A Daniels, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk<\/p>\n
Sally Wilton, Bournemouth<\/p>\n
Richard Baker, London SE24<\/p>\n
Tim Appelbee, Sutton-in-Craven, Keighley<\/p>\n
Adam Penwarden, Brighton<\/p>\n