MR A SEDGWICK (Letters, February 24) has toned down the bleak picture he painted earlier of pensioners' existence under the cruel heel of New Labour.

Yet, this time, he complains of them being in office for nearly two years without making any reparation to pensioners, not even relaxing conditions for cold weather payments.

It was never my purpose to plead the case of the present government but I must remedy their omission to tell him about the winter fuel payment to each pensioner in January; that the promise of cutting VAT on fuel has been made good and that eye test fees for pensioners - that other mean and vindictive Tory imposition - will be lifted in April.

From that month, pensioners will get a guaranteed minimum income. OK that's pension plus income support now paid to the poorest by another name, but at least they're not taking anything from us.

Mr Sedgwick adds that I am "obsessed with useless 30-year-old statistics to try and condemn the Tories."

Clearly, I must repeat that the Tories' breach of the pension contract was in 1980. Mrs Thatcher realised that this would result in the covert erosion of the state pension, its value against average earnings set to fall from 21 per cent in 1980 to 9 per sent in 2020: ideally fitting her dogma that all state provision was bad and all private ones good. So they duped people to swap sound occupational and State Earnings Related Pensions for private schemes - with a bill to taxpayers of at least £9 billion in bribes.

This left millions of people trapped in wrong policies - a scandal whose £11 billion compensation will eventually come out of the pocket of every insurance police holder in the country.

The "useless statistics" have detrimentally affected the lives of 10 million present pensioners and those of generations to come. I am unfazed if outraged at how shabbily we have been treated is labelled an obsession. Mine is based on facts.

G E RAYNER, Whinney Lane, Langho.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.