THE way successive British governments have treated our old people is a national disgrace.

The basic old age pensions paid in the years since the Second World War have amounted to nothing more than miserable pittances.

Both Conservative and Labour governments have refused to pay old people pensions which could give them a reasonable standard of living and a little dignity.

As senior citizens of the "war generation" gathered for the annual conference of Pensioners' Voice, president Dorothy Rhodes said they had been betrayed.

She said they needed a good basic income, secure community care, back-up for carers and thought for the victims, not the perpetrators of crime.

Who could possibly deny them any of that?

Many of the current generation of pensioners endured unimaginable hardships during the war.

Those who fought in the armed forces to preserve democracy from the nightmare of facism and others who endured tough times on the home front must wonder why they bothered.

The reward for many thousands of them has been poverty and fear in a society which seems to have lost all the compassion of the one they knew as youngsters.

Mrs Rhodes describes the government's consultative document, A New Partnership for Care In Old Age, as a pitiful response to the problem.

She is right. What pensioners need for a start is a decent basic pension. At the moment they are paid a miserable £61.15 for a single person and £97.75 for a couple.

This is less than half the average old age pension in European countries. In Germany, a country reduced to piles of rubble 50 years ago, old age pensioners enjoy an index linked pension which affords them a good standard of living.

Here, many of our pensioners are so poor that they hardly dare switch on their heating during the coldest of winters. And they are forced to buy poor quality food at a time of life when they need all the protection they can get.

Many are too proud to apply for income support which can amount to a mere £3,000 a year and has not been reviewed for 14 years..

Is it any wonder that our current generation of old age pensioners feel betrayed?

Most of them have given so much to their country and been rewarded with a basic pension which is an insult.

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