I OBJECT to the whole tone of RG Thornton's letter (November 12).

Pensioners, in the main, do not ask for "hand outs" just fair treatment. The poorer pensioners, who only get the basic State retirement pension of £78 per week, have in most cases paid in for it over 40 years of their working life and are given benefits of various sorts.

This is only because the Government realises that the basic pension is not enough to live on and hence it should really be higher.

At the other extreme, company directors, MPs and the like can vote themselves pensions which more than keep up with the cost of living.

Most pensioners fall in between these extremes. They receive the basic State pension plus an occupational pension which they have paid for over many years to ensure that they can continue to more than just exist after retirement.

However the advent of the iniquitous council tax which continues to increase at a rate of six times the annual pension increase has resulted in an ever larger slice of the pensioners income being paid back in tax.

I suspect that most of these pensioners will be returning between 25 per cent and 30 per cent of their occupational pension as council tax. If asked what they get for all this money most would say; the dustbins emptied and not much else!

No hand outs, thank you, just a fairer local taxation system. Keep up the good work, Don Parlabean.

Peter Southon,

Main Street,

Thorganby, York.

Updated: 11:13 Saturday, November 15, 2003