Counting the pennies? You’ll pay a high price
MONEY Mail editor Daniel Hyde rightly deplores the death of the savings habit.
It has been killed off not just by record low interest rates and low wage growth, but also by government policies such as tax grabs on pension savings.
Young people face many demands, such as the ridiculous cost of housing, which governments have failed to control, the prohibitive cost of public transport and repaying student loans.
Given the high rate of default, dismantling the free tuition and grant schemes that my generation benefited from does not seem to have saved the Treasury much.
When you are young, retirement seems a long time away and saving comes bottom of the list — there is simply no money left at the end of the month.
Moreover, there is little encouragement for older people to save. The thresholds for pension credit are taken as a baseline for other benefits and even for such things as eligibility for reduced price tickets at the Royal Festival Hall, so the frugal are deprived of culture in their old age.
Among my friends, I am the worst off because my thrift in saving for a small self-employed pension has placed me just above the benefit threshold.
I am still obliged to work after the state retirement age, while those dependent on benefits have been happily retired for years. So, how can I recommend that my younger friends save for old age?
There is more that could be done by the Government. National Savings bonds once offered aboveinflation interest rates, but sadly the popular pensioner bonds were not repeated, and the National Savings cash Isa rates are no better than any others.
JUDITH HOWARD, London SW11.
Snooper plan scrutiny
FINALLY a Holyrood committee – education – does what it’s supposed to and scrutinises a Bill and decides it is not up to par (Mail).
This is the revamped Named Person scheme which Education Secretary John Swinney is trying to salvage after the Supreme Court branded its key element, secret sharing of information, illegal. A bigger politician would have called it a day and scrapped the plan, but instead Mr Swinney trudges expensively on and even has the temerity to write to the committee saying he doesn’t like their decision.
The public have had no faith in this state snooper scheme right from the start. They saw through the fact that it undermines good parents and risks pulling resources away from at-risk children. Well done the education committee and keep up the scrutiny on Swinney and the most cack-handed Bill ever seen at Holyrood. Jean Campbell, paisley,
Renfrewshire.
Public inconvenience
THE idiocy of unisex toilets, showers and changing rooms is starting to hit home.
On a visit to a well-known pizza chain, I saw an elderly gentleman emerging from a toilet cubicle when a little girl of about eight walked into the unisex toilets.
She was horrified, turned around and fled into the arms of her waiting mother. ‘There was a man in the toilets, and I was afraid,’ she said. The gentleman was also very upset by this incident.
V. Longin, Goole, e. Yorks.
Escape the EU mire
‘NEVER had the need to be together, to protect ourselves together, to act together been so strong, so manifest. Yet rather than stay shoulder to shoulder with the Union, the British chose to be on their own again.’
These are the words of a negotiator from a country which capitulated in 1940 when the United Kingdom and its empire saved Europe and the free world.
Let’s just get out of this corrupt, unelected swamp.
Peter GRAY, Leslie, Fife. MY SON, who is financial director of a large company, has been negotiating a contract to buy a commercial property in Germany.
He found the other side difficult to deal with. On his latest trip last week, he felt he was making no progress, so he said to his solicitor and translator: ‘Let’s go home.’ They picked up their coats to leave when one of the Germans said: ‘Come back.’
The whole atmosphere changed, they began to talk in a sensible way, and by the end of the meeting they had exchanged contracts. Perhaps our Brexit team could try the same tactics with Brussels. Michael Stringer,
Havant, Hants.
Tax freeze folly
WE read every day about the lack of funding for councils. For nine years we had a council tax freeze which was totally funded by the SNP. What could this money have been spent on? Education, NHS, social care to name but a few.
Even if the council tax had been increased by 1 per cent a year this would still have been a good source of income and I am sure no one would have objected as long as it was spent wisely. The SNP cannot blame ‘the Tories’ for this disastrous decision which has contributed to the lack of funding for all our essential services.
Alison Macdonald, Kirkintilloch, Dunbartonshire. COUNCILS are saying they’re running out of cash. What’s the betting this will mean top executives on six-figure salaries telling us it means front-line services will suffer? At this rate. We’ll be getting our bins emptied annually.
Jim Cameron, Largs, Ayrshire.
Perfect plastic
THE Mail’s highlighting of the problem of plastic waste in our oceans describes a situation for which there is already a solution.
In the Nineties, Shell and BP developed processes for the production of a new class of polymer called polyketones.
They were developed as packaging materials and have the advantage of being photo, chemically and biochemically degradable.
These eco-friendly polymers failed to take off because of lack of public awareness, government bureaucracy showing little interest in pollution and an industry loathe to spend money on replacing profitable plants manufacturing traditional materials. Perhaps their time has come. professor Mike Green,
newcastle upon Tyne.
Hand of friendship
I HAVE become a volunteer visitor for Age UK, and it’s been one of the most rewarding, enjoyable, humbling and emotional experiences of my life.
I have made friends with a 92year-old man who lives alone. Apart from a distant nephew and a neighbour who drops off his newspaper, he can go for days without seeing anyone.
I visit him once a week for a game of Scrabble (he always wins!) and his face lights up when he opens the door because he has someone to talk to for an hour.
He has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the area we live in, marvellous photo albums going back to the Thirties and a vast array of sporting trophies, which are all discussed with vigour.
It really makes me appreciate how lucky and blessed I am to be surrounded by my family, and how much we can take it for granted.
Jeff KAY, Hardwicke, Glos.