I’ve never received something for nothing

I WRITE in response to the letter from Edward Kynaston suggesting that “Something for nothing cannot keep going on” (Letters, November 10).

I’m a pensioner. I have never received a £150 Council Tax rebate, £300 benefit for low income pensioner or a £650 Universal Credit payment because I worked all my life and lived within my means. I get sick and fed up from the moaning and groaning that I am a constant burden on the state and NHS.

No-one moaned - least of all HM Treasury - when I was working for 40 years, paying each month into the system that promised to take care of me “from the cradle to the grave”.

Now I get a five-hour wait for an ambulance, an eight-hour wait at A & E, then a three-week wait to see a doctor or an answering machine at Cheltenham General or Gloucester Royal promising to respond with 48 hours (which never happens). Put up taxes to fund a better system, but don’t ask me to contribute because the fat cats will take a bigger cut, leaving the essential workers to prop up the front line.

S Evans Cheltenham