Chaos is not melodrama, it is tragedy

Nicola Sturgeon and the others were quite right to encourage Tory MPs to do the decent thing and call an election [Sunday Post last week] but that would depend on them having a shred of decency in the first place.

They care only about themselves and many of them are so selfregarding that I’m starting to think some might actually be enjoying all the melodrama. Well, it’s not that dramatic if you are worrying about how to put food on the table or pay your mortgage. And that’s most of us. There’s no drama in that at all. Helen Whitely, Edinburgh

Fair pensions for all

Bob Duncan [Your View last week] compares the “two-tier pension system” between the public and private sectors and the early retirement opportunities.

I would suggest this is a simplification and it is only in certain circumstances that employees can retire early despite having paid into their pension scheme throughout their employment.

It should also be remembered that employees who have such a pension will be unlikely to be eligible for any other government help such as income support or pension credit. A lot of people think the disgrace is withholding retirement pensions from many women who expected to receive them at age 60.

Jacquie Macintyre, Greenock

Bob Duncan [Your View last week] is mistaken when he says that when people talk about us having to work till we are 68, this is only the private sector. It is in fact, a plan to raise the age at which people receive the state pension which, of course, does not depend on who you worked for.

Some of the claims of overgenerosity in public sector pensions are like the proverbial fishermen’s tales. I think the term “gold-plated” used by Mr Duncan may be a metaphor for schemes with cost of living increases, which I’m not sure always apply to public sector occupational schemes, or are never found in private sector ones. The state pension has, of course, kept up with inflation.

I also struggle with the statement that some public sector pensioners earn more when retired than when they were working, when their pensions are usually a proportion of the final salary or of the average of a number of years’ pay. Jeff Lewis, Whitefield, Bury

Keep benefits pledge

So will Liz Truss’s successor do what she wouldn’t and promise benefits will rise in line with inflation?

Meanwhile, thanks to government incompetence,

£15 billion in UK benefits goes unclaimed every year – often by those facing the most severe hardship. It’s high time the people at the lower end of society received what is rightfully theirs and the fat cats contributed their fair share. Stephen McCarthy, Glasgow

Dramatic effect?

Did Netflix really have to make clear The Crown is a drama not a documentary. How stupid do they think people are?

B Macdonald, by email