REFER to Mrs Smith's letter published on December 28, 1998. Why should she think that Mrs Thatcher and her Government had an obligation to exist on the state retirement pension, plus other benefits?

Those who receive state pensions and benefits (including me), get a very good deal on the whole. The amounts received in real terms are usually many times the amounts which recipients paid in. Also most of these incomes are index linked to give valuable protection against inflation.

I agree that the cost of the television licence is abominable. The answer is to privatise the BBC, and it is to be hoped that the next Tory Government does just that.

It is a socialist myth that "the poor get poorer" in Britain. Very few people today have any conception of poverty. If you want to know what poverty is, talk to some of the older people who lived through the hard times between the two world wars.

S R Morgan

Normanby Street, Bolton

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