Sir, Alice Miles is seriously out of touch if she believes the retired have done well over the years (“Got a few quid for the old rich folk?”, Comment, May 14). In fact, she seems to be most annoyed that so many of us are still alive.

My husband and I have worked hard all our lives — he in the NHS, I in state education. We scrimped to pay a mortgage, and the Government wants to take 40 per cent of the value of our house when it passes to our children. My husband built up a practice serving the local community. When he sold the goodwill of 40 years hard work, the Government taxed it as “capital gains”, threatening to take 18 per cent of his retirement sale — only the possibility of an election has kept it at 10 per cent.

We wanted to enjoy our old age so we bought into an extra pension. At 65 we learnt that we were not to be allowed to spend it as we wished. We were only allowed to draw down a miserable amount each year. Now, at 75, we are forced to take a pitiful annuity on the money we’ve saved. We are the generation that paid for the NHS all our working lives. We are now told that we are either too old for many kinds of treatment or that the waiting list is such that we are not likely to live long enough to get to the top.

By what system of social justice can this endless attempt to punish the thrifty and hard-working when they reach retirement be justified?

Jo Wagerman
London NW4

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