Cold has been systematically killing our elderly people for over 30 years from cold-related illnesses against a background of soaring energy bills.

This is partly due to the meagre state pension paid out in this country since the 1980s when Margaret Thatcher’s right-wing Tory Government broke the link that kept the state pension our elderly people had paid decades of National Insurance contributions for, from increasing directly as male average earnings increased.

Consequently Britain’s state pension has been reduced to a pittance compared to Western European levels.

Detailed statistics aren’t necessary to prove this evil cruelty being inflicted onto our oldest citizens, just as detailed statistics aren’t necessary to prove that Hitler’s Nazi’s murdered six million Jews and other ethnic minorities, old people, disabled people and children during the Second World War.

Unbelievably, there are still people in the world who believe the Holocaust is a myth.

I would love to find a good- hearted lawyer who would be prepared to work free to bring this situation out in the open and into the courtroom, so Thatcher’s doctrine could be seen for what it is, the mass discrimination and marginalisation of our oldest citizens.

Many of our oldest citizens are suffering untimely deaths due to hypothermia-related illnesses, due to inadequate state pension income from the Govern­ment. This has to be regarded as neglect.

This situation for our oldest citizens has been ongoing for over 30 years, yet the British, largely, have not turned a hair.

Britain’s low state pension has nothing to do with costs, because there is a “surplus” in the National Insurance fund in excess of £30bn. And the National Insurance system was set up to pay state pensions.

Britain is a very wealthy country, we can fight wars in the Middle East with hardly any questions about expense, and we can send billions round the world, yet according to this and former right-wing Tory Government’s since Margaret Thatcher, an ever-growing aged population is a problem!

Michael Thompson

South Furzeham Road

Brixham