COUNCILLOR Roy Perry's proposal for a 50p tax on pensioners bus passes (Echo comment 4th August 2018) is typical of his party, to attack the weaker members in our society.

Everybody knows that the 50p tax on bus passes would be the thin end of the wedge, leading to a concocted justification to increase the amount every year.

Putting his estimates into perspective, Let us look at the pensioners side of the real story, if for argument's sake, an OAP married couple used the bus pass just 5 times, a week that would equate over a course of a year a £240 depreciation of their already diminishing pensions.

Many pensioners already pay tax on their pensions because of the measly tax band levels. I believe when a pensioner works all his or her life all pensions should be free from tax and then, and only then, people may agree with Mr Perry's penny pinching scheme.

Again, if just 50 per cent of pensioners stopped using the bus service after the 9.30am watershed, will Mr Perry's party ask all tax payers to subsidise the empty seats that would increase, because at present and on many occasions, if one would take all the OAP's off the busses, most would not have a single passenger on board.

And that, everybody knows the bus companies would have a great excuse to curtail many buses and routes. At least they get a subsidy for each pass used, and on that point, Mr Perry and his colleagues should go cap in hand to the government and ask for a slice of the billions sent out as foreign aid to help Oap's in foreign lands.

I thought that charity, begins at home, obviously not in this case.

David Hacking

Southampton