JUST when we thought things could not get worse, up jumps Nick Boles, a Tory moderniser, arguing that well-off older people must shoulder their fair share of spending cuts – ‘free’ bus passes, prescriptions, TV licences and winter fuel payments to go.

Then it’s bound later to include all old people.

Well, Nick, let’s start with longer hours for MPs, pay and expenses reduced and the immediate scrapping of taxpayers’ massive subsidising of the bars and catering at the House of Commons.

Now that’s shouldering the spending cuts, sonny.

DAVID WINKFIELD Charles Street Oxford