HERE we are only weeks into this new Tory Government and they are showing you and I their true colours, I refer to the 3.1 per cent increase they have announced for themselves, this on top of the 13 per cent increase already announced for their staff funding which we know from past experiences is a job for the boys putting it nicely.

At the moment an ordinary MP’s salary is £74,468 per annum, the increase will take them to £81,931 per annum – an increase of £2,463, and cabinet ministers on much more. This is peanuts to what the ordinary workers of this country will get. It is hidden a lot because we now have the minimum wage, which, let me remind people was the baby of a Labour government same as the NHS, but can I state the pensioner as an example.

We now have, since 2016, introduced by this Tory Government, a two tier pension system. If you retired before 2016 your basic state pension is £129.20 per week. This will go up to £134.25, an increase of £5.05. If you retired after 2016 your pension is £168.80, this will go up to £175.20, an increase of £6.40, quite a large differential all told, and so long as they work on percentages, that differential will keep widening. This is a fact, that is why it should be an increase across the board same for all.

And can I add that in June the free TV licence ends for the over 75s, so out of their modest increases they will have to allow about £3 per week for that at the new rate in April of £154.50 per annum. Add this to the other increases – council tax rises and more which come every year – it amounts to an increase of nil.

MPs can claim for a TV at their office at Westminster, and also so far 320 have claimed for the licence for their second homes, stamps increase – that’s expenses to them, increased train fares – expenses to them, same as bus fares if ever they catch one.

This government was put back in for another five years on personalities and, as I stated in a previous letter, whoever is leader of whichever party he or she is answerable to a cabinet, shadow cabinet, and all the other MPs elected under that colour or flag. It’s called democracy.

All I can say is the people who put them there must like reading about knife crime, bedroom tax, austerity, poverty (food banks), poor people caught in the floods, our passports being scrutinised having being processed in Poland, allowing the Royal Mail to tell us the prices are going up more than ever but the service is going to get worse, prescription charges (15p increase usually only 10p at the most), and this with a forthcoming Budget to face and only a few weeks in.

Des Dunbar, Durham