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Just passing through

As the nation gets back to the daily grind after the festive season. Am I alone in being bored to tears by the media regarding Brexit and Harry and Megan.

My thoughts tend to focus on welcome to the real world most of us contend with.

The daily grind for men to financially support their families,The never ending task of our Ladies from changing nappies to cooking for the family as well as keeping the house clean.

Not to mention many of them working to keep the family finances on an even keel. No easy task in 2020. No star studded venues, or private jets, and round the clock nannies?

Most British Ladies face child care centres for their offspring at great personal expense I strongly suspect.

The serious point regarding this matter is that for all of us without exception, sadly our beloved pets as well.We are all just passing through this dimension.The cosmic universe is constantly changing, nothing remains the same as time passes on.

My point ? Regardless of your fame or wealth or power. Be you of hard working class stock as most of us are. Or perhaps a pop star or famous actor, perhaps a double tongued politician, quite a few about. We all face the same fate at the end.

Surely the fact that I firmly believe in as a Christian, is that you will answer to a higher power when your time comes.You would think that would make them ponder on their brief existence and conduct regarding their fellow human beings on the our planet Earth.

It seems not so far.

Bill Williams, Merlin Way, Covingham

Cheated of bus pass

I have come to realise exactly what poet William Wordworth was referring to in his famous poem which began ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’, as I am only able to wave goodbye to my good lady who has tamed me over the years and who has seen me through thick and thin, at the bus stop!

I have been in receipt now of a treasured bus pass for a pensioner having reached the ripe old age of 65 for almost a year now, and was so looking forward to my wife who should have reached her retirement age in 2018 to be able to accompany me on my journeys to keep vigilant eye upon me and make sure that I stayed out of trouble.

Therefore imagine just how horrified I was when my wife who is a woman born in the 1950s was endowed with the infamous title of being a WASPI woman who due to the shenanigans of the ‘nasty party’ cannot now claim her state pension until 2024, a full six years after reaching 60. I then considered that surely even though she has to wait another six years for her pension she would at least qualify for a bus pass at age 60 which is the case for women in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, but how wrong could I have been, after checking on the Swindon Borough Council website which quite mean spiritedly has now raised her eligibility for a bus pass to the year 2024. To make matters worse the decision by the council seems to be totally an arbitrary one, as some councils in England have still adhered to the previous ruling of issuing woman that reach the previous retirement age of 60 their free bus pass and quite right too.

Seemingly our purported cash strapped council chooses to endeavour to make savings by penalising the elderly and then hope that their mean spirited ruling will just go unnoticed and that no one will even bother to complain, but unfortunately I am and have never been one of the ‘roll over, oh it’s not so bad’ loathe to complain English brigade.

Graham Woodward, Nelson Street, Swindon