The triple lock is necessary for the poorest pensioners

Sean O'Grady's item on pensioner entitlement (1st August) was bereft of any factual detail leaving his rant untested. Firstly, let's look at what the triple lock relates to. It's the basic state pension. Which at present is £119.30 per week. With the present National Living Wage standing at £7.20 for the over 25s and £5.30 for those aged 18-20 it's the equivalent of someone on minimum wage working for 16 hours or 23 hours per week respectively. The new state pension scheme promises to be a flat rate of £155.30 per week (so an additional 5 hours’ work on minimum wage). The 2.5 per cent increase would therefore be between £3-4 per week, or an extra half an hours work on minimum wage.

Secondly, the 20 per cent of government spending which on various pie charts appears to be spent on pensions is misleading as this figure also includes occupational pensions to state employees, which includes everyone from teachers, police officers and nurses to senior civil servants, judges and service personnel. None of these occupational pensions are affected by the triple lock and tend to rise by the CPI, therefore 0 per cent this financial year.

The triple lock was aimed at helping the poorest pensioners, in particular those who are wholly reliant on the basic state pension because their employers did not provide a pension scheme or women who may not have worked for any lengthy periods or were dependent on their partner's pensions. The "debate" couched in these generational terms once again disguises the underlying issue of class and the level of poverty amongst the poorest, young or old.

Dr James Radcliffe

Newcastle under Lyme

Why are we pensioners always pictured as people with walking sticks or other aids shuffling along?

I am 72 today, I cycle at least 100 miles a week, spend some time at the gym and maintain an allotment growing vegetables for my family and homeless people in Derby.

Some balance would be appreciated.

Doug Flack

Derby

The debate on nuclear power and Hinkley Point ignores obvious alternatives. We have plentiful supplies of wind and solar resources, we have barely recognised let alone exploited tidal and marine, we have cheap gas imports and, importantly for our security, large reserves of our own should we need them. We should get on and build our interconnector grid with our European neighbours, increase our efforts to reduce energy demand progressively and so rapidly reduce our carbon emissions. We should be building for the future security of our energy supplies not relying on others to do so or placing ourselves and our future security in the hands of the People's Republic of China.

Rob Jordan L'Ombrellino

Axminster

Of course we should welcome back Muslim girls who have been duped by terrorists. But we should also address the environment that made the Jihadi Joanna’s travel in the first place. Traditional conservative attitudes that restrict young people's freedoms, a lack of dialogue and supportive liberal parenting makes the jihadi alternative attractive to British youth.

Mark Grey

Fleet

I agree with Daniel Prince (Closing the Net, 28 July 2016) that firms which offer internet services owe a duty of care to their customers. Most cyberattacks and fraud would be prevented if websites and other software were designed to be secure, but most programmers do not know how to do this effectively. Instead, they copy and modify software that they do not fully understand, from sources that they have no reason to trust, and rely on running some tests to show that the result is good enough. But computer scientists have known for 50 years that testing is a very weak way to gain confidence in complex software - if your tests find errors, you can be sure there are hundreds more that you have not found; if your tests run correctly, all you have shown is that the tests work, not that the software works.

Software is not much too important to be developed this way. Software engineers must behave like other engineers and build systems that can be analysed to show that they are safe, reliable and secure. A few companies do that and are prepared to guarantee their software, but most prefer to disclaim any responsibility for faults and failures. Cybercrime will continue to grow until software companies decide to accept responsibility for their poor engineering, or until they are compelled to do so.

Martyn Thomas CBE FREng

London