WITH a General Election a few weeks away and fast approaching my retirement age this August, could I ask our local politicians and MPs why we taxpayers of England are being discriminated against?

In Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, pensioners are given a bus pass which allows them free travel at anytime of the day anywhere in that country. Here in England our bus passes only allow cheap travel though Gordon Brown has just announced free travel at off peak periods, but only in our own regions.

There is more. University students do not pay tutorial fees in Scotland and pensioners are given free nursing care. We, in England, are not. Is this not discrimination? Maybe our politicians can tell us why it is not?

The population of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland put together only amounts to one third of Britains total population, so it is English taxpayers who are subsidising the people of these other parts of Britain. This also includes their very expensive Parliaments and Assemblies and all that goes with that.

I, for one, would not mind so much if the taxpayers of England got the same treatment as Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

So why is it so, or are we in England being taken for bunch of mugs?

Tony Sprason