IN response to MP David Chaytor (Letters, December 28) I would like him to consider certain facts with regard to the state pension.

The basic pension is now £77.45 single; £123.80 per couple. If the link with earnings had been maintained since 1980 it would now be £109.40 single, an increase of £31.95 single, and £174.94 per couple, an increase of £51.14.

In 1979 the basic state pension was 23 per cent of average male earnings;, in 2002 it was 16 per cent.

In 1999-2000, 70 per cent of pensioner households depended on state benefits for at least 50 per cent of their income. In 2001, 60 per cent of pensioner households had savings of less than £6,000. An estimated 28 per cent of pensioners have an income below the official UK poverty line.

So I would like to ask the MP: Where do you get the figure of £1.10 a week less than the current arrangement? As for his suggestion that I "dream on", well, like Martin Luther King I do have a dream. It is for a time when pensioners are able to pay their way on a pension that is a living wage and when we don't have to beg for a few extra quid.

Maybe we could get rid of a few of those obscene "weapons of mass destruction" and spend the money on pensions instead; or maybe introduce a progressive tax system which makes the rich pay their whack!

P. KAISERMAN