While not doubting his ability, his previous devious attacks on our income through taxation – notably on pension funds but also with unforgivable retrospective legislation in other areas – must surely warn us that we should all approach our MPs to ensure that the current hotch potch of energy proposals do not go ahead.

Other readers have pointed out the limited gains from properties not yet double glazed or insulated.

While it may be helpful in the long term, there will be little saving in the lifetime of those householders who have not already undertaken this exercise. In addition, any subsidies provided to help the proposals will of course be paid for by all taxpayers.

Similarly, windfall taxes on energy suppliers will be immediately fed back to the customers who will pay even higher charges for their supplies.

Too often, we wake up to the effects of indirect taxation too late. This time we must act and stop these nonsensical proposals from coming into force.

From: Peter Broadley, Broadley & Co Chartered Certified Accountants, Greetland, Halifax.

I'M in the middle of reading the life story of Mary Tudor.

Last week, I flicked the TV switch and listened to the Leader's speech at the Labour Party Conference, and yet another condemned man on the scaffold pleading for his life!

Given that his colleagues keep telling us what a brilliant Chancellor Gordon was, where's the rainy day fund?


Brave band of brothers deserves award

From: RW Scales, Mill Lane, Pickering.

HOW heartwarming it was to read the sentiments expressed by Barbara Garden (Yorkshire Post, September 19) on the subject of a campaign medal for we survivors of Bomber Command during the Second World War.

As she points out in her letter, more than 55,000 of us gave their lives (a heavier casualty rate than any other branch of our armed forces) in the long and deadly battle that was fought in the cauldron of those European skies.

I spent several days in a dinghy in a cold and hostile North Sea, two weeks in solitary confinement during my interrogation, was force marched more than 600 miles in a European winter and came home weighing five stones, four pounds.

Why successive Governments have consistently declined to give a mark of recognition to the survivors of that "band of brothers" I know not.

The world we live in today would be very different had our efforts failed and it is surely not asking too much to award the loved ones of those young men who died a medal to show their children what their fathers achieved.