In your paper (January 20) the centre pages were devoted to the problems of the NHS and blame these on an ‘ageing population’.

Now tell me, are there any countries where the population is not ageing?

If so myself and I think most of our 11 million pensioners would be happy to go there. In fact pensioners like myself have paid our taxes all our lives, and still are.

We are paying our way so do not blame us for the NHS problems.

The problems in the NHS are due to many factors, not least of which is the large scale and uncontrolled immigration which has been allowed to happen by successive governments without proportional expenditure on health, education, the prison service, police and housing – many of which have faced cuts and all of which are creaking at the seams due to overload in demand.

For example, it has been reported this week that we will need an extra 880,000 primary school places by 2020. What all our politicians have to face up to is the need to prioritise expenditure, as we all have to do in our private lives.

For example, do we really want to spend £45 billion pounds on defence (the largest budget in the world after America, Russia and China) or should this money go into protecting our people in a more direct way though better health and education?

Mr S Davidson, Cairo Avenue, Peacehaven