SIR – They say that lightening never strikes in the same place twice, but after this week’s Budget, every OAP knows it can and does.

History has repeated itself well and truly, with first ‘New’ Labour’s Gordon Brown stabbing pensioners in the back by abolishing the 10p tax band, now the Coalition’s George Osborne gives us a double whammy by freezing the age-related personal allowance for existing OAP’s – and taking it away altogether from those reaching 65 next year!

In both cases, the announcement was just a throw-away line hidden behind a headline-grabbing one – Brown cut standard rate tax by two per cent, Osborne raised the personal allowance for workers under 65 by £1,000 – but both at the expense of existing pensioners.

The weasel words of Prime Minister David Cameron about the large increase in basic state pension are meaningless, as the £5-odd rise comes not from Government largess, but the historically-high official rate of inflation at September 30 last year, by which method benefit increases are calculated.

Gordon Brown cost Labour the 2010 election, and I bet George Osborne along with the Lib Dems reneging on manifesto promises like university tuition fees will have the same effect in 2015.

As US President Abraham Lincoln said: “You can’t fool all the people all of the time”.

D S Boyes, Rodley Lane, Leeds