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NORTH EDITION roundtownnews.com Ticket to ride
Issue 682
9 - 15 NOVEMBER 2012
No surrender!
A GOVERNMENT minister has pledged the railway link between Benidorm and Denia will receive a 3.5 million euro upgrade next year p5
Help for elderly and vulnerable
PLUCKY PENSIONER Fran Daley is urging people not to give up in their fight for benefit justice and payments they are owed by the British Government
SPAIN’S SOCIAL Services are able to help elderly and vulnerable expats but British residents have been warned they must face up to their problems p8
Retiring? Think seriously before you consider buying an annuity
by Jack Troughton
DUE TO an EU gender directive coming into force next month retirement income for many pensioners could drop even further if they buy an annuity p34
Remembrance Sunday BRANCHES OF the Royal British Legion are staging Services of Remembrance this weekend and people are invited to attend and wear a poppy with pride p50
Celebration time, not on! LAST WEEKEND, during the Man United v Arsenal game, Robin van Persie scored against his former club but refused to celebrate out of ‘respect’ p62
Guy Fawkes
Remember, remember, the fifth of November
By Jack Troughton THERE WERE once times approaching Bonfire Night when it was almost impossible to avoid a homemade Guy Fawkes adorned with a pleading notice reading ‘Penny for the Guy’. With Halloween apparently now the fashionable night of seasonal celebration - marking the failed Gunpowder Plot and the attempt to assassinate King James and blow up Parliament seems to have fallen by the wayside. So it was with some nostalgic pleasure RTN stumbled on a real life Guy – especially here on the Costa Blanca - dressed for the occasion and perched in a wheelbarrow. Apparently he even escaped the flames!
THE 72-year-old is embroiled in an ongoing battle with the Department of Works and Pensions over her Disability Living Allowance (DLA) and believes there are hundreds being denied payments. She hopes people will band together and bring pressure on the government to pay the benefits people are entitled to as the government continues to look for savings. Fran said she had read of other expats struggling to get benefit payments and called for a silver-haired revolution. She told RTN: “Let’s hope all the people who are at a loss will band together and show these civil servants we are not benefit cheats or idiots. We are only asking for what is rightfully ours.”
Fran and husband Frank, 75 who used to work for the Inland Revenue, came to live in Alicante seven years ago and informed the DWP they were moving to the sun – only to be informed her DLA, which was awarded for life, would be stopped. A former civil servant, she ran a postal department with a staff of 300 but an “unforeseeable” accident meant she had to retire on medical grounds. “I was awarded the DLA (lowest rate) in 1994. In 2005 I informed the DWP I was coming to live here and they told me rather bluntly that this benefit could not be paid here – so I accepted these civil servants know best.” Continued on page 6