Comments made at a full council meeting that residents living in the leafy Trafford suburbs of Bowdon and Hale Barns were ‘living in ivory towers’ have sparked an angry backlash from the council’s Conservative opposition leader.
Coun Nathan Evans has written to Labour council leader Tom Ross demanding an apology over the remarks made by Coun Simon Thomas in a heated debate over the the government’s withdrawal of the winter fuel allowance to millions of pensioners.
During the discussion, Coun Thomas told the meeting his father-in-law didn’t need the £300 allowance even though he is on pension credit - now the main qualification for receiving the payment.
He also said his mother who is in her 80s had told him ‘she wouldn’t miss it - never in a million years’. He went on: “Yes, there are a lot of pensioners out there, that desperately need help, but it needs to be targeted.
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