Hi Mr Swire, from all of us at the bingo club, thank you from our hearts, thank you for the cut in duty on bingo clubs which must be resonating around the country and then the penny off a pint, well ,where will it end.

Some ladies have moaned a little, the ones who drink halves! Mary thought half pennies had made a comeback, and came in with £42 worth that she tried to unload at the bar. I do hope you have benefited with the pint you get in the House of Commons, I know it’s heavily discounted; it’s almost half what we pay here in Sidmouth isn’t it? Now that’s not very fair – a bit like my daughter who works in the NHS who has had no pay rise in several years – could that have been the guy in charge of beer who took this decision?

We do have a troublesome faction in our bingo club, a bit like the Conservative party really. Some have raised.., well, we’ll call it a ‘quandry’, do they have three pints and get a little merry for £11, or do they get a bottle of Scotch for £11 and get hammered? Problems, problems. On a slighty more important note, we were treated to three articles extolling the virtues of the budget. How about a word or two on the potential closure of the youth club, or the news today that the funding for half the libraries in Devon is to be cut, or that one NHS spokesperson mentioned that ‘weekly surgerys could be a thing of the past’. Penny off a pint! You just don’t get it, do you?

Wally Cotgrave

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