Your comments on the county council's plan to raise the charges for home care are again very much to the point (Oxford Mail, September 27).

I find it utterly disgusting that the council is trying to get an extra £350,000+ per annum from thrifty families with invalid members while, at the same time, giving motorists double that sum in free parking in Oxford evenings and Sundays.

I thought that the Conservative Party, which now has a large majority on the county council, though supported by fewer than 40 per cent of the voters, was all in favour of thrift -- not a word one often hears nowadays, I must admit.

To save more than £20,500 in the course of 40 years' work is not really a vast sum.

When my own with-profits insurance policy matured in 1993, I got some £23,000. I had paid into it every month for 40 years, even when I was unemployed from time to time.

Had I not bothered to save, I expect my wife, who became an invalid earlier this year, would have got her care free. As it is, since July, I have been paying £23.50 a week, which went up to £64 this month, when my wife obtained Attendance Allowance -- all of which is now taken by the county council.

Yes, I am among the 350 better-off, compared with the 1,650 worse-off among the 2,000 invalids and their carers in the county.

But I am far from rich. In fact, I am going to sell my small car, as my wife can no longer get into it. I use my bicycle every day for shopping.

Michael Hugh-Jones

Headley Way

Headington

Oxford