Your report of the recent meeting of the county council's Tory cabinet (Oxford Mail, January 18) makes depressing reading for the frail elderly of Oxfordshire.

Don Seale, who is in charge of community care, warned of "a bleak future for the country's vulnerable".

I was one of the few members of the public who attended the meeting. I represented the Oxfordshire Pensioners' Action Group and I had earlier studied the figures in the report which the cabinet discussed. On page 8 is a list of changes which invalids will have to pay from next April. I was shocked to see that a 45-minute visit by two carers, such as my wife has each morning, will cost £24.04 on a weekday and £29.41 at the weekend. That's £179 per week. She also gets shorter visits afternoon and evening.

Fortunately, under the so-called 'Fairer Charging' policy, only the fairly well-off have to pay the full cost themselves, and they would probably get care for less privately. In 2005, charges were increased twice, by six per cent in total, and next April, they will go up by a further 4.7 per cent, the cabinet was told.

The changes will raise more than £5.5m for the council's coffers, all of it from 1,727 invalids at home and their partners, who are financially assessed under a Government regulation which assumes that their savings bring in an annual 20 per cent return. Incredible? Yes, but unfortunately true. The Government is deliberately penalising the thrifty.

Only when the invalid's capital is reduced to below £20,500 does he or she get help from the council. There are a further 1,671 invalids in nursing homes who will have to pay £8,952,000 in 2006-7.

The average weekly charge is said to be £103, so the county council must be paying more than three-quarters of the total cost.

Moral: die suddenly or linger on in poverty.

Michael Hugh-jones, Headley Way, Headington, Oxford