IT'S nice to know that someone other than the Chancellor will gain from petrol price rises. The fuel hike boosted Britain's inflation level to 3.3 per cent last month. And, as pensions are linked to September's inflation rate, that means pensioners should be better off by about £2.25 a week. Yippee! Almost enough to buy a pint of beer in the Pitcher and Pretentious!

As it happens, Gordon Brown has hinted that he may give pensioners even more. Brown the Munificent they'll call him, as he loftily hands out a £5 weekly pension increase.

Best not mention the £15 billion surplus cluttering up the Treasury, though. That makes his largesse suddenly look less large.

After all, a fiver rise would still only increase the single person's pension to not much more than 70 quid a week. That's roughly the amount spin doctors would spend on a lunch at The Ivy to brief a journalist on the Government's generosity.

Tony Blair once said that he would "make a real difference to the lives of older people". Tellingly, he didn't say whether this difference would be for the better or worse.

As things stand, pensioners have little to thank New Labour for. Yes, the over-75s are getting free TV licences. And the winter fuel payments are certainly more generous than anything offered by the Tories.

Against that is last year's insulting 75p-a-week pension increase. This soon vanished thanks to the York council tax hike of 7.5 per cent and above-inflation rises to many council services.

Britain is one of the world's wealthiest nations, and the economy is booming. Average earnings are around £400 a week. So it is shameful that our pensions are so low. The same old people now struggling to scrape by on this pitiful income fought for our freedom, set up the welfare state and paid national insurance contributions all their lives.

If Mrs Thatcher had not ended the link between earnings and pensions, the single person's pension would now be £97.

But Labour made it clear at its conference that it had no intention of paying another £30 a week to pensioners, however small a price it is to pay for dignity.

Instead, Mr Brown is "targeting" extra cash, with schemes like the minimum income guarantee.

In other words he is imposing means testing. That's just what independent people who have worked hard all their lives want: to have to go crawling to the State with their begging bowl out.

All Mr Blair's high-minded ideals about eradicating poverty within 20 years are exposed by his attitude to Britain's old. This, he has often said, is a young country. Well, it is certainly better to be young in Mr Blair's Britain.

Pensioners do not want transitional arrangements, minimum income guarantees and targeting. They want a proper increase in the Basic State Pension. And if they do not get it, Mr Blair better beware. Pensioners now make up a quarter of the electorate. They are up to four times more likely to vote than young people.

Labour has always taken the pensioners' vote for granted. That might prove its undoing. This Government has realised too late that the old are becoming a powerful force in British politics.

YORK Chamber of Commerce doesn't want the Coppergate Riverside development. But some of its members think it is a great idea. The group previously said it was not equipped to comment on the aesthetics of the scheme.

It has now rejected the scheme because of the way it looks.

In other words, the chamber cannot make up its mind on this troubled development. Much like the rest of York. This can mean only one thing.

Sorry, Land Securities - it's back to the drawing board.