FREE bus travel for pensioners?

"That'll suit me fine," says recently widowed Vera Clint, who travels by bus three times a week from her home in Shipton-by- Beningborough to do her shopping.

At the bus stop opposite the Theatre Royal in St Leonards Place, Vera said: "I pay £1 return to York and then buy a £1 runabout to take me to Tesco.

"I couldn't walk there because of my arthritis.

"So if buses were absolutely free I'd be well off!"

Pensioners Catherine Voice and Yvonne Alldred, visiting York from Guildford in Surrey and waiting at a bus stop in York's Piccadilly to travel to friends in Skelton, welcomed free bus travel.

Catherine said: "I'm delighted but I do understand if there is a cost."

As for the promised £200 council tax refund, Yvonne said: "Oh good. We need that."

But Gordon Brown has still not done enough to woo pensioners' votes, says James Player, of Age Concern York.

He cautiously welcomed the attention that the Chancellor was paying to the "grey vote" but argued that the Government was targeting the wrong areas.

On the £200 council tax refund he said: "A lot of us would prefer a more streamlined benefits system. At the moment the means tested system is too confusing. Most people don't understand it, so they don't claim.

"We also want to have an advantage by linking pensions to average earnings."