I am so glad that the government are now seeming to clamp down on ‘cold telephone calls’.

I am a pensioner residing in a sheltered home. I have no debts, I do not drive a car and I have long signed up to the ‘Preferential Calls’ agreement. Yet constantly both my land-line and mobile phone keeps calling me at all times of the day and night seven days a week trying to arrange some deal with me.

I get both voice messages and texts informing of my severe debt, car accident or latest injury and how they can help me claim money or get my debt written off.

It’s become so bad that I now have to protect myself against these constant daily illicit calls.

I keep my mobile on silent. If ringing I look to see who is calling. If I do not recognise the name then I let it ring. I purchased a new land-line phone with an inbuilt answering machine. I informed all my known callers to first respond to my answer machine and say who they are.

Then I would immediately pick up and talk to them. Cold callers never leave a message so it is a sure safeguard for me. Yet sometimes I get other calls from important people that I should respond to like my surgery, the hospital, local council etc, who are not familiar with my security passes, so I ignore or miss their calls. Sometimes it gets so bad that I even bury my phone(s) within a drawer, covered by a cushion to cut out the unwanted intrusion.

When I was young hardly anybody had a telephone, even to dial 999. In these days of future technology everybody has that gift. Yet it is being so much abused that I feel now I want to go back to the old days and not have a telephone connection at all.

Christine Peters, Bournemouth