I live in Australia and am unable to get anything other than a standard response out of the bank in London

I have been living in Australia since retiring and my UK pension is paid into HSBC bank in London. I draw on it by debit card but my card is being refused now and I have no access to my pension. I have been emailing and writing to the bank since January and tried, unsuccessfully, to telephone but receive nothing other than a standard response. AMcK, Gloucester, New South Wales

HSBC put a stop on your debit card last October because of what looked like a fraudulent transaction. It says the time difference made it difficult to contact you so the block remained on your account although it affected only cash machine withdrawals, not purchases or online transactions. When you phoned in January, HSBC admitted it cut off the line by mistake. The second time you called, apparently, you put down the phone before it could confirm that the stop had been removed. The bank has sent you £50 for the cost of phone calls and to apologise.

It has also put a marker on your file so you are less likely to have problems with cash withdrawals in future but this will last only a year and you will have to request a renewal. Sensibly, though, you are now getting your pension paid directly into an Australian bank account.

You can email Margaret Dibben at your.problems@observer.co.uk or write to Margaret Dibben, Your Problems, The Observer, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU and include a telephone number. Do not enclose SAEs or original documents. The newspaper accepts no legal responsibility for advice.

John Harris seems beguiled by the Tories' rhetorical support for co-operatives and by Jesse Norman MP, the chair of Conservative Co-operatives (From John Lewis to workers' co-ops: these Tories love wrongfooting the left, 18 April). I fear he is being led astray. In reality, the Conservative-led government is no friend of the co-operative movement.

Chris Huhne is withdrawing support for solar renewable energy co-operatives, forcing many to close down. Michael Gove has taken the funding away from the co-operative schools project. Francis Maude has shelved plans for more co-operative Sure Starts and housing trusts. Labour's 2010 manifesto promised, on the prompting of the Co-operative party, to mutualise British Waterways, the quango that runs Britain's canals, giving real power to consumers. The government instead plans to turn British Waterways into a charitable trust – a less accountable quango.

Wherever one looks across this government's programme, you can see support for co-operatives being threatened or withdrawn.

Meg Hillier MP

Chair, parliamentary group of Co-op MPs

• Robert Philpot of Progress says he does not support the sell-off of public services (Letters, 15 April), but favours mutuals. Progressives have always been in favour of mutualising private companies to empower the workforce and customers. But this government last week announced the privatisation of the administration of civil service pensions under the guise of mutualisation.

Without any consultation, staff at My Civil Service Pension were told they will be stripped of their civil service status – meaning, among other things, they will not have access to the civil service pensions that they administer. This is not a mutual arrangement, it's an imposed sell-off that leaves the workforce in a weaker position. The language of the labour and co-operative movements is being hijacked to soften opposition to what is, in all but name, naked privatisation. My union is not fooled and we are committed to opposing this sell-off attempt and others that will inevitably follow.

Mark Serwotka

General secretary, Public and Commercial Services Union

• George Osborne is not being hypocritical in dismissing PFI as discredited when out of office and promoting it when in government. It's poor value for taxpayers, but good for the Tory party because it channels taxpayers' resources from paying for services to the balance sheets of Tory corporate supporters. Perhaps he sees it as the mirror image of fair-wage policies which channel potential profits from company shareholders to the wage packets of workers who may be trade union members, and thus the corporate supporters of the Labour party. Class conflict is alive and well and living in Downing Street.

John Veit-Wilson

Newcastle upon Tyne