I WILL resist the temptation to rise to John Blunt's bait (LET, October 27) as much as I would like to. I will just quote a few lines of poetry instead . . .

When your working days are over

And your schooldays in the distant past,

Your hair has long since vanished

And your teeth are in a glass.

With mortgages, debts and overdraft

You look back over the past and think

Is that why I was born to go through that?

On land and on sea in the snow and the heat

Hundreds of men died by the hour,

To defend the capitalists' gold and power.

I hope John Blunt has a much happier cruise towards his old age than many pensioners who survived the degradation of the working classes from the 1920s and 1930s and the 1939-45 war.

I was there, Mr Blunt. You were not.

LESLIE JONES, Aviemore Close, Audley, Blackburn.

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