COLIN Helps found my letter (BFP July 27) fascinating, pity he didn’t read the first paragraph. I agreed with A. Weedon on potholes.

This man doesn’t know when he is well off. Look at the services he receives for his money. I take it he has a job paying national insurance contributions.

I wish, oh I wish, I could take this man back in a time warp and plonk him standing outside Chepping Wycombe Council Offices in Queen Victoria Road and point him to 36 Temple End where he would find my parents, Jack and Hilda, bringing up a family of four children on a furniture worker’s wage, two pounds, 11 shillings and six pence. He never received the luxury of receiving holiday pay, so he didn’t have one. To receive treatment from a doctor or hospital, he paid weekly into a fund. He paid into numerous sick clubs, and a loan club, and paid out of his miserly wage for dental treatment.

You got nowt for owt, out of work, to get money they would have a means test, sell all your most valuable possessions first, then we will review your situation afresh.

Working in the printing industry, I came out on strike for people like you. In 1959 six weeks out, a ten per cent increase and a 40 hour week. In 1981, three weeks out, 37-and-a-half hours a week. People complaining about their taxes don’t deserve people like us fighting their battles for better conditions at work.

Your last paragraph, I find it insulting to question the integrity and ability who govern us locally, to get value for money services.

My parents with the conditions of benefits paid today would have thought this is utopia.

A land fit for heroes, which they were promised end of the First World War.

Rex G Pawley, Chestnut Lane, Hazlemere