TWO insulting letters in as many issues of the Echo (Letters, February 3) by D R Smith. I only hope I am allowed to reciprocate in some way and put his obviously argumentative brain to rest.

Once again, I am forced to state (and I’m proud to so do) that when I was a young boy in a family of ten living in council accommodation, we were the poor among the poor, we used to have to ask our neighbour what the time was as we never even had a clock. It may interest DR Smith that my parents were offered our three-bedroom, front parlour, semi-detached council house for one thousand pounds in 1949 and they couldn’t afford it.

I’m not going to enter into an argument with DR Smith and I’m certainly not going to play with figures and compare them with today’s earnings; only those who lived through that era can compare it with life today, I know now that I should have quoted a figure far lower than £5 per week because quite truthfully I can’t remember my father ever earning that much so to quote a figure of £33,800 in comparison with today’s salaries is an insult to anyone’s intelligence, the figure he comes out with is ridiculous and childish. I was earning less than that after the war, in 1949 as a seaman (£17-10s per month).

It’s pretty obvious that DR Smith is just out looking for an argument. He reminds me of my school days when the teacher had to drill something into one of the more backward pupils who couldn’t add up figures or see the woods for the trees in the middle of a forest, and no matter what he was told he would twist it to read something else, and to think I always assumed the older you were the cleverer you became, he says he’s an old soldier, it sure wasn’t the “Intelligence Corps”.

He can quote figures and turn £1 from yesterday into £160 today until the proverbial cows come home and he can pass off tax cheats as of not much importance, but one thing he’ll never do, he’ll never make my poor departed parents the wealthy of yesteryear, I only wish his silly comparisons were correct.

LA O’BEE, Southampton.