YOUR correspondent with a very large bee in his bonnet responds to almost any problem by deriding immigrants newly arrived in this country with out regard to the facts.

If you accept this version of events as true, perhaps it can be explained why unemployment levels significantly below those of a few years ago are now the norm.

It would be interesting to know how to fund the best levels of pension that any previous generation has enjoyed, without the income tax that derives from their presence, or is he unaware that in a few short years with out them, the ratio of those working, to those retired on pension will change irreversibly and that as a result pension benefit would plunge through the floor, or we have to accept that the working population would have to survive on a wage less than that, that the pensioner receives. I think not.

There is actually a matter of far greater concern lurking on the horizon, not perhaps for those of us presently retired, but certainly for our grandchildren, as the Chinese and Indian economies continue to expand it will not only be the jobs lost as our call centres transfer, but with their increased affluence will come the same greed, that influences so much our own life styles, this can only result in the transfer of many of the commodities including food for which we depend on those two continents, an example can be seen today as their demand for fuel affects the price that we pay at the pumps.

This then is not the time (or should it ever be) to deal with the problem in a way comparable to pre-war Germany when this same attitude used the Jews as scapegoats for a problem not of their making, unfortunately even here in Southampton we have seen the signs, only a few short years ago anti-semitic yobs thought that they were attacking Jewish graves and in doing so proved just how ignorant they really were.

My great-grandfather, Captain George Mantell, a British hero of the Crimea war, was laid to rest in the cemetery on the Common taken there by his comrades accompanied by the pipes, drums and flags of the National Guards Reserve after a procession through the streets of Southampton, his gravestone was wrecked, why? Because it carried the surname of his daughter buried with him, Dew.

We have to face reality, and that means inevitably change, uncomfortable but unavoidable, certainly Britain will not be the same, but it may just survive and be better for it.

ALAN REYNARD (by e-mail).

Sincerely Alan Reynard By e.mail