LETTER: Galling when we can give to foreign aid

I was lucky that a housing development began near my home and I asked for a job with Finnigans at Dronfield Civic Centre. It started with the site agent saying ‘you won’t stick it’, but I had a house to pay for and a family to support. I was labouring at £16 per week and a pound spot (bonus). It was a job.

I worked so hard, I lost three stone in three months. The site agent must have felt my strength because he had a heart attack and I ran his site. Here I saw first hand how people suffered if they had no work.

From there I went to Liverpool to help a friend and I dug a swimming pool, 32ft long and 16ft wide. It was a job I had finished in ten days.

I returned to Sheffield to find myself another job, dozens of old people’s care flats, but now I was the site foreman and I saw deeper into the minds of people desperate for work. These were the times of plenty where buildings where going up in their hundreds . These were the lifeline of young school leavers wanting work. One young man was pasty white and when I questioned him of his lack of colour he told me he had always been like that. Later I found out he had done time in prison, desperate times.

I have shown you some of the time but what about when there is no engineering or housing, what then? We do not want more houses and that means we do not want any more work for the area. Poor Mr Fuller died alone at a time of ‘good will to all men’, but I wonder how far that good will goes.

A charity boss asks for help with charity aid. How galling is that to humanity in this country when we can give money to foreign aid?

Frank Hardy

Land Acquisition Ltd