I agree with everything Margaret Ashley wrote about Britain's housing problem (Letters, June 17). But there is one thing which always annoys me. It is calling people without a job "workshy".
Why does anyone think they have the right to use such a derogatory term? Who are the workshy? Are they people who refuse to work for less income than a pensioner?
Did Margaret Ashley have a working partner to subsidise her lifestyle?
I am now a OAP. I was made redundant from my trade in engineering, as a toolmaker, in my 50s. I never worked again. I could not get another decently-paid job.
At the few interviews I managed to get in the Eighties, I was offered less than £1.50 per hour. This would be about £2.60 per hour today. The devious employers did not have the guts to advertise the pay levels in the Press or job centres.
No unemployed person deserves to be labelled workshy. We are all just a week's/month's pay away from the dole queue.
-Donald Harris, Worthing
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