Career advice, Clacton politics and a wildfire warning - your letters, plus Beatties shoppers in 1969

Many ways to succeed in life

I always wanted to be an electrical engineer, but I didn't quite get the A-levels for my place at university. That was 1962 when there were three large electrical companies, AEI in Rugby, English Electric in Stafford and GEC in Coventry. I applied and was successful to get a student apprenticeship with AEI.

This gave me alternate six month periods in industry, and at engineering college resulting in a BSc degree. This gave a really good introduction for my career in engineering, eventually specialising in electrical control systems.

I have now retired but have engineered control system projects all over Europe, South Korea, South Africa, Mexico, Ukraine and Saudi Arabia, so I've seen a lot of the world and really enjoyed my work after a slightly faltering start, so my advice to students with not quite the grades they wanted is don't give up and keep working at it, it may well turn out to be better than expected.

Don Perkin, Stafford

Clacton not like rest of the UK

Being the Clacton MP does not make you a man of the people. Clacton is very different from much of the rest of the country because 94 per cent identify as white British compared to the country average of 74 per cent. No sign there then of immigrants taking jobs and money.

Nearly half of Clacton's working age residents don't have a job probably because it is a seaside town and work is seasonal or more likely because 24 per cent don't have educational qualifications. This would explain why the area with one of the highest density of disability and sickness claimants voted for Reform despite Robert Jenrick wanting to cut billions from the benefits bill.

Mr Jenrick believes we are too soft with benefits claimants who are suffering from mild anxiety and depression.

It's no wonder that the young in Clacton are depressed since one in five of them has never had a job.

The truth is that Nigel Farage would not be elected in an area that more accurately represented this country. Indeed Count Binface would beat him in many areas, after all he has a university degree and Farage hasn't.

Roger Watts, Walsall

Alarm needed for the stupid

It was a good idea for the message alert on phones about how to have common sense about not starting bonfires, barbeques, etc during the heatwave. For some reason people don't realise that lighting anything in gardens can cause wildfires, with dry foliage it is a tinderbox. So glad the government pointed this out to thoughtless or stupid people with the phone alert.

Valerie Amos, Midlands

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