I’M now approaching my 87th birthday, more or less sitting in the undertaker’s waiting room, with little else to do other than make comparisons and generate personal opinions.

Born into abject poverty, I, on leaving school at 14, was obliged to seek work in order to supplement a family need for the basic necessities of actual survival.

This entailed descending into a coal mine at 5am each morning – wages, a desperately-needed 13s 8d weekly (69p).

This Great Britain of ours is often portrayed as a bastion of justice and democracy, yet I look around and see many, like myself, regarded as little more than paupers, mere tools to be used in the blatant pursuit of greed and abnormal affluence, claimed as a right by the many selfish individuals we see and hear of every day.

There can be little doubt we live in a divided, unfair nation, years behind the times with its anachronistic pursuance of what is needless and unnecessary.

Do we really have need for hereditary titles or an unelected House of Lords with its grace and favour residents?

The revolution is long overdue.

AW Dunn, Spennymoor, Co Durham