AREAS that have traditional high unemployment are those with the lowest immigrant population, and this includes the North-East.

Remember the Jarrow Crusade had no corresponding Kensington March. Immigrants and emigrants historically moved to seek work and a better lifestyle, my relations working in Australia, Canada etc. did not travel thoughtlessly.

Membership of the EU has both positive and negative effects on people’s job prospects, however it is not the determinant factor.

A recent visit to the technical school, now a Technology College, I attended in Kent revealed the Nuffield-funded woodwork shops, metalwork shops, the small foundry , the seven lathes, milling machine, drills, hardness testing machine and engineering drawing offices had all disappeared.

The reason given by the current administrator was: “We don’t think it’s appropriate to teach pupils how to make things.”

Lower taxation, hence higher disposable income, has led to us letting the rest of the world become our main goods supplier.

Benefit tourism seems to be on everyone’s lips. How about asking the politicians about the area’s constant employment problems, corporate tax evasion, cheap sell-offs of assets like the Post Office, regular “unexpected” overspending on capital projects and businesses using immigrants to produce a low wage high profit economy?

B Jackson, Durham.