REGARDING Geoffrey Richard’s reply (Wasted Resources, June 16) to my letter about overseas aid, I don’t want to start a tit-for-tat correspondence because, although Geoffrey Richards and I live in the same county we evidently live in completely different worlds.
In my world it is a good use of our aid money to help the oppressed people of North Korea by providing aid for English lessons and physiotherapy equipment, to fund paralympians from the Solomon Islands, a country where average income per person per year is £1,567, and to encourage energy efficiency in Brazil. 
I haven’t been to Cameroon but in some other parts of Africa traditional chiefs function as the first tier of government so it seems no more reasonable to sneer at them having training than to sneer at our town mayors doing so, and appropriate for aid to provide it as Cameroon is also one of the poorest countries in the world.
Lastly, these people are poor because of unfair terms of world trade, that benefit us not them. In poorer countries I have been to, people work very hard in any way they can, pay as much as they can possibly afford for their children’s education, and generally live decent productive lives. Nevertheless our standard of living seems like an unreal fairytale to them.
Vivienne Kynaston
Elms Cross Drive
Bradford on Avon