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Your news item on the university employee sacked for e-mailing "the Illegal Immigrants Poem" to colleagues ("Poet is fired over 'offensive' racist rhyme", September 29) made gloomy reading.

The pieces of the doggerel that you quoted were circulated on duplicated sheets in the mid-1960s when Enoch Powell was speaking of rivers "foaming with much blood" and London dockers were marching in his support.

The lines "see employment folk" ("bloke" in earlier versions) and "see welfare" are hardly ironic advice for "illegal immigrants" today who are more likely to find themselves picking cockles or boxing vegetables for a few pence an hour.

It is depressing to learn that so much ignorance is being peddled on campus.

Vin Arthey.
Teesside University