SIR - When Phil Boase criticises Bob Geldof's perpetual bleat for more of our cash to support Africa (T&A, June 13), he is simply highlighting what has been recognised about Third World aid for many years.

It has often been described as "poor people in rich countries, handing money to the rich people in poor countries".

I don't pretend to have an instant answer to Third World suffering, except to note that conditions here were not so different a couple of hundred years ago.

It has taken our mature society that length of time, including an Industrial Revolution and long political stability, to eradicate real poverty and deprivation in Britain.

It will take many generations for Third World countries to climb that same ladder and I'm not sure we really help them by throwing aimless cash into careless pockets.

Surely it would be better to encourage their progressive industrial development, supported by political integrity, thus generating the spread of real local wealth, from which may then ultimately flow the type of social benefits we in Britain now enjoy.

As for Saint Bob' himself: which is worse, his abysmal singing or his profane begging ? Tough call.

Graham Hoyle, Kirkbourne Grove, Baildon