AFTER spending more than 23 years in the manufacturing industry, starting out as a temp and finishing as an operations manager, I found myself unemployed in January.

After the initial shock and time spent at JobCentre Plus, I easily saw that it would be a long time before the manufacturing industry picked up enough to offer people like myself a route back to employment.

There must be many like me out there – unemployed but with skills to offer, sitting around seeing that there is no decent work out there, and not a great deal of help.

So I thought why not get together with others and form some sort of cooperative?

For example, if you take manufacturing, there must be unemployed managers, directors, sales, finance, fitters, all sorts. By coming together, sitting down, putting ideas and thoughts, maybe, just maybe we would have enough to start something up. I know there are investors/funding out there. So, if this interests you then contact me. It doesn’t matter whether you were in manufacturing, retail, cleaning, a builder or a painter. You have nothing to lose. Standing alone is daunting, together, then, we have a chance.

Please email Gary on marvellous76@ hotmail.co.uk.

GARY DIPPER, Wegmalls Way, Leominster, Herefordshire