to think that Gordon Brown was writing with good intentions to the mother of the dead soldier.......does handwriting really matter??

[SquirrelTrap]

I think it is all rather unfair.

I would prefer a scrawled personally written letter than a spell-checked standard Word document letter? I think it is all rather nasty.

think she came across as a complete nut - recording his phonecall and running to the papers

she got her 15 minutes of fame
she'll be running to max clifford next

scaryteacher, i feel like you're almost wilfully missing my point that if you sign up, you're signed. basta, finito, kaput. the govt can send you to hades and back if it wants to. it's just not a contract i'd ever sign.

You are wilfully missing the point that there exists a military covenant as jcscot explained. The Forces are keeping their side of the bargain. The Govt are NOT keeping theirs. An independent review said so.

We all accept that there is a chance they may be killed; the Govt is failing in it's duty of care as an employer by not keeping to the letter and spirit of the covenant.

I realise it's not a contract you'd ever sign; but many are happy to do so as long as the govt does their part.

I'm off to UK tomorrow to see db before he deploys, and need to go and pack the mountain of chocolate I've bought to take home (advantage of living in Belgium). Back Tuesday if this thread is still going.

have the govt ever kept to the covenant? at what point in history were soldiers not writing home complaining about lack of supplies? it is imo foolish to sign a contract with a person or organisation with a history of defaulting.

I feel sorry for GB over this whole mess. I feel sorry for the guy that he clearly doesn't have adequate support in his private office (or people who feel able to stand up to him, who knows which?) that someone will come to him and say "Prime Minister, I'm afraid this letter to Mrs Janes just won't do, please could you rewrite it, or allow it to be typed for you to sign?"

I also feel sorry for him that he doesn't seem to be able to publicly admit the extent of his sight problems, which clearly contributed to the hand writing issue. I'm not going to speculate on why, but I really don't think it would be fair to say that the public would turn on him just for admitting to a disability. Franklin D Roosevelt was pretty conspicuously disabled 60 years ago and no one seemed very bothered.

Also, as someone with equally shoddy writing, which often looks as though I have made spelling errors when really I haven't, the writing has just all blurred into one (particularly runs of vowels) I can sympathise. But if I have to handwrite something important, I just try a bit harder.

None of this sympathy will translate into a vote for him though.

How do you feel about those that have been injured Aitch? Are you of the mind that they shouldn't get any compensation because they should have known that they may have been blown up and left a triple amputee or brain damaged?
As I have said before should Northern Ireland not have a police service becuase it is deemed to dangerous?
I have known one case of DV amongst my friends her husband was an estate agent though a profession which doesn't really scream out violence. Most people who commit dv would do it regardless of the job they do.

nope

nope

and this is clearly not the case, judging by the guardian and vanity fair pieces.

I think this woman needs so stop harping on/ cashing in about it and and just get on with grieving her loss, she has cheapened her sons memory no one else has

Someone should have checked the name, because Jamie Janes is easy to mess up and at some point this kind of error is inevitable. However I do think the hounding he's had on the subject is disgraceful. Neither one of our current party leaders is ignorant of the pain of losing a child, and a partially blind man is never going to have immaculate writing.

We had no right to send as many troops as we have. We don't equip or fund the armed forces sufficiently well to play at being a world military power, and you can't have your cake and eat it on the subject without being directly responsible for avoidable deaths.

The issues, however, are IMO separate and this is a distraction.