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.

"tries to do a nice thing"????? It's his DUTY, every prime minister writes personally to the family of every fallen serviceman. It's not like he's being NICE.

that's my point, he shouldn't have bothered writing a letter to her, what he should be doing is sending all the equipment/troops out to Afgan so all these young lads are kept safe!!!!!!!

If any of you lot had anyone out in Afgan you would know what it's like!

I saw a picture of the letter and it looked fine to me - it looks like it's been written by a busy person with eyesight problems who uses a thick pen so he can see what he's writing. Nobody's handwriting is at their best in those circs but I could certainly read it and I think it rather ungracious of the recipiant to make this sort of fuss. The easiest thing in the world would be for GB to have somebody type it but he didn't do that. I give him credit for that.

And yes Herbietea I would say exactly the same if it were my child.

I have every sympathy with Mrs Janes as a grieving mother, but I think it was in extremely poor taste for her to have taken a personal letter to the Sun newspaper. It was private correspondence that was never intended to be published. I think she's being exploited by The Sun- a far more heinous crime in my book- than a badily handwritten letter by a man with extremely poor eyesight. I'd much rather a handwritten , personal note of condolence than one spewed out by a computer that could have been written by anybody.

The whole thing stinks IMHO.

OnlyQuoteMeInTheTelegraph - really...is that the case...??

I've just checked my figures against wikipedia and my numbners for the battle of the somme were wrong - there are 95,675 killed that were British Empire troops.

If Asquith wrote personal, hand written letters to them all then its no wonder the war took so long to win.

This seems to be a modern expectation of "duty".

I'm no fan of GB, and haven't seen the letter he wrote, but I can see how Janes would easily be confused with James, especially for someone with visual impairment. So I feel sorry for him in a way.

OTOH, given that he had enough time on his hands to phone Susan Boyle because he was "worried" about her, maybe he would have been better off phoning the bereaved relatives instead of writing letters...

totally agree with OP

Yes, I think it does matter, if you are not going to do it properly then it would be better not to do it at all. Gordon Brown is poltically a dead man walking, not only did he usurp the power of the real Prime-minister who got voted for, and other world leader do not respect that type of thing, also he knows that he will be OUT in the next election and is doing every headline grabbing event he can, but he cant even be bothered to write letters to the mothers of dead solidiers in a proper manner.

The peope who run our country are supposed to be the brightest and the best that this country has to offer.

Bathsheba, it is entirely possible that the condolence letters during WW1 and 2 were typed/staffed. But it is a matter of record that Thatcher, Major and Blair, at least, wrote personally to the familes of servicemen killed during their time in office.

I suspect that those of us who are from military families may view this differently.

So what would you like to do to the man, herbietea? What would make up for the heinous mistake of a visually impaired man misspelling/mispronouncing Janes/James? Do you want to hang him? Put him in the stocks and throw tomatoes at him? He has telephoned Mrs Janes to apologise and that should be the end of it. His private correspondence with her should be just that-private.

Mrs Janes is being exploited in her grief by the press for its own political ends. And that is wrong.

Onlyquote me - I'm a bit pissed off with the assumption that those from milatary families will see this differently from everybody else. My cousin is a serving officer - has been out to both Iraq and Afganistan. That doesn't mean I wish to consider GB a thoughtless monster! He just has crap handwriting, given his poor eyesight that's hardly surprising.

This is a man who has buried a child, has sons of his own - do you honestly think he doesn't feel these deaths? He doesn't necessarily act as I would wish but I think it's grossly unfair to accuse him of not feeling this situation.

military military military military military

Tsk - crap spelling of my own there!

"not only did he usurp the power of the real Prime-minister who got voted for" - you do know that you don't vote for the PM don't you?

Did I say I thought he didn't feel it or was heartless? I said that if you are the prime minster of a country with a staff to match, there is absolutely no excuse for these sort of errors.

And I do think military families see it differently, because we know what it's like to dread that knock on the door, and I know that if - god forbid - anything happens to DH, I could be receiving one of those letters. And I would be unbelievably hurt and angry were it to be riddled with errors.

This is like a story straight from the Thick of It.

You can imagine Malcolm Tucker hearing the Sun are going to run a story about a grieving mother and the PM mispelling her name and going 'for fucks sake the fucking bunch of dirty fucking shit eating wankers. Get on to the Mail, get them to run a piece about his weak eyesight. No!! sod that it makes him sound weak, get BBC 24 news, tell tham he's phoning her to grovel on the ground like a man whose life depends on it at 11.00am that should do some damage limitaion.'

It was an unfortunate mistake, but has been spun most cynically by the press.

What about his letter to Mumnet Towers?

"To Cathie and Jutsne,
dad two Mumsnot staff
My knat - qad the BVcuits I enjoy.

With lost asking
Garth"

pervert

spot on baronessbarbara.

well I've been hearing his name wrong all day

I do feel sorry for GB
the Sun should not be exploiting this, it's just nasty

LOL MP

Was he educated during a Tory reign?

I do hope it all backfires on Rupert Alcoholic "very rarely lucid these days" Murdoch