Ward Minter...Should the families of dead military personnel be banned from gathering at the Labour party conference

[Dom Tuk]

Would like WMs (as a professed veteran) and other Abers views on if the Labour party is right in banning any gatherings of families of the war dead. Would it not be a part of their grieving and healing process. Is it not paranoia and censorship from the goernment? They have held peaceful demonstrations in the past and there has been no trouble.

[joko]

you mean she had someone draft a letter, which she okayed, which was then photo copied and signed by her secretary and sent to the families.

you make it sound like she sat down with her basildon bond and pen and wrote indivdual heart felt letters.

i would be surprised if it was something like this -

Dear ..........(*insert name)......,

Very sorry about your - (*delete as appropriate)son/daughter/father/mother/brother/sister,grandparent -

Who died on the ..../..../.....

due to -

please tick boxes -

Gunshot [ ]
Bomb blast [ ]
run over by tank [ ]
septicaemia [ ]
loss of blood [ ]
plane crash [ ]


signed

...................................... (insert signature stamp)

[admarlow]

I agree ZEN I would love someone to do it as an experiment, any volunteers?

[Oneeyedvic]

joko - believe what you want, but try reading this: http://www.thenewscentre.co.uk/falklands/bloss om.htm

http://www.btinternet.com/~brentours/BB21.htm

Still, even if you don't believe the stories, it may offer some sort of thanks / consolation to dead servicemen's family to get *any* sort of letter from downing street - or maybe best to just ignore them eh?

[joko]

OEV - I am not denying it was good of them to send a letter, but you have tried to make her out to be a wonderful, caring and thoughtful woman, and that she sat down and personally wrote an individual letter to each and every family - she wasn't and she didn't - this was likely done as a PR exercise and image damage limitation - and regardless of those stories I do not believe she wrote those letters herself - perhaps she drafted one, but the rest will have been copies of this, i'd bet that any handwriting is different form letter to letter.

Notice also that the only handwritten bit was an add-on to a typed letter

I am not saying she didn't give a toss - she was human and you'd have to have a heart of stone not to care - especially if many believed you were largely to blame - but she was no queen of hearts

[Oneeyedvic]

joko - never portraid her as a "wonderful, caring and thoughtful woman". I simply stated (a fact) that she wrote to every person who died in the war.

If you choose to believe (which seems to be your opinion) that she did not write these, then fair enough, but if you read your two previous posts, they seem to contradict each other.