Re: Gordon Brown attacked over letter 'insult'
 

I get letters signed by the heads of organisations expect I am not naive enough to think it was sent/written by them. It's not known if the letters were actually written by the Prime Minsters themselves but I think the suspicion is that it's not the case.

Here is the part after Osem's quote:

So these military officials 'draft' the letter on behalf of the PM and send it.

Re: Gordon Brown attacked over letter 'insult'
 

Quote from article

It is official policy for the prime minister to write to the families of all service personnel killed in action while on operational duties.
According to Ministry of Defence guidelines published on the Parliament website, the letter is drafted by military officials and should ideally be sent within two working days of the death being announced.
The defence secretary writes to the families of members of the armed forces who die in service, including those not on operations.

Unquote


that is just a presaved letter with paste name address here instructions and sent to the PM's office maybe to be signed ore likely though just to be sent from there


not sitting down and personally reading the information he is provided by the ministry of defence then writing to the family in his own hand


so yes it is going out of his way

---------- Post added at 14:51 ---------- Previous post was at 14:48 ----------



lol Damien your quicker than me

Re: Gordon Brown attacked over letter 'insult'
 

Has Brown sent hand written letters to every soldier that has died in action? I personally think he did this as some form of PR exercise, which has gone wrong.

Re: Gordon Brown attacked over letter 'insult'
 

Yes, It's been mentioned that he has. Check the article and there is a interview from someone else who received one before. It's just that it's only now, when she brought it to The Sun, that it's become public.

Re: Gordon Brown attacked over letter 'insult'
 

So much easier to write a shabby letter than turn up at an airfield and watch boxes being loaded into hearses.

Re: Gordon Brown attacked over letter 'insult'
 

Perhaps you should direct your bite to those villifying Brown ;) I've already covered the 'handwritten' aspect and neither you or I know what approach previous PMs took to the writing of such letters. I've also already stated here that I don't think he meant any offence or was being uncaring and that the Sun is simply using this as a stick to beat him with, quite unjustifiably. However, as has been shown, offence was caused to the person who matters most of all - the recipient of that letter and all that could have been avoided if the PM and his advisors thought a tad more about what he'd written and how it was presented. It's nothing to do with the PM being partially sighted, it's about him contemplating the reaction of someone whose child has just been blown up serving the country he's running. IMHO her feelings should come first, not Mr Brown's...

Re: Gordon Brown attacked over letter 'insult'
 

Hear hear.

Re: Gordon Brown attacked over letter 'insult'
 

By bring it to The Sun the circus ensued and people are asked to Judge Brown on this issue and most were quite fair. Obviously some people are like a dog with a bone and cannot, and will not, give up any stick with which to beat Brown.

It's a shabby letter.

Well, It was Nice of him to send a personal letter.

Well they ALL do it.

Actually, The MOD does it on behalf of the PM

Well It was just THIS letter he did as a PR stunt. Serves him right!

Actually, He has sent letter to all fallen serviceman since he has been PM. It's not talked about before this incident.

Maybe Brown actually does something decent? Shocking I know, I presume he drowns kittens every time he writes one of these letters such to redress the evil PM thing.

Re: Gordon Brown attacked over letter 'insult'
 

might be hard to find as i saw him on a live interview on telly cant even remember which channels news at the moment but Mathew Paris Margret Thatchers correspondence secretary was defending Brown and saying He didnt know of any PM who had personally written like this to the families so I do know that even if there may be one from before her it hasn't been done by many others if any

Re: Gordon Brown attacked over letter 'insult'
 

Damien the point most here have made is that writing a letter is all well and good but NOT if you spell the name of the dead soldier wrong and then scribble it out and send the letter anyway. How long would it have taken for him to start again without the scribbled out mis spell of the name seriously if you can't have attention to detail in writing a letter fo this nature exactly where do you have attention to detail and isn't attention to detail something we should have in the person running the country.

For what it's worth i don't care who wrote the letter if david cameron or nick clegg had wrote this letter in the way it was written i would have said exactly the same things about the letter. Respect isn't just a word it is something you demonstrate in many ways and if your going to hand write a letter you then include that in the way your respect for something is demonstrated.

Unlike i suspect the vast vast majority of people on this forum i have been in the position of writing to the loved one's of a solider that was killed and i can tell you it was one of the hardest things i had to do and i never ever managed to convey myself or my feelings in one attempt three or four was the norm and every single detail was correct as that was my last act on behalf of a colleague and sometimes a friend so it was the very least i could do and the least they deserved.

Those letters mean more then many can understand to the familys that recieve them and a badly written one can have a huge affect as i believe is the case here. I do not support the sun at all and completely agree they are using this woman for their own ends even though at the minute and possibly not completely in her right mind she is going along with it.

I am also mindful of the fact that after being injured and the affects from that i couldn't write those letters now but if i was in a job where i needed too i would make damn sure someone looked over what i had written there is no excuse here for some of the sloppiness that was in that letter.

Re: Gordon Brown attacked over letter 'insult'
 

Rupert would love that to be true but it isn't imo, I doubt people buy that rag for its political views. Any one remember their "It was The Sun That Won It" headline, hardly anyone bought that issue as a result, they are just opportunists backing the favourite.

Re: Gordon Brown attacked over letter 'insult'
 

No - the Sun is just very good at sensing the mood of the times, picking it up and running with it. That's why the Sun in England and Wales is pro-Tory and the Sun in Scotland is not. If they tried to tell Scottish Sun readers to vote Tory, they would simply end up losing a lot of their readership.

Re: Gordon Brown attacked over letter 'insult'
 

Well well well, wonder what their excuse is? Perhaps their "journalist" also suffers from eye trouble or perhaps in their haste to point the finger they forgot to spell check, either way I think it serves them right. Jones indeed, planks.

http://www.hurryupharry.org/2009/11/...-a-name-wrong/