This cannot be considered an insult as the Prime Minister took the time out of his day to hand write a personal letter of condolence to a bereaved family showing the respect and admiration he has for their son who died for his country. He did not get someone else to type the letter and then sign it because he intended the letter to put across the fact that he cared about each and every solider who died serving their country. This is why he writes a personal letter such as this to every family of a solider who is killed in action. The fact that he made spelling mistakes or that his writing was hard to read should not justify his vilification, particularly as he has personally telephoned the mother in question and apologised for any offence he may have unintentionally caused.

When Theodore Roosevelt was President of the United States many Serbs had immigrated to the land of opportunity. This brought desperation for work leading to low salaries and maltreatment of workers. Miners worked in fatal conditions for below minimal wage and the racial divide between the less-educated/poorer serbs and their experienced English-speaking French and Italian counterparts divided. The Italians resented the new-comers for lowering demand and thus pay for miners and the Serbs felt ostracized.

The worst condition that is cited over and over to emphasize the horror of what the miners went through, is: that when a miner died, his carcass would burned. The ashes would then be gathered in a tin can and placed at his doorstep.

Considering all of that, a misspelled name is hardly the end of the world. Soldiers are honoured by the government and the P.M. And must not take that honour and respect for granted.

PM's duty is to contribute to making decisions that prevent soldiers' deaths in the future so why bother he should write every single word in these posthumous letters. PM must have had his staff handwrite letters then just put his signature on so he can't be blamed for everything.

Most politicians (I have worked as researcher for one myself) would give such a task to their researcher or even an intern; the MP would then stick his signature on the bottom. Mr Brown not only took upon himself to write the letter by hand but he did so when suffering from being completely blind in one eye and partially blind in the other. He has to use a massive felt pen so he can see his own writing. He is unimagineably busy and distracted by the rigours of multi tasking on an epic scale "Janes" is a rare surname easily mistaken for "James". Soldiers tend to die in conflict, this is common; what is not so common is a hand-written letter of consolation from a Prime Minister. The media witchunt is vulgar and disturbing - in no other capacity would it be acceptable to vilify a partially blind man for spelling mistakes made during what was essentially a gesture of personal goodwill.

Surely its the thought that counts?