MOST Balkan bombs missed their targets.

The continuing military occupation of Kosovo, like the bombing and sanctions on Iraq, perpetuates the waste of life, destruction of the environment and real costs involved.

Yet Treasury ministers assert clearly: "The war poses no threat to our finances."

Why then are 'poor' hospitals, schools, social services, who miss their 'targets' such a threat that they must be named and shamed, their staff demoralised, their local population stigmatised, and their funding cut?

Was it Blair's fictional '1984' where Big Brother governments maintained the threat of foreign war in order to repress the legitimate aspirations of the people at home?

JOHN NICHOLSON, Langdale Road, Manchester.