HAS everyone gone mad? A month's heavy bombing has done nothing for the poor people of Kosovo. Nato proposes a sea semi-blockade which risks confrontation with the Russians.

We are spending billions every day which are needed for our hospitals, schools and welfare services. The Cold War looms again. We have belittled the United Nations, our only true hope for world peace based on a real international force - which Nato is not.

And our decent British government is involved in murdering civilians.

Of course the behaviour of the Serbs has been monstrous, but this is not the way. This is not the Tony Blair the country voted for.

Here's one vote of no confidence in the world's political leaders, who are risking wider and wider conflicts, and terrible suffering, for the sake of saving Nato 's reputation.

But people matter more than institutions.

And our prime minister, flourishing his missiles, might do well to recall the well-known first, second, and third person singular: "I am determined, you are obstinate, he is pig-headed."

Roy Stevens,

Chaumont Way,

Stockton-on-Forest.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.