IN reply to questions raised in Chris Hill's fairly intolerant and ignorant letter in the Bolton Evening News on Monday, December 9, he states that he is in "absolute disgust and bewilderment" at David Blunkett's offer of refuge to 1000 Iraqi and 200 Afghani refugees.

He asks 'Why Britain?' and later shallowly answers, without any substance, that Britain accepts such refugees because the "UK Government is soft".

Mr Hill, do you honestly believe that our politicians have even a microgram of softness in their blood?

Maybe these refugees are people too. Maybe these people, who make painful decisions to leave their communities and countries because they are afraid for their lives, should be welcomed with nothing less than complete sympathy. People don't flee their countries for nothing! The refugees that I have met are not here to exploit our "highly paid" jobs and luxurious services like our reliably "on-time" and spacious trains, but are here to seek essential refuge.

Maybe Britain and other European countries are good choices for refugees because the majority of these nations pledged themselves to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention and thus have an obligation to provide asylum. These industrialised countries, like Britain, have often played parts in funding wars and generating poverty from which refugees are forced to flee. Does this not necessitate a further obligation -- maybe Britain was/is a key player in generating environmental and militarised instabilities and subsequent refugees through its arms dealings?

Unlike Mr Hill, I think that the decision to house refugees as quickly as possible is a good one and that the housing of our homeless is a matter to be addressed independent of the refugee matter. If it is softness on our Government's part then "Big up the soft governments". We are all citizens of the world.

and we all happen to be born where we are born.

A Whitlow

(address supplied)