AS an ex-Labour voter of some 50 years, I grow more despondent at the way our Labour/Tory government have behaved in the past three years. Not a week goes by that we don't hear of something being cut or reduced in strength; even to closing public toilets throughout the land.

At the announcement this week that the MOD is to cut the wages of the gardeners in the military cemeteries in Europe. This is surely as low as one can stoop to save money, especially when Gordon Brown tells us that the Treasury is awash with money?

I had cause to write to the then Director of War Graves UK in August of 1988 about the state of the Servicemen's graves in our churchyard at Walkden -- 26 in all. The parents of these dead heroes were long dead and no one was left to take care of the said graves.

I was informed at the time by the director that it wasn't cost effective to take care of them. My answer to the director was that these men didn't count the cost -- they gave their lives.

I got help from an unexpected source to tidy the graves -- the young cadets from the Army barracks in Fletcher Street. Also a word to the top ie The Duke of Edinburgh. Since that time, our graves here in the churchyard have been tended.

A word to Tony Blair -- cut these men's wages at your peril. It would be the way you would be remembered. Lay your wreath on Remembrance Day -- but show you mean it. Give these men a rise in pay for the wonderful job they do.

Mr Ernie Hamilton

Egerton Grove

Worsley