I WAS horrified to hear the young woman, widowed when her soldier husband was killed in action in Iraq, say on TV that because he had been paid for nine days after his death she had been told she would have to pay the money back.

Is this country so bound up in red tape that compassion has been strangled?

I couldn't believe that the young widow and her fatherless child could be treated so coldly after her brave husband had made the ultimate sacrifice for his country.

I'll always remember how bitter my father was that my grandfather, who died suddenly, was paid precisely to the hour of his death after working more than 40 years for the same firm.

This was over 70 years ago. Technology has come a long way since then, but dealing tactfully with tragic and sad circumstances has not!

C DEAN (Mrs), Borrowdale Avenue, Blackburn.