AN honourable mention is deserved by the comment by Miranda Carruthers-Watt in your article 'Refugees in desperate search for fresh start' (LET, August 17).

"We must stress that the money spent on asylum seekers is not money that would have been spent on other people. It is money which has come directly from the Government."

Is this supposed to comfort the poor beleaguered tax payers in this country? Where on earth does she think the Government obtains this money which it can dispense with such generosity?

If this taxpayers money was not earmarked for 'other people,' what was going to happen to it? Was it to be put away for a rainy day while our schools and hospitals collapse around us and there are not enough police to fight violent crime?

Her logic just doesn't make sense. I love the way those so eager to help these poor unfortunates are so free and easy with other people's money.

If the people who set up the welfare system in 1948 and paid into it all their lives, could go back and see what eventually their money would be used for, I doubt whether they would have contributed with any enthusiasm at all.

Despite the prevailing propaganda assuring us what a rich economy we are, the truth is, we are an overcrowded island with a crumbling infrastructure, quite unable to cope with these extra burdens.

With the best will in the world, we cannot save everyone, no matter how deserving. Eventually, if the situation is allowed to go unchecked, this country will end up like the Third World countries from which these immigrants are supposedly fleeing.

S LOVE (Mrs), Avenue Parade, Accrington.