Detaining a foreign visitor to Britain for allegedly being responsible for crimes committed in a foreign country, although the Government of that country is against the detention, is evidently considered by Mr R.G. Holmes to be a good use of the money we pay in taxes (letter, CT 24th March).

But what did this detention achieve? The British Government is now spending more than £100 million of our money on raking over another piece of the past. Bloody Sunday. This, too, will re-open old wounds but not bring back any of the dead.

Many people consider that Sir Edward Heath and his cronies, in giving away our sovereignty to the EU and so incurring an extra tax burden on us of billions of pounds every year,, lying to Parliament and the nation to achieve this, committed treason. Would Mr Holmes call for him to be tried and, if found guilty, imprisoned, perhaps executed? Would that free us from the shackles of the EU, its burden of taxes, bureaucracy, corruption and diminution of Britain?

The present British Government is not only keeping us in the EU but throwing away many millions of pounds more in destroying more of the British Constitution and setting up another layer of expensive governmental bureaucracy in Scotland, Wales and London.

If this money, instead of being frittered on bas causes, had been put into improving the NHS, it could have saved thousands of lives. It wasn't. Does Mr Holmes therefore see the politicians responsible as mass murderers who should be put on trial? Does he think that Tony Blair and Clare Short should be tried for mass murder because of their inhumane failure to act promptly to aid Mozambique, this resulting in perhaps 3,000 avoidably dead or disappeared?

Let's advance Britain and its people, and help our friends in the Commonwealth, not needlessly enrich the lawyers.

KEITH BRIAN

St Martin By Looe.