Sir - What kind of a nation are we having cut funding to protect desperate exploited migrants from drowning ? Where is the heart of the EU to which we belong for doing the same?

It is the same contempt-worthy culture that puts balance sheets first in which austerity puts humanity very low down the pecking order.

Now efforts are to be made to prevent those traffickers leaving at all by destroying their boats. Well it might save drownings but it conceals Europe's real concern is also to keep those people out.

To trap them in their misery and tyranny of which we are somewhat complicit for our foreign policy decisions and failures and yet we retain freedom of movement here for ourselves enabling EU member citizens to speculate and freely choose a country where they might be better off ? Well hardly surprising.

The rise of foodbanks here in Britain in which citizens of one of the worlds richest countries are having life sustaining handouts as if they were famine victims and the penalty in benefits on those with an extra room at home shows a sinister new mean spirit flourishing in our culture.

Where victims of worklessness and disability are demonised and only the ethically approved of 'hard working families' are celebrated by the establishment.

The almost biblical tragedy in the Mediterranean represents a new low in our so called modern continent and is a stain on the history of humanity.

Andrew Brown

Worcester,