First you soften things up with the heavy artillery and then you send in the infantry.

So the Tories have as many guns as possible firing off the same shells in the same direction: blaming the Labour government.

Then we get the hand-to-hand fighting, over cuts, which they hope will be simple, as we’ll all have been deafened into surrender by their repeated message.

Ask any of them anything and they’ll say it’s all the fault of Labour.

But, really, isn’t your correspondent Keith Mitchell (Oxford Mail, October 18) supposed to be something to do with Oxfordshire County Council rather than a bit of central government artillery?

Anyway, Mr Mitchell, are you really opposing Labour for financial deregulation? That doesn’t sound very Tory to me. And if your Foreign Secretary William Hague is critical of excessive Labour military expenditure, is he representing the same party that was critical of Labour for not spending enough on supporting the troops?

Either way, it’s pretty obvious that the real casualties in all this will be people who benefit from services, and those who work for them, in Oxfordshire, as elsewhere.

Joel Kaye, Purcell Road, Oxford