What an almighty mess it's become, the Kosovo situation. And all out of the best of intentions.

The outside world couldn't turn a blind eye and allow Milosevic and his bully boys to terrorise a whole population of Albanian Muslims out of their homes and their lands, slaughtering the men and raping the women. There had to be intervention. There was no option.

But since the NATO bombing campaign began, matters have gone from bad to worse. The pace of "ethnic cleansing" has accelerated. The massacres have increased. The flow of refugees across Kosovo's borders has turned into a torrent as Milosevic has succeeded in doing what he set out to do.

As those driven from their homes have gathered in their hundreds of thousands, in appalling conditions, in the countries bordering on Kosovo, it has become clear that the initial aim of Britain and other countries of keeping them there and funding improvements in their living conditions was simply not practical.

So now more and more of these refugees are to be given homes, initially on a temporary basis, in those countries whose planes are blasting their homeland to oblivion. A thousand a week are to be flown to Britain, many of them sick, injured or otherwise infirm. They will present the Government with a terrible dilemma.

A thousand people a week is four thousand people a month, 52,000 in a year if the displacement goes on so long. Many thousands of refugees will put a terrible strain on an already over-burdened health service, on crowded and under-funded schools, and not least on the Social Security budget.

This influx of people simply can't be accommodated in a society run under policies which focus on reducing public spending.

A Government pledged to cutting taxes must, sooner rather than later, acknowledge that the only way it can fund the care of the refugees is to reverse its policies and raise the means through higher taxation - initially on those who can best afford it, then on everyone else.

The alternative is longer queues at accident and emergency departments, longer waits for operations, fewer books to go round larger classes as cash is diverted into special needs, less money for the already under-funded home-care services for the elderly....a rapid acceleration, in fact, of Britain's ongoing slide towards becoming a hardship society. And that, I reckon, is a recipe for social unrest.

If the Government is to open Britain's doors to large numbers of Kosovans, it must open its coffers as well - and then prise open our wallets to top them up. There seems to be no alternative - other than, of course, telling those tragic people to stay in their refugee camps and rot while they wait, perhaps for a long, long time, for the battle for their country to end in the defeat of Milosevic so they can return to whatever remains of their towns, villages and farms.

Could you tell them that, if you met any of them face to face? No, neither could I. But if the money isn't made available to keep and care for those who Tony Blair and Jack Straw have invited into this country while still doing right by those of us who are already here, the British smile of tolerant welcome could soon become a little strained.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.