Absolute betrayal of the Gurkha

When I was young, I used to look forward to going to the Royal Tournament every year. Anyone who doesn't know what this is/was is forgiven because it was scrapped by our present government in 1999. I always enjoyed the field gun race between Portsmouth and Davenport and I always enjoyed the RAF motorcycle display and I always enjoyed the army dog display. I also remember one year, somewhere during the very early eighties seeing the Gurkha.

The Gurkha had great big bent machetes and did this thing where they abseiled from the ceiling, crept up on and disabled unsuspecting dummies and rescued prisoners from a hut in the middle of the arena and all this without a sound except at the end when I think they surprised the guards and shot them with rapid machine gun fire. It was amazing and it was well before Rambo or Arnie or anyone else like that. I was so impressed with these guys that I started to ask some questions.

It turns out that the Gurkha, originating from Nepal have fought for British causes since 1817, nearly 200 years ago and have distinguished themselves in every war we have fought during the twentieth century. They fight for us, our Queen and our freedom and do so with as much pride and honour as any British soldier could ever hope to have.

So why have Gurkha been handing their medals back to us this week? Because our government won't let them stay in our country and will not afford them the same pension rights as other soldiers retired from the British army. The reason for this is because of a tripartite treaty signed in 1947 by the UK, Nepal and India which ensured that Gurkha serving the British Crown would be paid only the same amount as their counterparts in the Indian army. This was never a problem whilst in active service because the regiments were heavily subsidised. In retirement however in the UK Gurkha have only been paid in line with their Indian counterparts instead of their British colleagues. This seems to be the case despite the whole reason for and the existence of race relation laws and the Human Rights Act 1998, which seem to have been overlooked completely on this issue. Perhaps the reason the law has been overlooked is because the Gurkha who is from what I can gather a proud and honourable breed does not wish to pursue the matter through the courts (how refreshing, but how naive).

I have a major raging problem with this. These are people who are not British, but choose to die for the Crown and state of Great Britain. We pay them less than our own soldiers and don't want them to stay in the country after they have retired from defending our freedom. They are giving us our medals back. I'd give them back too if I had any because if I had fought and bled with someone, I would want to see them looked after as well as me.....

.....Oh, wait a minute, our own troops are also being screwed over by the government, whilst they're all fiddling expenses at our expense. Our own chaps don't even have homes up to the standard of that provided to "economic" sponges from other places around the world who actively make "mugs" or the British people every day that they are here. Our front line troops are fighting with lesser weapons than their supposedly primitive enemies.

However, Hazel Blears, Man in Drag says that "ministers will listen carefully" to the complaints of the Gurkha. It would be the first time this government has listened to anybody since they got into power Hazel. You're not fooling anybody.

Turns out that as an interesting slap in the face, the Gurkha that do serve in the British army have roots in Tibet. So we are planning to send people who have served our country back to a country which is being systematically demolished by the Chinese....who we are to scared at the moment to complain to because....we're going into recession and we need them to prop up our feeble, false economy, they have a bigger and better army than us and the US so we could never challenge them anyway and finally, we know that if we do say anything they'll point to our hypocracy and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. Seems that we're quite happy for the Chinese to keep screwing over the people of Tibet as long as we can too and keep our own wars going.