Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Gurkha Campaign

No surprise, alas, that the government should still be trying to find ways to deny Gurkhas the right to live in this country. The most charitable interpretation of today’s announcement is that the Brown ministry is making it more difficult than it should be for Gurkhas who retired before 1997 to live in Britain. A more accurate assessment might be that this is a typically mendacious, mean-spirited, shameless, pointless piece of bullying bullshit from a government that’s so past its sell-by date that there’s no point in even wondering whether there’s any further use for it.

Here’s the BBC account:

Immigration Minister Phil Woolas denied he had betrayed the Gurkhas, adding: “This improves the situation.” He said: “It has never been the case that all Gurkhas pre-1997 were to be allowed to stay in the country. With their dependents you could be looking at 100,000 people. “It’s simply not true that we have betrayed the Gurkhas.

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