Gurkha with VC "failed to demonstrate that you have strong ties with the UK"

Site Issues 2007 Archive Room
#21

Because not enough Brits want to join. There is a historical precedent for Commonwealth soldiers serving Britain and since they all live under HM the Queen, there’s not really a reason why they shouldn’t. Gurkhas are obviously a bit of a special case, but they’re shown 200 years of absolute loyalty to the British crown when we’ve needed them so again, I can’t see a reason why they shouldn’t.

It’s not fashionable, it’s got a lot of bad press in the last few years, the ‘Mum’ effect of Iraq and Afghanistan, the economy’s good so there’s plenty of other jobs around. Take your pick. A really good recession would get us back to full manning in a matter of weeks.

Because they do the job and do it well, when a lot of British kids aren’t interested. They’re not completely foreigners either, because they all have the same head of state.

#22

So far as Australians are concerned, maybe not.

Whether the Queen or her representative, the Governor-General, is our head of state is an unresolved constitutional issue.

While monarchists and republicans love to debate it endlessly, it’s generally not an important issue in practice, but when our Governor- General dismissed the national government in 1975 in the exercise of his powers as the Queen’s representative, Buckers didn’t want to know about it and took the position that he was acting independently of Her Majesty and she wouldn’t intervene.

It’s odd to have a representative of the Queen who isn’t subject to her oversight, direction, control, or superior decision.

http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/rn/1995-96/96rn01.pdf

#23

the gurka regiments has been part of british millitary history for over 100yrs , and i think its unfair that the government can unfairly dissmiss PUN for living in the country he so bravely served with during the war , also in the daily mirror a few days ago had an artical , saying that joanna lumley was campaining to allow PUN into the country after he saved her fathers life againest the Japanese .

#24

There has a whole campaign going on on the “ARRSE” site (and is still going on, because while now the Foreign Office will allow Pun in, nothing so far has been said about granting visa to his aged wife and his son, who is the primary person taking care of Pun, also nothing about the other ex-Gurkhas). The FO treat it now as an exception, as not to set a precedent for the other Gurkhas who retired before 1997.
According to the site about 20.000 ex Gurkhas and their closer families would then be elegible for a permanent stay in Britain, but most of them would probably want to stay in Nepal anyway.

As the reasoning given by the FO that to allow the ex-Gurkhas to settle in the UK (or through UK passports all over the EU) would mean a brain drain for Nepal, as the British trained ex-Gurkhas would be leaving, I see this as a fake reason.
I don’t know in how far the Nepalese mentality goes towards education.
In another Asian country, the Philippines, which I know reasonably well ( my first wife came from there, as is my girlfriend for the last seven years, I also have been there several times), there exists a mentality to give the children the best education possible. The whole family will work so that the children will progress. The result is that the Philippines have (according to an Asia Week article I read some years ago) a better rate of literacy than the US. It also means that you have many highly qualified people with university degrees, who can’t find a job at home and therefore emigrate to other countries (both my ex and my present have been doing this). These people working abroad regularly send money home to their families, the total yearly amount is by now in the billion dollar range and makes up about 20% of the country’s income.
Ok, in the Philippines every bigger village has an elementary school (Paaralang Elementarya) and every town has at least one highschool. Every province capital has at least one college and a small university. The only analphabetes I met were either old people, who never learned it or street kids without somebody to take care of them.
This might be lacking in Nepal, but what is the use to have some ex-soldier trained in the UK in technology, who then won’t find a qualified job in Nepal and has to go back to subsistence mountain farming?.

Jan