Meg Munn is not well informed. The Rules she refers to are already in the Library.
They are the Rules that the civil servants manufactured one year after Malaysia offered the medal to the Commonwealth just so that they could deny British veterans the right to wear their medal. They are therefore retrospective rules applied with a single and mean-spirited aim.
Ms Munn might like to have a word with Ian Pearson, the FCO Minister whose name is on the January 2006 PJM Statement and so was responsible for issuing the flawed notice. He will tell her that she should not rely on those flawed Rules and that he now agrees that his statement is wrong and should be amended to allow the Malaysian medal to be worn.
It beggars belief that one can put ones life on the line for Queen and Country, but that it is civil servants, and not Queen and Country (i.e. Parliament), who dictate to us whether an honour acknowledging that service should be worn or "stuffed back in our Kellogs packets, for all its worth as a medal", as one MoD civil servant put it to me.
Barry Fleming
Posted on 14 Mar 2008 2:43 pm
Meg Munn is not well informed. The Rules she refers to are already in the Library.
They are the Rules that the civil servants manufactured one year after Malaysia offered the medal to the Commonwealth just so that they could deny British veterans the right to wear their medal. They are therefore retrospective rules applied with a single and mean-spirited aim.
Ms Munn might like to have a word with Ian Pearson, the FCO Minister whose name is on the January 2006 PJM Statement and so was responsible for issuing the flawed notice. He will tell her that she should not rely on those flawed Rules and that he now agrees that his statement is wrong and should be amended to allow the Malaysian medal to be worn.
It beggars belief that one can put ones life on the line for Queen and Country, but that it is civil servants, and not Queen and Country (i.e. Parliament), who dictate to us whether an honour acknowledging that service should be worn or "stuffed back in our Kellogs packets, for all its worth as a medal", as one MoD civil servant put it to me.