Joanna Lumley: Patron Saint of Gurkhas.

[ivan astikov]

Despite her recent media activity on behalf of the Gurkhas being done with the best of intentions, I wonder if it has occurred to St. Joanna that the parliamentary announcement in favour of the Gurkhas will have probably ensured that the British Army will now never recruit anyone into the Gurkhas unless they were born in the UK?

[jayjay]

What's the background on this issue for those of us not up on our British politics?

[Stanislaus]

Since defeating them early in the 19th Century, Britain has employed Gurkhas as frontline troops. Even considering that their pay is well below that of British soldiers, this is a good deal for your average dirt poor Nepali. What made it a particularly good deal is that they were given right of settlement in Hong Kong.

After 1997, that wasn't quite so valuable an incentive. So it was ruled that any Gurkha who retired after 97 could come to the UK. But those who retired before lost any residency rights. They've been campaigning for years on the wholly reasonable grounds that if they fought for us, they could come and live in our country when they were done. The government didn't want to do that, presumably on grounds of cost - they never actually explained why.

After a long campaign, including taking their case to the High Court, they've finally won. Joanna Lumley has been their spokesperson and done a phenomenal job, to the point where she was dictating government policy in a live press conference.

[Ferret Herder]

After a long campaign, including taking their case to the High Court, they've finally won. Joanna Lumley has been their spokesperson and done a phenomenal job, to the point where she was dictating government policy in a live press conference.

I've heard a bit about this via podcast, BBC Radio 4's The News Quiz. According to their humorous take on things, she was stating that Brown had told her he'd deal with the problem and his office was denying this - the comedian saying this was claiming that Brown would've been drooling over her and agreed to anything she said without really listening. So has a real agreement finally been made, or does it still need to go through some other steps before approval?

It'd be a shame if the government did work out a similar "solution" in response to the efforts on their behalf, though.

[Stanislaus]

As of today , a solution has been reached - pretty much everything the campaign was after, I think.

For an alternative point of view, see here :

That is precisely the government’s point. The 1947 tripartite agreement between Nepal, Britain and India (many more Gurkhas serve in the Indian army than in our own) decreed: “A Gurkha soldier must be recruited as a Nepali citizen, must serve as a Nepali citizen and must be resettled as a Nepali citizen.” You couldn’t get much clearer than that. For all the pathos of the bemedalled old Gurkhas being tearfully embraced by Lumley after the Commons vote, the fact is that these warriors would have understood the deal when they signed up. And a very good deal it was, which explains why year after year almost 20,000 young Nepalese would apply for the 230 new places available in the brigade.

A Nepalese farmer with a son in the Gurkhas recently explained to an American reporter that “to gain acceptance into the brigade is a sign of both prestige and financial success”. No Briton would consider joining the armed forces principally for enrichment – nor would we wish it to be so – but for a family otherwise consigned to the desperately insecure life of subsistence hill-farming in one of the world’s poorest countries, a guaranteed salary followed by a British Army pension at the age of 33 is a golden opportunity. Yes, we exploited these harsh facts for our own military advantage; but what was the harm done to the Nepalese recruits?