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NEW MEDALS FOR PAST SERVICE: INSULTS REPEATED
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Post MoD explanation and apology 
The following was received today by all members of the Fight4 team:

Gentlemen,

Thank you for your various e-mails this morning complaining about the reappearance of the “Medals for Past Service” article which I arranged to have removed from the Veterans Agency (VA) Internet website site some weeks ago.

I was as surprised as you to see that it had reappeared. As far as we were concerned, it had been removed permanently and completely. It had been on the site for many years, long before the PJM had become an issue. As soon as Malaya/Borneo veterans expressed their concern about its content it was deleted by the VA on the direct instructions from us, as it was never intended to cause offence.

We contacted the VA’s Webmaster first thing this morning, on receipt of your e-mails. He investigated and advised us that due to a technical “glitch” of some sort, the article had been uploaded to the new PJM Update page. This was not intentional and the page was removed as soon as the error was reported. The complete Medals section was taken off-line for the material to be deleted and then reloaded afresh.

On behalf of the VA, the Department unreservedly apologises for any offence unintentionally caused by this technical error.

Richard Coney
DS Sec - Honours 1
8/J Main Building
Whitehall
London SW1A 2HB


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...................'Jock'
Paroi...Rasah...Batu Signals Troop.
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Post Re: MoD explanation and apology 
'Jock' Fenton wrote:
The following was received today by all members of the Fight4 team:


Here is my billy doo in reply:

----- Forwarded by Barry Fleming/BAFleming on 19/03/2007 18:05 -----

19/03/2007 13:18
To: "Coney, Richard Mr" <Richard.Coney506@mod.uk>, peter.ricketts@fco.gov.uk, Bill.Jeffrey480@mod.uk, denis.brennan@cabinet-office.x.gsi.gov.uk, tanya.collingridge@fco.gov.uk, defencesecretary@mod.uk, Watsont@parliament.uk, Richard.Coney506@mod.uk, Ian.Keith798@mod.uk, ingrama@parliament.uk, twiggd@parliament.uk, touhigd@parliament.uk

cc: "BENYON, Richard" <BENYONR@parliament.uk>, rbenyon@wbca.org.uk

Subject: Re: Veterans Agency Website

Richard,

Why do you continue to indulge in the misleading use of words? You helped produce the offending page. Yet you state "It had been on the site for many years, long before the PJM had become an issue".

"Many years"? " ... long before the PJM had become an issue"?

If that is true, please explain why the offending page that you produced contained reference to press articles about the MoD refusing to allow veterans to receive the PJM, press articles published "in recent months" (your words).

Your own words mean that you published that page not many years before, but months after the PJM had become an issue!

I am not being pedantic, nor a smart Alec. This is a fundamental issue. If the MoD cannot associate itself with the simple truth on an issue such as this, how can we expect them to be open and straightforward when it comes to issues of 'honours, decorations and medals'? Those earlier articles in which you and the MoD feature, "Portsmouth Today - Bureaucrats are the obstacle to justice for veterans" received further vindication today from ... you and the MoD.

As with the MoD's anti-PJM case itself, disinformation has been used to defend the indefensible.

Barry



Last edited by BarryF on Mon Mar 19, 2007 6:33 pm; edited 1 time in total

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BarryF, who fought for the Right to Wear the Pingat Jasa Malaysia
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Post VA Website 
Good God, the garbage just never stops doe's it? They really cannot get their act together this bunch. I really wonder for the future of our country and our servicemen and women. Dave. PJM


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Post VA Website 
These "people" are without morals. They will deny their own names rather than admit they are wrong. Can they not, just once, say, "We are wrong, we are sorry, we will not do it again", without making excuses that test credibility, that is apparently beyond them.

I feel like saying, to use their phrase, "no further comments to make".

BUT I WON'T They don't get off the hook that easily.

I also got a reply from Lord (Paddy) Ashdown today whom I had asked to help our cause.

"I am afraid that this is just not a thing I can pursue at the moment as I am over committed already.

I wish you luck with you campaign however.

Paddy"


At least he answered (Margaret Beckett please note-even the Queen sends a reply) and at least he wishes us luck.


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Post VA Website 
Rolling Eyes The sincere apology;I,I,I, ha,ha,ha,haaaaa Laughing

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Post VA website 
The VA website have deleted the PJM section altogether.

http://www.veteransagency.mod.uk/medals/medals.html

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You may want to move this to another thread, but tucked away in all this is another piece of disinformation. The MoD, in welching on its own veterans, claimed that because it had no list of people who were eligible for the PJM (true as stated), it could not validate applications (not true). If one reads the Arctic Star page in the medals section you will see that the MoD agrees to validate service for THAT based on MoD records. The true case I believe is that if an individual wanted to validate his claim to the PJM, then the MoD COULD do it if it WOULD by reference to the individual's own record. Otherwise, how can it do this for the Arctic Star?

Omitted from the VA's tour d'horizon is any mention of the medal campaign by Bomber Command vets, whose aircrew loss rates exceeded those of many other groups.

As the Chinese say, a fish rots from the head. It is no accident that spin, disinformation, obfuscation, dissimulation, prevarication and downright lies are now standard behaviour in Civil Servants - it is required of them by their Ministers who have learned from our Dear Leader Kim Il Bliar that that is the 21st century way of doing business in order to keep the peasants in their place.

Oh - and Loch Fada - I spent a happy seaside holiday in her filling in for a couple of weeks for a guy who had broken his leg while she was Tawau guardship in Wallace Bay, Sabah,l in 1965. While there I put two four-inch rounds into Indonesia but fortunately the Indons didn't notice as the bricks must have landed in the ulu.

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The staff at the Vets Agency really should learn to sweep up properly after themselves. Although we managed to get the offensive term "disaffected" removed from the PJM page(s), the dreaded phrase is still there in the Medals section, Medal for Suez Canal Zone 1951 to1954, paragraph 2.

Methinks maybe not all VA people on the same side as Veterans.

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Post More "disaffected Veterans"! 
My personal thought on this one is as folows:

I (we) could of course complain again on principle. But: the lads got their
medal, and it applies only to the disaffected vets looking for NEW or MODIFIED
medals. since HM agreed that we could accept the PJM (not new or modified)
it, it doesn't apply to us. I think that if we complain they will gain
comfort from knowing they have got up our noses again.

QUOTE:
."..............other campaigns from disaffected veterans for new or modified had
at least been considered Departmentally at some point, it was not certain that
the case for a Canal Zone Medal had received such treatment".

In the summer of 2002 the Prime Minister asked the then Cabinet Secretary and
Chairman of the HD Committee to look into the matter....say no more!

The Prime Minster, we are told, is aware of our case. Question? why doesn't he intervene
for us? ( I believe this was in a response to a letter written by an MP to a Minister)

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Past service in the Armed Forces ought ideally to be a condition of employment for VA staff, but of course this couldn't possibly happen as it would mean a change of attitude in the Civil Service - who would probably find some weasel words to prove the idea was illegal as it would discriminate against some other section of the population and screw their measurement for inclusivity. Also it would probably be illegal under the EU laws which actually govern us.

I see no evidence that the author of the offending memo has been disciplined or even counselled for their crass behaviour but even if they were, their attitude would be unchanged and they would go on drawing their pay and sneering at us from their nice comfy chair. I hesitate to bother my MP with this as he is an ex-Civil Servant himself and would no doubt view the matter as trivial. Anyway for an Opposition MP to try and hit on this is self-defeating as the Govt's main aim is to show, by stonewalling, that the Opposition parties are not worth voting for - leave alone the Civil Service ethos of NEVER admitting a mistake by any of its members. So here we are stuck in a Socialist dictatorship.


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What a load of jerks!





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Post DOUBLE INSULTING! 
Evil or Very Mad Personally, I feel that not only are we insulted as disaffected etc, etc,
but he insults our intelligence by offering a pathetic reason for those insults
which I believe, between us we have well pulled to pieces! Some of the management
got the same tripe earlier John. Rolling Eyes

David

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Post Veterans UK Website: Medals - The PJM 
Evil or Very Mad

I couldn't believe my eyes! I had googled Veterans UK for some info for another purpose when I looked at the Google Results page for Veterans UK. There it was:

Medals - The Pingat Jasa Malaysia Medal
The SPVA-UK Website provides a host of information on issues of interest to
veterans. There useful links to other organisations and Government...
www.veterans-uk com/medals/pingat.html - 37K - Cached - Similar pages

It is almost two years to the day since we complained, twice, about DS Sec's Ceremonial inclusion of their denigration of 1957 - 1966 Malaysian Veterans in which we were described as disaffected and medal chasing veterans, irrespective of the fact that it had been accepted by HM, and only afterwards were we aware that we were not allowed to wear the medal on account of a note on Buckingham Palace Paper to the then Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, signed by someone who had not checked that his surname had been correctly spelt. Subsequently we were informed by the Veterans UK Department that they accepted input from other departments but were not responsible for the accuracy or otherwise of its content. We eventually recieved two "apologies" from Mr R.T.Coney, DS Sec, Honours 1, after the offending article had bee removed from the site, and then again when a "technical glitch" caused it to be reprinted.

Needless to say the promotional introduction on the index page, ensures that the article re the PJM carrying all the obfuscation, misinterpretation, etc that has been rebutted including the Commons Statement, now regarded by the former Minister who made it "as nonesense"; in some cases the Cabinet Office Ceremonial Officer no longer gives credence to some of the earlier claims regarding rules made by his and other ceremonial departments, etc, is repeated on the main medals page perhaps with a larger readership than it otherwise would have had, especially by those not cognisant of the actual facts and truths of our case and who may wonder if the F4 campaign is justified. YOU CAN BET IT IS!

With a new man at the helm at Government Communications, it is possible that he will not take for granted what has been presented to him in answer to complaints from F4, as others have done without question, but will require explanations.

I am reminded of a recent broadcast on BBC Parliament when a Government Minister, who also sits in the House of Lords
replied to a question from a member of the House of Commons Treasury Committee with the words:

"...because it was not for the Government to do that (sack Sir Fred Goodwin) We were not a shareholder in the bank. This was a decision to be taken by the Directors of the Royal Bank of Scotland. Remember these are distinguished people". The reply to this was "Distinguished people? Distinguished people who have cost the taxpayers.............."

This broadcast has also been issued as an uncorrected transcript of oral evidence to be published as HC 144-xii and those making reference to it are obliged to point this fact out. However I know what I heard on the broadcast.

I think there are some senior civil servants and "officials" who should take cognisance of the fact that however 'distinguished' and teflon coated they might appear to themselves and their colleagues, there may be others who in their quest for the truth will disregard the departmental ethos, and insist on explanations as to why the Ceremonial Departments of the MOD DS Sec, Cabinet Office, Foreign and Home Offices have become involved in, what some regard as a cover up for mistakes made by a very Senior Official or Senior Servant. In doing so these senior servants and officials have broken every guideline as to their responsibitlities and duties in the Civil Service Code, introduced by Sir Gus O'Donnel, as a meaningful attempt to prevent, as I perceive it, the misconduct carried out by these Senior Civil Servants or Senior Official.

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I refer the Honourable Gentleman (David) to my previous reply of the 19th of March 2007 (above) in which I stated:-

These "people" are without morals. They will deny their own names rather than admit they are wrong. Can they not, just once, say, "We are wrong, we are sorry, we will not do it again", without making excuses that test credibility, that is apparently beyond them.

I feel like saying, to use their phrase, "no further comments to make".

BUT I WON'T They don't get off the hook that easily.


Nothing changes David does it?......but it will Wink

Regards,

John


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David and John.

We can say nothing more up to date than has already been said on this site many times before. Our case is set out for all to see and cannot be refuted The fact that the inhabiants of the Westminster village have petulantly stamped their feet, stuck their noses in the air and might even emulate Violet Bott by scweaming and scweaming until they are sick if we keep on bothering them is not a situation easily resolved. They need a wise parental slap on the bare botty and be told to grow up and face life as we have done since we helped to save and make possible the growth of a now great nation called Malaysia.

All I can say as a footsoldier on this site is that there are thousands in our ranks and that when the site is quiet is when the wilting Violets should be most concerned. As with our comrades the Gurkhas I repeat.....We too shall have OUR DAY.


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