[Ghurkali: 'Here come the Ghurkas']
Mr. Eugenides found this in the Times:
Thousands more Gurkha soldiers and their families will be given the right to settle in Britain under a new policy to be announced by the Home Office.
Damn right!
Why on earth this country should make it so difficult for people to live here who have given it loyal and unselfish service for so long, while at the same time it shrugs its shoulders and cheerfully admits all sorts of quite unsuitable people from anywhere else in the world, is utterly beyond me. Unless, as I’ve said before, the proper Britishness of the Ghurkas now so exceeds our own that it’s thought to be embarrassing.
The other thing I wonder about is why retired Ghurkas should be so good at bus-driving that in some places they seem to have cornered the market. I’ve never been to Nepal, but I don’t seriously suppose that the opportunities there to acquire the relevant experience are really very much better than they are in the British Army. Perhaps it’s something to do with the famous ‘how many Ghurkas can ride on a Land-Rover’ stunt that they used to do in the Royal Tournament. Someone has to drive the thing, after all, though one can never actually see him.
Not only do the buggers-in-charge hate us with unmeasurable venom, but…
…they want to make it look as if we ourselves rat on our clear obligations to those who have served us from elsewhere. The clear purpose of this is to make those others – in this case the poor Ghurkhas – hate us also, for quite correct reasons, which is that we have betrayed them.
The fact that we have been been asleep on the job, and this have _let_ wicked people make it look as if we have betrayed the Ghurkhas, will be, as it is said “lost in the translation”.
I suppose this might be right, but I wonder whether my own conspiracy theory might be a fraction more Occam-compliant…:-)