The number two gallantry medal for actions involving the enemy, behind only the Victoria Cross.
So a Gurkha Corporal is awarded one (along with others) for the following action.
Corporal Mohansingh Tangnami, 29, from the western part of Nepal, was recognised for his steadfastness under enemy fire throughout the tour.
On one patrol, he carried a wounded comrade to safety before braving fire again to collect the man\’s ammunition and gun to prevent it falling into the wrong hands.
Good man that. His reaction?
"I still don\’t believe that I met the Queen," he said today.
And there are still people who oppose proper pensions and the right of settlement in this country for these men?
If they were sworn enemies of everything we hold dear, they would be welcomed with open arms.
I expect that they’ll be denied the right to retire here: seems that the be-nasty-to-(non-terrorist)-migrants movement now has full hold over Nasty Labour:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/pensions/3382931/Foreigners-banned-from-retiring-to-Britain.html
Which just means that we won’t be able to retire to New Zealand, Australia, etc. It’s the Smoot-Hawley immigration tariff act.
I think it has more to do with destroying our ties to English speaking countries than anything else.
Depends on your definition of the word ‘people’, I suppose…
Without wishing to denigrate the bravery of Corporal Tangnami and his colleagues, the Military Cross is not the “number two gallantry medal for actions involving the enemy” – that is the ‘Conspicuous Gallantry Cross’.
The MC ranks one level lower, on a par with (although technically junior to) the Distinguished Service Cross and (although technically senior to) the Distinguished Flying Cross.
Oh, the ‘official guide’ is here.
To follow up what ee007 just said, if you look deeply into the “consultation” papers deep in the Home Office website, you will find that they once again attempting to abolish the “UK ancestry visa” that allows people from Commonwealth countries with UK born grandparents from coming to the UK. They have already tried this once. It was implicit in the Labour immigration policy going into the last election – which Labour presumably got from the bureaucrats in the Home Office – but the government backed off once the Times pointed out what the things they were saying actually meant. However, they seem to be trying it out again, despite the fact that abolition of this visa type seems to be supported by absolutely nobody who is not a Home Office bureaucrat. Another thing they are trying to do is abolish the status of “Indefinite Leave to Remain” (ie permanent residency) as an intermediate step before citizenship, mainly because legal precedents assign actual rights that can’t be taken away from people with this status, which means that such people can’t be harangued by bureaucratic crap (and charged ridiculous fees for being harangued by bureaucratic crap) by the Home Office in the way that it would like. And there is the potential “Compulsory community service” requirement for people who want to become citizens. (Personally I enjoy comparing any “compulsory volunteer work” scheme to the Hitler Youth. It upsets the proponents of such schemes delightfully).
I am off topic though. Obviously I do support giving all Ghurkas who have served honourably in the British army the same pension as anyone else who has served honourably in the British army, as well as an unconditional right to settle in the UK.