Khalid Aziz: Not enough benevolence! (From Hampshire Chronicle)

Khalid Aziz: Not enough benevolence!

12:30pm Thursday 19th July 2007 in

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BY some supreme irony on the day that Winchester saw the sad return of one of the latest of our soldiers to be killed in Iraq, and at the same time as the nation changed Prime Ministers in mid-term without the courtesy of asking the poor electorate for their views on the subject, I was among a privileged audience at Winchester's Great Hall to hear a concert by the Adjutant General's band.

The occasion was in aid of the Army Benevolent Fund, which aims to help out soldiers and their families when they have fallen on hard times and of course that includes those wounded on active service.

Whilst, for obvious reasons, deaths tend to get all the headlines, the scores more who are wounded every day tend to be forgotten.

As we sat beneath the magnificent Round Table, I reflected on what successive ruling politicians have done with our armed services.

For decades now with ever decreasing defence budgets we have had more admirals than ships, and our soldiers and airmen are often forced into using their personal mobile phones because MoD issue communications equipment is so unreliable.

On top of that we pay our servicemen poorly.

It wasn't so in Arthur's day. At least then you got the spoils of war, but only if you won.

Of course it's not like that today and quite rightly. Win or lose, you're looked after. Or are you?

We were open-mouthed as the general in charge told us of the kind of compensation handed out to the 60,000 men left disabled in the South of England through war: they get a one-off gratuity of £10,000 and a pension of around the same each year, regardless of the nature of their injuries.

The concert, which embodied all that is good about the Army way of doing things, had been sponsored by a financial services company, and its eloquent director chillingly advised us of how he had struggled to invest £1.4 million paid out to a car accident victim to ensure he could create enough income to cover the specialist care needed for the rest of her life.

As the music played I couldn't help but think how wrong this all is.

Politicians are quick enough to take the credit when war goes well, but they don't like being confronted with the very real human costs of their decisions (and remember, Parliament voted for our perilous entry into Iraq, however much they might argue now that they were misled).

There's never enough public money to satisfy political ambitions aimed at buying votes. Just think if they had to pay the real costs of their adventures.

They should start now and ensure our wounded soldiers are properly compensated. This is not a job for a struggling charity.

Or would they prefer to revisit the scenes of my youth when one regularly saw war veterans, often amputees, selling matches on street corners?