Pauline McNeil #2144

In the week of Remembrance, the British government told a dozen veterans in Torquay it would stop paying for their homes. The same week it told Parliament it would pay £138 a night for every illegal migrant it puts up in an army camp in Sussex. The veterans live at Stone Court, where the Royal British Legion found them places this spring. Scott Marshall did a tour of Iraq as a Lance Bombardier and came home with PTSD. Maurice Quinlan, a Navy man, was sleeping in a shelter on the seafront before Stone Court took him in, and his two-year-old daughter stays with him there three nights a week. Their rooms were paid for by the government's own Reducing Veterans' Homelessness programme. A fortnight ago they were told the application to extend it had been turned down. They have until March to find a place to live, or they're out, back on the street again. Elsewhere, on Saturday night Downing Street put out a press release headed "No one who has served our country should sleep rough on our streets", announcing £8.7 million for that same programme. You can tell what a government believes by what it finds money for, and for whom. They value undocumented men with thus-far appalling rates of criminal activity who enter the country via invasive means over men who've fought and risked death for us. They value the criminal generally over the law-abiding. The small boats episode may be the only reason anyone involved in the government of Britain will be remembered in 400 years time - those who began it, those who perpetuated, continued and defended it. The manifest insanity of it shall soon end. Men who stow into our realm via illegal means will become instant prisoners. Social homes will once again go to citizens, not men from abroad who have an outsized likelihood of making a nil contribution to this country over their lifetime. And we will give our veterans, the most deserving of all those walking among us, dedicated tracks to prosperity and tailored medical care, so that a homecoming from battle will be worth it. Scott Marshall, who served, has a home until March. The camp at Crowborough will keep the party going for undocumented migrant men until 2030. This is your Britain this Remembrance Sunday.