We're British --- send a gunboat (From Times Series)

We're British --- send a gunboat

11:08am Thursday 30th April 2009

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Call me a dear old-fashioned thing if you must but I grew up in an era when Britain had an Empire and enough gunboats to send to quell any trouble in foreign parts.

I can remember when the Gurkhas were revered as Britain's most loyal allies in combat. I can even recall the days when our local politicians did not get a penny in expenses.

Some time during my reign as editor of the Times group one of my "moles" at the town hall - hey, I had more than one 'Deep Throat', friends - whispered that they had started handing out exs to our worthy aldermen and councillors.

I took time from devising my own expenses - I think the firm paid about a penny a mile petrol money at the time so it took a while to get to a fiver! - to establish that if I went through the bureaucratic system of form filling and touching the forelock I would be allowed to see what the denizens of the borough were handing over to those who had volunteered to perform a public service.

At the appointed time I was ushered into a room in the bowels of the town hall and presented with each and every receipt for expenses received.

A jobsworthy stood attendant and remained mute at any of my questions but I was able to record that a husband and wife team had totted up the most of the loot handed out and that a commendable few had disdained taking a penny. Some scoop, eh?

Those of us who grew up in Hendon were proud of our heritage - the birthplace of aviation in this country and the home of Denis Compton, the Brylcreemed hero of Middlesex and England and Arsenal and England.

Dear old Hendon Council, later to be swallowed into the giant misnamed Barnet, ran a tidy ship without having to pay the local politicians to turn up for meetings.

They never thought up a wheeze like the present day political geezers who extract money from our Barnet council taxes to go towards paying for a 2012 Olympics we (that's the nation, not just me and Mrs S) can ill afford.

And didn't I read just this week that Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs may be paroled in July and placed in a care home in Barnet ... another worthy cause for our squeezed savings?

I may seem my amiable self-centred soul on the surface but inwardly I have been seething at the injustice being handed out by our political masters to the Gurkhas, after new guidelines made it virtually impossible for most of their former soldiers to settle in Britain. The Gurkhas have been steadfast allies to Britain throughout my lifetime.

So there is rejoicing in the Signy household at a Commons victory for the Gurkhas, led by Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, Tory David Cameron, a host of dissident Labour MPs and the redoubtable Joanna Lumley.

In my four years in India - most of the time in what is now Pakistan - I worked alongside Gurkhas, the most pro-British of people. The only concern I ever encountered was playing football against a team of Gurkha soldiers - I was on the left wing and the excitable crowd stood alongside the touchline waving their famous Kukris by slashing them from right to left in an upward curve at every attacking movement.

After my first uneasy touchline jink skipping over the Kukris,I decided not to risk life and limb and that an easier way of life was to goal hang in their penalty area and I watched proceedings as we, the mighty British Army, got hammered 4-1 and the Kukris flew higher and higher.

So ended my first-ever Kukri lesson! I was so glad the Gurkhas were usually on our side handling those famous weapons.

That under-pressure Mr Brown in Downing Street seems to have responded to my recent call to get better weather forecasts. On a more serious note let's hope he now gets to grip with the vexed issue of the expenses of politicians and the injustice to the Gurkhas.

Note: In my time I chaired more than a dozen Mayoral appeals, raising hundreds of thousands of pounds, and numerous committees around the borough. I didn't ask for a penny in return ... in fact it cost a few hundred quid a year to support each Mayoral charity.