Last updated 11:48, Thursday, 02 October 2008

We’re a funny old country, but not always in the laugh a minute way.

Victory: Actress Joanna Lumley with Gurkha VC veterans

We are certainly a country of strange and irrational contrasts, highlighted by two events this week.

One of those road cops documentaries on televisions showed bobbies picking up a wandering pair of illegal immigrants on the motorway.

There was nothing they could do with them other than to check them out at the local station then send them on their way with advice to report to one of Britain’s immigration centres.

Naturally nothing was heard again of the two jolly immigrants who, by now, are probably slaving for about two quid an hour in some grotty London takeaway sweat shop.

Thousands of illegals have flooded into the country without anyone having a real idea just what the scale of the situation is.

Furthermore we seem to be perfectly willing to sponsor preachers of hatred and their families, with state benefits.

Yet when it came to heroic men willing to lay down their lives for Britain, what did the Home Office say? You don’t have any strong ties with us and you aren’t welcome to live here.

The Government has already shot itself in the foot by its treatment of the Gurkhas who wanted to stay in this country if they had retired before 1997.

This week a test case involving five ex-Gurkhas, representing 2,000 soldiers whose applications to stay in Britain had been rejected, produced one of those rare heart warming moments when the bureaucratic and plainly wrong power of Government was defeated.

Well almost. The Home Office could still delay and obstruct the change in rules. Hopefully Home Secretary Jacqui Smith will see to it that does not happen. Otherwise shame will turn to dishonour.

Seven Gurkhas have died waiting for Tuesday’s High Court ruling. In fact 50,000 of their colleagues have already died fighting for Britain, winning a total of 13 Victoria Crosses.

I don’t suppose the admirable Joanne Lumley will figure in the next Honours List after fronting a campaign which finally saw justice done this week.

The actress’s father’s life was saved by a Gurkha soldier when she was just a child.

She didn’t forget. Sadly too many of us did.

The disgrace is that it had to take a court case to begin righting a great wrong.