Falklands adventures (From Oxford Mail)

There is no cause to knock the armed forces or royalty and the people you should be pointing the finger at are the politicians. It makes me wonder if you have ever served your country ? Whileon the subjectof the Falklands you might find it amazing that a British pensioners gets no annual increase in his pension if he is resident in the Falkland Islands. This is true, of course he could pack his bags and move to the Philippines where he would get the uprated pension. Now that is worthy of comment ! It is hightime that the government paid the uprated pension to all pensioners wherever they decide to retire in the world. This government is the only one in the world with pension scheme that discriminates in this way against it's own pensioners and we are talking about just 4% or 1 in 25 pensioners who are affected. Remembering that all pensioners were required to pay the National Insurance payments throughout their working life and now they are being robbed and can only look forward to a life in poverty unless they get help from family or charity. This abomination of a policy that the government persists in maintaining is an insult and affects about 500,000 worldwide in countries mainly in the Commonwealth but also Singapore and Thailand and many others. The politicians cannot defend this immoral and unjust treatment of the weakest section of society and yet are only too keen to boost their own pensions and allowances. This would be treated as a criminal offence if you operated a pension scheme and did this ! Hello David Cameron, where are you ? As leader, you should be leading the way and doing away with such unjust treatment and Nick Clegg is just as bad, not to mention Steve Webb , the pensions minister. Honesty, Integrity, Fair play, common decency are foreign words to these misnamed honourable gentlemen !

I think that Morgeo's comment, above, would have been more suitable as a letter in its own right - although I generally agree with his sentiments.

With regard to Mr Everett's letter, my first reaction was that it had to be either a huge wind-up or, otherwise, just a bit silly.

To my mind, the Falklands garrison has been necessary as a deterrent since the 1982 conflict because Buenos Aires has never dropped its claim to the islands.

I don't think for a moment that Cameron intends to "invade" Argentina as Mr Everett suggests. More likely he is reminding them that the FI is better defended now than in 1982, in the light of the controversy that Buenos Aires presently seems keen to stir up with the approaching anniversary.

The UK defence cuts have weakened our position to the extent that we would find it almost impossible to repeat the military success of 1982, should another invasion occur, which I also think is unlikely. The need therefore remains to demonstrate to any potential invader that we now have a better system in place to defend the FI than we did then.

If, however, Argentina was to invade the FI again, other South American countries have this time pledged military support for its cause, which would make our task force's mission all the more difficult. Also, in spite of the so-called "special relationship", I doubt that we could rely upon the US to reciprocate the assistance our forces have given it in Iraq and Afghanistan by giving us military backing.

Finally, what is wrong with having an RAF search-and-rescue helicopter operating from the FI? So they have a lot sheep there, but don't they also have fishing and oil exploration industries? It is also quite near to Antarctica - always popular with explorers and, more recently, tourists. I can imagine that that area of the South Atlantic also sees a lot of commercial shipping, which would surely make it sensible to have a rescue operation in place in case something went wrong.

I do not claim to be an expert in matters concerning the FI or the question of who "owns" them. These are just my thoughts after reading the letter.

Also, the British forces garrison on the FI only amounts to 1,200 personnel, not the 5,000 troops mentioned in Mr Everett's letter.

Thankyou OX26Hound for your comment and support and you are right. I have raised this as an independent letter before but do use any occasion to highlight the discriminatory policy of the British government towards pensioners who retire abroad and who are penalised for doing so. There is absolutely no just reason to do this to a minority group of pensioners. David Cameron knows full well that this is wrong but does nothing to change it . Even the Equalities and Human Rights Commission refer us to the DWP who are the very ones implementing this disgraceful policy. So no help there. I would ask the constituents of David Cameron to put this to him. Yes, I wrote to him but he did not answer - because he has no valid answers !