Ministry for veterans is long overdue

The poor or worse no treatment meted out to our veterans who were wounded and often killed defending our  country and the poor treatment of their dependents has long been a source of shame  to me particularly when I saw when I saw how well the US treated their ex-servicemen and women with their specialist military hospitals and generous benefits. We are still stuck in the Old Etonian,,Duke of Wellington view of his squaddies as scum

In Edinburgh where I grew up there was a specialist military hospital set up in WW I  at Craiglockhart  for the treatment of shell shock. Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen  were treated there. This condition has now been described as PTSD by the bien pensants who sadly now rule us and who of course shut down such hospitals as uneconomic. I applaud BoJo for rectifying this scandal and appointing Johnny  Mercer as minister for Veterans but let it not be officers only as at Craiglockhart and as it was at TV 's Downton Abbey. Ordinary soldiers and their families deserve our thanks and nothing but the best treatment












pTS