FISSIONLINE

The clamour over the Nuclear Test Medal, forever to be known as the BORIS GONG, has reached hysterical proportions.

Obscure Labour MPS are lining up in Parliament to demand it be struck NOW! Those who purport to represent the nuclear veterans are threatening some sort of protest at the Remembrance day celebrations if they don't get the medal NOW!

Meanwhile the Daily Mirror has launched a petition to whip up support to force the MoD to provide the medal NOW!

What is it about these people? They've got their medal, even though it is admittedly from the lower echelons of medallic honours.

As far as we know the first and only person to suggest a medal for Britain's nuclear veterans was the Duke of Edinburgh.

On a visit to Christmas Island in 1959 he turned to his honour guard and, referring to the primitive conditions they lived in, said: "You all deserve a medal for being here "

In forty years of talking to nuclear veterans since we have never come across a single case where the interviewee expressed a desire for a medal.

It seems we have been talking to the wrong veterans.

If recent Daily Mirror reports are anything to go by there is a positive clamour for a medal out there.

Every veteran it speaks to these days seems desperate to get their hands on one, and the newspaper is expending a lot of energy and newsprint on their behalf

It reported "gasps" of astonishment when a Labour MP spoke about it in Parliament

And "gasp" an invitation to Downing Street to talk about a medal was treated as though the newspaper was entering the portals of Valhalla, the mythical Norse paradise of warriors. That may be all very well, but the fact remains the award of a medal will not advance the cause of the nuclear veterans or their children one jot.

In fact as Ken McGinley, their iconic founder pointed out, it would only serve to give the authorities a chance to close down the nuclear veterans fight for justice once and for all.

Is that really Mirror wants? Perhaps it thinks that by "winning" a medal for the veterans, it will be able to close down its own campaign. We sincerely hope that is not the case. What a pitiable end that would be! Forty years of pain, suffering, strife and torment for a shiny bit of metal pinned to the breasts of the very few nuclear veterans surviving

Is this what the mighty Daily Mirror, the soldier's newspaper, heir to Cassandra, Marje Proops, Paul Foot, John Pilger and others, has been reduced to?

Begging Boris Johnson for a medal! The Mirror needs to up its game.

It needs to use all that investigative talent it is rightly famous for to get to the real truth.

Expose the scientists and their current cheerleaders who knew that troops would be hit by fallout

Expose the doctors and their well-funded contemporaries who continue to cover-up the terrible health consequences

Expose the lying, cheating politicians who continue to hide behind the spurious evidence of their academic placemen

Surely the Mirror with all its resources could mount a new campaign, an investigation that would have real teeth? One that would have the Ministry of Defence diving for cover, doctors and scientists cowering under their desks, and politicians quaking in their boots?

In the best traditions of journalism, the Daily Mirror should drag them all out kicking and screaming into the harsh light of truth to face the consequences

Such an action would be greeted with universal acclaim and maybe, just maybe it could restore the Daily Mirror's historic role as a true champion of the ordinary people of this country.

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