The facts
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) is engaged in talks this week aimed at resolving a High Court challenge over compensation for gay veterans, according to Defence Secretary Wes Streeting. The legal battle concerns the government's LGBT financial recognition scheme. A judge is scheduled to rule next week on whether former personnel Steven Stewart and Mark Shephard can proceed with a judicial review. Stewart and Shephard received significantly less than the £50,000 payment available to some formally dismissed personnel because their departures were recorded as resignations, not formal dismissals. Streeting told the Guardian that the government wants to ensure the rules are correct and is open to continued discussion, but he did not commit to changing the rules or confirm a settlement. The Guardian reported that gay and lesbian individuals were barred from military service until 2000.
Our take
The Ministry of Defence, that towering fortress of institutional cowardice and bureaucratic sadism, is finally in talks this week. Not talks about how they systematically ruined lives for decades by hunting gay people out of the armed forces, you understand. No, they're in talks about how to potentially pay slightly less than a court might force them to after they devised a compensation scheme so dickheadishly cruel it’s a wonder they didn’t award bonus points for creative malice. The scheme, for the record, is the 'LGBT financial recognition' scheme, which is a name so dripping with bullshit it could fertilize a continent. It ‘recognises’ that if you were formally dismissed for being gay, you might get up to £50,000. But if you were so psychologically terrorised by the very institution you swore to serve that you ‘chose’ to resign before they could kick you out? Well, fuck you, you get less. That's the MoD's idea of recognition: a financial slap in the face calibrated to the precise bureaucratic loophole they used to fuck you over in the first place. Defence Secretary Wes Streeting, a man now tasked with cleaning up this historic shit-show, is out here doing the political two-step. He says the government wants to ‘ensure the rules are correct’. Not that the rules are a rancid, shameful monument to petty official hatred, mind you. Just that they might be technically incorrect. He’s ‘open to continued discussion’, which is politician-speak for ‘we are hoping you get tired and go away so we can keep the treasury’s vaults locked’. He won’t commit to changing the rules. He won’t confirm a settlement. He’s just ‘in talks’. What a prick. The sheer, staggering gall of it. For years, this ministry enforced a ban so vile it wasn’t lifted until the year 2000. They investigated, interrogated, and destroyed careers and lives. And now their legacy project is to sit in a room with lawyers and quibble over whether the people they bludgeoned into ‘resigning’ deserve the same pittance as those they formally defenestrated. They’re not apologizing; they’re auditing their own inhumanity for cost-saving opportunities. It’s like a mugger arguing he owes less restitution because the victim handed over their wallet before being punched. The MoD isn’t seeking justice; it’s just trying to find the cheapest way to lose.
