Judging by some of the e-mails that I have received on the topic, the story of that old Gurkha hero barred from Britain that I posted Friday has disgusted not a few readers. They are quite right. It disgusts me too.

Thanks to the reader who reminded me of these words from Kipling’s The Last of The Light Brigade: There were thirty million English who talked of England’s might,There were twenty broken troopers who lacked a bed for the night.They had neither food nor money, they had neither service nor trade;They were only shiftless soldiers, the last of the Light Brigade.

They felt that life was fleeting; they knew not that art was long,That though they were dying of famine, they lived in deathless song.They asked for a little money to keep the wolf from the door;And the thirty million English sent twenty pounds and four!

Rather to the point, I feel.

And if some readers would draw analogies with the way that some of the soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan have been treated on their return home, they’d be right to.