{"id":3552,"date":"2014-12-21T18:20:08","date_gmt":"2014-12-21T18:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=3552"},"modified":"2014-12-21T18:20:08","modified_gmt":"2014-12-21T18:20:08","slug":"special-treatment-for-former-members-of-the-armed-services","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=3552","title":{"rendered":"Special Treatment for Former Members of the Armed Services?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/uk-30567631\">Yes<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" src=\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/en\/a\/a5\/British_Army_Logo.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"233\" height=\"200\" \/><\/p>\n<p>But why? Apparently there is something special about serving in the armed forces &#8211; special enough for the mythical (it has no legal basis and so is in fact not a covenant at all)\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Military_Covenant\">Military Covenant<\/a> to be a popular phrase. And even a factor in determining government policy.<\/p>\n<p>But why does someone who has served 20 years in the Army catering corp deserve more and\/or better services than an NHS nurse who has &#8220;fought in the trenches&#8221; (including volunteering for work in the Ebola-stricken countries in West Africa)? And who is most likely to suffer from <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Posttraumatic_stress_disorder\">PTSD<\/a>? A nurse up to his arms in blood and gore? Or an Army cook who is up to her arms in spuds?<\/p>\n<p>And when you come down to it,\u00a0<em>anyone<\/em> who suffers PTSD &#8211; even a banker who has smashed up his Ferrari &#8211; needs special treatment.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps those who have been in the armed services should be first in the queue for specialist treatments but those programmes should be open to all who need them.<\/p>\n<p>And perhaps the &#8220;Military Covenant&#8221; should be extended into a &#8220;Public Services Covenant&#8221; to include those other public servants whose jobs put them in harm&#8217;s way &#8211; the police, fireman, ambulance drivers, nurses, etc.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yes. But why? Apparently there is something special about serving in the armed forces &#8211; special enough for the mythical (it has no legal basis and so is in fact not a covenant at all)\u00a0Military Covenant to be a popular phrase. And even a factor in determining government policy. But why does someone who has <a href='https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=3552' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[7,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-politics","category-7-id","category-3-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1f2KI-Vi","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3552"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3552\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3553,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3552\/revisions\/3553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}