Soldiering on

Len Tingle Editor Politics Show Yorkshire and Lincolnshire

Forgotten heroes of Burma?

Major Richard Perkins was a Chindit commando leading special operations forces behind enemy lines in the Burmese jungle in World War Two.

Now the 90-year-old is fighting his own campaign to recover compensation for the thousands of pounds wrongly deducted from his pension by the tax man.

After the war Major Perkins continued as a regular soldier until 1959 when he was discharged due to ill health.

Almost 40 years later he was identified as among 1,600 former solders who had been wrongly taxed because of a mistake by the army pay corp.

An old soldier from Pickering says he's been robbed of his pension.

The pensions of these war veterans should have been paid tax-free.

However, the Inland Revenue was not told this and deducted the money.

Ministers publicly apologised for the blunder and in 1999 announced that the affected pensioners would receive a full refund AND compensation for the interest they had lost on four decades of taxes they had paid because of bureaucratic error.

A hero's reward

"That is the point where the penny-pinching civil servants got involved," says an angry Richard Perkins.

"When I applied for my rebate the Ministry of Defence said I wasn't eligible because my discharge in 1959 was not attributable to service."

The CHINDITS were trained as commandos in WW2 Operated behind Japanese Lines in the Burmese Jungle The Chinthe is a ferocious Burmese mythical beast

In fact, the war hero who had served for years in extreme danger behind enemy lines in one of the bloodiest campaigns of the war left the army because of severe depression.

Even now he finds it difficult to talk of some parts of the time when over half the men who went into the jungles of Burma with him never came back.

The angry old campaigner went back to war.

In 2001 he took his case to a Pension's Appeal Tribunal which ruled in his favour and said he should get his money back. The MOD dug in its heels again.

Digging in

The Inland Revenue decided to pay him back the tax - but its powers to award interest was limited.

Only the MOD could pay interest back to 1959 and it is still refusing to do that. The old soldier calculates he is being denied £80,000 of much needed cash.

His local MP John Greenway thinks it is a disgrace.

Troubling memories of Burma during WW2

"This is a decorated war veteran who is being treated unfairly and is now living close to penury," says the Conservative member for Ryedale in North Yorkshire.

He has asked pointed questions of a succession of Labour armed forces ministers.

Meanwhile, from the tiny cottage he rents near Pickering, Major Greenway is conducting a well organised campaign.

The indefatigable 90-year-old has set up his own web page; organised a Number 10 e-petition which has already attracted over 850 signatures and regularly prods the media into taking up his case.

They are just waiting for me to die," he says. "I don't want to give them that satisfaction".

Len Tingle and the Politics Show cameras travel to North Yorkshire to take a look at the 90-year-old Major's campaign.

Second rate sport?

MPs are demanding that the Sports Council reconsider their decision to classify Rugby League as a second class sport.

Meanwhile, over in Hull, Tim Iredale joins a different kind of army - the legions of Rugby League supporters who want to know why the Government thinks their teams play a second rate sport.

Watch the Politics Show for Yorkshire Lincolnshire and the North Midlands on Sundays from 1200 BST on BBC ONE.