Would this happen in the US?

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You've GOT to be kidding me.

That's disgusting! And isn't Surrey one of the more posh counties in England?

From the reports, there is considerable public sympathy in the USA for veterans of the war in Iraq. Certainly more than there was for returning soldiers during the Vietnam War. But so many are coming back from their tours of duty injured, or otherwise facing adjustment issues, that the existing facilities cannot cope. There has been a huge surge in homelessness among American veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

It could happen anywhere, sadly.

If I was the owner of that swimming pool as I see it, those veterans and their instructor may use the pool all they wish. As far as those cads who said they should be expelled, as far as I am concerned they can go to hell.

Yeah it could happen. There is evil and there is ignorance, what can you do?

Thats absolutly horrific. That women should be named and shaimed!! I simply cannot beleive how some people treat veterans returning home. In WW1 and WW2 veterans were praised and now veitnam and soldures returning home from our current situations overseas are treated so horribly. Its so shaimful!! I have met a few vietnam vets and have friends over their or back from being over their and its always very nice to see them, I would certainly help them out as much as I could anyways if they needed it, and have given 1 vietnam vet homeless down at a nearby river while I was fishing a few bucks cause thats all I had. Im thankful for their sacrafice, no matter how you look at our current conflicts, and realize they are doing a job and making a sacrafice I have not had to make.

I would like to know more about this incident. The majority of the UK public was against the war from the start, so their anger at the war is something that can be understood as a justifiable political viewpoint. However, this rancorous incident appears to be anger directed at the troops themselves, not the war. My concern for the people of the UK is that if attitudes among the swimmers towards these soldiers getting the rehabilitation they need prevails among the UK population, then how can they be motivated to defend themselves if they were under attack in another World War? (WWII wasn't /that/ long ago.) The most striking thing for me about this incident is that the swimmers totally forgot about how important their military is to their defense in general, regardless of the situation in Iraq, and reacted to the soldiers with such spite and idiocy.

Those people sound like first class snobs. My mom would never stoop to insult a soldier but she used to pull me away from disabled people and act all revulsed by them. So, the comments by those ladies don't really surprise me. This, in a country that issues ASBOs to autistic children.

Absolutely it can happen in the US and it did. Veterans who came back from Vietnam were severely criticized and laughed at. Many incidences occurred involving these vets disabled or not. Regardless of how you feel about that war. The vets didn't deserve that. Especially since many of them were drafted.

The way I look at it, those servicemen have already paid to use the pool. Who honestly cares if a person with a missing limb goes swimming at a local swimming pool, especially one who lost their limb(s) while they were serving their country? Plus, children have to know that losing limbs is a part of life and shouldn't be scared of people who have lost an arm or leg or both. I hope that those women feel ashamed of themselves for arguing not to have disabled servicemen swimming in their pool!

What got me was the fact that they were accused of 'scaring the children.' What, maybe your kids will grow up knowing the negative effects of war? Can't have that, now, can we.

This report made me so angry. As far as I'm concerned, this is a bunch of ignorant, thicko morons who have no comprehension of the real world and what our troops are sacrificing. Unfortunately This country seems to be full of more and more of this type of selfish prat. I suspect that these are the sort of people who are too thick to even realise that there have been wars in Afghanistan and Iraq or even that soldiers actually get injured. I also suspect that they would have done the same if it was a group of disabled children.

I'm more shocked that the response was to ask the servicemen to leave - the management of the pool should have told the morons to leave and banned them and their spawn for life. In fact, they should have been prosecuted under the new Disablility Discrimination laws.

Please be assured that though a majority of people in the UK may have been against the war, there is a strong tradition of supporting our forces, despite the choices that our politicians make. At the end of the day, most of us are still intelligent enough to realise that soldiers do the bidding of our elected politicians and cannot pick and choose what wars to fight. Most of the on-line debates about this on sites like the BBC, always show the most highly recommended comments in favour of our forces but critical of our politicians.

Our politicians are as big a disgrace. They have been busy shutting down specialist armed forces hospitals and rehabilitation centres, to save money. To be frank, if they actually supplied the forces with the money and resources needed in the first place, many of these servicemen wouldn't have been so badly injured anyway.

I agree with that, Cernunnos. Check this out:

http://www.uknda.org/

There is nothing to suggest in any version of the story ive seen that the jeering had anything to do with them being veterans, that is the just the papers spin on it. What we seem to have some unpleasant people (possibly no more than 2 or 3) getting upset over;

a) the perception that someone else was hogging part of 'their' paid-for pool for free.
b) being upset at the sight of disabled people.

This would seem to be nothing more than a petty dispute over swimming-pool lane allocation, combined with a disrespect for disabled people (which i like to think is an isolated incident and certainly not the norm) it really does us no favours to spin it needlessly into some great political issue about pacifism and veterans.

I think the way people will swallow political spin from the media with no effort at critical evaluation is often a far greater and insidious threat than the issues they get het up over!

I didn't see any spin in the article I linked to. But you've got this bit correct:



I'll add that I'm sure if they knew that part of the pool was being used for free, then they also knew those using it were military personnel, and knew why those individuals had various body parts missing. The problem is in that they acted the way they did knowing that. True, it would have been just as inexcusable if the disabled people had not been from the military, but the military connection adds another angle in that the behaviour shows extreme disrespect for those who have sacrificed a normal life for the benefit of us all (and you need to separate your anti Iraq war thoughts from the underlying way voluntary military service functions in a democracy, psych)