For too long, successive governments have paid lip service to our veterans – they deserve much better

FINALLY, the message seems to be getting through that our brilliant military veterans deserve much better.

For too long, successive governments have paid lip service to the Armed ­Forces Covenant.

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Even more needs to be done to help our brave veterans – they deserve much better[/caption]

Yes, there has been some help for injured veterans — much of it thanks to donations from the kind-hearted public.

And The Sun bows to no one in our admiration and support for heroes who have paid the price, both physically and mentally, for their courage.

But far too little has been done to help in other ways — such as supporting the return to Civvy Street for the many brilliant men and women who leave our armed forces, having served with great duty and often in the toughest of ­situations.

The way service personnel — earning considerably less than strikers — gave up their Christmas holidays to cover dangerous gaps left by industrial action, is a shining example of the talent and can-do attitude our troops have.

So if our selfless troops need help with transition, then it must be there for them for as long as they need it.

And there must be an end to the vexatious legal claims from past conflicts.

Veterans Minister and former soldier Johnny Mercer – whose role has been shamefully undervalued until now – deserves applause for continuing to fight for the rights of our hero veterans.

Flops & robbers

IT is simply criminal that more than a ­million burglary cases were dropped last year because cops couldn’t find a suspect.

The sheer number of crooks getting away with it is damning enough.

But behind the bare statistics are ­hundreds of thousands of people whose homes have been violated, whose hard-earned possessions have been stolen and who, too often, have lost irreplaceable personal mementoes.

What are the chances that if the thieves had said something nasty on social media, instead of breaking and entering into someone’s home, the cops would have been all over them?

But a crime that shatters people’s sense of security and destroys lives?

Not so much.

Ease fuel pain

BRITISH drivers already face one of the highest tax burdens in Europe, so it’s an extra kick in their teeth when petrol prices are kept unfairly high at the forecourts.

Now Tory MPs are telling Chancellor Jeremy Hunt what The Sun has been screaming for years: We need an ­independent PumpWatch regulator in 2023 to crack down on rip-off petrol prices.

The fleecing of Britain’s drivers by greedy fuel retailers must end now.