A soldier home on leave after being injured in Afghanistan was refused a room by a hotel when he showed his military ID card at reception.Cpl Stringer, who has since returned to active service in Afghanistan, is reportedly still angry about what happened and the hotel has now apologized.
Corporal Tomos Stringer, 23, from Gwynedd, was visiting a wounded colleague in Surrey when he was turned away from the Metro Hotel in Woking.
He spent the night in his car after being told it was management policy not to accept military personnel.
Sadly, the treatment of Cpl Stringer is not an isolated event: The Herald reported in May that the British government is set to outlaw discrimination against service personnel following a number of incidents:-
Discrimination against service personnel wearing military uniform will become a criminal offence under proposals accepted yesterday by the government.
The move towards outlawing any physical, administrative, or verbal abuse of troops quotes one major incident reported exclusively by The Herald in January, which involved 200 soldiers returning from Afghanistan being forced to strip off their desert camouflage uniforms on the open tarmac at Birmingham International Airport and change into civilian clothing before being allowed through the terminal building.
Three other incidents used as a basis for new legislation included verbal intimidation of RAF personnel in Peterborough which led to a local ban on the wearing of uniform in public, the refusal of Harrods to allow a uniformed Army officer into the store after a Remembrance Day parade, and abusive complaints about seriously injured soldiers from the Headley Court rehabilitation centre being allowed to use one lane of the swimming pool at a nearby leisure centre.
