Medals not issued or not approved
TTN - your PO friend has taken a liberty with which I for one am not comfortable. I might have done what you did, to oblige a friend, but I would have kept quiet about it. He ought to remember that he would not have done this while he was serving. He is wearing his medals this week for those who can do nothing to change whatever they were allocated.
You will know of the Pingat Jasa Malaysia (PJM). Many thousands of ex-servicemen have accepted this medal from the Malaysian government for service during Confrontation. The medal itself is a most impressive production, the presentation ceremony has been very proper and enjoyable and we recipients have been proud to receive it in a circumstance of mutual respect ... except ... our own government, with a curl of its lip, only very slightly approves.
The MOD tells us that for us to wear the PJM on the left breast would be offensive to Her Majesty and, in so doing, briskly insults the head of state of a friendly nation. So, I assume, almost all of us put the medal away unworn. The MOD is wrong but we live with that, remembering bigger decisions they have got more disgracefully wrong.