Sounded Out

Poppy-wearing patriots will rejoice that the month of Remembrance rah-rah is going out with a double clatter of vintage military Britishness. Among the donkeys, the rattle of ready money - all intended for charity, of course - has caused a former head of the army to be caught offering ministerial access for cash. Lord Dannatt and another, equally dedicated public servant have been suspended from their ermined sinecures, despite Dannatt's transaction taking place in the future conditional tense and with purely theoretical willingness.

For the lions, meanwhile, there is the clatter of the Ajax armoured vehicle, a sonic weapon that the messiah of David Lynch's Dune would have envied had he possessed sufficient bulldog pragmatism to prefer deafening his own people over damaging the enemy's. The virtues of the Ajax were noised abroad some years ago, and it seems little has been done to suppress them. Fans of the Light Brigade, the Somme and Operation Market Garden will note with pleasure that the victory of rah-rah over realism in British military planning remains as decisive as ever.