Naaah. A cock's still a cock, whether he's on operations or not. Individual's who are gallant in the field suddenly lose their backbones when they get back to staff. Gallantry awards will always occur, because the clarity of combat can bring the best - and worst - but usually the best out of people.

I'm being too blunt. It is indeed late (but piquet officer was many years ago). We breed and train superb combat leaders, but dreadful managers. Look at our personnel and pay systems. If Accenture buggered up its peoples wages on the daily basis that the army does, its HR people and accountants would be hanged, sacked industrial trialled etc. Meanwhile, we still pay full whack income tax despite being out of the country for over half the year (don't anyone dare say the operational allowance is a tax break - weighted at the bottom rate of a private soldier's pay regardless of how much one earns....). My Guardsmen on operations don't even clear £1000 a month ($2000). We can't field anything swiftly unless the minister says 'effing do this now' because our bureaucracy is dreadful. I've worked in the Centre, and can play management speak bull#### bingo with the best of them - but this is not the place for that. Our % GDP is at an all time low - comparable with the interwar years when we hedged our bets until it was too late to catch up with German rearmament, or a similar period under a Whig government during the Crimea. Senior Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen have to take the rap for how the money we get is spent - we can't hide behind Ministers' skirts once we get the slice of the pie. And still we piddle it all away on legacy clumsy expensive kit, when what we need are well trained and treated (thus recruited and retained and at the right quality) people - and enough of them. Not 232 uber-interceptors, or a make believe medium-weight euro trash capabilty that fits in a C130 but has the protection of a Warrior.

Nah....I got it right first time. Pricks.