The leader's not for burning?

IT may have been a wee bit insensitive to parade a Bonfire Night effigy of the former SNP leader Alex Salmond through the streets of Lewes in Sussex, even if they didn't burn him. But it also gave a voice to those who happen to believe that the fitting place for anyone who plots the destruction of the United Kingdom is right up there with Guy Fawkes.

THANKS for your humorous epitaphs. The expression "never speak ill of the dead" is obviously a new one. A reader found a tombstone on which one grieving husband inscribed: "Arabella Young, who on 17th July 1781 began to hold her tongue."

ANOTHER reader tells of a headstone in Yorkshire where the first lines record the death of a husband and the next line the passing of his wife. Underneath, in a different script, someone added: "She was not a virtuous woman."

MY father, too, as a fully paid-up Yorkshireman, felt no obligation to speak well of the dead. When one of his acquaintances died the local paper approached him for a few words to include in the obituary. "You may quote me," my father replied, "as saying that Mr ****** was a complete **** and the world is a much better place for his passing." They didn't use it.

I CRITICISED the BBC a few days ago for wiping, destroying or losing so many priceless programmes from its early days. A reader leaps to defend Auntie with an email about the expense of old magnetic tapes and says: "The BBC wiping and re-using magnetic media was nothing more sinister than an economy measure." An economy measure? At the Beeb? I haven't laughed so much for ages. There are dozens of big news organisations in this country. It is a tough, competitive market and all these organisations, with one notable exception, are scratching around desperately for readers, viewers and advertising income. The BBC, on the other hand, gets an annual bung of £4,000 million from the taxpayer, simply for being the BBC. Economy? I don't think Auntie understands the word.

GOD alone knows why Michael Fallon is our Secretary of State for Defence. He looks like a suburban grocer, his background is in stockbroking and private nurseries and he has never spent a day in uniform. Yet he is the man who has ordered British troops back into Iraq, to "train" Iraqi forces how to fight the Islamic State. Train them? Which bit of "Don't run away" do the Iraqis not understand? If they are not prepared to fight for their own country, why should British soldiers be sent to hold their hands? By rights, this Sunday should have been a day to rejoice, the first Remembrance Day for many years with no British "boots on the ground" in any foreign wars. Michael Fallon is changing all that. I fear events may teach him a terrible lesson.

REMEMBRANCE Day memories. In the early 1980s my old TA unit was on parade as usual. The well-rehearsed drill from previous years was for the officer commanding to give a crisp command: "Squadron, eyes right!" as we approached the mayor and civic party. But a new officer decided to use the unit's name in full. We were a successor unit to two grand old regiments and our full title was rather long. As we approached the saluting dais, the officer bellowed: "67 (The Queen's Own Warwickshire and Worcestershire Yeomanry) Signal Squadron (Volunteers), eyes right!" By the time he finished we were well past the mayor and so we solemnly saluted the Chinese restaurant instead.