Everyone back to the 1870s!

Another day, another set of half-baked policy prescription from one of Gordon's imports. This time it's Quentin Davies, former Tory MP, who has produced an idea that will get the backing of peppery ex-colonels up and down the country: a bank holiday to celebrate the Armed Forces.

Personally, I'd quite like to honour the armed forces by having a sensible foreign policy that didn't say 'me too' to every American-led adventure, but I am sure that's a hopeless dream. Adding a new bank holiday to celebrate the forces seems like the sort of thing the Government would have done after the Indian Mutiny, not in the 21st century. It seems quite American too, as we might expect from this PM.

I don't want people to hate the military, or to beat up soldiers for wearing their uniforms (something that has a strong whiff of urban legend, to my mind). But I also don't want a contentious bank holiday full of tabloid masturbation about our grand imperial past and how we bashed the Hun back in the jolly old days. We get that every time we play Germany at football, anyway.