The Army’s “Policy, Guidance and Instructions on Inclusive Behaviours” states that “Acts of Remembrance, on Armistice Day and others, should be inclusive and seek to avoid being conducted as a wholly religious event”. (Telegraph source - Paywall)

Fair enough, but there's more than a touch of the straw man there. Remembrance absolutely shouldn't be a wholly religious event, but it never has been.

Then the guidance then goes on to say

Acts of Remembrance should be agnostic of religious elements and separated from Remembrance Services. This may be achieved by holding a religious service after the Act of Remembrance.

But the familiar Act of Remembrance is a non-religious ceremony which involves:

• The verse from Laurence Binyon's For the Fallen - 'They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old'

An extremely serious allegation against some element of UK Special Forces (UKSF) has emerged over the weekend.

The claim is that former members of Afghan Special Forces units, the so-called "Triples", who served alongside UKSF in Afghanistan, have had their requests for assistance under the ARAP scheme turned down because of UKSF concerns "that their former comrades in the Triples might, if relocated, “give evidence to Haddon-Cave”.

"Haddon-Cave" refers to the ongoing "Independent Inquiry investigating matters arising from the deployment of British Special Forces to Afghanistan from mid-2010 to mid-2013" chaired by Sir Charles Haddon-Cave.

Veterans UK, part of the MOD, have now extended the availability of the 'HM Armed Forces Veteran Card' to all former members of the UK regular and reserve forces:

Payments under the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme (AFCS) are currently considered income when determining whether someone is eligible for various benefits, but compensation awarded by courts for personal injury or medical negligence is exempt.

The effect is to reduce the benefits to which some veterans are entitled, or even in some cases to wipe out their enitlement altogether. This can affect war widows and families, as well as veterans themselves.

The origins of BAFF lie partly in a non-politically-partisan campaign by serving and recently-discharged personnel to encourage members of the armed forces community to register to vote, in order to make their own voting choice in the General Election of 2005.

The Government has issued instructions to the various pay review bodies, including the Armed Forces Pay Review Body (AFPRB), to commence their work for the 2024 pay round.

The Secretary of State's remit letter to the AFPRB Chair says that the nature of the "historically high" 2023-24 award should be taken into account, as well as "the Government's affordability position".

n 2021 a Defence Sub-Committee, chaired by Sarah Atherton MP, conducted an inquiry into Women in the Armed Forces and female veterans. The Committee is now inviting written submissions, especially from serving personnel, on one or more of the following points:

UPDATE 19 Oct: The MOD has now agreed that defence personnel can submit evidence to this inquiry. BAFF welcomes this decision.

We previously reported that:

The Chair of the Defence Sub-Committee inquiring into Service Accommodation has condemned as "fundamentally wrong" the MoD decision to ban serving personnel from contributing to the inquiry. He might have a point.

(UPDATED) The MoD said on Sunday 24 Sept that it had accepted a request from the Home Office, under Military Aid to the Civil Authorities (MACA), to "provide routine counterterrorism contingency support to the Metropolitan Police, should it be needed".

The linkage of the request to counterterrorism support excluded the use of armed defence personnel for armed police duties not connected to counterrorism.

The Met said the next day that the Army had been 'stood down' because enough of their own officers had returned to firearms duty.

UPDATE JAN 2024: The extended deadline for submissions of evidence to this inquiry has now passed. BAFF will continue to monitor.