BAFF has unsurprisingly added its voice to calls for Glasgow City Council to reconsider its refusal of a motion to confer the Freedom of the City upon the Royal Regiment of Scotland.

BAFF also asked me to look further into this.

In a good Scots phrase, it's A Right Fankle.

BAFF is non-partisan in political party terms. My personal view, shared by everyone I've spoken to so far, is that the decision was thoroughly misguided.

But I suspect that the last thing the Regiment would want, in this its 20th anniversary year, is to be treated as a political football by one side or the other in any partisan or constitutional debate.

 What would the grant of the Freedom involve? In Scotland it's purely an honour and a mark of connection with the recipient. Historically the Freedom of Glasgow was said to include the right to graze one's cows on Glasgow Green and to fish on the Clyde, but the legislation simply refers to "honorary freemen" without authority for such rights.

The Freedom scroll traditionally includes wording such as “the right, privilege and honour to march through the streets of [Council area] with bayonets fixed, drums beating, colours flying and bands [or pipes] playing", but this only refers to approved ceremonial parades and has no legal effect.

I will return to the legal position and other aspects of this fankle.

regards, Douglas Young 

It was a perfect news story for a Monday morning. Potentially comic (depending on your sense of humour), defence spending involved, and plenty opporunity for harrumphing; with extra points for getting the word 'woke' into reader comments and the twittersphere.

Yes, according to a story first reported by The Times' Defence Editor and widely shared, the Royal Navy is planning to spend up to £200,000 on a new uniform for female officers because the present design is believed to have 'inappropriately placed buttons'.

Specifically, according to a RN internal document the position of the top two "decorative" buttons on the current female officer’s No 1 jacket (in other words, dress uniform) are deemed to be "inappropriately placed".

I  admit that the thought never occurred to me and I'm a bloke, but according to the story's obligatory Royal Navy source -

'The button placement on the jacket has always been a bit of a joke within the service, but ...'

If that's so, that sounds like there could have been potential embarrassment for some, if not the end of the world.

Importantly, the Times story does say that "Some female sailors are believed to be infuriated by the decision..."

The Royal Navy source (who, just guessing, is male) went on to say that

... at a time when the navy has been tasked with gearing up to a warfighting readiness, surely there are more urgent matters for the navy to focus on and better uses for this money. Surely the obvious answer would have been to simply cut off the offensive nipple buttons on the existing uniforms?”

And there were many reader's comments agreeing with that, both on the incorrect priorities and on simply removing the buttons.

No tailoring expert, I doubt that the buttons could easily have been removed without leaving some mark, inviting yet more years of 'joke' according to the Royal Navy source.

The other objection to simply removing the buttons is that instead of four rows of buttons like their male counteparts, female Commissioned officers would then have three rows like male Warrant Officers, Chief Petty Officers and Petty Officers, who are senior ranks but not commissioned officers.

"That's an elitist argument" I hear some say but, if so, perhaps they are not such sturdy traditionalists as they like to think they are.

According to The Times' story, 'Some female sailors are believed to be infuriated by the decision', and that's important. Some female officers might be happy at the change. We don't know.

This is all of course against the background of a real crisis in defence. Financially, but also in recruitment and retention.

As said at the recent Dartmouth passing-out parade by HRH Princess Anne, whose honorary Naval appointments include Chief Commandant of Women in the Royal Navy -

It will always be the people who deliver operational success.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of Buttongate, let's not let the defence crisis get us into a state of reflexive sniping at every well-meaning attempt to improve something -

- including "for officers", and including "for women".

Douglas Young (former BAFF Chair)

Thanks BAFF for the ongoing coverage of the Troubles Bill and related muddles. As the Federation's original chairman and currently assisting with the ongoing BAFF restructuring, I thought it would be worth reminding ourselves of the Federation's position over the years on the applicability of law to military operations - and especially on so-called 'legacy investigations' taking place years after the alleged events. 

Other organisations will have their own points of view, but the basic priorities for a representative membership body like BAFF are the legitimate interests of our members and, by extension, the generality of armed forces serving personnel and veterans.

It's common enough on social media and news-media reader pages to see comments like 'I have never been in the military so it's not for me to judge their actions' - while in effect actually making a judgement.

For our part, we have never argued that while troops are on operations, 'anything goes'.

A BAFF spokesman made these comments to the BBC Today programme in June 2011 about the Iraq Historic Allegations Inquiry (IHAT) :

The people making these accusations have to put up or shut up. It is almost impossible to imagine that justice can be done after the amount of time that has passed. Our members are wondering about the motivation of this inquiry. Is it a sop to 'Human Rights' opinion, or is it actually aimed towards reaching a conclusion?

 [BAFF link]

And in September 2011 our spokesman was quoted in the Sunday Telegraph:

Obviously any allegations of misconduct against members of the Armed Forces need to be taken seriously and properly investigated.

Our concern is that some of the allegations being investigated by IHAT have little or no evidential basis and that even if there were indications that something had occurred, it is now far too long after the events for there to be any realistic chance of a just resolution.

What we cannot condone is a 'fishing expedition’ by IHAT in which service personnel are asked to inform on each other.

BAFF takes the view that the work of IHAT should be reviewed by an outside authority, and that if it is determined that the investigations are unlikely to result in prosecutions, IHAT should be disbanded and a line drawn under its work.

[BAFF link]

We didn't confine ourselves to comment, but set up a package of basic initial professional advice from an English law firm for any BAFF member approached by the IHAT or Northmoor investigators, even as a witness.

Speaking personally, I welcome The Telegraph's campaign on these issues, as I did in 2011. Currently we're seeing a daily round of distinguished contributors on that subject, the latest being Gen David Petraeus US Army (retired), a true friend of the British military.

Again speaking personally, I don't agree with every single sentence which has been written in an effort to bolster the campaign. What gets labelled 'lawfare' isn't always a wicked campaign against British forces.

Sometimes we might be risking the suspicion that 'The lady doth protest too much.' General Petraeus, however, makes strong points about which I would like to say more.

I wonder why this has come to mind today. Maybe it's because I attended a recent ceremony marking the 35th anniversary of the end of active operations in the Gulf; Op Granby to the Brits, Desert Storm to our major allies.

But Ive been refreshing my memory on something that happened in that conflict. A strategic bridge over the wide Euphrates river was repeatedly attacked by coalition aircraft because it was part of an Iraqi military supply line, and was therefore a legitimate target even though it was close to a population centre.

On 14 February 1991 a Royal Air Force Tornado GR1 aircraft fired two laser-guided bombs which were aimed at the bridge. Due to a malfunction, at least one bomb failed to pick up the guidance and continued past the intended aiming point and instead struck a crowded marketplace, killing between 50 and 150 non-combatants and wounding many more.

Civilian casualties caused by coalition air operations were already under intense scrutiny, as the incident happened only the day after the widely publicised Al-Amiriyah shelter bombing in Baghdad (13 February 1991) by U.S. aircraft. Neverthelss, the facts of the Fallujah mistake being clear, the RAF spokesman Group Captain David Henderson issued a statement within hours that the bomb had malfunctioned and failed to follow its laser guidance, and acknowledged that the RAF had made an error.

This acknowledgement was widely reported by British media and praised shortly afterwards in the House of Commons. Other than a few of the usual suspects describing the event as 'an atrocity', later criticism by organisations such as Human Rights Watch concentrated on the fact that so-called "smart weapons" such as laser-guided bombs were not as reliable as they were being often portrayed at the time, and should therefore be employed with more caution.

I remember much of this because at the time I was serving with British forces preparing in the desert for the coming ground war. We had every reason to welcome any damage done to Iraqi military forces and their ability to manoevre and resupply. But in this case the technical error was clear and the presentational damage would have been far greater if it had not been admitted. The RAF's prompt statement seemed to me and, I think, many of my comrades as exactly right.

Of course the circumstances and responsibility (if any) for unintended civilian deaths can be far more complicated than what happened at Fallujah. Investigation can be challenging amid the fog of war; 'the first report is always wrong'.

Nevertheless, knee-jerk denial without the facts can do far more reputational damage than an honest undertaking to investigate.