A bushy tale

This particular (very) retired colonel has no problem with the British Army allowing its soldiers to grow beards (“Of whiskers and weapons”, December 23rd). Indeed, on several occasions I sported a full-set and see no reason why it should not be more widely adopted. The question arose because Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, was asked what he intended to do about poor recruiting and poor retention of armed-forces personnel. His response, in effect “Let them grow beards”, probably tells us all we need to know about him.

As for the issues underlying deficient retention and recruiting, we heard nothing. The ongoing scandal of poor accommodation rumbles on. The “strategic pay freeze” from 2010-13 has still not been rectified. And perhaps most insidious and worrying of all, and despite the world becoming more fractured and dangerous, defence spending at just over 2% of GDP shows that the armed forces are still regarded as little better than discretionary expenditure. There is no sense that, in order to match Russian military muscle we need our own Zeitenwende (Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s recognition that Russia’s attack on Ukraine represents a historic turning point), let alone to establish an adequate response to meet the challenges of China and a disordered Middle East and west Africa.

It is said that one of the functions of a beard is to hide a weak chin. Mr Shapps’s newfound pogonophilia is no more than a diversion to hide a disastrously weak policy grip. Simon Diggins

Colonel (retired) Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire