'People such as journalists'

The Sunday Times had a great story at the weekend perfectly designed to get the retired colonels spluttering over their cornflakes: Generals told to travel 2nd class.

GORDON BROWN has delivered a final humiliation to the armed forces by ordering admirals, generals and air chief marshals to travel second class to help cut costs.

Shocking stuff, no doubt, but why exactly should senior military personnel be entitled to first-class tickets? Major-General Patrick Cordingley was wheeled out to explain.

“I couldn’t care less about officers’ personal comfort, but there are practical reasons why this is a pity. There are often times when you are looking at restricted papers that would be of interest to people such as journalists. If it is on a computer, people can look over and read quite happily over your shoulder in standard class,” he said.

FleetStreetBlues can't quite decide what's better - the good general's notion that second class carriages are swarming with investigative journalists just hoping for a peek of something secret, or the conviction that it'll be OK in first class, because journalists are riff-raff and won't get in.

And the very idea that Fleet Street's finest would stoop to looking over someone's shoulder to get a scoop. As if...