WITH ceremonies marking the 60th anniversary of both VE (Victory in Europe) Day and VJ (Victory in Japan)Day, not to mention an orgy of commemorations of the Battle of Trafalgar, we have heard arguably too many echoes of past wars this year.

On second thoughts, strike out "arguably". As a nation we are over-obsessed with our military endeavours. It says much about our values that Nelson is a more popular figure than Captain Cook.

Of course, an annual war-induced anniversary rightly cherished is Remembrance Sunday, honouring the dead of the two world wars and more recent conflicts. Belatedly, the Remembrance Service has just been updated, by a panel drawn from ten faiths, working in partnership with the Royal British Legion.

Henceforth, symbols such as candles or teddy bears can be placed alongside official wreaths. It is also suggested that Laurence Binyon's famous poem, They Shall Grow Not Old, be shared between two readers, with an elderly person reading the opening verses and a young person, ideally a grandchild of the first reader, completing the poem.

Good as far as it goes. But to give the service bite, perhaps a second poem should be included alongside Binyon's. A Gulf War poem by Adrian Mitchell comes to mind:

And once again the politicians

Whose greatest talent is for lying

Are sending you where they're afraid to go

To do their killing and their dying.

No? Too controversial? Well, we could have Thomas Hardy's Channel Firing, in which gunnery practice awakens the dead, who discover that all nations, "mad as hatters", are "striving strong to make red war redder yet".

With impeccable First World War credentials, Siegfried Sassoon could provide the jolt with his poem recalling the horrors of the Somme - rats, the stench of corpses, the "doomed and haggard faces of the men" - and asking: "Is it all going to happen again?"

Of course it has done so, and will do again. So, to make us squirm on Remembrance Day I would choose a poem, Will It Be So Again? written at the end of the Second World War by a future Poet Laureate, Cecil Day Lewis.

Will it be so again

That the brave, the gifted are lost from view,

And empty scheming men

Are left in peace their lunatic age to renew? . .

Will it be so again -

The jungle code and the hypocrite gesture?

A poppy wreath for the slain

And a cut-throat world for the living?

Will it be as before -

Peace, with no heart or mind to ensure it,

Guttering down like a libertine to his grave? We should not be surprised:

We knew it happen before. . .

Yes. That's the discomfiting stuff we need. Remembrance Sunday should prick our consciences not give us a warm feeling of duty done.

LOVED by few, the various dance "idents" used by the BBC since 2002 are apparently on their way out. Doubtless their replacements will cost more than the £700,000 spent on filming the aerial ballet, the wheelchair disco-dancing etc. Unless they simply use the initials BBC and the channel number. Is anything more really required?