Peter Edwards: What is the point of being in Afghanistan?

Last week, David Cameron insisted he wanted British troops home by 2015 but also admitted they could be there longer to train Afghan police and soldiers. As long as they are there, however, British men and women are in danger. The latest fatality from the region is Marine David Hart, from York. Described as "a perfect Commando" by his commanding officer, he was killed on the eve of his 24th birthday while on foot patrol in the Sangin district of Helmand Province.

Our involvement could mean another decade spent trying to remake Afghanistan and defend its people. Before you dismiss the possibility, however, ask yourselves this question: What are we doing in Afghanistan? Are we building a democracy, fighting the Taliban, trying to keep the peace or quashing terrorist plots to attack Britain? Maybe it is all of these. The most common justification cited amid this miasma of conflicting reasons is our duty to cultivate a stable and secure country. But when was Afghanistan last stable or secure?

Not when Taliban fanatics were stoning women to death in the 1990s. Not when Afghans were fighting the Soviets in the 1980s. Maybe briefly in the 1970s – until Mohammed Daoud Khan, then the president, was killed along with his family in an uprising.

Afghanistan cannot be turned into anything we would recognise as a modern country. It cannot be fought or reformed into democracy.

As a state it is nothing like Iraq, where conditions have slowly improved – despite a terrible death toll – and which had infrastructure and some kind of bureaucracy, albeit one controlled by Saddam Hussein. What Afghanistan could become, however, is a safer state, with regular voting, education for all and rights for women. It is on its way to achieving all of these but clearly the last three are dependent on the first.

David Cameron, and Gordon Brown before him, both conscious of the blood price we continue to pay, have talked about bringing home the troops as soon as reasonably possible. Their wish makes perfect sense – apart from its air of unreality. Afghanistan has a discredited president in Hamid Karzai, a corrupt police force and electoral system, an inexperienced and ill-suited army, a permanent tribal system with the consequent splits and a confident and impulsive Taliban.

So the new British government, as well as the Obama administration, will have to make a public case for staying much longer in Afghanistan –which can be done – or accept that the mission aim is more likely to be one of merely limiting the chaos.

It is a tall order for two leaders who did not create this situation. Progress in Afghanistan has been slow and unsteady. It has, however, made a difference to the lives of an impoverished people.

THE decision by the BBC to close its final salary pension scheme to new members shows it is finally accepting the financial realities of 2010. Or does it? The plan also involves capping contributions to existing members of the pension fund, but you can't say the Corporation is living in the real world until it slashes the fees it pays to senior managers.

Earlier this year, the BBC admitted that 37 of its staff earn a sum equal to or more than the Prime Minister's salary of 142,500: an extraordinary statistic which it justifies by saying that it must retain the best programme-makers.

Do these high-earners include the geniuses behind Bad Dogs' Borstal, Help! My dog's as fat as me?

And what the figures don't include are the fees of the Corporation's "talent" – presenters to you and me. These people command salaries of which David Cameron could only dream. Yet the BBC seems at pains to keep them, with the exception of Jonathan Ross and Christine Bleakley, both of whom have been belatedly allowed to leave. It is absurd. If presenters want to leave, then let them go.

MAYBE it's because I used to be a postman. It was in the holidays before my final year at York University and it was a taste of hard labour, starting at 5am each day.

Over the summer, I groaned mirthlessly as, one by one, my friends dubbed me Postman Pete. Anyway, my struggle to cope with the physical demands of the job gave me another reason to respect Alan Johnson, politics' most famous former postie.

Since Labour were kicked out of office, Johnson and Alistair Darling appear to have adapted quicker than most to life in opposition – and their obligations to hold the Government to account. Four others from the old guard, as well as Diane Abbott, have thrown themselves into the Labour leadership contest but the rest seem to have faded from view.

Johnson, however, keeps plugging away. Critical but not bitter, he has skillfully held the coalition to account on the Home Affairs brief.

Now, as he dons his silver suit and trademark sunglasses for the ascetic slog of opposition, I hope that he will play a big role in rebuilding Labour. The former postman should be doing his rounds in Westminster and Hull West for some years to come.