Wilfred - strangely enough, the British Army was very into its bright colours (hence the term Redcoats as in "the redcoats are coming!") It wasn't until the Boer War where those terribly unsporting Boers wore khaki and were there for very hard to spot bumped off the Brits in great numbers (especially the officers, who wore lots of shiny stuff and were therefore very easy to spot) that the Brits decided that discretion was the better part of valour and they, too, adopted khaki uniforms. This prompted the same level of outcry as the new BY livery (except, strangely enough, from the troops on the front line in South Africa who thought this was a Pretty Good Idea).