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Topic History of: 11.11.11
Max. showing the last 5 posts - (Last post first)
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Solihull Exile |
angel wrote:
The Fat Controller wrote:
I have always felt that wearing a poppy is out of respectability...not for the dead, but for the wearer. The wearer feels better about themselves. Surely not the idea. I respect people if I believe they are mostly decent, kind, humane, with or without towing the line and wearing a poppy on their lapel. Tony Blair wore a poppy too, shortly after embarking on death and destruction in Iraq. It's the hypocrisy I cannot stomach.
Plenty of poppy wearing assholes about today I'm sure.
Not one to generalise then?
Dry,very dry  |
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angel |
The Fat Controller wrote:
I have always felt that wearing a poppy is out of respectability...not for the dead, but for the wearer. The wearer feels better about themselves. Surely not the idea. I respect people if I believe they are mostly decent, kind, humane, with or without towing the line and wearing a poppy on their lapel. Tony Blair wore a poppy too, shortly after embarking on death and destruction in Iraq. It's the hypocrisy I cannot stomach.
Plenty of poppy wearing assholes about today I'm sure.
Not one to generalise then? |
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Locked Out |
Further to what I wrote earlier I have to add a note of cynicism. Why does Radio 4 feel it is necessary to repeatedly tell us that the commemoration at the Cenotaph was attended by, among others, celebrities? That piece of completely irrelevant information cheapens the whole thing. |
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Locked Out |
I buy a red poppy every year. I like to believe that if any of my local shops had the courage to sell white ones I'd have the courage to wear one. Whether I would or not is something the jury's still out on.
War {and remember I speak as a pacifist} isn't just about killing. There is a balance to be struck between those who give {please note the tense here, it's deliberate} their lives and those who take them. We must always remember dear old Harry Patch who, while being willing to give his own life, was unable to take another's. That is courage we can all admire. I'm sure that the fields of Flanders still hold the bodies of many such men. And we must never forget the medics, those men who were prepared to die {and many did} to help others. Those who died did so unarmed. And those who survived carried the horror of the things they saw with them for the rest of their lives. When I was a kid the Haig Fund was more about the care of these men than anything else, and much more has changed about Remembrance Day than simply that.
Remembrance Day isn't, for me, a time to celebrate the glory of military death. I see no glory in that alone, although I have little doubt that many others do. Neither is it a day when it should be necessary to wear a poppy. Keeping quiet for two minutes, however, costs nothing and makes little outward show.
11 o'clock on the 11th of November is a time to remember and pay respects to those who gave. And there has been enough giving for it to apply to even a cynical old pacifist like me. And it behooves me to abandon my usual colour scheme just this once. |
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david |
JK2006 wrote:
I have no problem with anyone remembering the dead. I have a huge problem with people feeling they need to do it in public and with some kind of symbol. Why? If you answer Why not? I answer "because it says more to me about people wanting others to notice them for whatever reason than about genuine caring". But I could be wrong. It may be that most people are unable to care unless prompted and allowed to get noticed.
I don't agree with all your opinions, but am with you on every word here. |
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