To me Remembrance Day is a time of sadness - for the fact that mankind has screwed up again and wasted more lives - and a time to honour those who have given their all to make tragic situations that more tolerable. It is too often assumed that it's just about fighting and death, but it his also about working to stop wars and preserve life. I think the label of Hero has been cheapened by the recent habit of calling all members of the armed forces 'Heroes' which suggests that other people who have their all - Fireman, Paramedics, lifeboat crews, etc ... are not worthy of the same accolade. Some members of the armed forces have served with honour, but others are just doing a job the same as anyone else.

I do not like war, but if someone broke into my home and threatened my family (or just threatened me) I would defend myself. We all would. Thousands of "pacifist" have attacked those they disagreed with over the decades. Some wars, like the 2nd world war (for example) I think have been "just". Millions more civilians could have died in the gas chambers in the 1940s if the war had not been fought. But there was no honour or excuse for the actions of the British armed forces in Libya (in my opinion).

I do wear the Poppy in remembrance and I salute those who deserve it. I think that the football match is a separate issue. Now if we play against a country with different views on a conflict to ours, we now have no choice but to put up with their own symbols being worn. There was a reason why the Poppy could not be worn, and David Cameron should have shown more sense and kept out of it. It is, after all, just a game of football.

Pumpkinhead wrote:
there was no honour or excuse for the actions of the British armed forces in Libya


...maybe to stop innocent people being killed?

out of the mouths of babes...or is it the folly of youth ?

It's a quandry....I rabbit on about the horror of sending armed forces into Iraq and Afghanistan, Libya etc where thousands of innocent people will die needlessly yet don't so anything about.
Still pay my taxes to support the war machine and so on.

I can see those who went to WW2 and made the ultimate sacrifice...the Nazis etc had to be stopped (despite being funded by powerful US families including the Bushs) yet we really gave little thought to the tens of millions of Russians who died and basically saved our wagon.

I watch the Aussies here celebrate 'Anzac Day' and they seem to have forgotten is was a bizarre attack upon innocent Turks- who had never harmed them- led by incompetent British generals using the colonials as canon fodder.

I worked out decades ago that basically all my family... back 3 generations (including married) avoided war because of their age so our family have no 'war heroes' of our own to honour.