We will have to agree to disagree on this, maybe it's the Northern spunk from me and the towns around County Durham, Wearside and Tyneside with the memorials and people who died from each town. I was told recently that 80% of our armed forces are made up of Scousers, The North East and Scotland, that doesn't surprise me one bit.. Night all..
They should have chosen something else to symbolise their message. A good message it is however I can understand why people might be a bit pissed off that the Poppy has been hijacked. The red Poppy is used for a specific reason and has significance in relation to the Great War Stinks of a Hipster idea to me.
Was just playing Devil's advocate really, in response to the comment about a rainbow poppy for the LGBT soldiers that fought. There have been Muslims, Sikhs, Jews, Christians and Buddhists that have fought for Britain in various wars, but I agree essentially religion has got nothing to do with it. My Grandad fought on the front lines in Burma and Holland in the 2nd world war. One of the most poignant things he remembers was collecting the personal items from dead soldiers on the battlefield to send back to their families. He said that he took a Bible out of the breast pocket of a British soldier, and next to him, then took a Bible written in German out of the breast pocket of a German soldier.
I’ll probably chuck 50p in the box at work and wear one nearer the time. Not a fan of wearing one for weeks and weeks beforehand although I appreciate there’s a competition on TV about who can be seen to care the most.
Yes meet me in Leicester Square. Try to make it more then fifty yards out of Euston this time before running to Wetherspoons in tears and declaring London is a ****hole.
Can't tell them anything, they're dead. You are the one getting offended here by the way. You planning to go down the senotaph and honour the dead by kicking off at anyone wearing the wrong colour poppy?
Young men like to fight, that never changes. They'd rush to join up, thinking they were going to be playing the live version of Call of Duty. Then they'd get a nasty ****ing shock when they found out some **** was genuinely trying to kill them. Exactly like every war for the last 2000 years, young men would rush to the colours dreaming of glory, and end up watching their mate get disembowelled right next to them. Probably best avoided imo.
It is a disgrace that many governments seem to have forgotten that and are have now restricted or are attempting to restrict those freedoms that the young men were sent to protect. This includes many in the so-called free world.
TBH trying to have a sensible conversation about not wearing a poppy is near impossible cos some/ most or a lot of people assume you do not give a **** about soldiers who died or were maimed so just act like you're a ****. I donate to the charity as I think ex service personnel are treated pretty badly. The are more likely to be unemployed, suffer from mental health issues, are more likely to attempt suicide and to be homeless than most people due to their experiences. I find it a farce that WW1 is claimed to be a war for freedom. It was a war brought about because the world powers had run out of countries to occupy so started to encroach on each others empires. Soldiers with shell shock were shot as cowards by ****s who were happy to send millions to their deaths while not allowing trade union rights, fair pay, health or education services or the vote at home. This is aimed at all countries not just Britain. The second world war was about fighting fascism but like ALL other countries Britain had no problem leaving Hitler to slaughter the republicans in the Spanish Civil War cos they preferred the fascists to win. In some cases they jailed people from Britain who went to fight against the fascists in Spain. And in USA people were accused of being prematurely anti fascist under Macarthyism. In my life time we have had a war with Argentina, Iraq, Afghanistan and Iraq again. We armed the Argentine regime throughout the 60s and 70s even though they were known to be disappearing their own citizens. Trade unions and left wing campaigners and groups like Amnesty campaigned against arming them but were ignored. Yet when they then pissed us off we called them fascists and had a war with them. Severely maimed soldiers were kept away from the victory parade in London for fear of it not looking good. We armed Saddam Hussein throughout the late 70s and 80s as he was our friend. We knew he was gassing Iranians in the Iran Iraq war and Kurdish people in Iraq but we ignored it. Until he pissed us off ... we then called them fascists and went to war against them. We then stopped cos Kurdish people started to look like they would overthrown Saddam Hussein and the west feared this would destabilise their interests in the middle East so Saddam Hussein was allowed to go back to gassing and Terrorising his own population again. The Taliban and Bin Laden were armed and trained by us when they fought the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s...we ignored the ****y behaviour cos Russian was our enemy...Until we decided that he and they were fascists and bombed Afghanistan back to the stone age. We then decided that as the Kurds were no longer a threat to destabilising the region (cos they'd most been gassed and tortured out of existence) we'd go back to call Saddam Hussein a fascist and go back for another war. Every political party and politician who armed these (and other ****ing lunatic despots) wears a poppy and claims their desire for peace while choosing to vote to send soldiers to die and to cut services that could help those who come home. To me the poppy is meaningless but I would not mock someone swearing them, teach the kids I work with (and my daughters) the reasons people wear poppies, always give to poppy sellers and always observe the minutes silence. To claim that all those not wearing poppies do not give a **** about those that died is as stupid as me claiming all those wearing poppies are hypocrites. sorry for the essay but it is impossible to make it a quick post without accidentally demeaning some one.
Great post mate. Where I work might not be the norm as most people are under 40 but there’s not a hint of any bad word about not wearing one. We all have our own ways of paying respect.
