Off Topic The QPR Not 606 Rolling Election Poll

Just beggars belief!

 

I'll be slaughtered for saying this but who cares. Does anyone else think war-remembrance is going a bit OTT these days?

 

Now I KNOW you're baiting...

 

At the going down of the sun..........

 

Just saw Jane Horrocks nearly break down in tears during a very moving reading. Either genuine emotion or good acting, I prefer to believe the former. It's a shame that the election has overshadowed these events, they are a very profound reminder of where politics can get you and what it can mean to ordinary people.

On the Labour inquest, it will make them an irrelevance for a couple of years at least. But the signs are not promising already. Alan Johnson and loads of others talking about appealing to the 'aspirational' working and middle class individuals and families, who Blair and Thatcher used to appeal to. Isn't that precisely what the Tories are about. I thought it was the individual's responsibility to work to satisfying their own 'aspirations', but to me these only make sense in the context of collective 'aspirations'- things like equality of opportunity - which is what Labour (not always effectively) used to be all about. Otherwise you end up in the Thatcherite 'there is no such thing as society' nightmare, where human nature is seen as purely driven by self interest, and we are constantly trying to second guess each others' next moves.

 

I promise you I'm not

 

Well that's me convinced...

 

It was the Jane Horrocks bit that got me, Stan. I must try to find a transcript of the soldier's letter she was reading. Also, somewhat incongruously, Alfie Boe singing Snow Patrol's 'Run'.

The Labour Party has lost itself. Let's have a proper left-of-centre mainstream party. That's what the Liberals could have become had they not taken Cameron's shilling.

 

It's not remembering war, Swords, but those who fought, and those who fought and died, so that this country remained free and not under the jack boot. You cannot remember these heroes enough.

 

Surprising given that you don't take much convincing normally.

(Saddam is armed to the teeth with WMD's. We must go to war & its not about oil..... )

You sure about that Goldie?

Stan said these things are very important as a reminder not to make the same mistakes again but sometimes I think it may have the opposite effect. There's a difference between remembrance and razzmatazz with the latter perhaps lending itself to impressionable (male) youths the idea that war is glorifying & that they could be tomorrow's heroes. I mean, did I see Chris Evans earlier on introducing a band on stage at a "memorial" event or were my eyes deceiving me? A month never seems to go by these days without one of these affairs taking place and, to me at least (and I'm aware probably not a single other person on this whole Site), there's a hint of the circus about the whole thing now. Again, I know its a very unpopular thing to say but as with everything I think things can be overdone and exhausted. I just don't think its that dignified anymore. Its almost carnival-like IMO.

It doesn't sit right Goldie. Its gone just that little bit too far now.

 

I see what you're saying. Most of the remembrance services e.g. D day landings were dignified and respectful imo. The reason for the celebratory nature tonight was that it was trying to recapture the atmosphere of relief and jubilation of VE day. I think it meant a lot in particular to those who remember it.

 

Just a few economically illiterate soap dodgers knocking over a few bins

 

Slight misinterpretation of my comment Swords. I don't want to start another debate about war remembrance (I really don't, it's always the same argument - it's not a celebration of war, its a recognition of sacrifice) but if there was ever a 'just' war, it's WW2. It's the 70th anniversary of VE Day, the last few people who were actually involved as young adults are still with us, most won't be for the 80th. My point was politics can lead to this. As it happens that war also shaped the UK indelibly as well - a lot of the things we were arguing about for the last 5 weeks - the welfare state, the NHS - were born out of it. The Beveridge Report (1942 I think) which set up the concept of the welfare state recognised that the amazing inequality of the depression years and awful quality of life for huge sections of the population could not be allowed to continue after the war, or there would be a revolution. Returning soldiers would simply not have tolerated having fought only to come home to decisions about spending money on food for their family or taking a child to the doctor, because they couldn't afford both. All parties signed up to it, Churchill was kicked out at least partly because people didn't trust him to implement it (they still remembered his role in the General Strike of 1926).

Sorry for the lecture, but for me it's impossible to understate the massive and permanent changes that this war brought about in the European countries that contested it. I was born 15 years after it finished, perhaps after my generation the awareness won't be so acute.

Having said all that some of that Chris Evans thing looked very tacky. And I don't spend much time thinking about it, which is why the remembrance stuff is important.

 

Minus one, I'm staying in tonight!

 

****ers.

The 'demonstrators' I mean.