While I don't agree with Swords saying there's a proliferation of these events - your point about appreciated the diminishing numbers still with us is hugely important. My backing of Swords (although it might be a slightly different take) is that, if you need to forcibly popularise it by having Dizzy Rascal doing All Saints covers (or whatever) then you're promoting something that shouldn't need celebrity razzmatazz. If people need enticements to respect and remember then we're better off hitting the dark ages again.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.
Your point about the need to remember the potential problems of the consequences of allowing extreme politics and enmity of those with differing political views is as relevant today as ever.
