Maybe a controversial post but this time of year brings the usual crop of poppy outrage stories.
Whether it’s seeing people being castigated for not wearing one 24×7 or the mixing of politics with the Poppy Appeal or even the moral outrage of seeing a young lad in a drunken haze urinating on a a wreath laid on a Cenotaph.
A quick opinion…
The Poppy is a symbol of remembrance and it is a person’s own decision to wear one or not. If they choose to great, if they decide not to, so what. I am a great supporter of the RBL and other Service non profits but that is my choice and I don’t think bad of anyone who doesn’t get involved or prefers to give to a poverty or cancer charity.
We should all encourage people to wear one but each to their own.
On the young lad getting bladdered and let be honest, pissing on a memorial. OK, he has done wrong and deserves to be punished but a prison stretch, come on. How many young toms have stood in a bar in Germany and put their finger on their top lip and put their arms up, more than people would like to admit. We all do stupid things when drunk and this is a young man who deserves the benefit of the doubt. A suitable punishment should be constructive like working for a service charity, perhaps collecting for the RBL for the next five years but prison is going to do no one any good.
The defacement of the RBL posters is for me, a mixing of the act of remembrance and politics and should not have happened.
Finally, if a person wants to wear a poppy at work no amount of worrying about other charities or upsetting people should matter. This is a once a year event and is a special case and in fact I would like to see this enshrined in law.
I agree the poppy is a matter for someone to decide upon for themselves whether or not they want to wear it. I would rather the people that choose to wear it fully understand why we wear poppies in the first place than wear it because it is the done thing.
The Example of the student caught in the act of relieving himself was disgusting. I do agree charitable work for one of the service charities would be a better thing to do than locking him up. I wonder if any one has seen the theft of a collection tin in Glasgow on the BBC website http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/8345619.stm i hope the police find them before the people do. The fact that the people in the footage appear to be Pakistani does not help if they are found by angry citizens.
Its not the fact that he was a particularly stupid drunk student, from what I read, it was his cocky, an completely non-remorseful attitude afterwards that is so bloody annoying
I agree with Jed about the man who urinated on the memorial and I agree with you that service with BLESMA or some other forces charity may just enlighted him but prison certainly won’t. I’d be angry if he was given a prison sentence even though I blogged about his stupidity.
For all my support for our military I only wear my poppy if I go to a service on Remembrance Sunday. The BBC are responsible for this decision because they’ve been bedecking their politicians etc with poppies for over a month now.
If someone prefers not to wear a poppy that’s fine with me. It’s personal choice and one of the few we seem to have left in this country, or so I thought until I heard about the shop assistant who was asked to remove hers. What a country we have become.
“Finally, if a person wants to wear a poppy at work no amount of worrying about other charities or upsetting people should matter. This is a once a year event and is a special case and in fact I would like to see this enshrined in law.”
The problem with this is that if one person is allowed to wear a poppy to work, another can use the freedom to wear a Che badge, or a nazi badge, or at least argue the case that they are being discriminated against, the employer is then forced to defend himself, probably in a kangaroo court, against charges of whatever discrimination is flavour of the month.
Its much easier to just say no to everything than explain to a court your not a homophobe even though you wont allow one of your staff members to wear a NAMBLA sash when teaching 7 year olds to swim.