Really thought provoking stuff.
Having read the articles I do agree that poppies are a fashion appendage and a necessary gung ho adornment for the majority on the tele.
Witness this
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/ar ... Queen.html(I know, I know, it's the Mail, and the equally awful Katherine Jenkins but still, please read it) £25k, ..... how fucking obscene is that???
Anyone who's been on Facebook over the past couple of weeks would have seen the plethora of sequinned, tarted up, Photoshopped efforts at poppies that have adorned loads of time lines.
Dumbed down, mass produced images - but I bet anyone who used them would have said that they did so in an effort to remember war 'Heroes' rather than because they'd taken a fancy to a sparkly image of something topical.
Instead of poppies and trotting out now feeble old fellas with a medal or two (and don't forget, they were trained to be killing machines in their day, to kill someone's kids. Like your kids or mine. Or bomb a street. Like yours or mine) I'd quite like it if we were subjected to footage of the horrors of war - some images of soldiers torturing other soldiers maybe - or maybe blowing someone's head off - because THAT is what war is about, NOT this jingoistic idea that I should somehow be grateful to people who choose (and I stand by my mantra that there is always a choice - we don't have conscription) to go to war.
Of course during the first and second world wars there was no choice, I understand that. But we've learned nothing, nothing from those atrocities, have we?
We still have wars, in the name of oil, religion, you name it - because whatever it is that makes people want to hurt and maim each other hasn't been civilised out of us. If it had, you wouldn't have politicians signing the wars off and people willing to fight them for them.
The people who fought in WW1 & 2 wars are few and far between now and I'm certainly not going to support anyone who didn't have to make a sacrifice.
I work in a massive office complex, and every year a few of the cutest, prettiest young girls are chosen to carry the poppy trays around, obviously because they're likely to extract money .
I was, in my halcyon days,
asked to do this myself and I always refused. I refused for the same reasons that, during the two minute silence held at work on Monday, I didn't sit with a faraway look on my face remembering the fallen, instead I ran this through in my head - I heard it for the first time in ages on Sunday and to me, it sums everything up beautifully.
Nick Lowe - (What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love And Understanding Lyrics
As I walk through
This wicked world
Searchin' for light in the darkness of insanity.
I ask myself
Is all hope lost?
Is there only pain and hatred, and misery?
And each time I feel like this inside,
There's one thing I wanna know:
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding? Ohhhh
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding?
And as I walked on
Through troubled times
My spirit gets so downhearted sometimes
So where are the strong
And who are the trusted?
And where is the harmony?
Sweet harmony.
'Cause each time I feel it slippin' away, just makes me wanna cry.
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding? Ohhhh
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding?
So where are the strong?
And who are the trusted?
And where is the harmony?
Sweet harmony.
'Cause each time I feel it slippin' away, just makes me wanna cry.
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding? Ohhhh
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding? Ohhhh
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding?
Wear your poppies with pride if you want to, but I won't be wearing one at all.
If anybody wants me I'll be dancing in a field wearing a maxi dress and a flower (not a poppy!) in my hair