Ban the Poppy

The British public pay lip service to the military and military vets in particular, IMO. A lot of the British public look down on military types; it's snob thing.

A lot of the poppy wearing and speaking well of the military in Britain is Pavlov Dog-level behaviour, achieved through years of training via media consumption, a bit like the breathless, equally Pavlovian, American 'Thank you for your service.' (A tiny fraction of U.S. service members ever see combat. It would be more accurate in most cases to say something more like: 'Thank you for flying to Iraq, where you spent most of your awake time peeling spuds and playing pool.' :D ) If the British public love their military so much, why are so many vets homeless or living in dire circumstances?

Agree with your post though, esp. the last line.

With many Irish among them. Collaborators. And many Irish helped build the British Empire. These things are never black and white.

Ireland's collaborating type, those that love to cozy up to imperialistic power, have moved on though, and you should too; it's all about the New West Brits these days. This type is found all over Ireland; Britain, no longer Master of The World, bores them now and being a West Brit doesn't create as much er... frisson as it once did, so they have moved onto U.S. politics, but they are exactly the same grubby, power-loving type.

I find this obsession with symbolism in Britain in recent years is becoming a bit tiresome.

I don’t think the poppy is or should be a controversial symbol in Ireland, if it’s just honouring those who were killed in wars, but that isn’t what the symbol is. It is politically loaded and everyone knows that. They just go hysterical when it’s pointed out to them.

I’d much rather we had symbol that wasn’t attached to the British army itself. If we are commemorating war dead, we should do it our own way.

I think though in England it’s gradually morphing into something more like the kind of crazy you see around symbols in Northern Ireland in recent years, as the wearing of the poppy seems to have become almost compulsory, certainly for media and public facing figures and it’s being enforced by thuggish nonsense online and offline. It’s the same path as MAGA and American flag obsession in the USA.

There was a long period of time when the British had much more cop on, and saw symbols for what they were: just symbols, but that time appears to be fading fast and Brexit unleashed a new era of jingoistic nonsense.

I just get fed up with this false dichotomy that by not wearing a poppy, or by being offended by what is a very loaded symbol that it’s somehow offensive or disrespectful. It’s not. The symbol means many things beyond a simple, neutral remembrance.

I don’t think it should be banned. I just don’t think it should be reacted to either.

Ireland has war dead, whether they died for British forces or not, they’re Irish and I think we should acknowledge them in our own way, without the baggage of the flag they fought under. Those that say you can’t separate the two are, in my opinion, just trying to create an argument that really doesn’t really need to exist. We have a history as a colony and as having been part of the U.K. for a time, it doesn’t mean it was by choice nor does it mean that it’s something we have to honour, but we can acknowledge that it’s part of history.

History and politics are complex. You can’t sum it up in a single symbol. Likewise the British army is complex. It’s done positive things and it’s done very negative things and it’s completely possible for people to have different and nuanced opinions about it.

I also don’t like this narrative of “the Great War”. No war was great. They were all abysmal periods of human savagery. The causes of them and the reasons they were fought, particularly WWII may have been noble and necessary, but glorifying war in my view is a bit twisted. They need to be a learned from and their horrors understood, not turned into points of national reverence.

This endless desire to put people into one of two camps is just oversimplification and insulting to intelligence.

Anyway, there are much more productive and effective ways to do your bit for Ireland, such as going on the BBC Sport website and giving Jack Grealish a low score on the player rating thingy, no matter how well he played. 😯😄