Poppies

Good luck to your son soop.

Posturing politicians will never learn that interfering in cultures that are so different fron our own will never ever work. All we have done in Afghanistan is to encourrage more young men to become terrorists as they do not want us westerners interfering with their culture. We are not making ourselves safer from terrorism, but quite the opposite. My rage at the idea that young British men and women are being killed and injured in this senselessness is indescribable.

So pleased I read your post greatnan I caught the end of the news on the car radio when taking grandson to school yesterday. A poppy! I was terribly upset as I heard it as puppy? I switched off very quickly so my grandson wouldn't hear what I thought was another sad tale if animal cruelty.

[relief emoticon]

Should the police have arrested the 19-year old drunken idiot who posted a picture of himself burning a poppy on Facebook? Offensive, yes,....stupid, yes..... but was it criminal?

Since the poppies are also to raise funds for people affected by war, then no, we can't pretend that it isn't at least partly political. If you want the poppy simply to be a symbol of remembrance, you'll just have to use your imagination to make it so. crimson, soop, that isn't meant to sound brutal, even if it does. I'm just being a realist.

crimson

Can we not weep for a life lost before it's hardly begun or a mother/wife/child mourning the loss of a loved one without it becoming political?

I'd heard that too, Bags - about poppies growing on disturbed ground. And what disturbed ground it was......

Crimson that is why I would like the poppy to remain a symbol of remembrance and not used to fire current religious/ nationalist extremism!

absent I am sure that Whitehall & its cronies like to interpret empathy for wounded /dead soldiers & families as support for aggression.... but it ain't necessarily so and perhaps that needs to be challenged too!!

nanaej It isn't just right-wing extremists who are appropriating the poppy and Remembrance Sunday. Some senior soldier was reported in The Daily Telegraph I think, saying words to the effect that the ceremony at the Cenotaph demonstrated the strength of approval among the British people and people of other nations of Britain's current military operations overseas.

Poppies grow on disturbed land. That's why they thrived near the trenches. Bluebells, on the other hand, tend to prefer undisturbed (undug) land. They thrive in woodland. I lived in Oxfordshire when the M40 was built and when the much objected to A34 Newbury bypass was built. Poppies appeared in the verges of the new roads.

I like to think that a field full of poppies shows that the farmer cares about the land. The field behind us was full of sheep and wild flowers, including poppies, not so long ago.

Amen

The poppies grew after the war because of the trenches [or so I was once told]. Also that poppies now are a sign of bad farm management. So poppies just make me think of the trenches and the poor boys and men who died in them. And I don't ever want to forget that. Sometimes a symbol is worth more than a thousand words.

an I also keep it going with a comment on the poppy badges that I have seen which say something like 'Try burning these'. I feel it is a deliberate goading to the extremist Islamists who have burned poppies.
I am afraid that the equally extremist nationalist /fascist groups are trying to muscle in on the emotive Poppy symbol which I feel is unacceptable. They 'stole' the union and St George's flag for their own..don't let them appropriate the Poppy!

Before this thread fizzles out I would very much like to say how much the Allied Forces hold a very special place in the Dutch psyche.

Even today in 2012 schoolchildren, in Holland put flowers on the graves on the day of remembrance. Yes, today 67 years later.
So, poppies, or the sale of should really not be up for discussion.

The buying of a poppy represents a respect and gratitude to our fellow human beings.
It does not say that we agree with war.

www.market-garden.info/

And to you, dear Butty

soop [gentle smile]

jings I'm sure that he'll be missing a family Christmas with the wee man. It was all so different just twelve months ago. Nothing stays the same...

Hope all goes well for him soop.

I think most people feel the same Greatnan.

Thank you, anno...

Good luck to your son, soop - he's a brave young man.

There has been endless mission shift in Afghanistan, so the job, whatever it is, is unlikely ever to be "done". As for getting rid of the terrorists – they've done that, they're all in Pakistan now.

My son, the journalist, will be spending Christmas with the troops in Afghanistan.

If we accept that getting rid of terrorist factions is the aim of the exercise, it is doomed to failure. It is a hydra-headed monster. Every killing of a 'terrorist' will encourage a hundred other young men to fight what they see as an attempt to eliminate their culture.
The home-grown security forces have carried out several attacks on Allied troops.
I wish we would just pull out now, even though I am filled with rage at the Taliban's attitude to women. I don't think that attitude will be changed by force.