Wednesday 8 November 2017

The Annual Poppy Argument

Every year about this time the Poppy argument breaks out, namely between those who refuse to wear one and those who feel it is disrespectful to not.
According to a survey by researchers Consumer Intelligence, the top reasons given by those who object to pinning the red flower on their person said it was because they felt bullied into supporting the Poppy Appeal, it glorified war and seems to show support for the military.
One in five adults plan to snub the symbolic flower and i am amongst them because i never have worn one and have had more than few 'discussions' with people who try and bully me into it.
I can relate to the 20% of adults snubbing the Poppy because being continually told i should wear one is guaranteed to mean i won't and secondly because i believe that rather than send young men and women off to fight wars and then stand around looking solemn wearing a red flower once a year, just don't send them to fight wars in the first place.
Wearing a poppy used to be about WW1 & WW2 but now it seems to commemorate every war including the wrong-headed ones in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya and who can say that any war or conflict that Britain has fought since 1945 has been justifiable?
The idea of wearing a poppy seems to have become co-opted by politicians to justify their folly and it has become 'patriotic' but i will not wear something that is used to support wars, either conflicts past or the ones we are currently embroiled in.
The argument is that people gave their lives for our freedom and it is obscene that some of us refuse to honour that debt by not wearing a poppy but i say that the freedoms they fought for includes being free to not be ordered how to honour the war dead by a poppy fundamentalists and if more people thought like me and the 20% who refuse to approve of what our military does, then there wouldn't be the widespread death and destruction that is currently going on around the World.

2 comments:

Liber - Latin for "The Free One" said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Falling on a bruise said...

I was the minority a long time before the rest joined me in the minority, i think of it as more people coming over to my side of things.