Quote:While I agree with no one should be made to wear a poppy your referenece to "Lady Haig" is not quite right, it had nothing to do with her what so ever see below taken off the Poppy Factory web site
Indeed you are correct about that hideous poem, the Americans the French Women and Earl Haig. The first factory I think opened in England in 1920. Lady Haig Established a factory in Edinburgh in 1926 http://www.ladyhaigspoppyfactory.org.uk/home and hence the poppy is commonly known to many as Lady Haig's poppy.
The poem urges us to take the fight to our foe, whilst I guess butcher Haig and his wife will be there with a little support should we make it back.
Yes people are told today to wear their poppy, and told to think of their career prospects if they refuse to do so. If you are a BBC news presenter or journalist you will not be allowed on TV in the run up to Armistice Day unless you wear a poppy, and it must be a red poppy.
Commercialisation? Oh yes, The British Legion are up for a bit of that, from their web site,
Get involved with the poppy appeal -
Quote:Increase sales and competitive advantage, check it all out for yourself on one of their corporate pages complete with photo of babes throwing poppies about like confetti. http://www.britishlegion.org.uk/get-invo...rtnerships
I used to wear a red poppy, but that's when it was about the quiet respectful mourning of the millions, the lost generation of The Great War. But after visiting my Great Grandfather's grave, his generation being the first to have graves - the army previously shipping their bodies home to be minced up and used as fertilizer - I couldn't escape the irony of it all nor fail to notice the way the appeal was slowly changing.
I don't deny the very good work that the legion does, but why should our veterans, and veterans of whatever stupid war, right or wrong, fighting for rich men, then have to rely on charity to keep their heids above the watur.
Pride and ultimate sacrifice? I have no idea how my Great Grandfather died, perhaps he was performing some heroic act, or more likely he was mowed down with 100's or 1000's of others having been ordered over the top to almost certain death by a cretin general. The Great War is a fascinating example of how a few mad men can control 100,000's. Making an example of a soldier, perhaps picked out at random, by murdering him seemed to be one handy little tool.
Anyway I'm sorry if I offend, but the poppy appeal gets bigger and bigger, more and more crass, dragging on unavoidably increasingly celebrating war, pride and sacrifice.
Ach back to Harry Patch, who yes wore a Red Poppy on remembrance day;
When the war ended, I don't know if I was more relieved that we'd won or that I didn't have to go back. Passchendaele was a disastrous battle – thousands and thousands of young lives were lost. It makes me angry. Earlier this year, I went back to Ypres to shake the hand of Charles Kuentz, Germany's only surviving veteran from the war. It was emotional. He is 107. We've had 87 years to think what war is. To me, it's a licence to go out and murder. Why should the British government call me up and take me out to a battlefield to shoot a man I never knew, whose language I couldn't speak? All those lives lost for a war finished over a table. Now what is the sense in that Harry Patch.