Words fail me. There is nothing I can add to the book saga other than a quote: “Where today you burn books, eventually there you will burn people”. I think that was Brecht but I may be misinformed.
As for poppies, it’s the same around here. I am a proud ex-Reservist and always wear a poppy. It was almost impossible to find one this year, and the ones I found were awful paper things. My wife gets mighty annoyed at people who don’t wear them, but as I pointed out, it could simply be there are none on sale where they live and shop.
The RBL needs to get its finger out and make sure all the usual venues get a supply next year.
The woke ideology is a form of what I have come to call 'cognitive anti-therapy'. In other words, it is a highly flawed way of thinking that cultivates increasingly unhealthy mental states in its believers. (This is in contrast to 'cognitive therapy', which is learning the art of skilled, realistic thinking to enhance one's mental health.) If one is a woke believer then literally anything someone in a 'bad' group says or does can be misinterpreted as harmful to those in the 'good' groups. It is paranoia on steroids. But it also inculcates an authoritarian mindset that involves bullying others. I suspect that it also attracts people with serious personality disorders who use it for their own ends. It is very much time to fight back against it. The problem is that it is a cult which has invaded so many Western institutions, rendering them dysfunctional. Perhaps the main offendotrons need to be placed in zoos, or maybe secure hospitals such as Broadmoor. The rest need help with de-programming from their cult beliefs.
I share your views on each of the topics you raised but my greatest feeling of despair comes from the inability of my home town to furnish you with a poppy on Remembrance weekend.
I was brought up in 1950s Wolverhampton by a father who was wounded at Monte Casino and a mother who worked in aircraft factories - always a likely target for the bombers.
Furthermore, my grandfather-in -law was killed at Passchendaele in November 1917.
We visit the grave in Ypres to place flowers when we can and were fortunate to be at the Armistice Commemoration in 2018 at Tyne Cot cemetry. One of my daughters, who did not have an invitation to the official commemoration at Tyne Cot, still travelled to Ypres, and watched the service on the public screens in the City centre.
We, and our daughters, will never forget all of them from all nations and the sacrifices they made for all of us.
I hope the nation can be relied upon to do so too.
1. I don't like the British Legion as a charity which bangs on about wokism but does very little for ex servicemen.
2. Whereas we might think we're remembering those that died in two world wars we are also commemorating those 40+ wars and conflicts in the past 100 years that have been simply brutal imperialist wars. 40+ I hear you say. Surely not? Here we go
The Adwan, Ikhwan rebellions, the Great Arab Revolt, the Palestine Emergency, The Afghan Tribal Revolts, the Balochistan Insurgency, the various attacks on Irish Republicans from 1942 onwards, the Greek Civil War, the Sheikh Bashir Rebellion, the Indonesian National Revolution, the Vietnam War, the Malayan Emergency, the Korean War, the Anglo Egyptian War, the Mau Mau Uprising, the Jebel Akhdar War, the Cyprus Emergency, the Suez Crisis, The First Cod War with Iceland, the Upper Yafa Disturbances, the Dhofar Rebellion, the Indonesia Malaysia Confrontation, The Aden Emergency, the Second Cod War, the Third Cod War, the Lebanese Conflict, the Gulf War, the Bosnian War, Operation Desert Fox, the Kosovo War, the Sierra Leone Civil War, the Afghanistan Invasion, the Iraq War, the Libyan Bombing and Civil War & Operation Shader.
Fair points but Remembrance isn't about the rights or wrongs of various conflicts, IT'S ABOUT THE POOR SODS who are used by US puppets like Blair and side kick Alastair Campbell to go and murder thousands of people...whilst getting their arms and legs blown off.
Don’t remember any deaths in the ‘Cod War’ personally. The Bosnian conflict was as peacekeepers and not sure any British Service people died there either, likewise Kosovo, and actually in FRY the British Army were probably key to NOT starting a conflict with Russia. British forces were definitely not involved in Vietnam either, except some Royal Military Police involved in guarding the British Embassy in Saigon, who never fired a shot. Other campaigns of decolonisation. We were involved in and actually, British forces were committed to stop Communist insurgents taking over against the will of the local population - vide Malaysia. Sierra Leone was to stop insurgency by drug addled insurgents, again nobody killed that I know of?
So we basically have a list of wars and conflicts around the world, some of which British forces had no involvement in, or in which there were no casualties. We could also include Operation Corporate where British forces were used to eject an invasion of British territory by a neo-fascist regime, and Operation Banner - The deployments to NI. I saw what Irish Nationalist physical force men did to London in the 80s and 90s and would say to include that operation would be a complicated moral judgement to say the least. Whilst some in the above list were of dubious morality, that is not a reflection on the British service personnel involved and either killed or injured.
As Mrs Bucket says, Remembrance Day is a secular day of honouring those who volunteered to serve OUR nations of Great Britain, laid their life on the line and suffered. Sales of poppies find the Haig Fund which supports those who suffered long term physical or psychological damage. I can’t see revictimising those as a protest against colonialism, sorry.
I very much doubt this celebrity novel was destined to enter the canon of English Literature as the closing date for new entries has already come and gone and is unlikely to be rescheduled.
Words fail me. There is nothing I can add to the book saga other than a quote: “Where today you burn books, eventually there you will burn people”. I think that was Brecht but I may be misinformed.
As for poppies, it’s the same around here. I am a proud ex-Reservist and always wear a poppy. It was almost impossible to find one this year, and the ones I found were awful paper things. My wife gets mighty annoyed at people who don’t wear them, but as I pointed out, it could simply be there are none on sale where they live and shop.
The RBL needs to get its finger out and make sure all the usual venues get a supply next year.
The woke ideology is a form of what I have come to call 'cognitive anti-therapy'. In other words, it is a highly flawed way of thinking that cultivates increasingly unhealthy mental states in its believers. (This is in contrast to 'cognitive therapy', which is learning the art of skilled, realistic thinking to enhance one's mental health.) If one is a woke believer then literally anything someone in a 'bad' group says or does can be misinterpreted as harmful to those in the 'good' groups. It is paranoia on steroids. But it also inculcates an authoritarian mindset that involves bullying others. I suspect that it also attracts people with serious personality disorders who use it for their own ends. It is very much time to fight back against it. The problem is that it is a cult which has invaded so many Western institutions, rendering them dysfunctional. Perhaps the main offendotrons need to be placed in zoos, or maybe secure hospitals such as Broadmoor. The rest need help with de-programming from their cult beliefs.
Thank you for an excellent article, Paul.
I share your views on each of the topics you raised but my greatest feeling of despair comes from the inability of my home town to furnish you with a poppy on Remembrance weekend.
I was brought up in 1950s Wolverhampton by a father who was wounded at Monte Casino and a mother who worked in aircraft factories - always a likely target for the bombers.
Furthermore, my grandfather-in -law was killed at Passchendaele in November 1917.
We visit the grave in Ypres to place flowers when we can and were fortunate to be at the Armistice Commemoration in 2018 at Tyne Cot cemetry. One of my daughters, who did not have an invitation to the official commemoration at Tyne Cot, still travelled to Ypres, and watched the service on the public screens in the City centre.
We, and our daughters, will never forget all of them from all nations and the sacrifices they made for all of us.
I hope the nation can be relied upon to do so too.
I don't wear poppies because of two reasons.
1. I don't like the British Legion as a charity which bangs on about wokism but does very little for ex servicemen.
2. Whereas we might think we're remembering those that died in two world wars we are also commemorating those 40+ wars and conflicts in the past 100 years that have been simply brutal imperialist wars. 40+ I hear you say. Surely not? Here we go
The Adwan, Ikhwan rebellions, the Great Arab Revolt, the Palestine Emergency, The Afghan Tribal Revolts, the Balochistan Insurgency, the various attacks on Irish Republicans from 1942 onwards, the Greek Civil War, the Sheikh Bashir Rebellion, the Indonesian National Revolution, the Vietnam War, the Malayan Emergency, the Korean War, the Anglo Egyptian War, the Mau Mau Uprising, the Jebel Akhdar War, the Cyprus Emergency, the Suez Crisis, The First Cod War with Iceland, the Upper Yafa Disturbances, the Dhofar Rebellion, the Indonesia Malaysia Confrontation, The Aden Emergency, the Second Cod War, the Third Cod War, the Lebanese Conflict, the Gulf War, the Bosnian War, Operation Desert Fox, the Kosovo War, the Sierra Leone Civil War, the Afghanistan Invasion, the Iraq War, the Libyan Bombing and Civil War & Operation Shader.
Fair points but Remembrance isn't about the rights or wrongs of various conflicts, IT'S ABOUT THE POOR SODS who are used by US puppets like Blair and side kick Alastair Campbell to go and murder thousands of people...whilst getting their arms and legs blown off.
Don’t remember any deaths in the ‘Cod War’ personally. The Bosnian conflict was as peacekeepers and not sure any British Service people died there either, likewise Kosovo, and actually in FRY the British Army were probably key to NOT starting a conflict with Russia. British forces were definitely not involved in Vietnam either, except some Royal Military Police involved in guarding the British Embassy in Saigon, who never fired a shot. Other campaigns of decolonisation. We were involved in and actually, British forces were committed to stop Communist insurgents taking over against the will of the local population - vide Malaysia. Sierra Leone was to stop insurgency by drug addled insurgents, again nobody killed that I know of?
So we basically have a list of wars and conflicts around the world, some of which British forces had no involvement in, or in which there were no casualties. We could also include Operation Corporate where British forces were used to eject an invasion of British territory by a neo-fascist regime, and Operation Banner - The deployments to NI. I saw what Irish Nationalist physical force men did to London in the 80s and 90s and would say to include that operation would be a complicated moral judgement to say the least. Whilst some in the above list were of dubious morality, that is not a reflection on the British service personnel involved and either killed or injured.
As Mrs Bucket says, Remembrance Day is a secular day of honouring those who volunteered to serve OUR nations of Great Britain, laid their life on the line and suffered. Sales of poppies find the Haig Fund which supports those who suffered long term physical or psychological damage. I can’t see revictimising those as a protest against colonialism, sorry.
Paul, I take your point about Danny Baker, and I listened every week to his Saturday morning 5 Live slot.
At the time I thought, and still do, that he'd been in the media long enough (NME, radio, TV) to know the optics of posting what he did.
He was naive to do so, and paid the price.
I very much doubt this celebrity novel was destined to enter the canon of English Literature as the closing date for new entries has already come and gone and is unlikely to be rescheduled.
Hear, hear. Odd how Trump is turning out to be common senses' best hope.