I think John may have a point. As explained here.

Duncan

Oh, Duncan, puh-lease!

The Guardian is a left-wing rag which has its own agenda. This is not an ''explanation'' which defends John's views, as far as I'm concerned.
There was much discussion on the radio today. "The most fortunate in our society have turned the solemnity of remembrance for fallen soldiers in ancient wars into a justification for our most recent armed conflicts." What a load of b****cks!

The idea that you can honor an eighteen year old brutally murdered in a trench a hundred years ago without allowing yourself to question the State and the dillusions used to get that eighteen year old into the trenches of yesterday and today is an interesting juxtaposition, a thimble of memory and a sea of Lethe.

I am trying to recall a rather good poem I heard once which seems relevant in the light of the very recent meetings with the Saudi government. It took the form of a memo to the UK delegates. I wish I could recall who wrote it. It concluded, roughly, thus:

Show them friendship and kinship and warships,
Show them guns, guided missiles and jets.
And be sure to remind everybody concerned
To wear poppies, Lest Someone Forgets.

Bollocks is as variable in appearance as the thing(s) for which it is named.

Perhaps the honest answer is to wear a white poppy.

A friend explained to me last week that poppies are the flower of choice for this remembrance because right after the war ended, poppies proliferated across the fields where the battles had happened. Is this common knowledge? It was news to me.

I think all British children of my generation know that retrospective explanation, Andrew. I believe otherwise, basing my opinion on some of the "trench" literature of the time. This, for instance, by Isaac Rosenberg:

‘Break of Day in the Trenches’

The darkness crumbles away
It is the same old druid Time as ever,
Only a live thing leaps my hand,
A queer sardonic rat,
As I pull the parapet’s poppy
To stick behind my ear.
Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew
Your cosmopolitan sympathies,
Now you have touched this English hand
You will do the same to a German
Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure
To cross the sleeping green between.
It seems you inwardly grin as you pass
Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes,
Less chanced than you for life,
Bonds to the whims of murder,
Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,
The torn fields of France.
What do you see in our eyes
At the shrieking iron and flame
Hurled through still heavens?
What quaver -what heart aghast?
Poppies whose roots are in men’s veins
Drop, and are ever dropping;
But mine in my ear is safe,
Just a little white with the dust.

The poppy is a weed of cornfields that were commandeered, destroyed, lay fallow and were gradually brought back to their original purpose by those who survived. It is known in botanical circles for its persistence.

Some people believe that the above poem (not my botanical tangent) was responsible for the choice of the poppy as a symbol, making it specific to that particular conflict which was, at the time, referred to as "the war to end all wars".

The poppy I wear, notionally, is the one the son of a Latvian Jew carried behind his ear for a while before he died on the Somme at the age of 27. It is not red with blood; it is white with the dust of his last line.

The honest answer may be to buy a poppy but then not wear it as I just did. Though I confess that was old man's forgetfulness. And of course I do have a point. Of course I do.

What about yellow poppies for those of us who would have deserted, just as all the American Rhodes sholars I met in Oxford had done.

Absolutely, Ann - to adapt the Bard - 'a white poppy gratis; nothing else for God's sake'. The Guardian article is spot on and unites me with John (saving your tired old barb about Bannockburn). If you seriously think that Guardian is left-wing, Jayne - let alone a 'rag' - I suspect you should get out more. Above all (save the Rosenberg, of course) I shall certainly remember Andrew's gently killing phrase - "a thimble of memory in a sea of Lethe".

I'm puzzled, Nigel, by the intended result of a statement like, "The Guardian is not a left-wing rag." Is it to move the perceived center, for the benefit of both the timid partisan and the low-information voter? Is it to convey a subtle, and perhaps self-flattering threat, that there is a real leftism out there, lurking behind the compromises of the system, that will bring the Revolution when the time is right? It is like the assertion that "Obama is not a liberal." There is clearly some intended payoff for the statement, but I'm not sure what it is.

With respect to poppies, yes, when symbols appear to be corrupted, they present a quandary for people whose intention with respect to the symbol is unchanged. They can go on saying the same thing with it at the risk of being misunderstood or they can stop expressing their intention or use a different symbol for it, alternatives which can also be misunderstood. Plenty of room for hypocrisy and manipulation around corrupted symbols.

Thank you, Ann. That poem and other are included in the small anthology "First World War Poems" selected by Andrew Motion and published by Faber. I strongly recommend it. Some poems never go out of fashion.

Also there are many lines for reflection in the anthology "Poetry of the Forties" edited by Robin Skelton (Penguin Modern Classics". Such as these lines with a most contemporary feel. The lines are by Alun Lewis in "All Day It Has Rained".

(...)
And we talked of girls, and dropping bombs on Rome
And thought of the quiet dead and the loud celebrities
Exhorting us to slaughter, and the herded refugees.
(...)

Today Sweden began border checks, albeit supposedly temporary and random. On Monday of this week, the flow of asylum seekers into Sweden reached a new record: 2160 in ONE DAY. Of which 741 were children traveling alone, sent by their parents in the hope that they might find a haven.

Even though you may not understand the language, it is enough to look at the video at the top of this link to get a grip on what is happening
http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/pa...cle21729680.ab

while elsewhere this is what the long lines of the displaced encounter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungar...er_barrier.jpg

One of our Greek-Swedish authors, Theodor Kallifitides tweeted this:

Meanwhile, "patriots" influenced by extremist propaganda are burning down the shelters intended for the refugees.