Poppy dillemma

I would never wear a poppy. Where I worked, we had a cleaner who said her husband had been killed as he was the radio transmitter in an aeroplane which was shot down. She said she had never had a penny from the British Legion, in spite of having to bring up two boys.
It sickens me to hear of these young men who sacrificed - or gave their lives.
Their lives were taken from them!
Other languages use the word fallen in battle and that is better I think.
The British legion How they love this marching getting dressed up in their best uniforms and those who watch it just lap it up sitting in their warm safe houses.

just seen a bit of Strictly on TV..showing rehearsals.. all the dancers had poppies on..now let's get real... how many of you wear your poppy in private around the house? or is it usually pinned on your coat/jacket? This is why I think it is a shame to misuse the symbol this way. It is surely too important to become a celebrity / media acoutrement!

The British legion How they love this marching getting dressed up in their best uniforms
what a horrible comment

the British Legion don't wear uniforms.
The British Legion are out in the wind, the cold and the rain collecting money to help people like your cleaner. I am sorry she didn't receive anything from them, perhaps she didn't ask.

No-one celebrates war, killings, they just want to remember those who died for our freedom.

in fact, today of all days that is a particularly vile comment.
thank goodness there are people who work hard for the charities; it is not them who send people off to war, if you want to rage, rage at the politicians.

I am not a badge of honour,
I am not a racist smear,
I am not a fashion statement,
To be worn but once a year,
I am not glorification
Of conflict or of war.
I am not a paper ornament
A token,
I am more.

I am a loving memory,
Of a father or a son,
A permanent reminder
Of each and every one.
I'm paper or enamel
I'm old or shining new,
I'm a way of saying thank you,
To every one of you.

I am a simple poppy
A Reminder to you all,
That courage faith and honour,
Will stand where heroes fall.

Margaret. My late uncle, a territorial, went as out to Palestine as cavalry with the Warwickshires in 1939 aged 18. The horses they confided in as they groomed them were soon replaced by tanks. He survived El Alamein, many of his comrades didn't.

He was proud of his medals but never wore them. He was not in the Legion. He didn't march but kept in touch with friends who'd shared the experience of war. Each November we watched the poppies fall in the Albert Hall in our warm safe house and thought our own thoughts, a tear or two may have been shed. He thought war pointless.

I would respect him just as much if he'd got out his beret and medals and marched in companionship with with his comrades, the numbers decreasing each year. Won't even start re ny 6' Bevan Boy uncle chosen by lot to go down the mines instead of into the Navy. Called a coward locally and no Cenotaph, not medal until last year when he was long dead of lung disease.

My tear today was for brave Johnson Beharry VC's account of Harry Patch (last WW! veteran) feeling privileged to meet him whereas Beharry felt this was the other way round.
A friend's enlisted son is out in Calais dealing with the aftermath of today's wars, clearing the camp which mushrooms up again each night ...

We need our youth to go out to try and improve the world, we don't need 'cannon fodder' and blind sacrifice. Beharry was prepared to die to save the rest of the group he was with, that was clear eyed self-sacrifice.

There are and were some extraordinarily brave people involved in conflicts.

I didn't buy a poppy this year. I read the Veterans For Peace article about the British Legion and their links with the arms industry and just couldn't support them
This year (2015), for example, the British Legion’s annual ‘Poppy Rocks Ball’ is being sponsored by Lockheed Martin UK, the subsidiary of the world’s largest arms supplier, Lockheed Martin; the slightly grander Poppy Ball is sponsored by Sphinx Systems Limited, who manufacture handguns and pistols.
Incredible isn't it
Full report vfpuk.org/2015/my-name-is-legion/

I think they need to review that trisher.

Perhaps the arms firms look on it as 'conscience money' , who knows. And the RBL accepts it as they think the firms should help pay to put right the wrongs caused by their arms. I don't know.

And how many of us have investigated exactly where our pension fund is invested? We can make ethical investments oursves, but may have no control over a firm's pension scheme.

That's worth reading, trisher, if only to support one's opinion.

Wear a white one for Peace?

Go with the crowd don't stand out pay your taxes and when in Rome do as the Romans do.

Some of the conflicts that are mentioned on these forums are really heartbreaking and mind boggling.

I've had a very simply and easy life.

Using arms manufacturers' money is a fundamental flaw in the British Legion's strategy. If the manufacturers are salving their consciences then that doesn't wash with me.

It was just a thought, I always wonder what motivates other people's thinking.

Perhaps they should have been aware, but I don't think many of the grass roots members of the RBL, beavering away to raise funds for the ex-servicemen and families were aware of the connection. It's not just injured servicemen they help, they help families young and old, wives who have been abandoned, people who can't afford a funeral service for a loved one etc etc.
Compassion drives them, not militaristic or jingoistic feelings.

Is it something to do with the new strategy of out-sourcing a lot of their marketing, fund-raising I wonder?

The money from the Poppy Appeal does go to help people who need it.

However
The organisers of the Red Poppy Appeal, the Royal British Legion have stated that "it is a matter of choice, the Legion doesn't have a problem whether you wear a red one or a white one, both or none at all".

As I reiterate - freedom of choice is what it was all about.

If they want to pay conscience money, the RBL should take as much as possible from them - that'll cut down their profits. Better going to help the people Jalima mentions than into the pockets of arms tycoons.

As someone whose family has fairly recently received tremendous specialist help from the RBL, I wear a red poppy in November and I usually buy a wreath/cross to place in the garden of remembrance; I contribute to the funds of the RBL by purchasing them.

My husband and I also actively campaign against the arms trade and on International Peace Day in September each year we buy and wear white poppies.

Such things as wearing a red/white poppy, or no poppy at all, are up to the individual and I feel uncomfortable at the recent upsurge in politicising what is essentially a very deeply personal decision. When I wear either of my coloured poppies only close friends and family know what they mean to me and without a context I don't see how others are in a position to judge.

I'm glad it worked out for you Lucky and hope that before next year you will have had a conversation with your choir so that you won't be put in a similar position again.

Coming from a large varied forces family I know the war in the Far East was a particularly nasty to put it mildly. We knew about the things that were done at changy etc. However, the government should have helped a lot more. The poppies however were made by men and women such as your dad with mental and physical disabilities and still are I think. They are to remember everybody who took part in the wars, living and dead. Including civilians in this country and elsewhere. This was quite a lot in Malta where some of our relatives lived. So please think of these other people too. Your poor dad must have been through hell. I know my dad in law still remembered the trenches on the Somme until the day he died.

It's like praising drug dealers for sponsoring anti-drug campaigns and drug treatment programmes.

No need to praise them - just take the money and spend it on those who have been harmed by their product. Who better to spend it on?

No! Stop making and selling arms, then nobody will be harmed by them.

And until they stop - take all the money off them that you can. Being high-minded about not accepting it is cutting off someone else's nose to spite your face.

Sorry, I don't understand about not getting the money. It's the arms companies that get the money. The amount of money that this government spends on arms would pay for the NHS, and all welfare benefits. It would even give a decent basic income.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children… This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

Dwight D Eisenhower, 1953.

The British Legion are getting money from them in sponsorship. There was some talk of that meaning that the Legion were war-mongering.