The James McClean Sponsored Poppy Thread

[Inanimate Carbon Rod]

2 hours ago, HibsFan said:

Sorry, just to clarify: when I said consequences, I was more thinking along the lines of social ridicule and/or ostracisation / an apology statement.

No fair enough. My own take on it is more that hes been taken advantage of by journalists and manipulated, if anything its incredibly unethical journalism and devoid of even the most basic ‘fact check’ but it is the daily heil it wont have happened. I dont get why they published that article with absolutely no corroboration but then again i really dont like journalists. He seems like a bit of a walter mitty character and that should have rung alarm bells. 

[Dan Steele]

1 hour ago, Zen Archer (Raconteur) said:

'One of', fffs.

[D Angelo Barksdale]

[Miguel Sanchez]

I remember when the poppy jumped the shark for me. I was sat eating my lunch and I saw a bunch of middle-aged and above people gawping at this: Floating poppies draw attention as Every Man Remembered statue is unveiled at George Square - Glasgow Live

Quote

The Every Man Remembered statue, encased in a glass box, stands 23ft high and is based on the Unknown Soldier.

Quote

The Provost commented: “The Every Man Remembered statue is a great way to raise awareness of those who gave their lives in the Great War as we continue to commemorate the conflict's centenary.

"I'm proud Glasgow had the opportunity to lead the United Kingdom's First World War centenary commemorations in August 2014 and that we continue to remember the sacrifices of those who fell to defend our freedoms at events like this."

I looked at the statue

I looked at the people looking at the statue.

I wondered how much the statue cost.

I wondered what that much money could do if it went to actually supporting people who needed it (and this was before I knew it was on tour around the country).

I turned and looked at the actual Cenotaph at the bottom of George Square, which didn't have anyone looking at it, and which Wikipedia tells me has been there since 1924.

I agree with the posts on the previous page from Chris, GHF and Ziggy. "The Poppy" has long since ceased to be the solemn, unspoken symbol of respect I understood it to be when I was growing up. I'd put a decent bet at 90% of the general public/media's poppy wearing being entirely performative, either because they think they have to or because of a sense of moral superiority. This is even before you consider shite like Rangers' Armed Forces Day being imported from America.

I don't want to speak in hypotheticals about something as serious as being in the armed forces, but if I was a young man who got sent to fight in either world war I'd be fucking mortified if I thought people would celebrate it with crass nonsense like this.

[velo army]

7 hours ago, DA Baracus said:

Hopefully less and less folk aren't bothered. It's a load of pish that needs binned. All of it.

Less and less people are bothered, I think you mean.

Sorry, it's been a trying day so PTTGOMNs like this added to a poster saying "ostracisation" instead of ostracism which was followed in turn by a "one of event" slogan has tipped me over.

I'm awa for a lie down. 

[Inanimate Carbon Rod]

20 minutes ago, Miguel Sanchez said:

I remember when the poppy jumped the shark for me. I was sat eating my lunch and I saw a bunch of middle-aged and above people gawping at this: Floating poppies draw attention as Every Man Remembered statue is unveiled at George Square - Glasgow Live

I looked at the statue

I looked at the people looking at the statue.

I wondered how much the statue cost.

I wondered what that much money could do if it went to actually supporting people who needed it (and this was before I knew it was on tour around the country).

I turned and looked at the actual Cenotaph at the bottom of George Square, which didn't have anyone looking at it, and which Wikipedia tells me has been there since 1924.

I agree with the posts on the previous page from Chris, GHF and Ziggy. "The Poppy" has long since ceased to be the solemn, unspoken symbol of respect I understood it to be when I was growing up. I'd put a decent bet at 90% of the general public/media's poppy wearing being entirely performative, either because they think they have to or because of a sense of moral superiority. This is even before you consider shite like Rangers' Armed Forces Day being imported from America.

I don't want to speak in hypotheticals about something as serious as being in the armed forces, but if I was a young man who got sent to fight in either world war I'd be fucking mortified if I thought people would celebrate it with crass nonsense like this.

I agree. Fwiw i do view the cenotaph as a very special place in terms of our ww1 and 2 dead. Ill never understand the fetishisation of abseiling and firing cannons at games, for me the cenotaph is a statement that war is an evil thing and good men died to stop it, these displays fetishise it and cheapen it. 

[Dunfermline Don]

I help at a Scout Troop on a Thursday evening and no one was wearing a Poppy last night. 
It was the same at the special needs club that I took someone to today. 
For me a Poppy should only be worn on the 11th or at a remembrance service on the Sunday. 

[GAD]

I used to wear a poppy every year, due to the fact my Grandads fought in WWII and I knew them both, as well as my Grandads brother who had been in a Japanese POW camp. I was in my 20s when they died. It was something that affected them their whole lives

I think a few things happened to get us to the point where people like me won't wear the poppy anymore, and it's nothing to do with screens, or not carrying cash, or any of that shite. A lot of effort went into bringing the American style fetishisation of the armed forces here to try and soften the criticism of the war in Iraq. That coupled with the last veterans of WWI then WWII dying off allowed the whole thing to be hijacked by the worst possible people and for the poppy to become a political symbol that many good people don't want to be associated with. The sad truth is the message behind the "Lest we forget" phrase the flag shaggers love so much has been completely lost, and the whole thing has become a nationalistic celebration of war.

[Dan Steele]

1 hour ago, velo army said:

Less and less people are bothered, I think you mean.

Sorry, it's been a trying day so PTTGOMNs like this added to a poster saying "ostracisation" instead of ostracism which was followed in turn by a "one of event" slogan has tipped me over.

I'm awa for a lie down. 

Before you lie down, fewer people, I think.

[velo army]

4 minutes ago, Dan Steele said:

Before you lie down, fewer people, I think.

I thought about that, but I believe @Aim Here once had a good riposte to the use of fewer v less and I've not corrected it since.

[lichtgilphead]

21 hours ago, BMunro said:

 

 

So, here's the Sockpuppet's "proof". An undated photo at an undisclosed location showing someone that looks a bit like Donaldson with some Hitler Youth members. Well, that's totally conclusive, isn't it! 

I'm not aware of any evidence suggesting that Donaldson ever visited Germany. However, it is known that at least seven substantial Hitler Youth groups, each of about twenty young men, took cycling holidays in Britain in the 1930s. These were generally the older members of the Hitler Youth: in their late teens or early twenties.

Their itineraries were usually built round visits to English historic sites - Oxford, Cambridge, London. etc. One party was touring Scotland and another finished in Wales. They attempted to integrate with the Boy Scouts, and (fascist-leaning) Lord Baden-Powell met with the Hitler Youth leaders whilst they were in the UK. He was also invited to Germany to meet Hitler himself!

Now, these visits took place in July 1937. At the start of 1937, Donaldson was living in the USA. He moved back to Scotland during that year, but I've not been able to narrow the date down any further.

Accordingly, it is possible that he could have met some Hitler Youth members in Scotland in 1937. So what? Here's a real Nazi collaborator & his wife actually meeting Hitler.

Which picture is more worrying?

 

[Florentine_Pogen]

                                                                                  FOR I WILL GIVE YOU THE MORNING STAR

'In the sunset of an age and an epoch we may write that for epitaph of the men who were of it. They went quiet and brave from the lands they loved, though seldom of that love might they speak, it was not in them to tell in words of the earth that moved and lived and abided, their life and enduring love. And who knows at the last what memories of it were with them, the springs and the winters of this land and all the sounds and scents of it that had once been theirs, deep, and a passion of their blood and spirit, those four who died in France? With them we may say there died a thing older than themselves, these were the Last of the Peasants, the last of the Old Scots folk. A new generation comes up that will know them not, except as a memory in a song, they pass with the things that seemed good to them, with loves and desires that grow dim and alien in the days to be. It was the old Scotland that perished then, and we may believe that never again will the old speech and the old songs, the old curses and the old benedictions, rise but with alien effort to our lips. The last of the peasants, those four that you knew, took that with them to the darkness and the quietness of the places where they sleep. And the land changes, their parks and their steadings are a desolation where the sheep are pastured, we are told that great machines come soon to till the land, and the great herds come to feed on it, the crofter is gone, the man with the house and the steading of his own and the land closer to his heart than the flesh of his body. Nothing, it has been said, is true but change, nothing abides, and here in Kinraddie where we watch the building of those little prides and those little fortunes on the ruins of the little farms we must give heed that these also do not abide, that a new spirit shall come to the land with the greater herd and the great machines. For greed of place and possession and great estate those four had little heed, the kindness of friends and the warmth of toil and the peace of rest – they asked no more from God or man, and no less would they endure. So, lest we shame them, let us believe that the new oppressions and foolish greeds are no more than mists that pass. They died for a world that is past, these men, but they did not die for this that we seem to inherit. Beyond it and us there shines a greater hope and a newer world, undreamt when these four died. But need we doubt which side the battle they would range themselves did they live today, need we doubt the answer they cry to us even now, the four of them, from the places of the sunset ?'

Lewis Grassic Gibbon - Sunset Song

 

 

[RH33]

3 hours ago, Ziggy Sobotka said:

f**k sake.

[welshbairn]

2 hours ago, Dan Steele said:

Before you lie down, fewer people, I think.

I'm with you, 'less' is too closely associated with 'lesser' for my liking, in this context. 

[vikingTON]

12 hours ago, CarrbridgeSaintee said:

I also think there’s an element of taking our security and safety for granted.  In our busy lives, it doesn’t even occur to people to stop and think of the sacrifices those before us made.

Buying a daft plastic or metal poppy does absolutely nothing to respect sacrifices made for freedom, when the British armed forces have fought as professionals in foreign countries only for nearly 80 fucking years. Because 99.9% of the people who fought in those conflicts are now dead. 

Sitting around in West Germany or Cyprus, 'defending' the Falkland Islands or acting as America's 51st (vassal) state across five continents for a monthly wage do not actually count as sacrifices for freedom. 

 

[BFTD]

13 hours ago, GHF-23 said:

Obviously not a particularly new observation but I walked past a poppy stall this morning and then noticed barely anyone I passed was wearing one. Definitely seems a lot more people just don't bother with it at all. Is this due to the quickly ramping up insanity every year and turning into an ersatz armed forces support season turning people off, or are folk just not bothered anymore? I think of my dad who used to always wear a poppy, despite being an atheist always went to remembrance services when I was growing up, and I don't think he's worn one since he moved back to the UK 3 years ago 

Aye, I noticed there's been quite a decline in advance poppy-wearing this year, in the Forth Valley at least. Maybe just a blip, or perhaps it's going to go the way of the St George's Cross - being seen with one has started to imply something about the bearer that not everybody will find savoury.

However, I doubt contributions will have fallen more than you'd expect from a time when everyone with wealth is wringing every last penny out of the people who made it for them.

[carpetmonster]

 

end of The Crystal Maze has let itself go

[welshbairn]

A decent inside explanation of how the Met theoretically operate on protests, on the legal side anyway. I'd be interested if @Inanimate Carbon Rod thinks it's much the same procedure in Scotland.  First 20 mins or so. 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0gs2fx5

[carpetmonster]

On 31/10/2023 at 14:13, Sherrif John Bunnell said:

 

Christ knows what the thing with the Iceland flag sticking out of it is supposed to be.

 

Steve McClaren, I'd think. 

[welshbairn]

1 hour ago, carpetmonster said:

Steve McClaren, I'd think. 

Bjork making a discordant shriek about the UK invading and occupying Iceland in 1940, followed by the three Cod Wars.

Edited November 11, 2023 by welshbairn