Lest We Forget

Every year, for as long as I can remember, I have bought a poppy. Most years I buy a second one as the first gets dishevelled and crumpled, or simply lost. I have never considered it as a political gesture, nor a controversial one, simply as a mark of respect for the members of the armed forces who have died in the line of duty. Increasingly however, it seems that what began as a simple gesture after the Great War has become contentious, either because of matters of etiquette, or the increasing politicisation of wearing - or not wearing - a poppy.

As a matter of etiquette, there has frequently been debate as to when the poppy should be worn. Some say it ought not to be worn until 1st November, and there have in the past been complaints that TV presenters were wearing them in October. Personally, I don't wear a poppy before 1st November, and normally stop doing so after Remembrance Sunday, but that's my choice: if you want to wear yours from the day The Royal British Legion launch their appeal (this year it was 26th October) until some indeterminate day in the future, then I for one have no problem. Then there is the matter of whether one should wear one at all. Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow once decided not to wear a poppy on air, saying demands for him to wear one were "poppy fascism". A few years ago, ITV News presenter Charlene White decided not to wear a poppy on screen and received abuse and criticism on social media. Like Jon Snow, she said that she happily wore one on Armistice Day, but would not wear one on air, and her choice ought to be respected, this is after all, still a free country.

The problem has become that wearing a poppy or not wearing one has become politicised. Wear one and some people will claim that you are glorifying war. In my view that is akin to saying that those who lay floral tributes at the sites of people killed on the road are glorifying road traffic accidents, but - and this is key to where I am coming from - if your view is different, then, by all means, you are welcome to it. Just do not force it on others. There are zealots who believe that not wearing a poppy is unpatriotic, an act of sedition, of treason perhaps, and they are entitled to that belief. So long as they do not force it on others. Wear a poppy if you want; don't wear one if you don't, but whichever way you jump, respect the right of others to do the opposite. Some people have become uncomfortable wearing the poppy as there is a growing belief that it has been 'hijacked' by right-wing groups in much the same way as the Cross of St George has supposedly become a symbol of fascism the implication being that anyone wearing or displaying either is beyond the pale. While I can understand that, symbols like the poppy or the Cross of St George only get hijacked because people allow them to, because they become submissive in the face of an opinion that says that if you continue to do something you have done for over thirty years, like wearing a poppy, you have suddenly become an intolerant, anti-democratic, totalitarian, xenophobic racist - which you probably haven't.

Writing in The Independent recently, Otto English opined that it is time to ditch the poppy as its original meaning has been lost, that it is no longer relevant. I don't agree, but he is of course entitled to his opinion, one which he is free to hold and publish thanks in no small part to the men whose sacrifices the poppy represents. Anyway, his opinion is based largely on the basis that poppies commemorate only those who served in the Great War of 1914-18 and the Second World War (1939-1945) and that the last of the Great War veterans have died and those from the second conflict are now so few in number. However, Remembrance Sunday is a tribute to the "contribution of British and Commonwealth military and civilian servicemen and women in the two World Wars and later conflicts (my italics)."  So while he is entitled to his view, it is based on a false premise.

While we are on the subject of ditching things that are no longer relevant, may I suggest we do away with Bank Holidays, which made sense in the days when workers did not automatically receive holiday entitlements from their employers? Or perhaps we could do away with Christmas and Easter on the grounds that the majority of UK citizens do not identify with any religion.[1] There is a whole raft of things we do that are no longer relevant, that have lost their meaning - or perhaps I should say there are things that in some people's opinion are no longer relevant - but that does not automatically mean we need to stop doing them.

Were I serious about doing away with Bank Holidays, I've no doubt that many of you would be up in arms, but why, if it were simply my opinion? It is not as though it would actually happen, any more than the poppy and Remembrance Sunday are going to get dumped simply because a journalist his written a think piece deeming them no longer relevant. Half the problem today is that everyone has an opinion about everything, and thanks to social media, has the opportunity to inform the rest of the world of it. Equally, they have the opportunity to try to shoot down in flames anyone who has an opinion that does not conform to their own - on any subject and at any time. A civilised society has room for many different opinions, but sadly we are becoming increasingly intolerant of opinions which differ from our own. I am saddened by the number of posts that I read on social media which descend into slanging matches because one person holds a view that others disagree with, but which they find it impossible to argue with cogently, being able only to hurl invective at the poor unfortunate who dared express an unpopular opinion.

My last words on the subject of poppies:

If you want to wear one, that's great.

If you don't want to wear one, that's fine too.

If you wear one and see someone who isn't, accept it.

If you don't wear one and see someone who is, accept it.

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[1] Source: British Social Attitudes Survey and the European Social Survey.

Is That A Wind Up?

There is a post doing the rounds on social media that asks people to name something from their childhood that younger people would not understand, and I thought of that post while wandering round the house on Sunday morning, looking for clocks to put back from British Summer Time to GMT. It isn't so much the changing of the clocks, but the fact that these days many of them do it themselves that is different today,  so it is just the devices not connected to the internet, like the central heating and the microwave and an actual stand-alone clock on the mantelpiece that need manual attention. Even the thing on my wrist that tells me the time - it's a Fitbit, rather than just a watch - updates the time automatically.

What really struck me was that everything that has a clock in it in our house runs off the mains or batteries; younger people will rarely - if ever - have encountered, the clock or watch that needs winding up. I have worn a watch of one kind or another since I was quite young, but it seems that these days the younger generation are more likely to rely on their phones for telling the time, albeit that wearable technology like the Apple Watch and Fitbits may reverse that trend.

I remember my first watch - a wind-up job, of course - as it was a Christmas present. Sadly, it didn't last very long as my Dad managed to drop it and break it (well, that's what he told me), but it got replaced with a new Timex, which was then really the brand to have. I had that watch for some years, although now sadly I cannot remember what it was like. At some point during the 1970's the digital watch appeared, with Sinclair (of ZX-Spectrum computer fame) producing one that had to be assembled at home, by "anybody who can use a soldering iron," another thing that is very much a thing of the past, except for devoted hobbyists. Unable to tell one end of a soldering iron from the other, I refrained from buying such a watch, virtues of which were its proclaimed accuracy and not needing to be wound up.

Accuracy: that is probably the feature that I for one value most in a watch, and one which led me to bin the self-winding one I bought. Freed from the need to wind the thing up every day, the self-winding watch required just a couple of minutes of swishing about in a figure-of-eight pattern to get it started, whereafter the natural movement of one's wrist would keep it going. That element was fine, but the fact that it kept such poor time - usually gaining a minute or two every day - meant that I went back to my old wind up model. One would think that these days clocks and watches would keep nearly perfect time, and in fact of all the devices in our house that display the time, there is little more than a minute's discrepancy between any of them, except the one on the microwave which, left to its own devices, will be fifteen minutes ahead of every other clock in the house within a month of being reset. Why I wonder, does that happen?

Aside from winding up clocks and watches, I imagine that there are many of the younger generation who would find cassette tapes a bit of a mystery, and especially the associated repair kit. Those of you of a certain age will, I'm sure, remember - and none too fondly - listening to a music cassette, only for the song to suddenly distort and the tape abruptly stop. Having pressed the Stop button, one gingerly ejects the tape. 

The best case scenario is then that the tape has merely tangled slightly in the recording heads and that after extricating it, increasing the tension on the tape with a pencil through the sprocket hole would do the trick, although that section of the tape would now, forever more, sound slightly garbled. The worst case however would be a broken tape - or a tape so badly mangled that it had to be broken - and requiring splicing. Out would come the splicing kit, the tape would be repaired and playable, but at the cost of a second or two of song, such that when playing it back in future there would be a sudden jump, rather like with a scratched vinyl record. I was going to say that vinyl records are something that current and future generations might scratch their heads over, but vinyl seems to be making something of a comeback, although the prices are a bit eye-watering, if you ask me.

If you are under  50, you probably have no idea what this is.

 

One thing that the younger generation is only too aware of, however, and which they usually greet with eye-rolling dismay, is when someone - usually a parent - starts up a monologue that begins with, "Back in my day." Admit it, we've all done it, and such diatribes risk entering Monty Python's Four Yorkshiremen territory, frequently referring back to the days when TV came in two channels (in black and white), there was nothing on the box during weekday afternoons except the test card, and Sunday afternoon viewing was a choice between a couple of ropey old films (usually some Second World War picture, or a Western), followed by Songs of Praise. Plaintive cries of "I'm bored" were the soundtrack to such afternoons: any teenager claiming to be bored nowadays will risk hearing such stories repeated.

Floppy discs, video cameras, fax machines, rolls of camera film, having to stay in to watch a particular TV show because VCRs hadn't been invented, the Christmas blockbuster TV premiere of a film that had been in cinemas five years ago, dial-up internet, or the Encarta CD-ROM because you didn't have the internet yet, or if you did someone wanted to use the landline to make a telephone call at the same time...the list could go on. The pace of change -particularly in technology - is such that what to me are recent developments, like MySpace, Friends Reunited, and MSN Messenger are now just memories. It is impossible to conceive what future generations will make of the things today's youngsters wistfully recall. Like watches without batteries, they will probably think it's a wind-up.