If you think that you think like the folks on the Palestine marches every weekend just look at this tweet

It seems that Britain’s marches for Palestine where folks are allowed to shout about Jihad, killing Jews and the Police say that thereare many way of interpreting Jihad and killing Jews and that this is not a hate crime are now a weekly occurrence, to take place every Saturday. And that means there is already talk of an especially big march on Saturday 11th November, one that will almost certainly pass by the Cenotaph. I suspect you and I know what that means.

I wrote a long time ago abut how I do not like to be forced to wear a poppy by folks tut-tutting if you don’t - by social pressures. But each November 11 I think of my father’s uncle killed in Egypt and of my mother’s uncle Michael who survived and had what was termed “a good war”. I saw his widow, my amazing great Aunt R at the weekend. In her front room was a large photo I had never seen before of her father (an Air Vice Marshall) showing the King planes for the D-Day invasion. Again he survived.

But on November 11, I will remember those on both sides who fought and died or who lived and were, I’m sure, scarred by the horrors of war. I won’t do it to celebrate war or victory.  Wars are terrible. I have, again, noted my horrors at how some folks revel in photos of Russian young men and women being killed in Ukraine. Like most German soldiers they are not evil folks, just young people fighting for their country in a war which most of us, rightly, view as wrong.

So in Britain on November 11th we do not celebrate war or winning. It is just a quiet reflection of sacrifice of deaths that should not have happened and of bravery. It is one of those occassions when every year I am reminded that such basic decency is part of being British and why this really is not such a bad place after all.

But on twitter many young folks who want to march take a different view as you can see below. 

Aunt R and I discussed how Britain had changed so much for the worse. Someone saying that a poppy wearer was “war crazy”, even thiirty, years ago would have been shunned. But today it seems to be seen as a valid point of view.