to be fair quite a few contributors here tore me to pieces for my opposition to the poppy day's increasingly hero-worshipping tone towards our brave boys.

I think it's a problem which is spreading throughout society as a whole, unfortunately, and the longer it goes on unchecked the more people who don't "conform" to the herd mentality will be further marginalised and isolated. I can genuinely see a situation arising in the future where people are named and shamed in tabloid newspapers if they so much as don't get involved in a "here come our brave lads" type parade.

Also I seem to recall you were going a bit further than challenging the hero-worshipping tone, moving towards the "cut all help for soldiers full stop" area, which is a little daft.

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Reclaiming "methinks" for the nation

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The Mail has already done this before with Poppies. They ran a campaign to try and force Premier League football teams to wear a shirt embroidered with a Poppy and they ran a series of articles having a go at Jon Snow because he didn't wear a Poppy on air. (his reason being that he refuses to wear any kind of symbol on air, which is fair enough.)

the thing that galls me with the "support our boys" is the fact that "our boys" are only "our boys" when out in foreign lands killing, and risking their lives.

when they return and are shell shocked and damaged, can't get work, and become homeless (i forget the stats, but there are a lot of ex soldiers that are homeless) they are just homeless. not our boys.

the "support our boys" spiel is pretty pointless, and seems to really mean "support the UK army, regardless of what it does" with the soldiers (who are people) being lumped together as one mass, but as soon as they leave the army - they aren't "our boys" any more.

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i left so malcy could stay, sorry guys!

boo fecking hoo.

I recall a hoo-ha about Strictly Come Dancing as well, the arguement about pins flying out when twirling round being dismissed as not good enough.

Jon Snow always gets a barracking from the populist press, but never caves in. You could say he's a bit of a hero of Mailwatch.

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"Even when you're a super-computer with an IQ of 2000 it's brown trousers time."

Reclaiming "methinks" for the nation

Latest blog post - 2011 - a review (updated 07/10)

Perhaps someone should give him a white feather...

To be honest, the original poster makes some good points but those good points are buried in his ridiculous generalisations, hypocrisy and the way he comes across like a permanantly enranged Mailite while attempting to condemn them.

I do agree that the hero worship and demi-god status that the army have been raised to is not good for the country. I think I'm expected to be rabidly sycophantic to the army as I have relatives who serve and have served but I find it ridiculous that anyone who doesn't instantly lavish the army with Sun-like praise like "all hail our boys, our brave lads" is seen as scum.

I think it has a lot to do with the hijacking of patriotism by the laddish brigade. I've always seen patriotism as appreciating the good things your country has given to the world and celebrating it while embracing other people, other cultures. I'm sure that makes me a wet-behind-the-ears lefty to the Permanantly Enraged but hey, life's too short.

Seems to me that patriotism is so aggressive these days. To a section of society, patriotism means hate and aggression towards anyone different, a siege mentality of England vs the World and an obsession with violence. Groups like the EDL are seen by those sympathetic to the Mail's world view as truly patriotic because they walk around in the colours shouting loudly and being intimidating.

I have asked people on forums what they feel most proud of in regards to our culture and all I've got back is a mouthful of abuse about Muslims and others trying to take away our culture. The irony being that these people seemingly don't have a clue about our culture and just want to be allowed to get hammered on cheap lager before getting into a fight, shouting "Eng-Ur-Land".

Even in the run-up to the World Cup, there were a few England fans who would scream "come on!" into a camera with rage in their eyes, their faces set into a contorted snarl and their bodies positioned for a fight.

I don't think these people understand how to be truly patriotic. They associate patriotism with rage and aggression towards anyone who doesn't fit in with their narrow stereotype of the world. They simply don't believe certain things.

They think that anyone that doesn't throw lavish praise on soldiers wants them dead.

They think that anyone who doesn't partake in aggressive chanting against foreigners isn't supporting England at the World Cup.

They think that anyone who doesnt:

Work in manual labour
Isn't willing to fight to solve all their problems
Read laddish magazines
Spend their time as the "life and soul" up the pub (shouting the loudest)
Treat women as expendable sex toys or domestic slaves
Only have that piss up in Malaga as their only experience of culture.

is anti English.

And I'm not stereotyping here. You come across this kind of person, in life and on forums and this is an attitude that shows.

These are the people who shout about "our boys" the loudest. As stated before, the only experience these people have had of war is on their Playstations. And because these people are seen as the salt of the Earth and are mistakenly believed to represent the best parts of the working class, this has crept into the national consciousness.

And they don't realise that it patronises the soldiers. Soldiers are regular people with qualities and flaws who signed up for a job which they knew was not safe. And if they want to do that, I'm not going to critizise them. I know I couldn't do it. Referring to them in terms like "our beautiful boys" (yes, one woman called them that) and "our brave wonderful heroes" while completely contradicting it with their portrayal of them as weak little kittens who were forced by an evil government into a war who are totally helpless and innocent is more of an insult than actually taking a balanced view of soldiers and saying, "yes, some can be brave, some are intelligent people, some are good people but that doesn't mean that all soldiers are these things".

The sad thing is that I don't see it stopping. People already want soldiers to be above the law, getting favouritism in jobs and treated with a reverence usually reserved (wrongly) for religious leaders. It may just get worse and yet I don't think they realise that they aren't helping the army.

I wish I'd written what Dan's just said. So many peopel these days have a default position of unthinking, aggressive reactionism.

I find the way the right wing tabloids worship the armed forces increasingly irritating. I have noticed that in recent years the Mail and Express have been launching increasingly vitriolic attacks against public sector workers. For some reason members of the armed forced are one group of public sector workers who are not subject to this villification.

A speciality of the mail is to take a group of people who are then demonised, have hatred whipped against them, have negative stories written about them, lies are spread about them and this group is potrayed as a threat to society. Asylum seekers and gypsies are classic examples of this. Recently muslims have became a hate figure for the Daily Mail and anti muslim stories are now appearing in the Mail and Express on a regular basis. I feel it is likely that the tabloids venerate and think the sun shines out of the backsides of the soldiers because they are killing dark skinned muslims whom the racist Mail and Express despise. If these soliders were killing white people whom the Mail and Express had not hatred against, would these papers be so sycophantic towards the troops.

Good point. In a way it's already starting. Here in Southampton my local paper named and shamed shops in a local mall for refusing to put up posters to publicise one of those parades in the area.

'Surely', I thought when I read about this, 'it's up to the manager of Dotty Perkins what goes up in the window?'. Apparently not. It appears to be acceptable to bully them into becoming part of the worship.

Absolutely disgusting really.

As with poppy fascism, do these people not realise that forcing everyone to do something means its impact is lost?

especially when that something represents the victory of freedom and liberty over fascist dictators who force everyone to think like them.

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No. The poppy represents charitable giving, to aid wounded ex-servicemen and dependent families. The British Legion will deny any other meanings - quite rightly.

And surely also the poppy was the symbol from the battlefields of the 1914-18 war which had nothing to do with fascist dictators, more being due to atagonistic monarchies?

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"Even when you're a super-computer with an IQ of 2000 it's brown trousers time."

Reclaiming "methinks" for the nation

Latest blog post - 2011 - a review (updated 07/10)

Given that fascism was a product of, not a cause of the Great War? Yup.