As sometimes happens, the Mail's sanctimoniousness fails to strike a chord with its readers. But look at the worst-rate comment, direct from Private Eye's From The Messageboards. It's someone on here isn't it?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/footba ... l?ITO=1490

Comments closed after 9 items published - at least they realised they were getting owned.

And, good God! read the infantile phrasing of that article.
It reads like a junior school project, or perhaps Georgina's work.

For he record, my Grandfather was a veteran of the second world war.
This isn't some boast to elevate me above the masses, but a personal anecdote.
Like many small boys, I enjoyed gluing military models together and would excitedly ask him what the war was like.

He told me it was a long time to be away from his family, unpleasant and dangerous.
He told me that good men had to do terrible things for the save of their comrades, and he would not go into detail.
He told me he hoped I would never have to do the things that he did.
He told me that the greatest thing we could do for our veterans is prevent more wars, give them a decent health service and good pensions.

So I'm disinclined to believe a wet-behind-the-ears reporter who disagrees wth all the above, and feels a plastic flower marks the start and end of our gratitude.

Poppy fascism? Ask the EDL...

http://thoughcowardsflinch.com/2010/10/ ... ppy-trade/

_________________
"You may have heard the phrase, 'The flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil sets off a tornado in Texas.' Well, try this: 'The lies of a newspaper in London can get a bloke's head caved in down an alley in Bradford.' Richard Peppiatt

I must say I find those comments quite encouraging. Let's hope we see more of the same over the next two weeks: tabloid reporters are out and about as we write, scouring the country for organisations that aren't flaunting poppies all over the place so that they can mount "campaigns" to force them into sewing meaningless scraps of cloth on their employees' clothing, after which the papers will claim wonderful moral victories. And not one soldier or dead soldier's family will be any the better for it.

That was the story from 2009.
The poppy fascism for this year is http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/footba ... pride.html

The worst rated
There are thousands of Muslim supporters attending Old Trafford every week!
- Arthur Roberts, Bucharest Romania, 29/10/2010 7:21


Ah so it's the moslems fault.

I'm not totally sure if that comment about Hogdson wearing a poppy is a dig personally at our last manager but if Hogdson did wear a poppy so did a certain ex manager of Liverpool...

I think most managers did.

I've always noticed the pro war people are always people who have never witnessed war.

Their hollow victory is here

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/footba ... le-1325026

but I think they've misjudged it, again. I see I'm in the green with my comment on that story. Perhaps, like last year, even Mail readers are largely aware of the totalitarian images recalled by any forcing of people to wear badges.

I bet Patrick Collins is chomping at the bit to attack his newspaper over this shite. He might do, with a bit of subtlety to get is past them.

I've come to the conclusion that "Poppy fascism" is ultimately more about wanting people to conform socially than it is about remembering and reflecting on the country's war dead.

The fact that it happens to commemorate the times we gave Fritz (or Johnny Argie or Johnny Afghan or the Micks) a good walloping (and the rest of Europe acted like pussies) is entirely fortuitous.

Social conformity seems to be a major factor in a lot of Mail hatred. Take any issue the Mail regularly bleats about - Muslims, 'yobbishness', etc - and the real issue is more often than not "Does this person/group fit into my preconceived image of what Britain/whatever ought to be like?". Taking Muslims for example, they tend to be hardworking and law-abiding people. Good, you'd have thought. However they do insist on speaking foreign, dressing weird (to a Mailite), and doing other things that makes them obviously and visibly different from the norm; in a way that arguably Jews and Hindus are not, or at least not to the same degree. Not so good.

Basically, the last thing a Mailite wants to do is stand out from the crowd, as that makes you a target for small-minded bullies.

Such as Mail columnists, journalists and readers. So it goes...

_________________
Ten seconds... the pain begins.

Fifteen seconds... you can't breathe.

Twenty seconds... you give up and turn off the Jeremy Vine show.

Can't agree. Sikhs and jews definitely do things that stand out from the crowd. I don't think that explains why muslims get focused on in particular.

Some Sikhs and Jews do stand out from the crowd but most don't. Many Sikhs don't wear a turban or have a beard - in some Asian communities it is all but impossible to spot a second or third generation Sikh by appearance alone. You see a heck of a lot more karas (iron bangle) than turbans or beards and these are often tucked up a sleeve. For many Sikhs losing the turban and beard was one of the first things they did upon arrival in Britain.

And how do non-orthodox Jews stand out from the crowd? There are many, many thousands around the UK who are utterly invisible virtually all of the time.

But Muslims? There is a definite increase in the wearing of identifiably Islamic clothing - hijabs, taqiyahs, etc. The fastest growing segment is unquestionably amongst the young. It is becoming routine to encounter Muslim families where the parents shun Islamic dress, and have done so for decades, but some of their kids insist upon it. My partner grew up in a mixed Hindu/Muslim area and is constantly amazed at how it has changed in the last 15 years. At school in the eighties nobody was wearing any of this stuff - all of the Muslim kids dressed exactly the same as the Hindu kids (girls with a plait, boys in a jumper knitted by Aunty). Not a single head covering in sight, male nor female, except on some awkward Sikh boys tormented over their topknots. Some of those kids now wear Islamic dress but their young cousins and relatives wear it much more. In areas where the Muslim population has remained essentially unchanged since the 1970's there have been real changes, mostly in the last 10 years. There aren't that many more Muslims - it's that some of the existing ones are dressing very differently in some cases and suddenly became much more visible. I guess it's on obvious response to feeling that your identity is under attack, to defiantly declare it?

On a personal note I especially enjoy the absurdity of white converts to Islam pottering around Tesco dressed for the desert.

It's also a bit like the longing for a golden age that never existed so beloved of elderly Mailites. An immigrant knows that Britain for all its faults is a better life than he left behind and want to fit in; his children will blame Britain and discrimination for their every failing. I know of several Irish families - the parents who came over here in the fifties will be named something like Patrick and Mary, their kids born here are Andrew and Tracey, and their children will be Siobhan, Bridget and John-Paul.

Hmm. An interesting article, but a bit short on historical perspective - tucked away in Paragraph 19.
In 1935 Hitler was seen as a threat, but in no way a monster. There were fascist governments in a number of countries, and indeed the USA was following some quite similar policies with regard to economic stimulii.

Beyond that, 1933-35 was the high-water mark of the idea of the Great War as a futile and wasteful bloodletting, in which the ordinary soldiers had more in common with each other than with their leaders. The literature and journalism of the time saw the war as a mistake, and the Treaty of Versailles an unfair punishment on a Germany that was not solely to blame for the war.

So rapprochements like these were (and are) quite common. This is only significant because of Hitler, who of course used the visit to promote his agenda that Germany and Britain could be good friends, forget old animosities, more similarities than differences etc.

Once again the Mail sets its own agenda - ironically the author doesn't tell us what the Mail said about this visit in '35! Classic.

Oh, and welcome to the forum.

Yes the Legion visitiing germany in 1935 has a lot of commentators (and even the author) rather confused.

A couple of interesting trends from a minority of commentators.

Some suggesting war was a bad idea (Cos we should've joined in with the big Nazi adventure).
Others that can be summarized as "OMG what do you mean! I didnt think he was bad till 1939".