Poppy Watch 2020

[sidcow]

On 28/10/2020 at 22:46, mjmooney said:

My encounters with skins go back to the late 60s/early 70s. Don Letts says it was a mixed race tribe? Sure, they got on fine with the West Indian kids - they would, they were into reggae (this was years before punk and Oi!). Didn't stop them hating the Asians, and Paki-bashing was their favourite activity. And not just Asians, but white longhairs like me and my mates - we got set on time and time again, totally unprovoked. Fast forward to 1982, the week before my wedding, and a mate and I got jumped by 8 or 9 NF skins, breaking my front teeth and putting my mate in hospital. On a trivial level I always found the 'look' utterly hideous. Forgive me if I'm sceptical about the cuddly little Weetabix Representatives for Wellingborough. 

Me and my mate age 13 or so were on our way to Stirchley Bowl to play on the arcade games, pockets stuffed with cash. 

My mate was borderline genius and got into King Edwards (the proper one) on a scholarship. 

We were approached by a group of the Stirchley Skins, the leader held his fist in front of our faces which had a big gold signet ring on it. He said "You see this ring? It's f in hard like my fist, give me your money or this is going in your face. " 

We blagged that we hadn't got any money as we'd just been to the arcade and spent it all which they believed despite us walking towards instead of away from the bowling alley. 

As we were walking away my mate said that he was tempted to say, but did not think it was the right time to point out to him that gold is in fact quite a soft metal.   I told him how glad I was that he decided not to say that.

Every skinhead I ever encountered was a nasty bullying shit. 

Edited October 30, 2020 by sidcow

[Wainy316]

And people says youths of today are unruly and dangerous.  
The 70s and 80s sounded like you were taking your life into your hands just going to the shop.  You certainly were going to the football.

[rjw63]

53 minutes ago, sidcow said:

Me and my mate age 13 or so we're on our way to Stirchley Bowl to play on the arcade games, pockets stuffed with cash. 

My mate was borderline genius and got into King Edwards (the proper one) on a scholarship. 

We were approached by a group of the Stirchley Skins, the leader held his fist in front of our faces which had a big gold signet ring on it. He said "You see this ring? It's f in hard like my fist, give me your money or this is going in your face. " 

We blagged that we hadn't got any money as we'd just been to the arcade and spent it all which they believed despite us walking towards instead of away from the bowling alley. 

As we were walking away my mate said that he was tempted to say, but did not think it was the right time to point out to him that gold is in fact quite a soft metal.   I told him how glad I was that he decided not to say that.

Every skinhead I ever encountered was a nasty bullying shit. 

Yeah, slap headed words removed.

I got my face kicked in when I was about 11 by a gang of these pricks. Hope they all died of cancer if I'm honest.

[Brumerican]

[Follyfoot]

On 29/10/2020 at 08:38, Wainy316 said:

And people says youths of today are unruly and dangerous.  
The 70s and 80s sounded like you were taking your life into your hands just going to the shop.  You certainly were going to the football.

Yes but we only ever beat up our own and you could leave your doors unlocked all night and we loved our dear old mothers

[kidlewis]

On 21/10/2020 at 10:54, NurembergVillan said:

On a separate yet related note - when did being virtuous become a bad thing?  So much of what we do is virtue-signalling.  Even wearing a Villa shirt.

There's a huge difference between you wearing a poppy and, for example, this guy -

That’s the main point, wearing a poppy is all good imo for the most part.

 

its the whole competitive nature of something which really shouldn’t be. 
 

MPs wearing the poppy in September or The Cookie Monster wearing a poppy or the people who turn their front garden into the Somme every year.

i guess it makes them happy whoever they are. 
 

I bet they do a week of rationing to really hit the point home. 

[NurembergVillan]

rocket polishers like this justify this thread's existence - 

 

[Mark Albrighton]

Going for tasty AND tasteful.... 

 

[KenjiOgiwara]

The poppy started out as a rememberance symbol of fallen in the Great War right? The moved on after WWII and such to become a general day of the armed forces? 

I'm slightly surprised it's so accepted in the PL. It's basically mixing politics and sports. 

[bickster]

2 hours ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

The poppy started out as a rememberance symbol of fallen in the Great War right? The moved on after WWII and such to become a general day of the armed forces? 

I'm slightly surprised it's so accepted in the PL. It's basically mixing politics and sports. 

Your reasoning is exactly why its ok inside the UK as the domestic associations control that but FIFA / UEFA throw a hissy fit for non-domestic football

[KenjiOgiwara]

36 minutes ago, bickster said:

Your reasoning is exactly why its ok inside the UK as the domestic associations control that but FIFA / UEFA throw a hissy fit for non-domestic football

I get that, I'm more asking if you English think it's okay. 

[bickster]

1 minute ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

I get that, I'm more asking if you English think it's okay. 

The vast majority of the population are very happy with it

If you held a referendum on ending Remembrance Day and everything associated with it, I suspect the vote would be in the high 80% against

[villa4europe]

Just now, bickster said:

The vast majority of the population are very happy with it

If you held a referendum on ending Remembrance Day and everything associated with it, I suspect the vote would be in the high 80% against

agree

I think we do well to call it remembrance day and we will remember them, it manages to tip toe the line and not fall in to the American trap of celebration of victories and what we've done over around the world because not all of it is good, some of it is very bad...

that's the attempt at removing the political message from it, we're not remembering the governments or how the battle ended or even necessarily where it was, its about honouring those who were sent off to die in the name of our country, its about the people

I've had to explain that to my German wife, she knows nothing about poppies (its also maybe another one of those where its so common for us that you somehow expect others to have at least heard of it and more often than not they haven't) as much as some people want it to be its not a reminder that we won the war, you can guarantee you will see a post washed with irony next week saying we should be allowed to wear a poppy because we won the war, politicising it

if in the future it became increasingly Americanised then I wouldn't do it anymore but I think the legion themselves from what I can gather from my grandparents are actually pretty sound and down to earth 

[Chindie]

The difficulty with the Poppy is that's not just a remembrance symbol. It's the representative of a charity that looks after all needy ex-servicemen. Which opens up a great many more difficulties than 'just' it's symbolic position as a remembrance of great, unprecedented sacrifice.

It really shouldn't have any place in a non-political sporting world.

[KenjiOgiwara]

22 minutes ago, bickster said:

The vast majority of the population are very happy with it

If you held a referendum on ending Remembrance Day and everything associated with it, I suspect the vote would be in the high 80% against

That's not my point. Have the day and I bet most people will support that. It makes sense. It was more a question about what you feel about mixing it with the football league. 

[bickster]

3 minutes ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

That's not my point. Have the day and I bet most people will support that. It makes sense. It was more a question about what you feel about mixing it with the football league. 

I very much doubt there's be any difference in that percentage.

[KenjiOgiwara]

Strange. 

[Awol]

1 hour ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

Strange. 

Not really. During WW1 a Football Battalion was formed that over 120 professional players joined, many more joined County Regiments and 'Pals' Battalions and football was suspended for the duration of the war. It was a total societal effort and the same thing happened 20 years later. 

I agree with the OP about the growing trend to focus on the symbology of remembrance for its own sake, with some people having a mawkish, almost ghoulish fetishization of the poppy. It's gross, and it detracts from what the thing is actually about: remembering and acknowledging the ungodly sacrifices made by our elders, for us. That's worth two minutes of a Sunday morning once a year.  

[villa4europe]

would add that there's a development with football's association with it in the last decade or so seemingly because of how football has developed

from memory it used to be games on the Saturday and Sunday of remembrance Sunday would have the minutes silence, last post on the bugle and usually some members of the armed forces in attendance and then always charity collections held at the ground, it was like that for a long long time

then im not sure which way round this all came, teams playing on the Sunday started wearing poppies on their shirts, these were auctioned to raise money for charity and im guessing were a success because then everyone that weekend wore a poppy on their shirt, then what's happened is that due to home and away fixtures and now international fixtures its also moved away from remembrance Sunday and its become every team doing it in their final home game before remembrance Sunday, that's how we end up with villa doing last weekend as the home team and then doing it again next weekend as the away team, that's all relatively new, maybe only 10 years old

but I would expect that its at its peak now, not sure what else they can do or would want to do

[bickster]

So many levels of wrong here.

Whoever the social media person is that put the tweet up managed to get the cropped version of the image you initially see as missing everything Never and above so initially is just reads Forget like this...