I don’t know how you @Jane_Williamson have concluded that Marxism is incompatible with love of one’s country and one’s fellow countrymen and women.
Millions of communists died to defeat Hitler’s Nazi ideology and violent expansionist assaults to the West and to the East.
Jeremy Corbyn loves his country, as do I, and if I stick in anybody’s craw because I honour the dead tomorrow, then I’m happy so to do, it will give those throats something to ponder on. 
And some have another view on such things - it doesn’t make you wrong or those right - it’s just a different point of view about War and it’s aftermath - Neither of us fought but were regaled stories by those that did and lost family members to enemy bombers, fighter planes, tanks, shelling and infantry . I have never worn a poppy but that does not mean I have forgotten the horror of war or the sacrifice made.
My Scottish grandfather was in SOE from 1939 to 1945 (I found out after his death) and he never spoke about the war at all. My French grandfather spent the whole war in the Far East, latterly in a Japanese POW camp, apart from once saying if you were fussy about what you ate you died, he didn’t speak about it either.
Yours is a very sober and thoughtful comment on the memorialisation of war, and echoes Polly Toynbee’s.
I think it’s time to stop the march-pasts and the fanfares. Their function IMO is just to stir the blood and to vaunt militarism. A minute’s silence and perhaps the solemn tolling of a bell could be enough.
Or a five minute close down of all but the absolutely crucial emergency channels of communication, to allow for real reflection on the memory of the dead. And all traffic signals at red.
It could be signalled by a warning siren, and concluded by the “All Clear” siren. These still have deep resonance for me.
The Remembrance Ceremony is a reminder to our children of the suffering caused by war.
Thirty years ago the Berlin Wall came down and the Communist East Berlin was freed.
All these things need to be remembered.
I know that it is Toynbee’s quote, not Dan’s - but surely the answer to her question is self-evident.
As long as lives are lost to war.
That’s going to be a long, long time then unfortunately.
It all depends, I think, on the meaning given to the term remembrance. Remembrance is the personal recall in the present of past lived experience.
Remembrance in its present gaudy form is mainly bread and circuses for the majority for whom it is as likely to be the glorification of militarism and of national pride, not of sorrow for the wanton waste of life, and the terrorisation of innocents.
That’s my opinion, anyhow. I don’t claim it to be superior to any other, by the way.
#vero…I have just got this book, which apparently was only issued in France in 2011 as the preferred view was that the resistance was solely french. Might be of interest to you…?
Fascinating! I shall look for it. I can consult my grandfather’s dossier in the special operations executive records in the war rooms if I am in London.
Did nobody notice that the idiot Boris laid his wreath upside down on the cenotaph! Frigging idiot!
What an idiot! 
Yes, it was noticed.
Taken in the round, probably not the worst gaffe he has ever made.
But I wonder if he will try to claim it on expenses again.
well I lived in Worksop for several years and was always being referred to as “m’duck”
So, the BBC now shooting itself in the foot by covering up the error by using footage from 2016 in the report on BBC breakfast.
Just in case there was anyone left who thought the BBC was trustworthy.
It seems that shady deals in back rooms is still the way politics is done in the UK
Indeed.
Striking that the anti-Boris “This is not Brexit” crap that Farage has been peddling on my FB account turns out to be completely untrue.
One wonders what the Tories are paying him.
They will certainly make it worth his while not necessarily monetarily.
With Brexit Party now not contesting the existing Conservatives seats - will this mean that Labour has to swing to be fully remain?
I wonder what the effect of this Brexit Party change will be?
Farage’s bluff to force the Tories into an open deal has failed, though there may well be a covert deal.
However, research seems to indicate that he takes more votes from the Tories than other parties - so if in the end the Brexit Party stands in all the non-Tory seats it could still make it harder for the Tories to increase their number of seats - while not affecting potential Tory losses in more ‘remain’ areas…
