Poppies

[mart]

Sorry pe, I was replying to Peter. I can't see how having an opinion on the miners strike has any relevance.
I don't think anyone who has never fought in a war is qualified to express an opinion let alone a condemnation of "cowardice".
There are too many armchair generals on this forum.

Mart

[planeterotica]

mart wrote:

> Sorry pe, I was replying to Peter. I can't see how having an
> opinion on the miners strike has any relevance.
> I don't think anyone who has never fought in a war is qualified
> to express an opinion let alone a condemnation of "cowardice".
> There are too many armchair generals on this forum.
>
> Mart

planeterotica wrote:

I agree mart i also fail to see where the miners strike has any relevance on this matter allough i supported the miners in their cause having friends who worked in the Kent mines, but the red poppie is the symbol of rememberance and during the 1st WW women would hand out white flowers to men of age in this country who hadnt conscripted which was a sign of cowardice therefore the connection with the white poppie.

[mart]

You are confusing the white poppy with the white feather.
"The White Poppy is sometimes linked with the white feather, which chauvinist women bestowed on 'slackers' in the First World War. The notion of a white feather representing cowardice goes back to the 18th century, arising from the belief that a white feather in the tail of a game bird denoted poor quality. To 'show the white feather' was therefore to be 'unmanly'.

On 30 August 1914, less then a month after the declaration of war, a retired Admiral, Penrose Fitzgerald, announced in Folkstone that he had formed a band of 30 women to present a white feather - a danger 'far more terrible than anything they can meet in battle' - to young men 'of public school and university education...found idling and loafing' instead of setting an example to working men.

Thereafter white feathers were given out all over the country, but their frequent bestowal on men invalided from the trenches or otherwise unqualified for military duty made the women concerned unpopular even among those sympathetic to the war effort."

The Four Feathers in the movie were white.

Mart

[Peter]

You seem to think only those who have partaken in an event have a right to epress and opinion on it. Hence, if you wern't in the strike and i was, you don't have a right to comment on it. Not a stance i'd agree with.

Not confusing it with feathers either. My comment came from a news job I worked on many years ago, when the white poppy was being sold rather 'forcefully' by the CND/Commie/Socialist Worker types outside the British Legion, under a very anti-war banner. It ended in fisticuffs dealt out by the septogenarians after they were told by the unwashed scruffs they, and anyone who took part in wars, were as bad as each other and all murderers.

The white poppy they were selling were referred to by the British Legion members as "the Cowards Poppy"

[stripeysydney]

No offence Mart, but I'm with Dibble on this one, he's right , and yes he doe's shit-stir sometimes to great effect.
A few years ago I was visiting some friends in Runnymede in Berkshire and it was a sunny afternoon and me and my other half was wandering down by the Thames and accidentally came across the Air Force Memorial for all the Dominion Forces killed in action during the second world war; every nationality and religion was up on that wall.
Pakistani's, Nigerian's. Kenyan, Fijian, indian, even the Irish who had no reason to like the British volunteered in their thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousand to fight evil..
It was a humbling experience just wandering around reading all the names of those who had sacrificed their lives.
It was very quiet too....

[planeterotica]

Mart apologies for confusing the white flower with the feather but we are talking along the same lines, please read on, my own father was in the Marines during WW2 and was on one of the first landing craft to approach the Normandy beaches on D Day, the craft he was on was blown out of the water he survived and spent several hours in the water avoiding the machine guns that were hailing down on them from the cliff tops, eventually he was rescued and went on to see action in Belgium, Holland .and the final push into Germany he was aged 20 at the time, after the war he like so many others just got on with their lives they had no counciling or support from the govermant and ex servicemen and women only had the British Legion to look to for support and they raise most of their money buy selling poppies (red ones) when the poppie seller use to knock at the door my father always donated and took a poppie and would lay it on the sideboard but would seldom wear it likewise with the medals he was awarded he would never wear them, he never gloryfied war and never spoke about the horrors he would have witnessed which he took with him to his grave when he died 2 years ago aged 80, he never spoke ill of the German people and i never once heard him make a racist remark, he was a strapping six footer who could look after himself but was never violent but i feel sure if a white poppie seller had knocked on the door their feet wouldnt have touched the ground, and its for these reasons i say to any one selling white poppies go and shove them up your arse !thumbsup!