White poppies are distributed by the Peace Pledge Union, the oldest secular pacifist group in the UK. Last time I wore one, I was insulted by two librarians.
Pardon me for saying so - or don't: I really couldn't care less - but I'm not much of a fan of our annual 'Remembrance Sunday' rituals.
For one thing,
what really ought to be an occasion for the old to teach the young that the ruling elites have never seen them as anything other than a resource to be spent - is instead managed and manipulated so as to place those same ruling elites centre-stage in a theatre of fake respect and pseudo-humility. If you really think a creature like Theresa May (or David Cameron, or Gordon Brown, or Tony Blair...), or any of that sociopathic gaggle of 'royals' - can stand at the Cenotaph and feel anything other than the cold, then something has gone seriously awry in what should have been your education.
Plus, there's the rather obtrusive fact that what, by rights,
should be a day of public rage - over loss, over suffering, over the whitewashed psychopathy of state-policy violence - never contains so much as a smidgeon of anger, not the mildest trace of anything that might ever bring about
the tiniest change...
Comment: Pretty soon people won't be able to say or do anything at all.