Has poppymania gone too far?
Has poppymania gone too far?
The long read: Over the past 20 years, the symbol of remembrance for the war dead has become increasingly ubiquitous – and a culture of poppy policing has grown with it
I've literally never been stopped for not wearing a poppy. People wearing them don't say anything to me about not wearing one and I don't say anything to them about wearing one. It's like me commenting on someone's jewellery. Why the fuck would I? People want to wear what they want to wear.
Is this really such a newsworthy issue?
One thing I do find nuts is that the poppys have only just moved to paper stems. Every year they'd be busy handing these things out only for the plastic stem and centre to end up in landfill. I bought one of the reusable metal brooch versions a while ago, and just wear that each year, but it's sad that the disposable nature of them wasn't taken into consideration when they were designed.
I thought they were meant to be disposable so you'd buy anew each year?
They are, but their stems and centre piece are plastic, which just ends up in landfill or litter. A reusable brooch is more environmentally friendly, but at least now they have paper stems and (im assuming) paper centre pieces so when they get thrown away they're not so bad.
Don't the metal ones have the year on to shame you into buying a new one?
O get them because the lifespan of a paper/plastic one is about 3 days...
Maybe some do, but mine just looks like this:
The person dressed in a giant poppy costume who was jumping side to side and waving their arms at me as I entered the supermarket was pretty funny and made me smile, so I'll have more of that type of poppy mania please.
Some people get weirdly militant about wearing them and decorating with them in Facebook posts, but I don't think I've ever seen anyone behave like that on person.
Poppy mania had gone too far in the early 2000s. Now it’s just completely bonkers out of control madness.
Worked in a school where the head refused to employ any of the candidates who turned up for interview because none of them wore a poppy (and one of them wore tan-coloured shoes that hadn’t been polished, too!) Some of the candidates were perfectly suitable and the school needed to fill the post to help reduce workload on the rest of us.
I hope this was a private school. The idea that the state system would be so insanely discriminatory is insane.
Regular state school. I worked in another where the executive head hired a private investigator to keep an eye on staff who were on longer-term illnesses and do “background checks”.
My girlfriend is a teacher and due to the stories that I've heard I've come to the conclusion that a lot of teachers and particularly head teachers, are total lunatics.
My first two heads were both involved in fraud. This was in the early days of grant maintained schools. The first one set up a printing business within the school and staff could only do photocopying etc through the printers. He was taking home a nice cut of the “profits”. The second one defrauded the school for about a million pounds in a scam where her husband sold the school computer equipment, got a stupid deputy to sign for empty boxes and then claimed that the computers had been supplied. That head went on the run to Spain. Eventully went to the High Court and she got away with it. We were told by local LEA that if we leaked anything to the press we would be prosecuted.
Also have to mention the heads who pretend you aren’t there when you try to talk to them in a corridor. I was once told never to approach one head because “Kings only talk to other kings!”
If only wearing one actually fostered true anti-war sentiments, eh..
Poppies and the very embodiment of virtue signalling. I hate that every panelist on BBC shows is forced to wear a fresh one. It's ridiculous and makes the entire effort meaningless. All because Mildred up the road will have a hissy fit on Points of View if somebody forgets.
LEST WE FORGET
Mate of mine was chatting to a girl online
"What are you wearing, babe?" "Just a thong 😉" "Where the f*ck's your poppy?"
How do you go too far with images of poppies, especially when they represent remembrance for people who died fighting nazis?
You didn’t read the article, did you?
Who does?
Ironic that you mentioned Nazis.
There are some people who have become obsessed with the idea that if you don't wear a poppy you're some kind of warmonger.
They go around and try and shame people about it. I don't know why they just don't hound out white feathers.
Honestly it's just people with nothing better to do with their lives then harang everyone else for not exactly conforming to their personal worldview.
That's a bit much. Like yeah, if someone asked "should I wear a poppy", I'd 100% encourage them to. But there's no sense harassing someone who doesn't lol.