After I spotted a cabinet minister sporting one on 20 October (a few days after Nick Griffin), I rang the Royal British Legion, which runs the show - and, incidentally, asks Nick Griffin not to wear his poppy broach all year round.Ī nice young woman explained that the annual launch date is usually between 20 and 26 October. A bit like Christmas – which starts soon after Easter – the poppy season seems to get longer every year. In theory the frenzy will now ease off – at 11 o'clock on the 11th day of the 11th month, 91 years after the guns finally fell silent on the western front in 1918. And those identical fit-for-TV Mercedes hearses looked as if they might have bought half a helicopter for the frontline. Ghoulish Nick Griffin was photographed in yesterday's crowd looking more cheerful than he managed on Question Time. Thus the wholesome human impulse – sympathy – which prompted the citizens of Wootton Bassett in Wiltshire to pause as military coffins passed through the town from nearby RAF Lyneham started out well enough, decent to the core.īut it becomes larger and sleeker with every passing day, the coverage growing too. It's all become another media circus, masquerading as something profound – though profound emotions are still at work below the exploitative razzmatazz.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |