[News] No VE Day thread?

[AmexRuislip]

This isn't a dig at anyone here but the people who seem to care most strongly about this seem to directly their energy at getting angry on the internet now, rather than organising anything previously.

Yeh I can see that.
But I guess anyone wanting to organise anything that remotely mirrors anything after WW2, has to jump through council red tape and any H&S issues that may be relevant.
Then there's the cost and who fronts the monies required for any such event.

Best go to an officially organised event IMO
Then complain that it's

 

[mikeyjh]

I could be wrong, but I think I’ve detected a definite lessening in the degree of remembrance for this anniversary. Whilst a bit worrying (“Lest We Forget” and all that), I suppose it’s understandable, with the direct memories getting more and more lost each year.

There are some weird inconsistencies in twentieth and twenty first century remembrance. Back in the sixties, as a Boy Scout, I marched through Seaford on November 11th, remembering the dead of the two world wars, but we weren’t remembering the dead of the Siege of Khartoum (eighty years earlier), and I’m sure that in the thirties they weren’t remembering the dead of the Crimean War (eighty years earlier).

It’s an awful thing to say but maybe, eventually, we have to let it go and consign it to the history books. That, of course, sounds callous and has all the risks of “those who forget history are doomed to repeat it” catching up with us.

I don't disagree - I just sometimes wish we focussed a little bit on the history of WWII, why it happened, how Hitler came to be so powerful, that's a lesson we don't seem to teach, or learn.

 

[WATFORD zero]

I could be wrong, but I think I’ve detected a definite lessening in the degree of remembrance for this anniversary. Whilst a bit worrying (“Lest We Forget” and all that), I suppose it’s understandable, with the direct memories getting more and more lost each year.

There are some weird inconsistencies in twentieth and twenty first century remembrance. Back in the sixties, as a Boy Scout, I marched through Seaford on November 11th, remembering the dead of the two world wars, but we weren’t remembering the dead of the Siege of Khartoum (eighty years earlier), and I’m sure that in the thirties they weren’t remembering the dead of the Crimean War (eighty years earlier).

It’s an awful thing to say but maybe, eventually, we have to let it go and consign it to the history books. That, of course, sounds callous and has all the risks of “those who forget history are doomed to repeat it” catching up with us.

I think that 80 years on from it ending, it's inevitable that there is a lessening of remembrance for WW2. My Grandfather came off the beaches at Dunkirk and went back over to Europe a few years later, but he died 50+ years ago. I remember working and being mates with blokes who had fought, but none of them are around anymore. I suspect that I am of the last generation who actually remembers and had close family and friends who were involved and I'm pushing 65.

I tend to focus my attention around Remembrance Day and people who fought and died in all wars more these days.

 

[rippleman]

I must admit the lack of publicity for yesterday's 2 minute silence meant it completely passed me by. Worthing tpically fires a canon to signal the start and end of a period of silence but i didn't hear it (which doesn't mean it didn't happen). It would have made far more sense to have the bank holiday yesterday rather than Monday (Or had an extra one so we could acknowledge and remember those who served).