"Sacha" wrote in message
. uk...
On 12/1/08 12:14, in article , "Bob
Hobden" wrote:

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/remembermonday/

Just in case you haven't seen it.

Done, thanks Bob. I also signed up to the petition on the EU referendum!
--
Nov 11 is a public holiday in Canada but its observance varies. Some shops
(but not all) are closed until noon and many large companies allow their
employees to transfer the day off to the xmas/NY period.
Graham

"graham" wrote in message
news:Sl9ij.59831$uV6.25276@pd7urf1no...

"Sacha" wrote in message
. uk...
On 12/1/08 12:14, in article , "Bob
Hobden" wrote:

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/remembermonday/

Just in case you haven't seen it.

Done, thanks Bob. I also signed up to the petition on the EU referendum!
--
Nov 11 is a public holiday in Canada but its observance varies. Some
shops (but not all) are closed until noon and many large companies allow
their employees to transfer the day off to the xmas/NY period.
Graham


Just going to show that it is treated as 'another public holiday' and the
idea of what it's about forgotten in the midst of time. I won't sign the
petition. What I would sign is that 'everything' shuts down at 11.00 on the
11th of November for 2 minutes. 2 Minutes for people to 'really' remember.

Kind regards

Mike
Appreciating free speech, fought for by those who served to save free speech


--
www.rneba.org.uk. The Royal Naval Electrical Branch Association.
'THE' Association to find your ex-Greenie mess mates.
www.iowtours.com for all ex-Service Reunions. More being added regularly

On 12/1/08 18:40, in article ,
"Martin" wrote:

On Sat, 12 Jan 2008 18:33:42 +0000, Sacha
wrote:

On 12/1/08 18:29, in article ,
"Martin" wrote:

On Sat, 12 Jan 2008 18:14:50 +0000, Sacha
wrote:

On 12/1/08 17:17, in article , "Bob
Hobden" wrote:


"Eddy" wrote ((SNIP))
This is off-topic but as other replies appear to have been allowed I
would like to add my view.

That is why I put OT in the subject line. However poppies are flowers (or
weeds). :-)

I used to be a teacher at a good number of schools (primary and
secondary) and universities, until a few years ago and I was, and am
still, appalled at how most young people have little knowledge of and
regard for the extraordinary sacrifice that was made for the freedom
from Nazi domination which we all enjoy today. (Let's not forget the
Nazis dominated Europe and got as far as invading and occupying our
Channel Islands and it is a miracle we managed to beat them back!)


You berate the young and middle aged for not understanding about
Remembrance
Day and yet also tell us you were a Teacher for years.

snip


I suppose, to be fair, that teachers have to follow a curriculum. Are
they
allowed - or were they - to go off onto their own chosen path of interest?
That's a genuine question - I know they have to toe a party line now but I
don't know if someone who has been teaching for 60 years would have been
able to choose topics about which they, personally, were passionate.
But I'm in accord with you, Bob, about the teaching, or lack of it, that
children get now with regard to history.

Schools don;t teach recent history " because it is open to different
interpretations"

50 odd years ago I did O level History 1815-1914

My kids did a bit more, but not WWII and later.

The result is that one used to spend half ones life filling in the gaps. TV
Channels like Discovery make it easier to catch up on wars.

If you don't learn from history,
you learn nothing and IMO, every single child in every single country in
the
world should be taken to see the sites of war graves or e.g. Auschwitz so
that they learn what man can do to man if *they* don't put a stop to it in
each successive generation.

Maybe some of those nearer home - The Somme, Normandy, Arnhem ...?

Certainly but those aren't 'nearer home' for every child - and I do, most
truly, mean every child. One of the most moving things I've ever done was
visit the battle fields of Normandy and both the US and German cemeteries
there, closely followed by the memorial at Pearl Harbour.

They have more chance of identifying with hundreds of thousands of British war
dead, than Auschwitz.

I've visited Dachau, but it was the war grave cemeteries at Anzio that shocked
me most.

But those would not - perhaps - affect children from the Far and Middle East
as much as children from Europe. All countries have their memories of
horror, sadly.

--
Sacha
http://www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
(remove weeds from address)
'We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our
children.'

On Sat, 12 Jan 2008 14:13:02 GMT, Eddy
wrote:

Hi Bob,

This is off-topic but as other replies appear to have been allowed I
would like to add my view.

I see that the objectives at the petition-site are "to create a new
public holiday, the National Remembrance Holiday, to commemorate The
Fallen and our Nation, with the holiday falling on the second Monday in
November each year, the day after Remembrance Sunday".

I totally agree with the objective "to commemorate The Fallen and our
Nation". However, I don't believe that we do that adequately at present
and I don't believe that creating a holiday a day AFTER Remembrance
Sunday would encourage us to do it any more decently.

I used to be a teacher at a good number of schools (primary and
secondary) and universities, until a few years ago and I was, and am
still, appalled at how most young people have little knowledge of and
regard for the extraordinary sacrifice that was made for the freedom
from Nazi domination which we all enjoy today. (Let's not forget the
Nazis dominated Europe and got as far as invading and occupying our
Channel Islands and it is a miracle we managed to beat them back!)

But, of course, it is not just young people who disregard the efforts of
those who fought. Large numbers of middle-aged people, those of us in
our 50s and 60s, who were born shortly after the war, also show scant
regard for the heroes of both world wars. For proof, simply keep an eye
on any cenotaph round the country on Remembrance Sunday! The crowds
which gather are SHAMEFULLY small. I know young people who regard those
folks standing round cenotaphs in silence on Remembrance Sunday mornings
as a load of old nutters.

So the challenge is "how to get the nation to actively observe the
commemorations of Remembrance Sunday". If the nation can manage to get
out of bed and genuinely do that for ten years on the trot, THEN I would
say a new public holiday could then be linked to Remembrance Sunday.

Whether we should have or deserve an extra day off work is a separate
matter. To me it seems the UK seems to be binging itself silly without
any need for an extra holiday.

Eddy.

I am very much in favour of Remembrance for the fallen.
However it seems to me from the commercial support for the petition
that this is being used as an excuse, a label, for just another public
holiday. It will be used as an excuse for various commercial,
consumer-oriented activities that have nothing to do with Remembrance.

Christmas and Easter are bank holidays because they are religious
festivals, but only a minority use them to go to church. The majority
use them as an opportunity for parties. If we have a Remembrance day
off work, I believe the majority will also use that for parties. Is
that what we want?

On Sat, 12 Jan 2008 14:58:08 +0000, Sacha wrote:

I wonder if this suggestion has been made because strenuous efforts to
make 11th November a public holiday *whatever* day of the weeks it falls
on, have always failed.

Well I support that idea. It's not about a day of work or a long weekend,
'cause that is what it would end up as if placed on a Monday.

--
Cheers
Dave. pam is missing e-mail

"Fuschia" wrote in message
...

I am very much in favour of Remembrance for the fallen.
However it seems to me from the commercial support for the petition
that this is being used as an excuse, a label, for just another public
holiday. It will be used as an excuse for various commercial,
consumer-oriented activities that have nothing to do with Remembrance.

Christmas and Easter are bank holidays because they are religious
festivals, but only a minority use them to go to church. The majority
use them as an opportunity for parties. If we have a Remembrance day
off work, I believe the majority will also use that for parties. Is
that what we want?



Well said. That is why I will not sign the petition

Mike


--
www.rneba.org.uk. The Royal Naval Electrical Branch Association.
'THE' Association to find your ex-Greenie mess mates.
www.iowtours.com for all ex-Service Reunions. More being added regularly

In article ,
Martin writes:
|
| | Schools don;t teach recent history " because it is open to different
| | interpretations"
|
| That is not true. Both of my daughters did the second world war,
| including references to the Holocaust.
|
| How old are your daughters?

The younger is 22. While it is possible there has been a sea-change
in the past 8 years, I don't think there has been.

| There is also the distasteful fact that, for the past quarter of
| a century, Remembrance Sunday has been used by politicians as an
| opportunity for jingoism and as a way of claiming that they care
| about dead and crippled troops without actually doing anything for
| them. The original offender was, of course, you-know-who.
|
| Mrs T?

Hush. Speak of the devil, and ....


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

Bob, I'm glad you agree there is a great need for the young to be
educated about the two world wars, why they had to be fought, and what
that fighting entailed. And, yes, most certainly it should partly be
done within the education system. I can assure you, however, that since
I was teaching it has only become even more difficult for teachers to go
their own brave way and avoid the strictures of the national curriculum.
You should have heard something of us in the news over the years.

The media has also an immense role to play in the education of the young
and reminding of society in general of the extraordinary and unpayable
debt we owe to those who fought. One or two documentaries on BBC 1 or
2 over the course of the week preceding Remembrance Sunday is not
enough, particularly these days when so many consider it their right to
have satellite or cable access to literally hundreds of TV channels.
Many of the young, for example, NEVER bother with BBC 1 or 2: they're
glued to the likes of MTV and so forth.

Eddy.

Sacha wrote:
I suppose, to be fair, that teachers have to follow a curriculum. Are they
allowed - or were they - to go off onto their own chosen path of interest?

Up until about 1988 it was easier for teachers to divert or involve
other facets, however, even then, it took strength of character to speak
of the heroism of those who fought and lived through the war for there
was that other powerful stricture about: peer-pressure amongst teachers
and from the sixties onwards it has been fashionable, hasn't it, to
avoid any acclamation of war efforts.

If you don't learn from history,
you learn nothing and IMO, every single child in every single country in the
world should be taken to see the sites of war graves or e.g. Auschwitz so
that they learn what man can do to man if *they* don't put a stop to it in
each successive generation.

Absolutely, Sacha.

Eddy mentions the Channel Islands where my parents, grandparents, aunts and
uncles, were living under Nazi rule. They - and we - are lucky that rule
didn't prevail because from them I learned enough about how bad it was while
it lasted.

Fascinating. My grandparents and uncle endured two years in the Channel
Islands under the Nazis, losing their farm and spending those two years
cooped in a rented room in town. They watched as the Germans closed
down the businesses of Jewish residents and rounded them up. And then
in 1942 Hitler ordered my grandparents and uncle, and all other
English-born residents, to be imprisoned in southern Germany. The toll
that those three years of "internment" took on my grandparents destroyed
them mentally. (And by the way, no compensation has ever been paid to
those particular prisoners, as it has to Japanese POWs for example, and,
also, there has never been any enquiry into the degree to which Channel
Island authorities collaborated with the Nazis for the five years of the
occupation. I believe that to this day certain papers have never been
declassified.)

In our Parish magazine there was a short piece about young people in the sea
cadets collecting money during the Poppy Appeal in Totnes. Some equally
young drop out type came up to one young girl and told her she was
supporting 'murdering scum'. I do so wish I'd been there. I wonder if he
realises what would have happened to him if he'd said that to someone
collecting money for the Nazi party, from which fate he was saved by what
his ignorance describes as 'murdering scum'.

I think this one example you give, Sacha, states the situation
perfectly. That "young drop-out type" and thousands of other
non-drop-out types too would continue in the same attitude while lapping
up an extra public holiday.

Eddy.

Nick Maclaren wrote:
Both of my daughters did the second world war,
including references to the Holocaust.

They were lucky then, Nick, in the person who was their teacher.

There are some schools where a teacher may declare in the staff room
that he or she is about to teach about the world wars and the Holocaust,
etc., WITHOUT getting black looks from fellow teachers. I'll leave it
to you to consider what kind of schools they are and where those schools
might be situated. But I will give you a clue: they are highly unlikely
to be state schools in large urban areas!

Eddy.

wrote:
I have recently realised that it isn't their fault. It is ours. We do
not go about it the right way.

Absolutely, Helene, it IS our fault. The trouble is that "we" are more
than just you, and me, and a good number of others speaking here on this
topic in this forum. And, while our small number does what it can to
ensure the true story of the wars are not forgotten, many of the others
are so much more powerful than us. Transglobal corporations are running
the world of today and it is not in their interests to have the young
dwell upon matters that you and I and others like us know to be
important. They push the agenda of modernity and the future, which in
practice translates as the culture of consumerism. It is they who have
created that most contagious disease of our society of today:
"Affluenza". Most of our young are completely afflicted with it. All
they really want is no-maintenance no-work accommodation in which to
consume and enjoy, be it bigger and bigger flat-sceen TVS or smaller,
cleverer I-Phones and I-Pods, to lavish ready-cooked dinners, with at
least two weeks a year carbon-printing somewhere sunny and at least
several thousand miles away.

Eddy.

Martin wrote:
France 2008
Mar 21 2008 Fri Good Friday †#
Mar 24 2008 Mon Easter Monday †1
May 01 2008 Thu Labour Day 1
May 01 2008 Thu Ascension Day †1
May 08 2008 Thu Victory Day 1945 1
Jul 14 2008 Mon French National Holiday 1
Aug 15 2008 Fri Assumption Day †1
Nov 01 2008 Sat All Saints´ Day †1
Nov 11 2008 Tue Armistice Day 1918 1
Dec 25 2008 Thu Christmas †1
Dec 26 2008 Fri St. Stephen´s Day

Er, "What is point"? (Reference Radio 4's hilarious "Down The Line"!)

Is point that we as a nation should define ourselves according to how we
compare with the number of days that other nations have as public
holidays?

Other criteria not perhaps more relevant to definition?

Eddy.

In article ,
Eddy writes:
|
| They were lucky then, Nick, in the person who was their teacher.

Look at my Email address :-)

| There are some schools where a teacher may declare in the staff room
| that he or she is about to teach about the world wars and the Holocaust,
| etc., WITHOUT getting black looks from fellow teachers. I'll leave it
| to you to consider what kind of schools they are and where those schools
| might be situated. But I will give you a clue: they are highly unlikely
| to be state schools in large urban areas!

The Cambridge area and, I believe, much of Scotland, are exceptions.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

In message , Nick Maclaren
writes

In article ,
Eddy writes:
|
| They were lucky then, Nick, in the person who was their teacher.

Look at my Email address :-)

| There are some schools where a teacher may declare in the staff room
| that he or she is about to teach about the world wars and the Holocaust,
| etc., WITHOUT getting black looks from fellow teachers. I'll leave it
| to you to consider what kind of schools they are and where those schools
| might be situated. But I will give you a clue: they are highly unlikely
| to be state schools in large urban areas!

The Cambridge area and, I believe, much of Scotland, are exceptions.

I have difficulty understanding why

1) being about to teach about the world wars and the Holocaust should be
so noteworthy as to be worthy of being declared in the staff room.

2) why doing so should be the occasion of being the recipient of black
looks.

Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

--
Stewart Robert Hinsley

Stewart Robert Hinsley wrote:
I have difficulty understanding why
1) being about to teach about the world wars and the Holocaust should be
so noteworthy as to be worthy of being declared in the staff room.
2) why doing so should be the occasion of being the recipient of black
looks.

It's because "anything to do with guns and war and killing" is simply
wrong, Stewart! Guns, and war, and killing is thought to equate to
patriotism, nationalism, jingoism - and these things too equate to each
other and are also thought to be just as wrong!

I believe the attitude stems from fashion, ignorance, fear, and
irresponsibility.

Eddy.