Found this post in another place and thought I'd share it as it made me smile:
"I don't celebrate Armed Forces Day. I don't wear a poppy. I don't stop at 1100 on 11/11 if I can help it.
I remember the fallen from Iraq & Afghanistan, the suffering innocents from those countries & the men who fell so that others did not have to follow them on the one day that might possibly make some kind of difference...
Polling day."
All I can say to a post like this is that it is only because people did stop their normal lives and serve the nation's needs when the blessing that is democracy was under threat that you can write as you do and make the choice not to stop and honour their memories. As for suffering innocents from Iraq and afghanistan, I can only suggest that alongside naivety I would also have to perhaps add something much worse for one of the things I am sure of is that our forces have most heroically worked to save lives and reduce the numbers that would have died had we not been in those places. Men and women who have displayed great selfless commitment to their task and I think and pray for those who today train the Afghan Nation Army and Police force (ANA/ANP) and for those courageous people who go out onto the ground to defuse explosive devices.
If you don't want to stop for those who served in the two world wars perhaps you might like to take a look at the lives of men who have served and paid with their lives to protect the civillian population (children in particular) like Oz Schimdt or Brett Linley and pay your respects to them on Armistice Day and remembrance Sunday. Perhaps you might also like to add to them the 195 names of those who have died in the past year and will shortly be added to the Armed Forces Memorial at the National Memorial Arboretum?
As for Polling day, I struggle to see who you might find who would suit your obviously grand naivety in terms of a government and pray to God that we'd never see them get into power.
Soapbox away - rant over - evensong approaches and the words of the psalm (53) echo true with the person to whom I respond in that it deals with fools!