davpaz wrote:
vietnam really pushed the helicopter into the future. Falklands.... penguin repellent?
The Falklands taught us that we were going to need a better long-term conventional-payload delivery system than the Vulcan, given our hit-rate on port Stanley airfield. We also learned a thing or two about Thatcher, and that if sovereign territory is ever agian occupuied, we need only take the local telcom exchange and phone round everyone's houses, asking them how many of the occupying forces can be seen outside their homes
As for the weekday silence - I think it is a recipie for disaster, a bloody-minded car crash of a pointless microcosm of the sort of attitudes that cause wars in the first place. You've the people who don't care (and whose right not to care people died for in the first place) and the ones who really, really do... and the poor fuckers caught in the middle who just want to observe or get on with their jobs according to whichever is the path of least resistance. If you want to observe it in a shop, lock the doors and stop pretending that people read signs. They don't. Unplug the phone or take a break in the callcentre. I used to avoid this issue every year working in banks and so on by going for a shit at two minutes to eleven. There was
always some degree of problem somewhere in the office. And in call centres, you can be twenty minutes into a call with an irate customer - and can ask them to shut up for however many minutes it is this year, or keep going and piss off your colleagues! Lose/lose - and so I lose interst in the whole affair. If everyone was going to observe it, fine - but not nearly everyone is, so let's not cause strife with it, eh?
And yes, they have the Remembrance Sunday thing specifically to avoid this problem. Personally I have a great deal of feeling about the whole war business, which I consider in my own way and in my own time. Mass observances of anything exist to display one's feelings to others and to get the feeling that others are with you in what you feel. I require neither in my life. Nor will I make a noise or do anyhting to interrupt a silence if I'm caught by one.
Poppy fascism is an incredibly damaging thing as well - listen to this Vine episode from last frinday - 33-34 minutes in - there's two teachers debating whether poppies should be compulsory in schools - the poppy fascist probably just scared a hundred parents off enrolling their kids in his school.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... _07112008/Seriously, this guy is scary!