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Free Entry At Firhill For Serving Armed Forces


partickman

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You are wrong about that.

Our forces can choose exactly where to fight.

They can down tools and refuse to invade another country illegally.

Many have done exactly that over the years but your lot call them cowards.

If there are any heroes in this mess it's those who refused to fight.

We don't even honour them at remembrance sunday.

I must have missed that memo .

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That's surprisingly simplistic and - dare I say - "stupid"?

I have not been in love with 'our' most recent forays into overseas wars, but I can see that our armed forces do wonderful work.

"Signing up" is not the simple matter of choice that you blithely suggest.

It involves a complicated set of reasons and decisions. Reasons such as our current armed services recruit from areas which traditionally have offered their younger generations little opportunity. The services offer an escape for so many young folk throughout the UK. The choice you are suggesting is remaining on the dole or getting into drugs or... offering yourself in service for your country and your compatriots.

Young people do want to get a job, engaged with life, find a purpose. If it's in our Service, how can that be a bad thing?! It's not.

Service is creditable aspiration. Service to unfortunate parts of the world like in the Balkans and throughout the community of the UK. They do that, too. You might not like the decisions that politicians take that involve our service people but that is no fault of theirs. They demand our respect for the shite they go into.

I guess you'd be happier if they stayed on the dole and littered the pedestrianised High Street?

The freedom of choice that you (Maximillion and lovestreet) advocate comes with a concomitant acceptance of a responsibility that you receive along with that glorious freedom. It's a tacit acceptance that the majority of people in the society that puts up with you also has a freedom of choice.

Their choice might well be to celebrate their war dead in various venues. I might well be in agreement with you about where that should be, but I certainly don't think the minority is in a position to proscribe or deny THEIR choice.

I know democracy is too big a word to use in times when some parts of our democracy want to separate cos not all of their minority wishes match what the rest of the country inflicts upon them, but is it so hard to accept that the majority of people in the UK still want to remember the generations that gave their lives for our good? And to try to shut up, accept it - or make yourself scarce whilst all the shite you loathe goes on?

I've never seen a Royal wedding, divorce or funeral cos I think it's all shite. I take myself off to places where I need not suffer. I don't watch tv. So I don't play their game and I don't get upset about it.

I've never seen any of England supposedly winning a World Cup at once upon a time, because I am grown up enough to know that it might upset me.

Just learn to accept that your petted lip cannot always win the day and that other folk might genuinely, inexplicably, like other things.

I guess my great age has just made me so much more mature.

I hope this helps? smile.png

never said it was bad and don't accept it's stupid of me, it does however remain a choice, i said i respect those who had little or no choice in being conscripted and, no i would not like them to be on the dole but i certainly don't want them going out to be shot at - under the guise of protecting me, i'd rather they stay alive

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With so many negative anti Armed Forces comment on here i thought i`d end my contribution to this thread with this taken from the beeb site.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-24889924

It fills me with great pride to see there are still so many wonderful kind people in this country who appreciate the sacrifice & service made by past & present armed forces personnel .

RIP Harold Jellicoe Percival. How fitting that you are laid to rest today.

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Guest somner9

Ok lets look at it differently.

Who can state the aim and objectives for our troops in Afghanistan (why are they there), and what they have achieved (i.e. made it a better country for it's nationals) in the 10+ years many lives have been lost.

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This might seem a tad controverial, but I genuinely believe that the final marking of Armistice Day should be in 2018, 100 years from the end of WW1.

I've always believed that, while we should learn from history, it is equally important to move on from the past. The First World War was, to a very large extent, a despicable folly, whereby too many young men to contemplate were effectively sent to their deaths in the most shameful of circumstances, and for the most dubious of purposes.

It seems to me that, all too often, we fail to learn from history and are equally incapable of moving on from the past. There comes a time when we need to disassociate ourselves from the acts of our forebears, and I am increasingly uncomfortable with what has become an annual convention of marking the end of something that should never have begun.

We don't have an annual event to mark the abolition of the slave trade - most likely because we are justifiably ashamed of this passage of history. Yet we don't forget that it existed (and continues to exist in other forms throughout the world). Likewise, we don't mark the end of the child migration schemes of the early part of last century, as a result of which, thousands of children were separated from their families and suffered neglect and abuse. I could go on, but I won't.

The point is that I'm not sure whether convention and "the establishment" should dictate when and how we mark periods of history. I could just about understand the reasoning if it served to force home some important lessons from WW1, but I'm not at all convinced that this is the case - not least, for example, when Earl Haig's name is directly associated with the poppy fund.

All that said, I respect the rights of others to choose to remember what they will, in a manner that seems fitting to them, and appreciate that my position on this one will likely place me in a very, very small minority.

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