Poppy Fascism? Poppycock.

I’ve been doing quite a bit of travelling this week. Around my local area, don’t get too excited. So because of this I bought myself a weekly bus pass, meaning I could use the bus an unlimited amount of time. Sounds great, only it isn’t.

I needed to head into the city on Tuesday and instead of getting the train like I would normally do, I decided to get some use out of the weekly bus ticket. I cannot stress this enough: it’s one of the worst decisions I have made this year. And this is a man who willingly watched the Manchester Derby last night. Yep, it was that bad.

Buses, it’s fair to say they’re my least favourite method of transport. The only thing lower would probably be mouse, but at least I could make reference to Uncle Buck. Heck, I’d rather paraglide from place to place. Do the weekly shop on a unicycle. As long as it’s not a bus I couldn’t care less.

I mean, come on, they’re slow, they’re no longer cheap, they have all the charm of an abattoir and the smell isn’t far off that either. So there I am, sat inside what can only be described as a McDonald’s bathroom on wheels, only with slightly worse hygiene, and obviously I instantly start regretting the decision.

Naturally I start to look around for something to pass the time. Adverts, fantastic! One very condescending piece from the nhs, another from what looks like the police, and one that says “Some people are gay. Get over it.” Good point advertisement, well made. Okay, that took 14 seconds, crap I am so screwed.

And then I saw it. The most glorious thing introduced to public transport since seats. It sat there, one seat from me. The Metro! As soon as I saw it I grabbed it, thank you Lord! Now, the Metro is hardly the best and mightiest journalism you’ll find this side of the equator; their stories are usually a couple of days old, and sometimes they don’t have the whole football result because it went into extra time, which I find hilarious, but when you’re sat on a bus or train and your ipod just won’t cut it anymore, it’s as good as the freaking New York Times.

So I’m flicking through the paper, and there’s nothing really to shout about in the news, a bloody great big advert from the Kinect (fed up of that yet?), a piece on some crap boy band called One Direction, and then I saw a headline that caught my eye.

“Don‘t wear a poppy, shop worker told.”

Great, as if I’m not depressed enough sat on this bus with a Oscar the Grouch, now I see a story like this. The best thing to do would be to just turn the page and not read on. But annoyingly I did.

The story is about a shop worker, Harriet Phipps who was told by her manager that she could not wear her poppy as “it’s not uniform or company policy.” Of course she ignored this rule and was warned again about the matter the next time she did it. Harriet said she was disgusted, and frankly, so am I. It really annoys me when companies do this to people. Like when British Airways told a check-in worker she couldn’t wear a cross showing her faith. I hate it when companies literally say: “we don’t want you as a person to work for us, we want a robot, we’ll then paint the robot as we see fit and programme it to do our bidding.”

These are real people, who are the lifeblood of these companies, and they get treated with absolute disrespect. The shop Harriet Phipps works for? Hollister. Owned by Abercrombie & Fitch. Yes, the same Abercrombie & Fitch who told a shop worker she had to work in the back because she didn’t fit ‘the look’ of their store. Why didn’t she fit ‘the look’? She had a prosthetic limb.

But the main issue that keeps on cropping up in recent years is the whole poppy debate and this isn’t the only story that’s cropped up this week. Jon Snow has been in the news again, he won’t wear one on air but does wear one privately. And everyone’s up in arms about it. But then again people have been complaining about Andrew Marr wearing one too early. We do love a good moan here in Britain. If everyone was given a £2000 tax-rebate we’d still moan that we had to walk to the Post Office to collect it.

Snow calls the backlash ’poppy fascism’, he doesn’t believe in wearing symbols on air. Whether it be a poppy or an AIDS ribbon, he wont wear one. I can understand where he’s coming from, but I just think the poppy is something different to all the other badges you can wear. It’s worn in remembrance, it's not a symbol of war or of anything for that matter. It honours those who have died protecting our nation.

I heard someone say the other day that they wont wear a poppy because they won’t fund ‘Blair’s war’. It reminds me of the Celtic match last week where a banner was propped up amongst the fans saying: “Your deeds would shame all the devils in hell. Ireland. Iraq. Afghanistan. No bloodstained poppy on our hoops.”

Some people are so blind. People refusing to wear them because they believe if they do they are promoting wars, whether they’re right or wrong. These people are idiots. You don’t wear a poppy to let everyone know you are pro-war, or that you believe Blair was right to follow Bush into battle. That‘s so ridiculous! It represents the soldiers who’ve been their! The money raised by purchasing a poppy goes straight into supporting these brave men and women (and their families) who live and die in a war zone just so we can live this supposedly hard-life here at home.

And that’s the main thing that annoys me; the short-sightedness of it all. As if we wear a poppy to honour those who are fighting or have died in Afghanistan and Iraq. The poppy represents more than just that. It represents everyone, everyone who has ever fought in a war, whether it be right now in Afghanistan, or back in the First and Second World Wars.

It doesn’t matter when or why we went to war. What matters are these honourable men and women served and still serve our nation and our allies’ for us to live a normal life. Some might not have believed in the war, and they fought regardless. Some were forced to fight, and they fought regardless. Some were even children, and they fought regardless.

Naturally after thinking about all this on a rammed bus in a traffic jam it puts it all in perspective. Yes, this bus idea was the worst decision of the year, but at least I can make these decisions. If it wasn’t for the heroes who’ve fought and died for us I don’t even think I would have that.