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In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields

During the Second Battle of Ypres a Canadian artillery officer, Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, was killed on 2 May, 1915 by an exploding shell. He was a friend of the Canadian military doctor Major John McCrae.

McCrae was asked to conduct the burial service owing to the chaplain being called away on duty elsewhere and later that evening he began to write his poem ‘In Flanders Fields’.

Today, nearly a century after McCrea’s poem was written, the wearing of the poppy which it inspired has increasingly attracted as much controversy as it has publicity.

Since The Saturdays were invited to frolic half naked in a sea of poppies to launch this year’s Poppy Appeal, you can’t turn on the television (is it just me, or like Halloween and Christmas, does the build up to Remembrance Day seem to start earlier every year?) without seeing celebrities, sportsmen, presenters, politicians and other public figures mandatorially adorned with the scarlet flower (Check out the X Factor this weekend and you’ll see what I mean!). Ben Griffin, the first SAS soldier to refuse to go into combat has called it a ‘month-long drum roll of support for current wars’.

Whether you agree with him, the Poppy Appeal by the British Legion (which hopes to raise £36m this year) is for many a most worthwhile of charitable causes. Whatever we may think of the modern wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, British servicemen and women injured there, or in earlier conflicts, surely deserve our respect and care. Service people don’t start wars but they are the ones on the front line and we are all in their debt because of that.

That’s why the fate of the simple poppy and its meaning in the mass-media age is a real concern. Has it become so banalised that its ambivalent origins and meaning, as McCrae’s poem, have been forgotten?

Attempts to enforce poppy-wearing as a patriotic act diminish the true value of the poppy as a personal statement. Likewise the attempts, allegedly by some national retailers in Belfast City Centre, Connswater Shopping Centre and other retail outlets around Northern Ireland to prevent staff from wearing poppies (and even refusing to serve some customers who wear them) are an affront to the memory of all those who sacrificed themselves in defense of their country and a denial of the freedom that they fought for.

The wearing the poppy is not political (although some would make it so).

As one commentator has said quite rightly this weekend, ‘The scarlet poppy is a symbol of blood sacrifice and death; it is also a symbol of the stubborn renewal of hope and life. It can be worn as a symbol of pride but also as a symbol of grief and of refusal to forget the lessons of the past’.

So let’s not allow the politicians, the military and the bigots to exploit the meaning of the wearing of this scarlet symbol for their own agendas.

Let’s not forget today or on Thursday, or on any day what the real significance of the simple little Poppy is.

Silent Single

If you want to show your support for the Poppy Appeal this year you can also purchase the Silent Single now on iTunes, featuring Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, superproducer Mark Ronson, David Cameron, Bryan Ferry, Bob Hoskins and tennis star Andy Murray during two minutes of silence.

Well he may have beaten his big brother to the Labour leadership but judging by his first performance as leader at the Labour Party Conference today, it really doesn’t feel like Milliband E is ready to lead the country any time soon. We may be 5 years away from the next General Election, but it’s probably more likely that Wallace (or even Gromit?) will be the next PM than Red Ed.

No harm to Labour but watching the coverage of Ed’s day at the Conference on the news, you can’t help but wonder what genius behind the scenes thought that it would be a great idea to bring Gillian Duffy (yes that bigoted woman) to the conference to give her expert opinion on the state of the party; then to introduce her to the new leader as he left the stage having delivered his speech and to share that cringingly awkward moment with the viewing public when Ed tries to be all warm and friendly to her with all the sincerity of his predecessor when he met her back in May; and then to play that beautiful moment out against a musical backdrop of the Kings of Leon’s Someone Like You (genius)…whatever you think about Tony Blair - as a charismatic, refreshing, dynamic new leader of a party that is ready for government…Ed is no Tony…but maybe, as the song went all those years back, Things Can Only Get Better (whatever happened to DReam?).

What must poor old Tony Benn have thought of the whole charade. We’ll probably never know. For those of you who missed it on the ITV News, he fell asleep in mid-conversation with Mrs Duffy as she was sharing her views on the state of the nation, classic moment. Probably sums up the state of the Labour Party right now.

A new generation for change? Doubt it.

Say goodnight to the folks Eddie.

If you didn’t already, it’s worth getting a look at the front page of this morning’s Bel Tel.

Two headline stories that should make us all think about what’s happening in our society as Peter and Martin go across to meet Gorgeous George to plead our case ahead of October’s spending cuts announcements.

The Lost Generation – one in five of our young people can’t get a job read the lead story as the paper covered the release of a report by the Equality Commission on the impact of the economic downturn. Shockingly half of our unemployed are aged between 18 and 24; youth unemployment is now running at 20%, more than double the figure four years ago and three times the overall unemployment rate and four times the rate for older people.

Speaking at the launch of the Report, Evelyn Collins the Commission’s Chief Executive said, ‘We need to make sure that young people are not left behind to a lifetime without work or full involvement in society’. Here, here Evelyn!

For a copy of the full report go to www.equalityni.org

Contrast this story with the feature picture on the front page of the Telegraph of two secondary school students from North Belfast, one Catholic and one Protestant, as they read out an agreed statement dealing with the area’s troubled past and its hopes for the future at a candelit ceremony of remembrance and reflection at Duncairn Gardens, organised as part of the North Belfast Respect Programme by the Ashton Community Trust.

As one of the girls Nicole O’Rawe said, ‘This ceremony brings us all together. We should never forget the past, but look to move on towards a better future’. Here, here Nicole.

Let’s hope Martin and Peter don’t let you down at Westminster today.

For details of the North Belfast Respect Programme go to www.ashtoncentre.com

“The harsh reality is that Northern Ireland must raise more income or cost less to run, there is no alternative to this stark choice”.

A report compiled for NICVA by Oxford Economics, ‘Cutting Carefully’, has said at least £1.2bn would have to be saved from public spending in Northern Ireland between now and 2015 to meet government targets.

Launching the report on the challenges facing the economy, NICVA chief executive Seamus McAleavey warned frontline services could be at risk if the wrong approach was taken.

He said: “This is the most detailed external analysis yet of what is coming down the track and it makes for painful reading. It presents a significant test for our Executive and it is vital that the correct decisions are made. The choices made now will shape our economy and society for a generation.”

The Northern Ireland Executive already faces making £128m in spending cuts following the emergency budget earlier this summer, though it’s still not yet clear whether that will be incurred this year or next.

Earlier, £367m of efficiency savings were announced for this financial year.

Government funding for the voluntary and community sector stands at £260m, 45% of the sector’s income, NICVA said.

Northern Ireland receives a massive subsidy from the rest of the UK, calculated by looking at the difference between tax receipts contributed and public money received. The report warned that if cuts were made across the board, they would amount to 8.4% of spending over five years. If the health budget was ring-fenced it would mean 15% reductions across all other departments.

“Protecting health and education would mean 22% cuts on everything else.”

Mr McAleavey warned:

“The Executive needs to be fully aware of the wider social and economic repercussions of every decision they make. The very worst thing that could happen is panic or bad choices during the process, or worst of all delaying action, which is going to make our problems even greater.”

It is currently estimated that Northern Ireland has 31% of its employment in public services, compared to 25.9% in the UK as a whole.

The new report states that Northern Ireland must “transform the economy in such a way that public services cost less to run, or alternatively that the tax base (from local businesses and consumers) provides significantly greater tax payments to the Executive”.

On a more positive note, the report argues that spending cuts may well leave Northern Ireland with a leaner, more efficient and cheaper to run public sector.

Leaner certainly, cheaper probably, but in the rush to cut spending and make our public sector more ‘efficient’, we all need to understand the long term impact that cuts will have on our public services and on our ability to attract the type of investment that our economy will need to get through these challenging times.

We all want value for money, but not at any cost!

For a full copy of the report click on the following link: http://www.nicva.org/news/smart-solutions-tough-times

You wouldn’t have his job for a pension, or would you?

On the day it was announced that BP chief executive Tony Hayward will get an immediate annual pension worth about £600,000 and a year’s salary plus benefits worth more than £1m ($930,000) when he leaves in October for ‘special projects’ in Russia, it’s not so good news for the rest of us on the pensions front.

With British Petroleum making up 7pc of the FTSE All Share Index and paying out around 15pc of all the dividend income in Britain, the impact on pension funds, investment funds and your child’s trust fund could mean that we all have some ‘exposure’ to BP’s disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, without even knowing it.

Luckily Mr Hayward’s pension pot is valued at about £11m and he will keep his rights to shares under a long-term performance scheme which could – depending on BP’s stock market recovery – eventually be worth several million pounds…in spite of the fact that tomorrow his company is set to post the largest quarterly loss by a UK firm in history!

This from a man who when he became chief executive in 2007, said his number-one task was to focus “laser-like” on safety and reliability.

Got to admire BP’s corporate PR machine though for moving Bob Dudley into position to replace Englishman Hayward. A true son of the Mississippi with a “deep appreciation and affinity for the Gulf Coast” surely Dudley couldn’t make a bigger mess of America’s ‘big ocean’ than that Tony guy. (What is it with Englishmen called Tony and messing up in the Gulf?)

Let’s hope for all our sakes (and pensions, and savings and investments!) that Mississippi Bob can succeed where Kevin Costner and Tony Hayward failed.

In the meantime watch this classic USB Comedy video.

It would be funny if it wasn’t so true!

Tremendous article from the Ulster Architectural Heritage Society’s Rita Harkin in this morning’s News Letter as she railed against the ‘regeneration’ of our towns and cities and what she calls ‘these government-backed mammoth retail-led schemes which are supposed to signal the rebirth of urban areas…but more often than not stamp a clumsy big elephantine foot over any remaining fine grain, wiping out their essential character’.

Well said Rita! No one is against progress; times change and society moves on…but not progress at any price and certainly not with an insensitivity to, and lack of consideration of local culture and tradition or an appreciation and respect for the rich architectural heritage of many of our towns and cities.

Developers and planners beware, Rita is on the case and all power to her for speaking up.

Rita was inspired by the ‘Through the Viewfinder’ exhibition currently on display in Gallery 2 at the Waterfront Hall in Belfast, as part of the Trans Festival 2010. Local photographic artist John Baucher, aka Moochin Photoman has used the ‘Through the Viewfinder’ or TtV technique he picked up on Flickr to create a mosaic of 2,000 individual photographs celebrating the diversity of Belfast’s visitors and residents.

(TtV is defined as taking a photograph of any subject ‘Through the Viewfinder’ of one camera, using another camera). See below and you’ll get the picture hopefully!

No ‘fake, sales pitch pics of chardonnay-sipping couples here’, as Rita comments.

The exhibition runs until Saturday 24 July, so try to catch it before it closes, or go to John’s blog at http://moochinphotoman.tumblr.com/ or Flickr page http://www.flickr.com/photos/23386031@N00/

In the meantime…