Do you support a National Remembrance Bank Holiday?

[WendyS]

Number 10 Downing Street has approved a petition that was launched requesting a new public holiday falling on the Monday after Remembrance Sunday in November each year.

To be known as the National Remembrance Holiday, its purpose is threefold:

1. To emphasise the remembrance of those servicemen and women who have given, and continue to give, their lives for Britain

2. To remind people of the importance of protecting our Nation and what it stands for

3. To break that 3 month period between the August Public Holiday and Christmas when there are currently no long weekends, especially as the UK has fewer public holidays than most European Countries.

Anybody supporting this idea can sign it on
<http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/remembermonday

[smudge]

Most certainly do Wendy, but there was a petition thread on here a few days ago, although I'd already rec'd an email from a friend with it on & signed it then.

Thank you anyway.

[WendyS]

Thanks Smudge for pointing that out. Have been out of circulation for a few days after my knee surgery so have missed out on my regular AB updates.

[smudge]

You're welcome Wendy. I noticed that you hadn't rec'd any answers, so thought I'd let you know.

Take care on that knee & hope you get well soon. -x-

P.S. I had knee & foot surgery on the same leg in February this year & am glad to say they're both much better now!

[WendyS]

Smudge - nothing like a double whammy for getting two lots of pain at the same time - at least you could decide which painful location to concentrate on at any given time.

[Buenchico]

Sorry, but you're not getting my support.

First of all, I don't believe in any form of 'remembrance'. When you're dead, you're dead and that's it. I've never understood so-called 'grief'. (I've never grieved for anyone and I know that I never will. It simply seems to be a total waste of emotional energy to me). I refuse to attend to attend funerals and I've removed the markers from my parents' graves. I strongly object to tax-payers' money being spent on such pointless activities as maintaining war graves. They should all be dug up and the land put to more productive use.

I can see a certain logic to placing an additional public holiday around November but that assumes that there's any point in having public holidays anyway. My opinion is that all public holidays (possibly with the exception of the Christmas period) should be abolished. I'm not suggesting that anyone should get fewer holidays than they do now. I simply think that the idea of everyone taking a holiday on the same day is now largely redundant. So many people now work on 'public holidays' that it would be as well to abolish them altogether.

None of the foregoing is intended to cause offence. It simply represents my honestly held views.

I hope that the surgery was 100% successful and that you'll be doing the can-can soon ;-)

Chris

[jno]

if I died for my country, I must say I'd like to think it would be for something better than giving everyone a day off - on which, except for those who knew me, most certainly nobody would remember me at all. I have no issues with war graves - those who died for their country might expect from that country at least a decent burial - but holidays, no.

[smudge]

Everyone to their own Chris & 'your own' does sound very bitter & emotionless.

What gave you the right to remove the markers from your parents graves? Did they give you permission to do so before they died? If so, I wonder why they were put on there in the first place?

[smudge]

P.S. To be honest, a public holiday for Remembrance Day never entered my head before this petition cropped up, but I signed it anyway.

Whether it's right or whether it's wrong, by the amount of people who have signed it must have some respect for the war dead & not just for gain.....

[WendyS]

You have a right to your views Chris and obviously there is a reason behind them, but if it had been your father or your son/daughter that had been killed in action, I wonder whether you would not have wanted the memory of their sacrifice to live on, with gratitude, by those who followed. I cannot imagine what your parents must have done, for you to want the marker to their graves removed. It is just very sad that you feel you cannot value and remember the lives of those who have paid the ultimate sacrifice. If you have never grieved for anybody, I wonder if you can have truly loved.either. Sadly, I do not think you can have one without the other.

[Robinia]

I'm not in favour of a holiday either. Would it really be spent in quiet remembrance? I don't think so. It would just become another 'Let's hit the shops...what shall we do with the kids?.... let's sit a traffic jam' day.

[jno]

I remember my parents very well, WendyS, and I loved them, but I've never seen their gravestones (they were in another country). I don't think that this means they're remembered any better or worse by those who knew them; and those who don't know them will be none the wiser. Headstones are a conventional way of commemorating the dead (those who haven't been cremated), but they're not proof that their families loved them. In fact when I see gigantic tombs raised by aristocratic families, I always suspect they're meant to intimidate the living rather than remember the dead. People live on in our hearts or not at all.

[LoftyLottie]

I'm afraid I wouldn't agree with it at all, either. Unlike Chris I have grieved for people, but in my own quiet way. I don't need ceremonies, headstones, memorials, etc. Fortunately my parents felt the same way and my mother has asked for a cardboard coffin, so ceremony, no fuss and no tangible memorial.

Grief is personal, and people grieve differentlhy and for different reasons.

Like Robinia, I think that the majoirty of people would say 'Whoopee - a day off work' and wouldn't even think about the reason. We already have rememberance day (which personally means nothing to me) and I wonder how many people observe the two minute silence, and , if they do, I wonder if they spend it thinking of the war dead.

I also agree with JNO's sentiment. "People live on in our hearts or not all all"