The reality that Remembrance Day is now a highly politicised event

The purpose of the red poppy’s sale is to raise funds for the Royal British Legion and Royal British Legion Scotland so they can do the job governments in the UK since 1919 have failed to do: take adequate care of veterans of conflicts in which the UK Government has aided and abetted, and their families.

READ MORE: Michelle Thomson: This is why I choose to wear a white poppy

The reality that Remembrance Day is now a highly politicised event and should be allowed to die a death causes me, a veteran, not the slightest heartache. If any government in the UK since 1918 believed the sentiment of a “war to end all wars” then it never has served its purpose. If you want to remember the dead, a quick trip to the many mass graves of UK service personnel around the world would be a start, rather than the meaningless load of old sentimental cobblers that goes on at the Cenotaph once a year.

If service personnel had actually “died for your tomorrow” then the current legacy of egregious wealth for the few and poverty for the many rather puts a cap on that sentiment.

The “truth” is that service personnel and civilian deaths in any conflict are always as a result of failed politics and the greed of the few, which are usually one and the same.

READ MORE: Explained: Why we have a white poppy on Sunday's front page

You want to end war?

Then you need to change the current, feudal UK system of government, turn the world’s economy upside down and start all over again while ensuring populists like Donald Trump get nowhere near the levers of power in the future.

The problem?

This will take a war against all the vested interests who like things just as they are, to whom a “white poppy” is neither here nor there but it will soon be presented in their media as a symbol of terrorists out to threaten the stability of the world.

The bottom line for most veterans of conflict is the fight to forget what they have seen, on a daily basis; we remember all too clearly what we have seen.

Peter Thomson
Kirkcudbright

THE brilliant Ruth Wishart, in Sunday’s edition, claims that the “populace (are) overwhelmingly in favour of assisted dying” (Assisted dying should be a right for those living with unbearable pain, Nov 10).

This could be true, Ruth, but where is your evidence to back up the claim? Tell us about the opinion polls and the numbers involved, then let us make our own minds up if your bold statement holds water, because I don’t recall being asked for my opinion in a Scotland-wide referendum.

I’m not arguing against assisted dying, but it’s such an important issue that surely we Scots are entitled to some figures to substantiate the claim that we overwhelmingly support it. Do we?

I’d hate to think that a great commentator has allowed her own views to cloud her judgement and make such a sweeping statement on the basis of anecdote and some snapshot opinion poll.

Jim Butchart
via email

COUNCILLOR Andy Doig (Letters, Nov 6) says that the LGB community is divided on trans issues, based seemingly on the views of his LGB friends, and he writes also of the importance of scientific rigour.

So here’s a fact: in 2023 YouGov surveyed 992 LGB people in Britain on this issue. 77% personally viewed trans people positively, including 58% very positively, while 15% were neutral. Only 7% viewed trans people negatively, including 3% very negatively. That’s an 11 to one pro-trans ratio. Amongst lesbians, the figures were 84% positively and 6% negatively, or a ratio of 14 to one in favour.

It’s less scientifically rigorous, but a visit to any Pride event in Scotland will clearly evidence the solidarity of the LGB community in support of our trans siblings. And of course why not, considering our long shared historical experience of discrimination, and of the struggle against it?

Tim Hopkins
Edinburgh

WE know now from a long-awaited (and, crucially, independent) review that a British barrister’s “horrific” violent abuse of more than 100 children was covered up within the Church of England for decades.

In yet another example of the Church prioritising its reputation above the children in its care, John Smyth was encouraged to leave the country for Zimbabwe without police being told.

Smyth’s victims have asked for only one thing to recognise their pain and lifelong suffering: the resignation of Justin Welby. He has declined.

The Church of England again took stewardship of this month’s Remembrance commemorations. Rather than being given this unjustified privilege, it should be disestablished and its many more dark secrets subjected to full police scrutiny.

Neil Barber
Edinburgh Secular Society