What fresh hell is this? National VE day

[wetpants]

This has popped up on my local FB page, villagers are all up for it too. Apparently it’s a nationwide incentive??

The thing is, most front gardens are tiny or non existent here. There’s no way you could be 2m away from your next door. Also these villagers who are up for this are the same people who few weeks ago cried about a lone bloke sitting on a crass verge, well away from any pedestrians. How is this any different?

I’m not British (have lived here a long time though) so maybe I’m just not getting the fervent VE day misty eyeness

And don’t get me started on 9pm nationwide singalong WHO comes up with these things???

Let's all make a date in our diaries for a month's time because betcha there will be a spike in deaths because of this stupid idea. As if everyone is going to sit directly outside their houses and not mix

Also a good point.

If it's not for you don't celebrate but don't knock those who do. For some it's important to keep the memories alive

I'm not knocking those who celebrate (although I think commemorate is more appropriate), I am knocking those who celebrate in the streets forcing everyone around them to join in and shooting daggers at them when they don't. I just don't "do" forced jollity, regardless of the occasion.

Absolutely @CatWithKittens. I think it’s sad that we can’t talk about ways to commemorate the day without people ridiculing.

I might hang bunting from the lid of our neighbour's bin that constantly flaps over our side of the fence. Maybe some fairy lights on the pizza boxes that keep blowing in.

cologne 4711 if you think having visited Bergen-Belsen gives you any idea what it was like on the day it was liberated you should look at some of the film and photographs taken and read some of the accounts

Catwithkittens I assume you are under the age of 90 so not sure why you think you are any better informed than anyone else on this thread is?

The op was saying "oh if you had a relative who had liberated Belsen you'd understand". Well my father was very close by, and I have visited three times. And my uncle was killed in the RAF (mother's eldest brother). I still fail to see the connection with enforced street parties.

Unbelievably cringe-worthy, I haven’t seen anything like that near me, thank goodness. I wouldn’t even be able to drink my way through any communal celebrations as am on call next week.
I’m sure I’ll need to go into the hospital on Friday and that’s fine by me.

I don't really want to celebrate though, can't stand the inevitable glorification of war these things become, when they are meant to be the very opposite.

Theres no glorification of war, its to do with a time now failing living memory as fewer are left as time goes on, more to celabrate the time when the war, the blood sweat and tears were over.

All of my "family" inc relatives are now gone but they all "did their bit" to the war effort one died on active service on in a horrfic way on a sinking artic convoy ship but most were in the RAF and served in the Battle of Britain..

And none of them were jingostic or boasted how they smashed the bosch, in the main they told of how they and what they did and what life was like for them. The ones too who wernt direclty involved the few that lived in London in 1941, wern't a lot of fun.

So lets just remember what it was like at the time for the people who were involved and honour the ones that didn't come back.

I must admit i still feel a sense of pride whenever i hear a Spitfire of its mate the hurricane fly over and I remeber my dad and uncle who kept those kites in the air at Duxford and thet great gent Captain Tom and these words after the fly past in his honour when he said "thats very nice of them to do this for me but i remember a time when they flew in anger!"

Bless him and all who were involved:)

I dislike the "they fought for their country" comments because it is not universally true. My father, uncle and GF weren't fighting for their country, they were from a neutral country, I can remember going on holiday to visit family in the 1950s and people my father went to school with crossing the road to avoid him as he had fought with the British.

It's all very well saying 'you don't have to join in', but there are a lot of people on this thread who are making it very clear they'd prefer us to join in and think we're ungrateful scumbags if we don't.

@CatWithKittens I went to Dachau a few years ago and it fucked me up. Especially going in the crematorium.

I used to work with someone who insisted that in WWII her father fought to keep Britain white. I'll be falling over myself to remember him.

No one should be visiting parents- if you are, you are breaking lockdown.

No - those of us caring for the vulnerable - eg (elderly) parents in ill health - that is one of the permitted reasons for not staying at home.

The 2011 census revealed there were 6.5m of us looking after an ill, older or disabled family member, friend or partner unpaid.

We are not breaking lockdown when we continue to do so

@ladybowerscake

Finland allied itself with Nazi Germany during the second world war

You don't think that's not a massive over simplification of what happened to Finland in WW2?

Being attacked by Russia in 1939?
Repelling that invasion?
The Lapland War against Germany in 1945?

What was Finland supposed to do when the Russians attacked?
You remember that Russia wasn't really involved against Germany until the Germans invaded Russia.

History is complicated.
More complicated than a simple soundbite that you provided.

People just don't get it do they? If all your neighbours are outside your house celebrating, you cannot avoid it unless you live in a very big house with a very long drive!

Are they actually going to beat on your door and windows and drag you out?

Go for a walk first thing and stay out if it bothers you that much, or put the radio on. Yes it's intrusive if they really crank it up, but it's only one day, and may not even be for very long.

There's so much to worry about, and neighbours having a "party" you don't approve of really doesn't matter much.

I was tempted to say play Richard Dimbleby's recording of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen and then stop to think about whether a jolly sing-song is the best commemoration. This is definitely an occasion when at least two minutes silence would be the more fitting response.

I'm mid fifties and even my parents weren't born till after the war so even they dont get the singalong shit

They must have become parents at an incredibly young age then.

The sooner this country gets over its WWII obsession the better it will be.

Agreed.

I was tempted to say play Richard Dimbleby's recording of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen and then stop to think about whether a jolly sing-song is the best commemorati

And to reflect on the circumstances that led up to the camps and ensure that it is never repeated.

(even though we all know that hate and 'othering' does continue)

@pheasantplucker1 Everything! After WW2 ended in an effort to ensure peace and prevent further conflicts the Council of Europe was formed. This Council still exists and their flag is the EU flag. What better way to remember the end of a dreadful conflict than celebrating one of the institutions who have contributed to a (largely) lasting peace.

You've got the end of lockdown to look forward to, which will be a lot like the liberation of Paris, with all the non-clappers dragged out into the leafy cul-de-sacs to be shaved, then tarred and feathered with surplus loo roll and pasta sauce.

They must have become parents at an incredibly young age then

Born 1946
Parents at 22 - 1968
That would make someone 52 now.

22 wasn't that young to be a parent back in the 1960s.

You've got the end of lockdown to look forward to, which will be a lot like the liberation of Paris, with all the non-clappers dragged out into the leafy cul-de-sacs to be shaved, then tarred and feathered with surplus loo roll and pasta sauce

Brilliant. And a teeny bit scarily plausible

I just don't like organised jollity. And don't like being made to feel a grumpy old sod for not wanting to join in.
The following night one of our neighbours is doing a second wine and cheese tasting on zoom, which is much more up my street.

52 isn’t mid 50s.

If your parents were born in 1946 they would be 74 now. They could have had a child at say 23 (not incredibly young back then) who would now be 53.

It's a bit fucking cringey and jingoistic isn't it

I used the j-word about it too. Can't bear this enforced joviality people try and create.

Will people who don't join in be named & shamed, like some of the clapping refuseniks?

Dachau is I believe different. My grandfather who saw Belsen a few days after it had been liberated and was on the staff of the divisional commander in whose area it was, said that the huts were later pulled down and burned to help eradicate the typhus which was rampant. But even if buildings remain my original point is that those of us who have not seen it can only do our feeble best to imagine what it was truly like. I did not read the original column as saying that just because you had a relative who had seen it as it was you would understand. I read it as saying that unless you were there you could not truly understand - certainly that's what I think. Such inhumanity and awfulness is so umimaginable that I think those of us who did not see cannot really begin to do so. I am certainly sure that visiting the site now does little to aid in picturing the scene, the smells, the unspeakable horror, that greeted the liberating troops and which the poor people there had been living and dying with over so long.