If you don’t want to observe two minute silence- don’t be out

[Mokel]

Every Remembrance Sunday and Nov 11th, when I worked at retail, we did a tannoy announcement with 5 min, 2 min before to inform customers that the store will be observing the 2 min silence. Then another to start it.

Every time there were customers who kept talking. Plus one time a woman in her 50s shouted “why can’t anyone serve me some fucking fags?” Everyone just looked at her. Some had the courage to say how disrespectful she was once the silence ended.

If you are unable or refuse to observe the silence at 11am today or tomorrow, please don’t be in a public place.

Thing is, shops are actually private places, they're owned and managed by someone, and no one has the absolute right to enter them and use them, shops can and do bar people because there are conditions of entry and use like not stealing, not abusing staff, not trashing the place etc. The bar is usually quite low behaviour wise, but as it's actually private property, you can be banned for any reason they choose (protected characteristics aside).

So if the owners or others on their behalf decide that they're observing the two minutes silence and staff can stop serving to do so, then that's what's going to happen, and you don't have the God given right to be served in that time just because you want to be, or you don't agree with it or anything else. Most places won't insist on you confirming to silence, standing still etc, but you don't automatically have the right to demand the staff serve you because you're a customer in a private space, who has no more rights than the staff when it comes to choosing to observe things like this.

Knobs going to knob.
One of the things to be grateful for is that people laid down their lives fighting for a society where people could behave this way. Which is ironic!
Can’t see anyone shouting for fags during a state mandated silence in Nazi Germany

Stupid is as stupid does...

I mean, if we're all going to use hackneyed and illiterate speak?

Yes. They're the ones who get annoyed at being told that, for two minutes once a year, they've got to stop what they're doing and shut up and try hard to pretend to thin about what it is we're supposed to not forget.

They're the ones who think about this stuff, off and on, when the occasion causes them to, all year round.

"Can’t see anyone shouting for fags during a state mandated silence in Nazi Germany"

Can you not see the irony in this? Expecting people to behave as if they were in Nazi Germany? Used as an argument for remembering the people who died to save us from living in a Nazi Germany satellite state?

Yes, being quiet for 2 minutes is exactly the same as mandating people to burn other people in ovens.

But pressuring people in this way - well, Remembrance Sunday used to be a measure of peoples' disgust at the political classes for failing to prevent a totally unnecessary war that left a generation of young European men dead or damaged. Now, it is all about patriotism, nationalism and the kind of shallow, showy conformance that allows dodgy ideas to breed.

It was always about patriotism and remembrance, with the political class greatly involved in the commemoration. It’s more in line now with the way it was when I was a child. It fell into abeyance for several decades before being revived as the WWl centenaries arrived.

I’m not sure what point you thought I was making, the point is that if we’d not defeated the Nazis then we would have to be silent for stuff like this, we would be subject to way more than hard stares if we didn’t toe the line.

I don't remember it ever falling into abeyance. In fact, if anything, last year and this I have noticed far less fuss of the sort that saw TV presenters named and shamed for not wearing, or wearing the wrong sort of, poppies.

It was barely marked at all from the 1970s until 2014 when there was a huge revival of interest.

Complete rubbish. I've been going to our local football club matches for 40 years. It's ALWAYS been marked at the nearest home game to Remembrance Sunday by a small armed forces parade, playing of the bugle and 2 minutes silence.

It was also observed at UK airports. We twice went on holiday in the 90s on Remembrance day, and the whole airport stopped and went silent at 11am. I know it was the 90s because we've never been on a foreign winter holiday since our son was born in 2002!

I also remember it being held in shopping centres and supermarkets virtually continuously back as far as I remember.

To say it was "barely marked" until 2014 simply isn't true.

Let’s face it @taxguru, if I said the sky is blue your immediate response would be “Rubbish”.

That they don’t winge if other people exercise their fought for freedom of choice and not maintain the silence.

It was where I grew up.

Yeah it was always political. After WWI there was a widespread public realisation that the entire slaughter had been pointless which is obviously v bad for future war planning. Armistice Day ceremonies were initially a counter to this, to bring control of the narrative of what happened in WWI back to the generals and politicians, with their assurances that it was a one-off and would never happen again.

A PP said Tony Blair brought the two minute silence in in 1991 after involvement from pressure groups.

They're not exercising anything, they're just being twats.

Or have been negatively affected by the British Armed Forces.
We don’t know what sort of a life a random person next to us has lead.

Respect for all.

They're free to share their thoughts about the armed forced with the rest of the class during any of the other 525,598 minutes in the year, but doing it during the two minutes' silence is not respecting those who choose to observe it.

I wasn’t saying I think it’s ok to shout during that time
I was simply trying to point out that calling people twats when you have no idea of their lives isn’t OK either.

If you're making a noise because you have Tourettes or you don't have the necessary cognitive understanding to appreciate why other people are staying quiet, then no, you're not a twat.

But most people are perfectly capable of staying quiet for a very short window of time to allow other people to observe the silence, and if you desperately feel the need to make a scene right at that moment to show how much you don't care, then yes, sorry but you're a twat.

I do question what exactly we are Remembering now. I have already said that it's become a performance with people on TV having to wear a poppy.

Next year we will have the VE day commemorations and I do think they will be worth commemorating. Although the vast majority of the people who fought have passed away I imagine that many of us will still have parents or grandparents who were alive during the war.

But you can give them a filthy look though! ( I would ) but also I know my 7 year old autistic grandson wouldn’t manage it. And some people that have disabilities would maybe struggle and that’s fine. There is a difference between not keeping silent because you can’t or just choosing to not do so and trying to deliberately make someone who is observing it talk ( in a shop for instance) that winds the hell out of me!

So you would happily respect your families aggressors and invaders who shot them in cold blood and subsequently got away with it.