Last year Remembrance Day fell during the General Election. As a result there were no serving MPs and I was not able to lay a wreath.
This year there will be no official wreath laying owing to CV19 precautions. I have therefore delivered a wreath to Wokingham Town Hall so the staff can add the wreath from me as MP to the wreaths laid last year by others. I also agreed to attend a much slimmed down Church service next Sunday which I assume will be cancelled given the likely new lockdown rules.
November 2, 2020
How very sad. I can understand cancelling the march past for all ex-military and the older representatives of organisations. However a march past of serving military as a token recognition of the terrible losses in wars would still be appropriate.
November 2, 2020
I find it extraordinary that, given the sacrifices we remember, it is not possible to hold an acceptably distanced parade.
Woke risk averse public officials finding it easier to say no rather than have to work harder to find a solution.
Good job the Tommies were made of sterner stuff and disappointing you seem to have meekly accepted it?
November 2, 2020
You couldn’t make it up. It’s a disgrace. Thank you John for your efforts.
November 2, 2020
It was good to see, the remembrance soldier anchored in place out side the town hall
November 2, 2020
Normal service will not be resumed until a change across the board and this is playing into Nigel Farage’s script for a new Reform party. As the saying goes “We Will Remember Them”.
November 2, 2020
I personally don’t trust Farage.
But see my post below detailing how a real Brexit party would in future be seen off. I refer to the EU Arrest Warrant and BoJo’s intended Security Deal.
November 2, 2020
The irony is that nearly a million of our young people gave their lives a century ago, and now we are told we can’t to get within a few metres of each other in case we catch something with a relatively miniscule mortality rate.
November 2, 2020
It is shameful that nothing has been resolved on the attempt to burn the Union flag on the Cenotaph. Parliament was in high dudgeon about the bloke who took a leak in Parliament square beside a memorial, I suppose you all felt you had permission to be outraged because he was White and could be classed as a right winger, justice for him was swift, and pretty severe. Trying to burn the Union flag on the Cenotaph , well nothing. Shameful , utterly shameful. On Remembrance Sunday the establishment will say ‘We will remember them’, but it seems only when they can be bothered, it seems to be becoming all too much like hard work for them to protect the memorial to the fallen.
November 5, 2020
Well said, we are being dumped down by the Establishment every day.
I will back Farage as I see him as the only man that has the guts to stand up to this rotten Establishment.
No one else has bothered in 50years.
Change we must have , I trust him to deliver based entirely on his work for us over 25 years.
Not one of those in Parliament has done anything like him he deserves our support or this island will slip under the waves of Globalisation
November 2, 2020
I am sick to the back teeth of the obvious double standards, where some gatherings/celebrations get ‘kid gloves’ treatment, whilst traditionally English ones are stopped with fines and/or draconian sledge hammer tactics.
Until they treat ALL gatherings in the same way, Remembrance Sunday, along with Christmas etc should go ahead in the same way it always had.
These same partial tactics are applied with protests, even when criminal damage takes place.
November 2, 2020
+1000
Our entire traditions, history, culture. religion and civilisation are being spat upon and desecrated. This applies to Britain and all the European nations, the nations that produced the most colossal explosion of genius ever. Cathedrals, paintings and sculptures, music. Everything good is being desecrated and replaced by trash and desolation. Meanwhile we are muzzled and locked away so that we can’t make a whimper of protest.
November 2, 2020
Cathedrals paintings etc And plays !!!! My favourites are Lear and Othello. They teach a very valuable lesson too. which the British electorate should have heeded.
November 2, 2020
Well done for that thanks.
Where on earth does SAGE get 4,000 Deaths a Day from? It is complete and utter scaremongering & clearly totally wrong – about 15 times too high. New cases are levelling off nicely already at about 250 deaths a day, around normal daily deaths historically and many of these could well be false positives and/or other causes.
Can we get some genuine and real, independent, non political experts to replace Sage please.
We need this in the energy and climate areas too where the government also get totally wrong & deluded advice.
November 3, 2020
We also need so analysis of the costs health and other cost of the shutdown likely to for exceed the benefits.
Just as all the expensive green crap subsidies and market manipulations cause far more damage than any good they might ever do.
November 2, 2020
Thank you – Lest we forget…
November 2, 2020
Let it be remembered that those who fell did so for the people of this country and not for them to have to endure cynical and sinecured irresponsible representation from the political class.
This is in no way an allusion to our host.
November 2, 2020
The people we are remembering would be astonished to see what a nation of lily livered cowards we have become.
Their sacrifices were for nought.
We should be thoroughly ashamed.
Today, lions led by Donkeys has never been move apt.
November 2, 2020
Lions led by snakes, more like.
November 2, 2020
Oh yes, no church services, non-essential. I wonder if the Archbishop of Canterbury approves or disapproves or will even put out a statement ? – commenting on Brexit matters more in his line it seems.
November 2, 2020
Good afternoon
Well done Sir John.
It is sad that we cannot remember those that paid a far higher sacrifice that we would by standing still in the cold November air. How pathetic we are in comparison.
November 2, 2020
+1000
November 2, 2020
For generations that put freedom before the health of the nation understanding that freedom begets the health of the nation.
We WILL remember them.
November 2, 2020
To hell with the lockdown. I will be going to the local war memorial. I expect many more to be there.
November 2, 2020
+1000
November 2, 2020
Sir Winston Churchill did much to deliver us from tyranny, Compare and contrast our present “Winston Churchill” who is delivering us into tyranny using all manner of smoke and mirrors to conceal this. In particular he shortly intends to strike an EU security deal on the pretext of “cooperation.” This will include maintaining the abominable EU Arrest Warrant, unreformed , which will enable arbitrary arrests for political reasons, and extradition and long term imprisonment. And will entangle us in the whole EU legal system , the final nail in the coffin of our Common Law rights. As a result, supposing for example a genuine Brexiteer politician tried to gain power, he could be removed by the same tactics as were used against the Catalan separatist politicians and Italy’s Matteo
Salvini, ie ,imprisoned long term arbitrarily on a trumped up charge.
November 2, 2020
PS
BoJo, at the very least, should insist that any future extradition arrangement with the EU will include the reacquisition of powers by a British court to to demand to see and to assess any evidence of wrong-doing already collected by the requesting State, and if it considers it to be insufficient, to refuse the extradition.
November 2, 2020
PPS I get the impression that the media and TPTB are deliberately keeping this issue quiet and undiscussed. They go on and on about trade, deal or no deal, but never about this. It is more important than anything else IMHO. What’s the good of trade deals if you live in a corrupt banana republic where you can disappear if you speak your mind, try to form a party challenging the status quo, or whistleblow etc?
November 2, 2020
Her Majesty’s Guards devised a slimmed-down, but dignified version of the Queen’s Birthday Parade (Trooping the Colour) in June which observed social distancing. Surely a similar ceremony could be arranged to honour our war dead?
November 2, 2020
While it is meaningful to carry out the traditional Acts of Remembrance at public ceremonies and in company with military comrades, it can be very moving to hold a private moment at a seldom visited memorial or other place either alone or maybe with a partner or close friend especially if done at 11am on the 11th.