Remember the dead, but don't disregard the living

The time of year has come round again for Remembrance Sunday, so another round of poppies has been distributed. Personally I wonder that it's just becoming a political fashion accessory - that is just as quickly removed from most lapels after the event; I'm occasionally asked when a family anniversary comes around connected with war (not in November), "why are you wearing a poppy?"

Why not?

Remembrance of wars past (and wars still taking place, alas) should be constant in the mind, but the commemoration itself is for the weekend of Remembrance Day. Remember our wars then, and not have them rammed down our throats every day (on the news or in the form of Security messages "for our safety" in shops and stations.)

In all truth, November 11th should permanently be a national holiday of Remembrance, regardless of what day of the week it happens to fall. It would be an appropriate gesture to those who died for freedom, for us to give up one day of our lives for the loss of theirs.

Only then can an entire globe's grief and gratitude be truly assimilated.

Was it wise to give the BNP the "Oxygen of Publicity"?

Of course not, but it was a no-win situation for the BBC in some ways - except their ratings.

I'd never heard of the National Front (as they were once called) because they were originally banned from the British media; such a suffocation was highly successful and put them in their rightful place. In their "new" form as the British National Party, they have risen to the heights of two MEP's, which was the basis for the BBC's justification in inviting leader Nick Griffin onto tonight's Question Time; broadcast from Shepherd's Bush in the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham - an "ethnic borough" composed of blacks and Indians in the words of the egregious Mr. Griffin.

Unfortunately, he has a point when he says it was something of a lynch mob, and David Dimbleby's behaviour - as the sixth panelist in effect - did not help matters, and distracted from the more important issue of immigration into this country, and what an increasing amount of xenophobia there still is around.

Such an exhibition of protest against a clearly fascist organisation on the programme was heartfelt and unanimous, but the very fact that this subject is being discussed on the airwaves and the Internet like this is helping BNP subscriptions enormously. They want Nick Griffin to be seen as a victim - but battles for democracy and truth always have always had victims of some kind. This is one victim for which there should be no pity.

Going to the Depot

If we are to believe The Sun newspaper to be any sort of political swingometer, then I suppose it would seem that Gordon Brown is pretty well bound for the depot now, which is just where I was last night together with a few dozen other lucky and bewildered souls in the Mercury Theatre Company's 10th anniversary production.

In a typically audacious move, the company have moved outside the confines of the regular theatre and staged an art installation-cum-theatrical presentation of certain events in Colchester's history, turning the old Magdalen Street bus (and tram) depot into a mini-asylum, with audience "inmates" incorporated into the performance area in prison-like jackets and caps (mine was hopelessly small), just a breathing distance from the actors themselves - it's perhaps the one time I'll ever actually work "with" the Mercury Theatre, such was the level of audience and cast integration in the round.

The plot as such is a series of often stylised vignettes (with one recurring sub-plot about a missing child in red, reminiscent of Schindler's List and Don't Look Now), but beautifully lit and boldly staged, even though the acoustics are necessarily bad and the references to Colchester's history are often obscure. A booklet issued at the end - not the beginning - of the show only partly tries to explain things.

Some have found it brilliant, others deeply pretentious. I found it just a little obscure, but with vivid moments (such as being ushered through an area re-creating Severalls Mental Home with one of the characters being given EST), and it's perhaps also the first time when I've walked out of a play onto the streets with the effect of stepping from one frying pan into another.