Uniform Madness

As ever, the UK's right-wing press has an unerring instinct for the irrelevant, regularly promoting the most trivial 'news' stories they can find, ignoring or downplaying the more significant issues of the day.  Just look at what has been getting their knickers in a twist over the past few days: some dude who turned up to a Remembrance Day event in Wales dressed in a Rear Admiral's uniform that he probably wasn't entitled to wear.  A major issue likely to shake British society to the foundations, I'll think you'll agree.  Of course, this is a 'story' that addresses so many of the thing the right hold dear: their uniform fetishism, a worship of the armed forces and their past glories (not matched by any commitment to actually fund them in the present), Remembrance Day itself and its worship of all those fallen heroes, (again, without any commitment to actually caring for those who didn't die, instead living into a poverty-stricken old age - but don't worry, they were only enlisted men, not officers, so they don't count) and conspicuous patriotism.  Their manufactured outrage over some fantasist in a fake uniform is second cousin to their annual poppy-wearing obsession - if you don't wear one, you are an unpatriotic commie who spits on the graves of the war dead.  Likewise, wearing a uniform you aren't entitled to is a heinous dishonouring of the sacrifice of 'our brave boys'.  

The Daily Torygraph, in particular, went into an amazing, if not obsessive, level of detail as to how you could tell this guy was wearing a fake uniform.  Apparently, he was wearing the wrong style of shirt collar and the medals were all wrong - you can't wear certain medals if you hold another certain medal, etc - and various insignia were wrong.  No doubt he was wearing non-regulation underpants as well.  It's touching that they think that people actually care about this shit, but really, if only they put the same effort into checking the details of the other stories they print - particularly the ones denouncing the Labour government, the BBC or, indeed, any other public institution, not to mention climate change.  (Look, I know that I'm obsessive about some things, as well - I can give you chapter and verse about the history of British model railway manufacturers, for instance, but I can't help but feel that this a rather healthier, not to say harmless, area of trivia).  Perhaps I'm just an unpatriotic bastard, but with every year that goes by, the more frustrated I get by the right's fetishisation of Remembrance Day and the military as a whole and by extension, it's glorification of the whole idea of war and sacrifice.  It just isn't healthy.  But, as I say, war is a big obsession with these people - apparently a good war is what today's youth need in order to give them some discipline and self respect - which is probably why they spend so much time these days running scaremongering headlines about the alleged imminent outbreak of World War Three.  The bottom line is that I simply can't work myself up into paroxysms of outrage over some sad bastard pretending to be a Rear Admiral.  There really are more important things going on in the world today which should be taking up the headlines.