This weekend

Though it is a quite common trope that more people watch X-Factor than watch the BBC Remembrance commemoration on this weekend of the year, but what has really struck me is how few poppies are worn by the general population at large.  It is not just the 'apathetic' young but those of all ages as I see them walk down the street - I find that quite shocking.
Although I find wearing a poppy a full seven days before the end of October by the political and media establishment a bit excessive (from the first of November I think is fine enough), for so many of the population around where I live to eschew poppy-wearing has the corollary that they almost certainly haven't given money to the Royal British Legion this year.  And this is despite more than coverage than usual with the 100th anniversary of the start of World War One.  I can understand the 14% of the population formed by immigrants (minus Commonwealth members) eschewing it - it always looks odd when British politicians and correspondents go abroad and they are the only people wearing a poppy; it is just not in the culture of non-Commonwealth Great War combatants to commemorate with a poppy.  But what has happened with most of the 86% British-born populace?  One of the sweetest things of my daughter Kimberley in the last week is how, along with 'fireworks', 'poppy' is her favourite word.  Pointing to the one on my jumper, she even said, "nice poppy."  With little idea of its significance, still she has embraced it.
In Germany, the mood is far from sombre but not because of any callousness regarding war.  Rather they are celebrating the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.  Upbeat tunes such as one regarding trumpets bringing down the walls of Jericho are all the rage.  The BBC's Europe correspondent, Mark Mardell, was in front of the Reichstag, claimed to be one of his favourite buildings.  Funny given that he doesn't really know its history.  He said it was burned by the Nazis to clamp down on all opponents, but the Reichstag was actually burnt down by a disturbed Dutch pyromaniac - to borrow a lyric from The Prodigy, he was a firestarter, troubled firestarter.  Mardell compounded this by telling the German ambassador to the UK that a new country came into being with the fall of the Wall.  The ambassador was too polite to point out Mardell's errors - that East Germany survived into 1990 and when it disappeared it wasn't a unification with the western half, it was an annexation by West Germany.  The Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) continued in existence, just expanding its territory by a third, exemplified by a cartoon at the time with the head of Chancellor Helmut Kohl made into the outline of West Germany and swallowing East Germany starting with the bit jutting out (the Fulda Gap).  What is Mardell being paid for?