ON Remembrance Day I wonder how many poppies will be worn with pride and gratitude to honour men and women of this and other lands who gave their lives through two World Wars and other conflicts.

The massive battle of the Western Front, the Dardenelles, later of Dunkirk, Europe again, Burma, the Battle of Britain, the desert campaign, the oceans and seas which became graves for so many brave souls, men captured and murdered by the Japanese and those incarcerated as POWs by Germany, the men, women and children on the home front deprived, battered and disillusioned by six years of war.

On Remembrance Sunday you will see pious politicians with bowed heads and solemn faces standing silent, some waiting to lay a wreath of poppies, others who decry the very name of England, suggesting nationalism is a dangerous English trait and men who lease out this land to people of other nations who offer nothing in return and can't even say thank you.

There will be faceless men and women of an almost defunct and desecrated Commonwealth and Empire dripping with hypocrisy waiting their turn to lay a wreath.

I bitterly resent I should forget my heritage, my old values and traditions and I despair our history or scripture no longer seem to be taught with any priority in our schools.

Surely we have not so outgrown Christianity that it can no longer enrich young lives but sadly the Anglican church no longer seems aware of its real responsibilities.

The Union Flag, the Flag of St George, Land of Hope and Glory, Rule Britannia and God Save the Queen are no longer the edict of this island.

I do not expect to be classified as a European, A Briton, a British man or a man from the UK -- I am an Englishman and expect to be recognised as such.

How many more poppy days will there be before it is an offence to be a patriot?

These are times shrouded in suspicion of danger, danger from Europe tightening its grip on a nation who once had resolve, strength and backbone, danger from terrorism -- we should decide our destiny and no-one else and it was never more important to realise if you do not defend your freedom you do not deserve to be free.

On a final and even more poignant note we have another part of a lost generation wondering how much hope for peace, contentment and happiness they may have in care, retirement and rest homes in their declining years, betrayed by a country which says "we don't have enough money to keep them open."

The shame, humiliation, the sickening hypocrisy is a national scandal; we just do not seem to care any more.

ERIC BATES, Marsden Road, Burnley.