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Football's FIFA might not
like the Poppy, but OS do!
FIFA may not want to see poppies
on footballers' shirts, but the Poppy has now made it onto UK maps. Thankfully
the Football Associations of England and Scotland say that they will defy a
ban... It's not the 1st time that there has been a misunderstanding about its
significance. In 2011 for example, workers in some high profile chains had been
told to remove their poppies in shops, like Poundland. Often the reason given
has been that it might cause offence... Oddly, there is still currently no
express right permitting an employee to wear a Poppy at work. Some employers are
happy to leave it to their employees as to whether or not to wear such, but
others may want to take a more "hands on approach." There may well
be a genuine occupational requirement for employees not to wear poppies. For
example, those handling or processing food may be prevented from doing so on
health and safety grounds, like KFC did in 2015. In 2015 it stopped staff from
wearing poppies in kitchens, on health and safety reasons. But unless employers
have a clear dress code policy in place, preventing employees wearing charitable
symbols such as poppies or wristbands for example, any disciplinary action taken
for doing this could be difficult to justify.
But some good news has hit the headlines as this week. We have
been contacted by Keegan Wilson, from the UK's Ordnance Survey. He commented
that:- "Our surveying team are working across
Britain on a daily basis, capturing all of the changes to our country. From new
roads and housing estates to hospitals and shopping centres, the team map it all
out. Our surveyor, Keith Lanham, was asked to survey a more unusual site
recently, with particular significance on Remembrance Day. This year marked the
100th Anniversary of the Fovant Badges in Wiltshire. If you haven't come across
them before, they are regimental badges that were carved into the chalk downs
above the village of Fovant by the soldiers of those regiments. To mark the
Anniversary, the Fovant Badges Society, the voluntary organisation which
maintains the badges, commissioned the addition of a centenary badge to mark 100
years of the Fovant Badges, and securing their long term future."
He added that:- "The trustees of
the Society decided that the centenary was best marked by the building of a new
badge on the hillside. The new design is a Poppy with '1916' and '2016'
lettering. As far as possible the new badge used construction techniques that
would have been familiar to the Soldiers stationed in the area in World War 1.
Each of the original badges represents a regiment that was stationed at Fovant
during WW1, until the camp closed in the 1920's. On a foggy October morning, I
climbed the West facing escarpment to survey the new badge. Using my GNSS
(Global Navigation Satellite System) kit, I was able plot the fresh chalk
outline of the 25 metre diameter poppy and 2 dates. The most difficult aspect of
the task was not the climb to the badges' location, or the steepness of the
survey site, but how to show the detail with regards to current product
specification. This is possibly the 1st completely new hill figure to be
surveyed for a century. With the help of the specification team, we decided to
show the Poppy and 1916 to 2016 dates in full, due to the importance of this
memorial to those who fell in the Great War."
What are your views on the Poppy? Should the World football
governing body's rules prohibiting political, religious or commercial messages
on shirts apply to the Poppy? Should the FA defy a ban on players wearing
poppies when the teams meet on Armistice Day? Should the UK put into effect a
law that protects those who want to wear Poppies? Please let us know your views,
via emailing us to:-
News24@SouthportReporter.com.
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