h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Probably the most important day in living history. Recorded as VE Day and celebrated with street parties and dancing in the streets throughout the whole of the Uk. Declared a public holiday.
Why is it no longer celebrated ?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/may/8/newsid_3580000/3580163.stm

I'm glad we don't celebrate it.

Commemorate it maybe but to celebrate it would be to grossly insult the Germans these days I think. We are supposedly friends now?

Was it the day after VD day?

In France there are commemorations, with flowers on the war memorials, pretty much in every town and village, where the officials (often the Mayor, sometimes their Deputy) reads out the names of the people who died in the wars (the World Wars, and sometimes also Algeria and Indochina).
We have those ceremonies on 11th November as well, every year.

I think it's more about remembrance than celebration. Because, let's face it : we won the war, that's true, but how many people did we lose in the process ?
I don't think "all's well that ends well" is true in this instance.

I guess we are meant to be friends now, but old animosities die hard, don't they?

After all, we are meant to be friends with the French too, but, you know, they're still the French.

It's like this: we went to Legoland a few weeks ago, and while there we looked around the Star Wars exhibit. In there are several dioramas of scenes from each of the six films rendered in Lego. I took several photos of the scenes from the original trilogy, but none at all of the scenes from the prequel trilogy. I have no doubt that a lot of time and effort went into creating those dioramas too, but they are of the prequels, so I didn't take any photos of them. Animosity, see?


Geggs

I appreciate your first example, Geggs.

Never understood the English rivalry with the French. After all, the French invaded, conquered and obliterated the English over a thousand years ago and all we've seen since then is petty squabbles between Frenchmen in parts of Great Britain and Frenchmen on the European mainland.

After I'd posted I realised that you had SF. The irony was not lost on me.


Geggs

I think you'll find the official line was that the Norman Invasion was well within net immigration targets.

True. It didn't take many Frenchies at all did it?

It did, until they tried the food.

Typical Jock thinking there swl. When we're not German, we're French. It'd be easier if you lot just went back to calling the English "sir."

Actually I forgot we annexed you in 1603, so you're all Jocks now.

Why don't we go back to when we were invaded by the Romans and point the finger at Italy?

Or we can just try to address the world as it is..

I blame the beaker people

Going back to AB's original point...
Probably because the war was still going on
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/august/15/newsid_3581000/3581971.stm

And we probably wouldn't want to celebrate the atomic bombs.

Oh, if that's how the Act of Union worked then I really want a vote on independence!

Truly, commemorate would have been a better word. At the time it was seen as a fight for freedom, a war to end all wars, a world war. All within living memory.
There was a United Kingdom, a functioning Commonwealth and world trade.
It was the end of 'our' war against Germany and it's alis. Thankfully America had come to our help, they were attacked by Japan whilst still helping us, naturally our forces stayed with them until the atom bomb struck the final blow for world peace.

The Normans were more Viking than French