Performative remembrance

I was in Kenton yesterday and was surprised to see Harrow council had already slapped poppies on lampposts. It's the first week of October, guys, what were you thinking? The poppies were all along the shopping parades on Kenton Road, one per lamppost, but not on the Brent side because they're not kneejerk remembrance fetishists. The red flowers also bedecked two shopping parades in Queensbury, and are likely elsewhere but I wasn't on a deliberate scavenger hunt to spot them. Admittedly Remembrance Sunday is the earliest it can be this year, but 8th November is still FIVE WEEKS AWAY and this premature bloom is entirely unnecessary. The Royal British Legion don't launch their appeal until 22nd October, their starting pistol always fired 17 days before the Cenotaph ceremony, whereas Harrow have gone for 34 days which is effectively Double Remembrance. Are they trying to get value for money for their flappy bits of red plastic, is the councillor in charge a super-patriot or did someone at…