This week, hundreds of thousands of people will join the annual act of remembrance to commemorate those who have died in war, proudly wearing a poppy to honour the fallen.

However the simple flower emblem, which has been used since shortly after the end of World War One as it was the only thing to grow on the devastated battlefields of Belgium and northern France, has once again become an issue in itself.

Is the decision to not wear one an act of disrespect?

The Daily Mail newspaper is running a campaign, demanding that Premier League football teams have a poppy embroidered onto the shirts they wear this weekend. Twelve clubs initially said they would do so, but as the Mail turned its ire on those that didn’t, all bar two — Manchester United and Liverpool — have now agreed to make the gesture.

The Mail said football teams wearing the poppy sent out a “powerful message of solidarity” to Britain’s armed forces.

“All too often footballers - on and off the pitch - set a dreadful example to their young supporters,” the paper said in its editorial. ”It would be to their eternal shame if Manchester United and Liverpool snub the opportunity to demonstrate that their sport can be a force for good.”

Footballers are by no means the first to be criticised for failing to wear a poppy. BBC, ITV and Sky News presenters and reporters all wear a poppy when they appear on our screens following complaints in the past, and even producers on “Strictly Come Dancing” have come in for criticism this year for suggesting contestants should not wear the emblem because of health and safety fears. They have since backed down.

A few years ago, Channel 4 news presenter Jon Snow described such insistence as “poppy fascism”. He said he wore a poppy off air but would not wear one or any symbol — such as an AIDS ribbon — while broadcasting.

Guardian columnist Marina Hyde described the outrage of the Mail and other media commentators as “phoney poppy apoplexy”.

“The point so often ignored is that the second world war, in particular, was fought to allow people the choice in this and many other matters,” she wrote. ”Victory meant freedom from fascism, which makes Jon Snow’s choice of words for this annual hounding of any public figure pictured without one – “poppy fascism” – particularly significant.”

The Royal British Legion which runs the Poppy Appeal itself says that wearing a poppy was a voluntary gesture. But with British troops fighting, and signficant numbers dying or being wounded in Afghanistan, many argue that it is more important than ever to show the soldiers have the support of the public — and the best way is by wearing a poppy.

Amid the turmoil of the 2008 financial crisis a myriad of events unfolded that the general public knew nothing about, writes New York Times reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin in a new book titled "Too Big to Fail."

Wall Street fell from the dizzying heights of good fortune to calamity in a matter of months. To a large degree it's still to early to tell whether financiers and politicians involved made the right choices.

"At its core 'Too Big to Fail' is a chronicle of failure -- a failure that brought the world to its knees and raised questions about the very nature of capitalism," writes Sorkin in his behind-the-scenes account.

He spoke with Reuters before giving a lecture at the London School of Economics on Thursday.

When the Bank of England decided to expand its quantitative easing policy by 25 billion pounds to 200 billion on Thursday, it was essentially hedging its bets.

After Britain's economy shrank unexpectedly in the third quarter, and with two thirds of the City expecting an expansion to the QE programme, simply shutting off the tap of government bond purchases would risk being more of a shock than the economy could bear.

On the other hand, the Bank clearly believes that the worst is over for the economy and that recovery will come soon -- even if it's going to be weak.

Thursday's decision means the central bank will keep buying government debt until February, but at only half the pace of before. This still amounts to around 2 billion pounds a week, not including the much smaller sums of corporate debt that the Bank is buying.

What the decision means for a typical household is harder to calculate. The Bank says that its quantitative easing programme has raised the price of government and corporate
bonds, making borrowing cheaper.

But for average firms and consumers looking for a loan, the benefit is harder to spot.

There is little clear evidence that banks are much more willing to lend than a few months ago -- though the Bank would argue that quantitative easing has been instrumental in avoiding the recession turning into a depression.

In the longer term, the big unknown is the impact that quantitative easing will have on inflation. Sterling's weakness against the dollar and the euro will push inflation up in the short term, and going forward the Bank of England said it faced a balancing act.

While rising unemployment and half-full shops and factories will keep a lid on prices, policymakers know that quantitative easing could exert upward pressure on demand and prices for months if not years after it has stopped.

That's why they took the decision today which could mark the gradual phasing out of this unprecedented policy of asset purchases.

It’s bonfire night, and once again poor old Guido gets it.

Up and down the country he will be burned in effigy for the dastardly crime of trying to blow up the Houses of Parliament over 400 years ago.

But wait — after all the moats, duck houses and house-flipping of the past 12 months, should it not now be conceded that he might have had a point, even if his methods were a little extreme?

With Westminster held in little more than contempt by many people who have been appalled at the greed and sharp practice of some of our MPs, surely Guy Fawkes should — maybe for just one year — be regarded as more of a hero than a villain. A sort of sabbatical from the day job.

That of course would leave a vacancy on top of all the woodpiles stacked waiting and ready for tonight.

Who should we put there instead?

For a man who loves hunting, fishing and shooting, Prince Philip may sound like an unlikely host for a vegan lunch.

But with more than 200 religious leaders representing nearly a dozen of the world’s faiths coming for lunch at Windsor Castle, the Duke of Edinburgh had to be careful what he offered his guests.

Beef, pork and indeed meat of any sort would have been unacceptable for many of those attending the Alliance of Religions and Conservation (ARC) event.

And given that his visitors were there for a conference on religion and the environment, the chefs had to be careful that the food was local and sustainable.

The menu started with a salad of roasted English pear, celeriac and cobnuts (a type of hazelnut grown in Kent).

For the main course, guests had mushrooms stuffed with artichoke, red onion and thyme, served on pearl barley and butternut squash risotto.

Instead of fine French wines, there were non-alcoholic cranberry and orange cocktails.

Lunch was served after a morning of speeches introduced by Prince Philip, who founded ARC in 1995 to help religions to develop environmental programmes.

In a speech that cited Dante and T.S. Eliot, the Bishop of London Richard Chartres said humanity was living out a sort of “cosmic drama” in five acts, with the final scenes about to unfold.

“Act 5…is just beginning,” he said. “It will decide whether humanity is just a dead-end in the unfolding story of life.”

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s message to delegates in the vast Waterloo Chamber, built to mark the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, was just as stark: Mankind has only one home, planet Earth, and action must be taken immediately to save it.

“We may have to have nine more planets if you continue to emit greenhouse gas emissions like you have been doing,” he said.

It may be the longest recession in history, but for many Britons it hasn’t felt too bad.

Unemployment has risen and the days of easy credit are gone. But for those people still in employment, there’s been a big fall in mortgage costs, and food and energy prices have come right back down.     

Monthly surveys from grocer Asda have shown a steady rise in disposible incomes and so it is hardly surprising that retailers are starting to feel the benefit.

Marks & Spencer beat first-half profit forecasts on Wednesday, while rival clothing chain Next topped third-quarter sales expectations.  

The signs are that Christmas, the biggest spending season of the year, will continue the positive trend and will not be a repeat of last year’s frenzy of discounting and business failures.

The Centre for Retail Research forecast earlier this week that retail sales would rise 1.9 percent to 44.7 billion pounds in the last six weeks of the year, not far short of the average outcome in the nine years before last year’s decline.      

But the improvement is unlikely to continue.

With a temporary cut in VAT sales tax due to reverse and other taxes expected to rise to plug the gaping hole in public finances, disposible incomes could come back under pressure.      

Wages growth is likely to remain subdued as unemployment continues to rise, and many Britons may feel that, after a festive splurge, they need to refocus on paying down their still high levels of personal debt.

It may be a merry Christmas, but a much less happy New Year.

Recent U.S.  gross domestic product data show the world's biggest economy emerged from recession in the third quarter, while in the UK data show that in the same period Britain's economy contracted.

British economist and author John Kay theorizes that Britain is mired in its worst recession on record in part because government support has not been evenly distributed across sectors.

"We've poured money into the financial sector -- by and large the financial sector in Britain is doing OK," he said.  "But very little of that is getting through to small and medium-size businesses out there in the rest of the economy."

An online Twitter seance kicks off in London on Friday, October 30, the day before Halloween, in an attempt to communicate with the spirits of dead celebrities.

Psychic medium Jayne Wallace will try and contact the stars, and will act as online intermediary between the living and the dead by tweeting any responses she receives.

Tweets for the “tweance” can be sent to the social networking site http://twitter.com/tweance

Which dead celebrity would you tweet?

- Sebastian Coe is head of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games. The opinions expressed are his own.-

This week the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games reached another milestone.  It’s now 1,000 days until the London 2012 Olympic Games begin and many of the promises made to the International Olympic Committee, when the bid was delivered in Singapore in 2005, are taking shape.

When we won the bid, we promised 2012 would be “Everyone’s Games” and I’m honoured to see that millions of people are already inspired by, benefitting from and delivering London 2012. And as our countdown to the Games begins in earnest, there are more and more opportunities for people to get involved in London 2012 and achieve our vision of using the power of the Games to inspire lasting change.

In Singapore, we stressed that we wanted to engage young people in activity straight away and to make this a global initiative and not just one that takes hold in the UK. We are doing this. We launched International Inspiration two years ago, a worldwide programme to connect 12 million young people to sport in 20 developing countries by 2012.

Brazil, host to the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games, is one of the countries where International Inspiration is now active. I hope Brazil, and future host cities, will carry on the work we’ve started.

I also said we would only build facilities the country really needed.  It’s a promise we’ve stuck to. The Olympic Stadium, Aquatics Centre and Velodrome are rapidly taking shape and, after 2012, will remain as much needed world class facilities for athletes and the community to use.

I also said we’d use the London 2012 Games as a once-a-lifetime opportunity to transform one of the poorest parts of East London with new jobs and opportunities. We’re doing that too.

This week the Olympic Park and Village workforce hit 7,000 of which one in five, or 21 per cent, live in the five host boroughs that surround the Olympic site.

At 1,000 days to go, we’re well on our way to delivering our key promises.

As political parties step up their campaigning ahead of a general election due by June 2010, voters need to know exactly how politicians plan to tackle a projected deficit of 175 billion pounds, says Stephen Herring, senior tax partner at accountancy firm BDO LLP.

In a report titled "Time to Break the Silence" BDO suggests there will not only be cuts in public spending, but substantial business tax increases.

The firm argues that voters have the right to be properly informed about where the changes will be made and says that an additional 25 billion pounds a year in taxes might be required in the medium term to rebuild national finances.

"It may come as little surprise to see that almost every business is expecting to be hit by tax rises next year, but it's disappointing to see that even after the [political] conference season, we're still in the dark over the parties' tax policies," Herring said.