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.

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.

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.

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?

Within a couple of weeks, European Union leaders are going to choose the first president of the European Council now the Lisbon Treaty has finally been ratified.

It won't be Tony Blair, given the opposition of his European Socialist comrades to the former British prime minister and the hostility of several west European governments. So it's time to subject some of the other contenders to the same scrutiny that Blair has faced as the undeclared front-runner in this surreal race. Most of the 27 EU leaders appear to want a low-key, consensus-building chairman of their quarterly summit meetings rather than a high-profile globe-trotting statesman.

Opponents of Blair cited several grounds -- his loyalty to George W. Bush and support for the Iraq war; the fact that he failed to bring Britain into the euro single currency or the Schengen zone of passport-free travel in his 10 years in power; the fact that he is a strong personality from a large member state. r. Let's see how the other aspirants fare on those criteria, and what other skeletons they may have in their closet.

Blair's only declared opponent was Jean-Claude Juncker (second from right), the veteran prime minister of Luxembourg and chairman of the Eurogroup of euro zone finance ministers. Juncker opposed the Iraq war. His tiny country of 450,000 souls is a founder member of the EU and all its common policies. The Luxembourger prides himself on having brokered many compromises between EU heavyweights France and Germany. But his old-style European federalism is out of fashion in Berlin and Paris, as well as London and much of northern and central Europe. Juncker has a strong political aversion for Britain which surfaces in sometimes outspoken comments late at night or after a drink or two. He alienated French President Nicolas Sarkozy last year due to his perceived passivity when the financial crisis erupted, and his defence Luxembourg's banking secrecy in a bitter standoff over tax havens. He has few admirers among the new member states of central and eastern Europe.

I wrote on this blog last week that Jan-Peter Balkenende (third from left) seemed well placed because he is a grey man with few sworn enemies in Europe. Balkenende supported the Iraq war, but not as actively as Blair. Dutch troops did not fight to topple Saddam Hussein. An independent inquiry headed by a retired judge is now investigating how the government came to support the war when its own intelligence service doubted that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Balkenende has made coalitions with almost everyone, including the far-right anti-immigrant Pim Fortuyn List which entered parliament in 2002 after its founder was assassinated. His seven years in office have been marked by a sharp rise in xenophobia and Euroscepticism in the Netherlands. He lost a referendum on the EU constitution in 2005. He has made no notable contribution to the EU, nor shown any particular interest in European affairs. He did raise hackles, particularly with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, by promising parliament in 2005 he would win a 1 billion euro annual reduction in the Dutch EU contribution and negotiating stubbornly until he achieved that aim. That may explain the distinct lack of enthusiasm for his candidacy in Berlin.

Merkel would probably prefer former Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel (right), a trusty conservative ally. Schuessel's main black mark, in many eyes, is having formed a coalition with the extreme-right Joerg Haider's anti-immigration Freedom Party, in 2000. This prompted the 14 other EU governments to shun high-level contacts with Vienna in what proved to be a counter-productive gesture. They ended their boycott after commissioning a report by three "wise men" concluded there had been no breach of fundamental European values in Austria. It led to the insertion of a clause in the EU's Nice Treaty providing for the possible suspension of a member state which did breach fundamental rights.

Schuessel initially kept Austria's borders closed to workers from neighbouring central European EU newcomers and was unenthusiastic towards Turkey's bid for EU membership, although not as outspokenly opposed as French President Nicolas Sarkozy. He would be seen as "Berlin's man" if he got the EU Council presidency.

Belgian Prime Minister Herman van Rompuy (second from left) has been mentioned in recent days as a possible candidate. He lacks EU experience having attended only two summits since taking office, but diplomats say his subtle intelligence commands respect at the European top table. The centre-right van Rompuy crafted a compromise to keep Belgium's fractious Flemish and Francophone communities together after a lengthy political crisis following the 2007 general election. Britain and other countries opposed to a centralised, federal Europe have always been suspicious of Belgian candidates for EU leadership positions. London torpedoed then Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt's bid to head the European Commission in 2004 and his predecessor Jean-Luc Dehaene's bid in 1994.

The other contenders that have been mentioned are former Finnish Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen (left) and former Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga (third from right). Lipponen is unlikely to win out because his Socialist political family has chosen to go for the EU foreign policy chief position rather than the presidency. A keen supporter of European integration, he ran a successful Finnish presidency in 1999. But even Lipponen's former aides describe him as a plodder. After six years out of office, he may be too out of touch with the cut-and-thrust of EU governance to stand a strong chance.

Vike-Freiberga is an inspiring public speaker with strong Atlanticist views who returned from a long exile in Canada after the Baltic states gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. A centrist with no party affiliation, she could benefit from efforts to inject some gender balance into the EU's top positions. But she has never run a government and rarely attended European summits in her eight years in office. She might be more of a figurehead than a hands-on leader.

Each of the contenders has strengths and weaknesses. None is anywhere near as internationally known -- or as divisive -- as Blair. Take your pick.

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.

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.

Former Foreign Office minister Kim Howells poses the question in the Guardian in a piece made grimly relevant by Wednesday’s shooting dead of  five British soldiers by an Afghan policeman.

Howells says troops should be brought back from Afghanistan and that the billions of pounds saved should be used to beef up homeland security in Britain – drawing the front line against al Qaeda around the UK rather than thousands of miles away in Helmand province.

He accepts that such an approach would result in “more intrusive surveillance in certain communities,” a tacit acknowledgment that Britain’s Muslims would be subject to greater scrutiny by police and intelligence services.

His “Fortress Britain” theory takes into account indications that a growing number of experts feel the war against the Al Qaeda’s supporters the Taliban in Afghanistan is unwinnable.

It also makes the point that not all Al Qaeda training camps are in Afghanistan anyway.

Howells is Gordon Brown’s intelligence and security watchdog and his theory goes counter to the prevailing wisdom in Washington and London, both of which are preparing to send more troops to Afghanistan.

Do you agree with him?

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."

Polls published in advance of Charles’ visit show support for Canada’s constitutional monarchy is weak, even if the public’s frosty opinion of the Prince of Wales himself has begun to warm just a bit.

Sixty percent of Canadians felt the constitutional monarchy was outdated, although 80 percent said it was an important part of Canadian history.

Polls in New Zealand show people generally in favour of the monarchy even if it seems to have little relevance to their lives but when William heads off afterwards to Australia he will find a much more developed republican movement.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is an avowed republican whose announcement of William’s trip made it crystal clear that the young royal was coming because because he asked to, not because he was invited. Foreign Minister Stephen Smith says a split from the monarchy is inevitable in the next decade.

William, travelling without girlfriend Kate Middleton, can expect to bask in the lingering “Diana factor,” but this enduring phenomenon may actually work against the older couple in Canada.

Do you believe such royal visits have any point?