St George's Day

Today is St George's Day.

Indeed, one can hardly avoid the fact, given the number of lefty politicians and SPADs "reclaiming" the day for the left on Twitter (to the disgust of Labour turncoat Dan Hodges in the Daily Telegraph http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danhodges/100268700/the-patriotism-police-cant-force-me-to-celebrate-st-georges-day/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter).

Such is the patriotic fervour of the left that the LabourList website http://labourlist.org/ has turned itself over for the day to articles musing on the nature of Englishness by such Labour luminaries as Jon Cruddas, Sunny Hundal, and Chi Onwurah MP - though none of them seem to be calling for a bank holiday on 23rd April.

With such left-wing politicisation of identity issues, how then should non-lefty people mark St George's Day?

Let us look back a hundred years to the Great War, and remember that so many parents chose to portray their dead sons as St George.  It was mainly officers who got individually remembered in expensive and dazzling stained glass (as in the above example), but collective village memorials also follow the St George theme.  On this day, in this centenary year, let us try to live up to the patriotic example they have set us.