Poppies....

Looking like a Monet Impressiont painting, these poppies, with rice paper thin petals, looked beautiful in a corner of Hulme Park on the edge of the city centre. We are literally within metres of the roar of the inner ring road but we could be in the middle of Cheshire somewhere.

Poppies are very emotive flowers in the UK. They are the ones we associate with our war dead. They like disturbed soil to germinate and they found the killing fields of Northern France and Belgium perfect at the end of World War I when they covered the battlefields in 1919 after the war finished the previous winter. Blood red, they were adopted as a symbol for fallen heroes.

On July 1st the Queen will be coming to Manchester Cathedral to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme which has particular resonance in this part of the world when 1000s were killed and injured, on the first day of the battle, from this region, including the Accrington Pals. Accrington, a former mill town north of the city, had nearly a generation of young men wiped out in just one day.

We should consider these things when we vote on the EU referendum on Thursday. Whatever problems the EU may have, one of the things it has helped guarantee is the 70 years of peace we have enjoyed.

Political speech over.

Extra picture is a close up of the poppies.