Wetherspoons has put up notices in its pubs after a row which blew up over footage of a British Army veteran being turned away for wearing a poppy. JD Wetherspoon has denied banning Remembrance Day poppies in its pubs, stating that heightened security measures surrounding local protests led to entry restrictions at a Hampshire venue over the weekend.
Now, the pub chain has put signs on the bar in its venues following widespread outcry after footage of the veteran being refused entry to The Star in Gosport on Sunday afternoon (October 25). In the clip, a doorman told the man he could not enter wearing a poppy because it was “political” and instructed him to remove it or face being denied service inside.
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The notice put on the bar in pubs says: “In fact, Wetherspoon has not banned veterans wearing poppies.
“Wetherspoon is a long-standing supporter of the Royal British Legion Poppy Appeal and sells poppies in its pubs.
“Last year, for example, the pubs raised £55,867 for the appeal.
“There was a demonstration in Gosport on Sunday, near Wetherspoon’s Star pub and there were extra security measures in place.
“Unfortunately, some poppy wearers, and other members of the public, were refused entry.
“On the advice of the police, the pub was closed for the rest of the day. The pub has now reopened and Wetherspoon has apologised to customers for the inconvenience.”
The confrontation took place as Gosport became the focus of major unrest, with an estimated 400 anti-immigration demonstrators marching through the streets from the Haslar Immigration Removal Centre toward the town square to protest small boat arrivals in Hampshire.
In the viral video – first shared by Joe Standen, Reform UK councillor for Paulsgrove, on the Spotted Pompey Facebook page – the door steward could be heard telling the veteran: “Really sorry mate, you can’t come in with a poppy I’m afraid. It’s political.”
When the pubgoer insisted the emblem of remembrance was “not political at all,” the doorman replied: “I’m just doing my job.” He then advised that patrons could enter only if they removed their poppies and concealed them in their pockets, warning: “Don’t put it on inside, because you’ll be asked to leave and they won’t serve you.”
In response, Wetherspoon chairman Tim Martin said: “Wetherspoon is a long-standing supporter of the Royal British Legion and sells poppies on its behalf every year in the pubs. Wetherspoon never has, and never would, instruct its staff to turn away people because they are wearing poppies.”
OPINION – CAROLE MALONE: Some poor village is missing its idiot if PM really thinks we’ll swallow this
Andy Burnham doesn’t know what he’s doing, writes Carole Malone, right (Image: Getty / Express)
Is Andy Burnham really as thick as he appears to be or does he think the British people are? I suspect it’s the former which means some poor village somewhere is missing its idiot. Why else would he come out with nonsense this week saying: “Brexit is to blame for the small boats crisis” when it’s patently not.
Brexit has nothing whatsoever to do with the small boats crisis which started way before we left the EU and while we were still under EU rules. The Tory Government at the time declared the situation a “major incident”. More importantly he can’t blame the crisis on Brexit for the simple reason that historical data makes clear that the EU’s Migration Returns mechanisms brought MORE asylum seekers into the UK than it removed.
Take 2019 for instance – Britain transferred out 263 asylum seekers while 714 more were sent to us from Europe. Does that sound like a good system to you when you’re taking three times more people than you’re shipping out? And if we rejoined the EU we’d have to take as many migrants as they told us to take and it would be more than are coming here now.
Also does Burnham really expect us to believe what he claimed on Good Morning Britain this week that the reason migrants come here is because they know we can’t return them: “We have people knowing we can’t return them in the same way we used to.”
Which is rubbish, because it was every bit as hard to return them before Brexit as it is now. And Burnham knows full well that migrants come here for lots of reasons – the main ones being free hotels, free housing, free healthcare, a lifetime on benefits and free education. They don’t come here because of Brexit.
So why IS he coming out with this divisive tosh now – not least because his own Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has said categorically that Brexit is NOT the reason for the small boats crisis: “There are lots of debates to be had about the rights and wrongs of Brexit, but is it responsible for the boats? I don’t think that is true.”
So why is our dopey PM saying the polar opposite to the woman who knows more about the small boats crisis than he ever will? I’ll tell you why – he’s using this phoney Brexit narrative in order to justify the fact he’s crawling back onto the arms of the EU. He desperately wants Britain back in the failing bloc because he doesn’t know how to run the country and he’s stupid enough to think they do. And if we’re back in the EU, he can blame Brussels for everything that goes wrong here.
But by making these fake Brexit pronouncements he also knows it will detract attention from the fact that our “talk-a-lot-but-do-nothing PM” is doing beggar-all about the problems crippling this country. In his first 100 days in office, he’s barely said a word about illegal immigration or how he’s going to resolve a situation that is costing taxpayers billions every year. He’s said nothing about how he’s going to pay down the £3trillion debt (which is costing us £110billion a year in interest). He refused to say how, or if he’s going to cut the gargantuan benefits bill. And he’s saying even less about the cyber war we’re told is going to hit in the near future which could see Britain plunged into darkness.
And what’s Burnham been doing while all these problems are piling up on his desk – he’s been on Gogglebox eating crisps with his mate, Liverpool Mayor Steve Rotheram, and making TikTok videos. This man is not a serious politician. He’s trivial and much of the stuff we’re being told is in the budget is also trivial and does nothing to sort out the big issues that could bring Britain crashing down.
But back to Brexit – he put his foot in his mouth yet again on Good Morning Britain saying he wasn’t averse to the idea of open borders. This from the man who in 2017 said free movement should never be revived because “it was defeated at the ballot box in 2016”. Now he’s changed his mind. What the hell’s wrong with him? Is he taking lessons on how to govern from Starmer? Or does he just change his beliefs and principles – like Starmer did – as often as he changes his underpants? Does he actually believe in anything or does he just say what suits him at the time – like Starmer did?
And what are we supposed to think of a politician who told the good people of Leave-voting Makerfield that he had no intention of unpicking Brexit. “Brexit is done,” he told them when he was pleading for their votes – the votes he desperately needed to catapult him into No 10. But now he’s there, he’s spitting on those people who put their trust in him, who believed he wasn’t going to interfere with this country’s biggest ever democratic vote. “We need to be honest with people about who we are,” he droned this week.
HONEST? Oh, pull the other one! Andy Burnham wouldn’t know honest if it smacked him in the face because he’s been anything but honest about Brexit. He also said this week that Britain is now gaining momentum – well if it is why the hell does he want to drag us back into the crisis-hit, failing EU where most of the major economies are in the toilet and in a way worse state than ours?
Do we think Burnham even knows that? Our Prime Minister – who has spent the first 100 days as PM playing man of the people and desperately trying to be liked rather than actually doing his job – is standing by watching this country crash and burn with a silly grin on his face and bag of Monster Munch in his hand. He really doesn’t know what he’s doing. And you have to wonder who’s more terrified about that – him or us?