In their defence, it isn’t just a TfL thing, it’s a national thing and probably down to the media. At some point in the last 20 years it seems poppy’s have become almost ‘compulsory’ in the public’s mind and I’d imagine most organisations are too afraid not to toe the line. See the uproar every single year in the media if a TV presenter/footballer/etc. doesn’t wear a poppy at this time of year, whether because they changed jackets or political beliefs. I’m sure TfL would love to stop bothering with them, but the backlash and uproar would be ridiculous, and just the type of thing the right would love to hold over Sadiq Khan’s head.
Yeah I kind of tune it out now, but a quick google of ‘not wearing poppy’ and filtering for news articles is quite revealing that this poppy mania bubble is still going on.
Organisations have been proud to display the poppy for a lot longer than 20 years and rightly so.
Quite and the railways companies hold that tradition with ceremonies at many stations
I probably wasn’t very clear but I wasn’t referring to ceremonies and that kind of thing, but things like individual buses/tubes/trams ‘wearing’ poppies which I don’t remember as being as common as it is now. But maybe that’s just my memory failing me!
