I hate badges and ribbons, but this year I have decided to wear a poppy for the first time

Ted Heath was not always easy to love, but his grumpiness could be endearing. I remember him once inveighing against badges. Badges, he said, lapel-stickers, medals, tags, ribbons, bumper-stickers, rosettes, even T-shirts with writing on them — they all added up to the same thing: using yourself as a human billboard to advertise your convictions or good works. He detested the practice, he said. This diatribe had been prompted by a request to attach some perfectly harmless sticker — Save the Whale or whatever — to his coat. The young man who had asked him to do it was rather winded by the tirade.

But I agreed with Ted. I still do. Of course one can see why those who have merited a decoration in war or national service may care to sport their medals on suitable occasions, but even this practice seems to me (to be candid) a little showy. As for slogans, political badges, the gold £ lapel-pins that a certain kind of Eurosceptic wears, ugh. At party conferences some Liberal Democrats literally run out of lapel-space on which to sport all the statements they wish to be seen making.

Tattoos repel me as the ultimate, indelible, irremovable lapel-sticker. And during the Eighties I took a lonely stand (at least in some of the circles I moved in) against those red ribbon Aids awareness things; and the pink ribbon breast cancer awareness things, and against the green and white ribbon things, too, whose import I now forget. As for the afternoon recently when virtually the whole House of Commons turned out in yellow ‘remember Maddie’ ribbons — well, let’s hope some of them are embarrassed about it now, even if not at the time.

I just think, I suppose, that it’s a bit vulgar to decorate yourself with your affiliations, your sympathies or achievements.