Are there English flags out near you?

[olderandnonthewiser]

Left the North East this morning and saw a few, lots on the motorway bridges and our local fb page is full of them.

On every bridge down the M5.

I see it more as a grass-roots reaction to the massive over-reach of the Liberal Left elite. Anger certainly - and a sense of injustice - rather than desperation. Although I agree that they probably can't see another way to get their point across - that's what protest always is. The message is to the politicians and decision-makers, not to the asylum seekers.

I agree with you that those in power should be paying attention. Not trying to suppress it by taking down flags, dismissing them as bigots and handing down excessive jail sentences to make an example - but genuinely revisiting their own policies and actions. The UK should be run for our benefit - not as some socialist experiment.

I think this is a really good explanation of what's currently going on.
I'm keeping my mouth shut in RL and on SM but I'm concerned by some of these chimps taking over the St George's Cross flag again. Come on, they're not supporting the women's rugby or being patriotic, this is a veiled threat re immigration. If they say otherwise I don't believe them. Ive hung up Union flags outside for a few years when I thought the Royal occasion merited it, but I've long felt St George's flag has had sinister associations because the Far Right claimed it as their own and should be hung out only on 23 April. Any other time only after careful thought.
in our area the red crosses have started appearing on the mini roundabouts. We are predominantly white British here, it's a small Hampshire market town. There is supposedly a premier inn up the road that's become a hostel for asylum seekers, but if it has then they appear to never leave the hotel, they'd stand out round here if they did. .

I am assuming this is some kind of "mobilisation" via social media, but I'm noticing it's a certain "type" that's really getting behind it... very worrying.

I suppose desperation in that they can't see another way to get those in power to listen. The government and the Liberal Left elite try to silence any discussion with accusations of bigotry and racism, and refuse to actually engage with the issues people keep raising.

Protest has always been how disenfranchised groups try to make those in power listen.

I do find it so strange the way the Left ignore and suppress any discussion about the impact of excessive immigration undercutting workers. Immigrants are seen as higher up in the oppression hierarchy, so only they matter. The Liberal Left have tunnel vision which makes them incapable of balancing rights between different groups. Labour really have moved a long way from being the workers' party.

No Union flags or England flags near me. We have the banners/standards of various Yorkist and Lancastrians on lampposts in the local high street. Richard III (as he became) was outside Tesco one year, cannot be by the chiropractors as that is the side of the street for Lancastrians.

If you revisit the thread it wasn't me you asked the question of. That's why I've not replied.

Posters are on here for discussion, not to answer your word soup with detailed questions at your demand.

Calling me a bully for absolutely no reason just makes you sound angry. I can't think of anywhere on here or in my sixty years of life where I have been a bully.

Nobody is saying citizens should be silenced.
Nobody should fear being labelled racist or right wing or left wing if that's what they are.

You know that the current displaying of flags is nothing about celebrating culture and national identity very well.

Many of the bits of the UK that do look like the opening scene of the Vicar of Dibley are crippled by poverty, second home ownership, zero jobs, a very elderly population, no facilities such as shops, pub or transport.

Swap 'community orchards' for food bank, community bus, fundraising, campaigning, visiting the isolated and elderly or volunteering for Home Start and you see that there is something more productive that anyone, anywhere can do instead of shimmying up a lamppost with a flag.

I wonder how many flag people have actually written to an MP, attended a council meeting, spoken to any authority about their concerns?

All these nylon and polyester flags will end up in landfill or caught in some hedge somewhere rotting away indefinitely and messing up the environment.

But you don't worry about that for Pride flags or Palestinian flags - only for Union and St George's flags. Or even for Welsh or Scottish flags. Are they particularly badly made?

The majority of flags, of whatever colour, are made of non biodegradable plastics. They are almost all extremely badly made with no intention that they should last more than one or two uses.

They are almost all imported to this country from China.

I am part of several environmental campaigning groups and litter picking groups. I run a group dedicated to keeping plastic out of the ocean. Every single day of my life I go litter picking taking plastic out of the environment.

So with respect, you are wrong.

I'm genuinely curious to know which flags you find yourself clearing up most often?

None here. In the village, market town or nearest city, no flags.
Our Council has only housed 50 non European immigrants, none in hotels.

We do have Eastern European immigrants in the town, mostly working in factories. and they have been shown preferential treatment although with little resentment from the locals.
A whole row of houses was built for Ukrainians only, another for Polish workers.
Ukrainians understandable and we have a long friendship with Polish people stretching back to the pilots stationed here in WW2. Many married local women and remained here.

The best way with immigration is keep it at reasonable levels to cope with services. People are rightly aggrieved at too many, too fast.

TBH this is what comes of a certain section of the population despising the St George flag, and saying it’s purely a sign of ignorance, football hooliganism, stupidity, racism, and above all, The Sort Of People We Wouldn’t Wish To Know, Probably Very Lower Class.

I did live in an area with actual race hate for a while. And it’s swiftly angry and violent in my experience. It’s seeing a skinhead punch a woman because she’s in his preferred seat on the bus.

Why has what a lot of people think of as a far right display got so much traction? I don’t think it’s rocket science. Most of these areas will be old Labour with large white working (or used to working) population. Wages have gone nowhere in the last decade.

If you look at Labour, it has moved from a working man’s party to a more metropolitan academic class of people. For the Conservatives, they are completely about money, they have had ethnically diverse leadership but basically cutting the basis of the state is all they do. If you have had depressed wages, bottom of the heap, you need more help not less. Neither party is going to do very much to help you. And nevermind asylum seekers. They are just the most visible. We had millions of people come here in the last couple of years without much thought except it would support the economy.

Both of these parties have the same class of politicians. Neither have been very interested in these areas flying flags en masse

Lots have appeared around us in the last week (ex mining northern town). Also roundabout and a zebra crossing spray painted. There has been a nasty undercurrent brewing for the past few weeks. Lots of little things, stones been thrown at windows of businesses not British owned (not enough to smash but to chip the windows). Publishing on the local FB page of the full addresses of HMOs and houses that "boat people (non white people)" are housed in.

We attended a class party the other day and one of the mums (who is Muslim) said that she hasn't dared to leave the house apart from essentials all school holidays as people are allowing their dogs to snap at the children, standing blocking the path so she has to walk in the road with her pushchair and children, cars passing her pushchair on the road very very closely, she gets daggers glared at her, her husband was called a rapist and paedophile in the park by teenagers when he took the children to the park.

The government really need to start listening to people and addressing issues not just gas lighting and calling it far right as it's becoming a powder keg that only needs a spark. By calling any discussion about immigration far right you weaken the definition of far right and people then see far right as people who might have reasonable concerns about immigration rather than the actual far right who are much more extreme and hateful in their views.

Insightful post @Icecreamandcoffee that is how it starts. When people start withdrawing basic courtesy and believing some far right lies (ie paedophilia) then you have a problem.

Racism is easy to do. This is not about asylum seekers. They are just the most visible. If the authorities do not step in (and I don’t mean the police) and start helping these places then the results will be predictable. And I don’t mean turning up with the police as a first step

I heard that if you " raise the flag " you're signalling an intent to be first in line for conscription if we end up going to war with Putin.

We have a community orchard, seems a bit daft in a village,
You have a strange idea of country living in England.

There's a small new eco build estate on the outskirts of our village. £700,000 for a house, on an estate! That's 150 miles from London, if you have the misfortune to go there, hop on the direct train. Hour and a half is quicker than getting across London.
Crippled with poverty, don't make me laugh.

😂🙄

It's not Russia we should be worrying about, if you listen to David Betz - a Professor in the Department of War Studies at King's College.

There's time to prevent this escalating, but it requires taking people's reasonable concerns seriously and addressing them.

Gaslighting people and calling them racist and bigots - when most of them are not - is just as harmful as any of the right-wing rhetoric on social media.

They can be set up in parks. I live in a deprived conurbation. I am trying to set one up on part of a park that is in a really grotty and unloved corner. These are the areas that need stuff like this more than anywhere else. Please don't be patronising. Or negative. And please don't think everyone deserves nice things.

Thank you for this. I live in a deprived, flag-lined conurbation and am trying to set up a community orchard too. Well done for having a community orchard!!!

I have passed over one painted roundabout this morning in a quiet country village and my next door neighbour has a flag out but then he always does. Not seen any other flags ( midlands)

Quite a lot on the M20 in Kent and in the towns and villages but then this is prime Reform territory.

If you read my initial post on this subject you will find that I didn't say that I find myself clearing up flags often. I said that "All these nylon and polyester flags will end up in landfill or caught in some hedge somewhere rotting away indefinitely and messing up the environment."

Do you not think that will be the case with these flags? They'll either be taken down and put into the bin (landfill) or will eventually find their way into the environment.

As you're genuinely curious - we do pick up the kind of banners people use to advertise events/businesses, bits of street bunting, flags that have blown off of cars (especially when the football's on), birthday banners and balloons, Halloween and Christmas banners etc etc.

It's all plastic. It takes years/decades to break down. It harms the environment and it harms wildlife.

@penfoldanddangermouse, other European countries had empires, too, and certainly didn’t behave any better than we did, but do any of them endlessly beat themselves up about it, or consider it a reason to be ashamed of their flag?