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.

I'm think you must live in a bubble.

Just because some rich incomers can afford expensive houses in your village (or any village) doesn't mean rural poverty isn't a huge problem.

Read up on it - Homesick by Catrina Davies is a good start. Watch Simon Reeve's programmes on Cornwall.

Fuel poverty, child poverty, poorly paid and seasonal work, poor housing, no public transport.

I'm not trying to make you laugh. It's not funny.

gleaningcornwall.org.uk/poverty-in-cornwall/

https://theweek.com/news/society/960010/how-rural-poverty-is-getting-worse-across-the-uk
https://www.ncl.ac.uk/press/articles/archive/2023/03/ruralpoverty/

Went on a long drive and saw a smattering of cross of St George and a few more union flags. Also what I think was a county flag. No painted roundabouts though. Womens international rugby is on, the flags come out for football, why not for rugby too. Sick of EVRYTHING being seen as racist. Never voted for reform, never intend to but labelling everything as racist encourages that.

Drove M5 and M5 today and they are all the way along! We wondered why too?

I saw loads on the M6 a couple of days ago

And all the criticism of anyone who puts a flag out - I dont possess one but it makes me want to go and buy one so all the virtue signalling twats who want to tell other people what they can and cant do will clutch their pearls.

My child has an England flag on her wall amid KpOp posters and various postcards from places she has been. It's part of her culture, one of them (she is of mixed parentage).

I'm not English myself but I think it's mental to say that having a flag from your own country is racist. You'd have to be such an intolerable fucking snob to think you were too far above the riff-raff for all that patriotism stuff.

I just don’t agree at all. We were in Winchester yesterday and there were union jacks everywhere as bunting, it looked very very celebratory. Not everyone has a cynical mindset, thankfully, and most people know the the flag has been around a long time, and obviously it will endure.

Well said! I completely agree.. all the assumptions about flag flyers being “ thick” is so condescending, it’s repellant.

And yet isn’t flying a flag the ultimate in signalling, virtue or otherwise?
just because someone doesn’t want to fly a flag doesn’t make them UNpatriotic. You should see me on Armistice day - the last post and Nimrod have me in pieces. Likewise hearing a brass band gives me the shivers. Seeing a wonderful landscape from atop a hill can stir all kinds of feelings.
cheering on our winning athletes and teams bring joy. I could go on.
Flying an England flag at half mast (because that’s what a lot of the ones on lampposts look like) leaves me cold. As an act it’s just so reductive. I’d love to ask some of the flag people what ELSE makes them feel proud. But I fear they’d just say ‘Yeah but flag. Why don’t you like it?’

flying a flag when women are playing rugby is a gesture of support for women's rugby. The Red Roses are reigning Six Nations and WXV champions, also number one ranked team in the world. If they get to the final I imagine there will be a few more flags and people with face paint.

How many people with Phds are flying these flags?

None in our tiny village thank god but someone has painted the nearby roundabout and there's a flag out over a bridge a little drive away. Nearby bigger village I would not be at all surprised to see them!

I'm not bothered by flags, it's just the possible intention behind them. We're a mixed heritage family as well so it's a bit intimidating but hopefully if we all just ignore them, they won't get the reaction they presumably want.

Or as George Orwell put it many years ago:

"England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals 
are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles it is always 
felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman 
and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution, from horse 
racing to suet puddings. It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably 
true that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of 
standing to attention during ‘God save the King’ than of stealing from a 
poor box."

yes. But let’s be honest here, most of the flags are nothing to do with the Red Roses. Which is a shame really, because they’re blimmin amazing

But you are aware that the current campaign of flag flying / mini roundabout painting etc is staged by the Far Right as part of their anti-migrant anti-Muslim campaign?

Britain First, a neo-Nazi group, has donated a huge number of flags, for starters.

None anywhere near me.

I live in a peaceful area of (very) multi-cultural S London.

there are two pubs within 50 meters of my house. One has two union jacks that have appeared outside in the last week. The regular patrons are also wearing these awful T-shirts that are a pattern made up of the Union Jack and St George’s flag, maybe 1 in 3 of the guys which is a big enough increase for me to notice it in the last week. The other pub has flag bunting up, is directly faced into a road with no pathway as the entrance is at the side so I’m assuming that’s why they have bunting and not big flags on poles like the other pub. Maybe customer base is working class . The third pub is about 100m anway and very middle class wine bar type place, zero flags.

totally bizarre. I thought it was to do with football?

A friend of mine in London joined a group who spent a whole weekend clearing and planting their local railway station.

On Monday morning she went to the station to catch her train and every single one of the lovingly planted plants had been ripped out, torn up and thrown around.

Not much hope for a community orchard.

No. It would be shocking if there were here in Perthshire!

Nope.

I have seen any yet, I obviously don't get out enough

Saw 2 on my way down the M5 as I was going towards Plymouth on the weekend.

I know the risks, but is that a reason not to try?

I saw one today in Devon (alongside the M5, I think) on a proper flagpole. It had ENGLAND printed on it, so I hope it was sports related.

Someone has painted red crosses on the mini roundabouts near me, quite clearly they have zero brain cells as the roundabouts are brown, raised cobble types, so it looks nothing like the flag! Just shows how people jump on the bandwagon without thinking it through!