How to deal with the flag flying

[Slightyamusedandsilly]

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/176g9ybzKD/

This bloke has got it right! I'm going to order a bunch of other flags and put them on the local lamp posts that the neighbourhood racists are monopolising!

Exactly.

And as for Yvette Cooper, she's playing to the popularist vote, which will do Labour no favours at all. Pandering to Reform voters who aren't going to be swayed away from Farage's lies.

I have a problem with the huge amount of graffiti lately. If I’d seen people encouraged to paint foreign flags on public property that would also be unpleasant. There are British flags flying down the Mall, outside local restaurants and garden centres, some of my neighbours have them (and indeed Ukraine and UK forces flags) flying on their private properties which is fine. Graffiti isn’t patriotic, it’s selfish. The temu England flags tied to lampposts are just going to fall down and make litter and go into landfill, which is hardly making us feel pride in our country. My neighbours maintain their flags.

The problem is though that posts like this and thinking like this is actually adding more fuel to the fire and pushing more people to the right.

Accusing people of being naive for not thinking that the flags are racist is also not great. Its a way of belittling people who may hold a different view and trying to shame them into conforming with group think.

Labelling the England flag as racist is deeply problematic and complex. It has been associated with far right groups but it also has a deep rooted cultural connection to England and English culture. Vilification of one aspect can cause defensiveness and a greater move towards the other, fueling a cultural shift towards the right.

Just as the Democrats didn't realise vilification of MAGA supporters solidified support for Trump and paved the way for him to win, a lot of people don't realise that the same behaviour here regarding the England flag will open the door for Reform to walk through.

The more people draw attention to it the more it will be become magnified.

Sometimes I think forums have paid agitators, not paid by the forum itself, who test balloon reactions and harvest data.

I haven’t seen any flags round here. I wouldn’t even know about it if it wasn’t for the news!
Who has the time to be faffing about putting up flags.

And I repeat the statistic that conviction rates for both violent and sexual crimes per person in the population of that nationality vary hugely by nationality.

That two nationalities – Afghans and Eritreans – were more than 20 times more likely to account for sexual offence convictions than British citizens, according to the data.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/03/10/foreigners-commit-up-to-quarter-of-sex-crimes/

It isn't racist to recognise that. It isn't racist to change our immigration criteria to reflect the different risk that men of different nationalities pose. Nor is it racist to change how we process and house young, single, male asylum seekers to reflect the reality of the risk men of the main nationalities who make up asylum seekers pose.

In fact I'd say it's pretty racist to bundle all people of non-white nationalities together when analysing the risk they pose. Why should SE Asian and Japanese men - with their very low rates of convictions - be grouped with Afghans and Eritreans? It's a deliberate obfuscation of the truth for political reasons.

I’m struggling with the flags at the moment. I know they can be flown for all sorts of joyous, sad, poignant and political reasons but at this moment I view them as meaning one particular thing. My ‘lived experience’ (bleugh but used it for shorthand) leads me to feeling fearful, or at least unsettled at seeing them in our shared public space. But I’m not going to get into a fight with anyone about it, in fact I think by practicing my non-reaction I’m helping myself and taking the heat out of situation where there are good number of people hoping for a battle out of it.

It's been England's flag since the Middle Ages though, it doesn't belong to a minority of knuckle draggers. And it doesn't represent racism when flown at major international sports events such as the Rugby 6 Nations, Rugby World Cup or Women's Rugby Cup which began last Friday.

If that was a dig at me, actually, I'm working from home, sitting on the sofa, off to do the school run in 2 hours.

I'm not sure being paid to 'agitate' would meet my standard hourly rate unfortunately.

What data do you think is harvestable from a few bored mums online during the day? If there is any, crack on I say! LOL

They bloody well are. It was organised by Tommy Robinson.

We can have foreign (Palestinian) flags that symbolise the rape, murder and kidnapping of men, women and babies springing up everywhere, but our own country's flag is a problem?!

Driving around town I see Ukrainian flags flying, many Palestine ones in certain areas. It’s lovely to see the Union Jack and St George’s cross flying. If you live here, regardless of your background, it’s your flag too.
It’s very dangerous to presume you know peoples motives OP. Should I think everyone wearing a Palestinian flag is antisemitic? Of course not.

If it’s ok to fly the Palestinian and Ukrainian flags, then why can’t people fly the Union Jack or English flag? It is our national flag after all.

It's exactly the same. It's a cult following tommeh ten names

You could complain to the council about the noise of the flags flapping in the wind , or obstruction of vision , roads etc

I think (and this is based on growing up in NI) part of the issue is that England is seen by many in the UNITED (which it isn't) Kingdom as being the dominant country. Thanks to the English vote, NI and Wales had to go into Brexit - of course we did because the English outnumber us in population. We voted no. I think you have every right to be proud of your country but the flag DOES sadly remain a source of contention (?) for many outside of England. I'm sure this does not apply to you, but sadly the attitude of many of the English that are encountered outside of England, gives off an air of superiority - at least when it comes to Northern Ireland. We are like the small appendix that the English parliament can't be bothered with. None of this is meant as offensive, but England does very very little for Northern Ireland yet we are still mainly governed by London. And as I said in an earlier post, it is source of division in this country anywhere that flag is flown. I can show you so many youtube videos of the trouble it has caused. Of course it's not the flag itself, it's a small number of morons.

This

Agree with this - it's not the flag in itself, being flown or displayed e.g. to support your country in sporting event, or celebrate national occasion like the Jubilee, or coronation (though it won't take much detective work to identify me as NOT a royalist 😂). The current wave of flag-flying has a different intent and has been whipped up to coincide with xenophobic and yes, frankly often racist rhetoric. It is designed to provoke, not celebrate. Thos behind the "campaign" I feel, really want people to object so that they can turn around and say "See, you can't even fly an English flag anymore, wokeism gone mad etc etc"

ODFOD 🙄
Flying the flag is one of the few things people can do as a ‘fuck you’ to the idiots in charge telling them they’re rascist bigots.
We saw how well that worked out with Brexit.
My village shop is run by 3 brothers, I don’t know or care if they were born here or if they are immigrants, if I were to guess, they are of Indian heritage - they provide a much needed service and they have both the Union Flag and St George in the window, are they racists too? 🤪

When a discussion about the flying of these flags is opened it’s the deliberate playing dumb about their meaning is what really winds me up. They’ve appeared where I live and stealthily overnight. If these people are so patriotic why not put them up in daylight? And why now? Why not over the last few years? Come off it, you absolutely know why and what they mean. People who have had a flagpole in their garden for years are patriotic not these muppets who have bought cheap flags from Temu and are posting them up everywhere 😤

They may be protecting themselves. An NHS doctor of Indian heritage had his car sprayed and vandalised with a St George's cross and a tag of "go home". We saw in last summer's Farage riots mobs chucking bricks through windows in what they believed to be "P*ki" areas, stopping cars and only waving through white drivers etc etc.

The England flag is not racist. Nor is the Union flag. I would happily display them IF they hadn’t been taken over by racist thugs, using them to make other people uncomfortable. I wish we could take back control and they are not used by the likes of Tommy Robinson but I don’t think that is ever likely to happen. I am proud to be British. We, as a country have laws against discrimination, we look after people, our British born and those that come here for a number of reasons. We have healthcare and benefits. I know it isn’t ideal and that our systems and organisations don’t always work as well as they could but we try. I don’t like uncontrolled immigration, for a number of reasons including the exploitation of those that come here under false promises. I don’t blame people for wanting to come here for a better life either. People are people and everyone should be afforded basic human rights and using our flag to go against that is deplorable.

OR... they could hold the political opinion that the UK should be run for the benefit of it's people - including themselves - and that our Liberal Elite government and institutions aren't doing that and aren't listening to people telling them how they are affected.

How racist of you to assume they wouldn't feel that way, based on their ethnicity

Posts like this & the OP is giving the idiots a symbol for their hatred.

It's a flag, a symbol for a country.

"Racist" to consider the possibility that people of colour may feel uneasy with the rhetoric and whipping up of anti-immigration feeling going on? Reform talking about mass deportations? (fawning to try to please their US heroes). Who exactly is this Liberal Elite? (your capitals)

People defending the flag flying, why have you picked now of all times to fly it? You’re disguising your racism with a poor excuse of patriarchy.