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!

I think their distorted narrative is being rejected. It’s : women are women, and flags are flags, get over it! This is the word on the street, at least where I live in London.

Your conflating two completely seperate issues in the assumption that they neatly overlap in terms of public thought. They dont, at least not in the UK maybe in the US. But it does seem the more people spend on Twitter the more likely they are to assume that there are these really rigid lines between "the libs" and non woke folk that just doesn't match where most people are.
Whatever the word on your street is, most people don't have a problem with flags in houses, flying from council offices, on pork pie packets. It's different if someone's dripping red paint on a roundabout. Saying "haha you had no problem with flags when it was pride flags being painted on the roads" just makes it look like you spend all your time arguing with people on line.

How many people have you actually met in your day to day life who share the "distorted narrative" you and the down to earth folk of your street are so proudly rejecting? E.g. have you actually met many people who are inventing narratives about everyone proud of the flag being a racist. Or is it you that's creating narratives about what other people think?

I drove through Parson Cross in Sheffield today, and every other lamppost had either a Union flag or an England flag. At the last lamppost we saw a couple of people hoisting up another flag.

The Union Jack, a racist symbol? Really?

It clearly was meant to be in Parson Cross.

I’m not sure where that is, but how on earth would you know anyway?

The ones where I live were hung by local right-wing yobs. Who have since been all over the local social media pages wingeing about them being ripped down. Why, I don't know, because they got what they wanted, a reaction.

The Union flag and St George's Cross are used in many ways.

In the situations you're talking about, the flags are flown as an symbol of state authority and power. It's the same flag, but being used as a symbol of something totally different.

In sports matches, the flags of the constituent parts of the UK are used to express loyalty and support for the country and for their sports team. Likewise the Union flag at coronation parties, on high streets and at country fairs. That's closer, as a symbol of belonging and pride. But not a call to action.

In the current political campaign we're all discussing here, both Union flags and St George's Cross flags are being used to dusplay dissatisfaction with current political and administrative actions. To show strength of opinion to the government, the many state institutions and the liberal elite who all refuse to engage with the population and instead try to dismiss and silence them. And to take action to combat a profound sense of injustice and disenfranchisement.

Not racism. A grassrots political movement.

And it's the opinions and direction expressed by that political movement which some people are so upset about, and are trying so very hard to shut down, using emotive language and thought terminating cliches.

Perhaps because the 'reaction they wanted' was engagement by the political class, and political change... not to be shut down and dismissed with superior, emotive, thought-terminating terms like 'right wing yobs'.

People are allowed to fly flags without the woke immediately branding them ‘racist’.its honestly insulting to the entire nation, as it is our national flag(s) and nothing at all to do with far right groups. This is just another way to shaming and silencing people, and I can not bear it.

In addition they are also diluting the gravity of real racism, by using the word so flippantly.

You don’t have to be white to feel proud to be British, you don’t have to be white to fly a flag fgs. It is so narrow minded tio assume automatically that the flag flyers are thugs. They are absolutely not. Everyone here from farmers to lords and everyone in between fly flags.

I assume your concern is the growing popularity of reform, not the flags op. Well that my friend is mainly due to the current abject failure of this government but please don’t conflate the two.

I think the flags look gorgeous!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cyvj289y788o.amp

I don’t think this news story helped matters tbh.

None around me because I live in an ethnically mixed part of Leeds. However I work in York and it’s absolutely laden with them. They targeted the university area with them. Racist arseholes.

Anyone who just thinks they are lovely and patriotic needs to give their bloody head a wobble and wake up!

They're fascists. If they were just people who liked looking at flags they'd be in the Albert Hall next week. Or gazing at the recent VJE/VJ day bunting that was everywhere not so long ago. Or making plans to see the cenotaph in a few weeks. But they're not, because there's nothing innocent about this lot. It's a coordinated fascist campaign and we all need to recognise it as such.

It"s not 'pretty flags'.

And neither is it racism or fascism.

So why don’t we discuss it? I’m more than happy to. What are their political arguments apart from “All brown people are rapists”? Because that’s all I’ve heard so far.

Can we also discuss why areas with next to no immigrants are having the same struggles with lack of public services, high housing costs, lack of jobs, yet are still blaming immigrants? In fact, it seems like there are less/no flags in the very areas that have a more diverse ethnic population.

It's a deprived area of Sheffield with the seventh lowest household income of all Sheffield neighbourhoods. I expect the residents are pretty disenfranchised with the current situation, hence the flag flying.

But why? I get that people are pissed off by the state of the country, but I don’t understand why they’re blaming asylum seekers?

Why not blame any other random demographic? Old people? Man City supporters? Butchers? Or why not focus their justified anger towards the government - you know the very people who actually are to blame, instead of picking on a vulnerable group?

It’s an expression of racism. It’s pathetic!

Yes I’m sure one group of disenfranchised people picking on another group if disenfranchised people is going to help! FFS.

I imagine theese flag flyers are incapable of critical thinking.

Those racist symbols aren't nice for POC driving around. They're a visual reminder of racism.

What's driving this, is people insisting they're racist and trying to ban them. Stop with that narrative and the flags will come down!

I don't know of any other nation, including those that built empires and have committed atrocities even in more recent times, that are so insistent on self hatred and self flagellation.

Are you seriously asking why those suffering severe deprivation in parts of our country - those that can not afford to feed their children or heat their houses feel aggrieved and upset when the young men rocking up here are being put up in hotels with all of those things - free food and warmth?

Can you really not understand why they would feel devastated to feel at the bottom of the priority list, when it comes to any help, support or services because we are spending billions and billions on people that do not and have never even lived here?

Young men that are fit, healthy and capable of work in their own countries are washing up here day after day to ‘screw the system’ as they see it, and no one is doing a single thing to stop the flow.

Meanwhile their quality of life continues to spiral, their bills continue to rise to pay for it all - without consent. There are zero signs of any improvement. It’s only going to get worse as far as they can see.

Are you so exceptionally detached from reality that you can not see how explosive this is about to become? We simply cannot afford nor do we have the space to house the world.

The overwhelming majority of people rocking up here are not in dire need, at all. They are ECONOMIC MIGRANTS and it’s about time you understood the difference.

You could also try giving some empathy and understanding to those struggling, because so much money is being poured into housing and paying for these economic migrants.

@Nestingbirdswhy should the fact you are born in a country entitle you to help more than someone born in a poor country who is coming here for help. That is a major problem we have in the UK and actually a cause of the underlying racism the flags represent.

I agree the system needs to change to something like income protection that you have to pay in to get something about. But the best majority of these refugees are happy to work and live in HMO’s which a lot of the deprived people you talk about won’t do, we just need to give them the right to work.

I am aghast at your deluded mindset. I am honestly speechless.

So you are prepared to offer a house, benefits and a remain to stay to every economic migrant that rocks uo here? On the off chance they might choose to work??

Do you have any grasp at all on the fiscal hole we are in? Have you paid the slightest bit of attention to the ever growing debts we are carrying as a country? We simply can not afford to do this, no country can.

For fucks sake, pick up the god damn Financial Times. Educate yourself. Money does not flow from the rivers and trees my friend. Jesus fucking Christ how can people be this deluded about this country’s finances.