To ask those who are not white brittish how they feel about the flags?

[PicaK]

Birmingham and Tower Hamlets are having St George England flags put up by privately funded groups.
I'm horrified by the implicit racism. I've seen a lot of white people applauding this and "time we took back the country" comments.
I haven't seen many non white people commenting. My feel is that they are too intimidated to do so. Am I right? Or is it indifference or is it that you're dealing with racism on a daily level and this is just one more thing.
Please don't post if you're white.whatever you feel about the flags. I want to hear on white viewd

It's really hard to believe that anyone in the world today seriously uses the swastika in anything but a neo-Nazi context, but perhaps I am being too Euro-centric. I can't pretend to know anything about what people who use Sanskrit do, but WW2 was so utterly horrific and affected the entire world that I'm surprised to hear that "billions" of people happily use the swastika.

What about adopting a different design as the English national flag? Several countries have done this in order to break with the past.

What do MN’ers think about that? Would you fly a new English flag? Serious question.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇬🇧❤️

This. Thank you. I wondered about ‘billions’ too to be honest !!

Repeating my post bc I replied to the poster who answered the below, when I meant to reply to the poster who wrote it:

It's really hard to believe that anyone in the world today seriously uses the swastika in anything but a neo-Nazi context, but perhaps I am being too Euro-centric. I can't pretend to know anything about what people who use Sanskrit do, but WW2 was so utterly horrific and affected the entire world that I'm surprised to hear that "billions" of people happily use the swastika.

Don’t talk in reason or logic, they hate that

It doesn’t matter again whether you think it’s relevant or not. I can find it comical and I am at liberty to say so. You’re starting to give off the impression that only certain people are allowed opinions.. be careful before you fully expose yourself for what you are 🤡

Thank you for articulating this. I remember as a kid in the 70s and 80s getting airmail letters from India bearing the true symbol (as pp said, slightly different to the nazi symbol) and my dad having to patiently explain it to the various quizzical postman. 12-15 years of Nazism and a few idiot racists since the end of WW2 hasn’t wiped out centuries of cultural heritage belonging to billions of people from other parts of the world.

Sometimes I am just speechless by what people decide to write posts about

I addressed this upthread! New English flag should have a teapot as its centrepiece and an Alice in Wonderland theme round the edge, and possibly a Bakewell tart.

Brittish? Who cares - OP, your views are Shittish.

Comparing the English flag to a nazi swastika is pointlessly ruder than anything I've ever read.

Just after VJ Day, too.

Lucky I’m not a nazi. If you’d tried that, your neck would be swinging merrily in the breeze from that lamppost you hate so much.

Instead of an English flag that reminds us some humans and some societies can be free, brave and good. Millions died to make it that way.

Enjoy the evening breeze!

Your facts are wrong. Most are legitimate asylum seekers:
For the year ending March 2025, roughly 145,834 small boat arrivals claimed asylum since 2018:

• 56,605 received grants of protection.
• 30,041 were refused.
• 19,696 withdrew claims.

Source: gov.uk

56,605 is hardly a problem in a population of 68 million. The social problems in the UK are not caused by this proportion of the population. I would say there are far more destructive, anti-social elements we should worry about. Hint: don't be disingenuous.

@PicaK I'm not white and quite honestly I was shocked by your question. I wasn't sure if I understood it correctly.

I have never understood why people hate the flag. I'm old enough to remember really scary and intimidating racism.

The flag is a joy as far as I'm concerned. I'm outraged that councils want to remove it. How Is it possible that we can fly any flag except ours?

I've got to go to an area of London this week that is covered by Tower hamlets. I am slightly worried that I'm going to lose my rag if I see anyone taking down the flag, but I presume they will do it late at night or early in the morning.

I had one on my balcony during the football and after the ladies won, I didn't want to take it down!

One of the nicest things about the Jubilee, the Coronation, the VE day party were the flags in my mum's street. Honestly, it made me so happy. I still have a video of the neighbours putting them up.

I was living in London at the time and I barely saw any flags. But I'm not sure they were many street parties either. I'm now back in mum's area. I think there's probably a younger demographic and they'll be concerned about flying the flag now. That strikes me as a real shame.

Depends what you consider 'hard left' as really these terms are often just interchangeable with left wing which isn't "hard left" at all. Considering the Labour party won a landslide election in 1945, I doubt a majority of people associated the 'left' with division, they associated it with socio-economic change and getting rid of pre-war inequalities, which many were not happy to accept after fighting in a world war. All my grandparents were left wing, including one grandparent who was in the RAF pre war and would have been considered middle-class.

@Horsie 😂

@BruFordthe one we have already is perfectly fine.

Around by where I live, in Birmingham 🙄

I keep seeing that date, 13 September, just randomly popping up. Is there aggro planned?

And OP you've got no right to demand who can and can not post on your thread. That's probably why you got the vote you did.

This is a really silly post. Flying the flag of England in England is not racist. Bonkers.

The flag is a joy as far as I'm concerned

Looks joyful doesn’t it😊

It's really hard to believe that anyone in the world today seriously uses the swastika in anything but a neo-Nazi context

Typing a sentence like this betrays a huge ignorance of how billions still use the swastika and eurocentrism is a kind word. Others may call it racism.

This! First time I went to America 30 years ago, I thought why don't we fly our flag like this?

I haven't been for about 10 years now. Blimey, that's a long time. I miss America. Anyhoo - sorry I really did have to say that and I do say it in real life - I presume they are still proudly flying their flag? I hope so.

No I'm happy with the one we've already got thank you.

This is an interesting question - I have a close friend from NZ who would rather they adopted the fern as their flag and dropped the one with the union flag.

I don’t have any skin in this game, as I said upthread, I am Welsh and happy with my dragon and my saint flag - I never use the union flag, it’s not representative of me. And that is how he feels, but from a different perspective.

Mind you it could end up with a god awful design like the 2012 Olympics couldn’t it! But a very interesting question to raise - there were similar conversations about Antarctica not so long ago.

But also people likely want to stick with what they have, it’s unfair to have it hijacked. If a supremacist group decided that the dragon was ‘their’ symbol tomorrow I would fight tooth and nail not to let it get into their clutches.

All true, but lots of people would have to start using those symbols, and since they don't, anyone who does is tainted with their connotations. I'm not going to be the first one to fly a swastika in order to try to break the stigma!

My in-group is my own country and nationality. It's not like there's some other huge group near me who would all know that I wasn't a Nazi if I flew the swastika. We all respond to our time and place, and in my culture today, the English flag has some really dubious associations. I'm not flying it due to those associations. I'd be far too embarrassed. I don't agree with far-right groups and there's no way I'm going to associate myself with their symbols. Technically it might not be their symbol, but culturally it is, and anyone who says it's not is being disingenuous. Of course it shouldn't be that way. It should be just a flag. But there's a big difference between the way things should be and the way they are in reality.