To be devasted the roundabout in my town has a crappy 'flag' painted on?

[Liesmorelies]

I nearly threw up when I saw it this morning - what a horrible shock.

It's a very small town in the Midlands near a city. Yes it's ex-mining but does reasonable ok now, not deprived eg no contextual offers for my dc for uni, but not massively desirable or trendy. Has a Labour MP now but hasn't always in recent years. Voted for Brexit but only just. In 2019 more people voted against Tories AND Brexit than for them - split the vote so we still got a Tory, but still.

In other words, I did not expect this. It's horrible - looks ugly and badly done even before you get started on the thinking behind it. AIBU to ring the council on Tuesday and ask when they are going to deal with this vandalism?

I did a four hour round-trip on the motorway today too and the amount of flags on bridges was shocking - just make it stop.

Well, I think you should all calm down.

A flag is what you make of it. For example, I once made a lovely skirt out of a Japanese flag. Didn’t wear it to the British Legion dinner, I must admit. Lovely bit of cloth though.

And the Spanish flag that my neighbour recently bought for some women’s football game is now doing service as the most adorable table cloth for my rattan garden table. I gather the Spanish lost the game, so Manuela gave it to me. But it lives on in my garden as a super talking point, along with my walnut cake.

I’m not in favour of painting roundabouts though. Where would it end? We might have slogans and protest statements painted on walls! Vandalism, pure vandalism.

I actually quite like it.

Exactly it’s like if your white you can’t be proud of it
and I would like to know why

I’m brown
immigrant parents
married to a white man

But I’m allowed to be proud to be brown
but my white husband isn’t allowed to be proud to be white

And vice versa.

Zov! You're back! Did you see the photo I sent you? After you were so rude as well. xx

Go to the SA on St Patrick's day and it's an excuse for many to get off their heads in celebration, many of the celebrants couldn't identify Ireland on a map.

There actually is a right side, which is to be a decent person who doesn’t seek to intimidate others and pretend it’s something else. I don’t see how the answer to being shafted is to shaft others. Maybe learn actual history, understand the system and do something about it, rather than get angry and paint roundabouts.

Well my white husband and none of his family think that

She was actually DEVASTED which I assume is some kind of Tiktok version of devastated.

They'll be grateful for the free advertising, personally I had never seen it before and there are probably many others like me.

Are you English?

Absolutely nothing wrong with flying the flag. But flying the flag to make other people feel uncomfortable and to make a point is a completely different thing. It's naive to think that all this flag flying is just because people all of a sudden feel patriotic and it's not a coincidence it's happening at the same time as the protests against the hotels. There have been a couple of videos on Facebook of men painting red crosses on flats that are above businesses such as an Indian takeaway, using racist language to talk about a woman in a hijab. People are pretending that this flag party is nothing but good old patriotism and if we have a problem with it then we hate England.

We had someone paint our mini roundabouts. It looks shit, the white paint is dirty and the lines aren't even straight. If you're going to do it, do it well.

Why on earth would you be proud of being white???? I am neither ashamed nor proud to be white - it's just what I am.

I am patriotic to a degree in that I am fond of Britain and when I lived abroad for a couple of years there was lots that I missed, which did surprise me. Pride is something else though and not a feeling I can relate to.

The other irony, of course, being that these same people are the “broken Britain” brigade. Why suddenly so proud when the country’s “gone down the drain”?

Yes, we saw "fuck off invaders" with pictures of the German and UK flag, on our recent canary Islands trip.

Quelle surprise. Thought so. You can't help yourself with your hatred of English people.

I never thought of like this! What an excellent point.

The ‘patriots’ who think England is so wonderful also think it has given to shit 🙄
Make it make sense. (I wonder what their real message is….?)

I like living in a country where people are free to express themselves. You might not identify with feeling proud of being British / English, but if others are, good for them!

I’ve just come back from a day trip to wales and there were welsh flags all over. My local town has Palestine flags and pride flags all over the place, I’m glad people are free to put them up too.

I’m a liberal though and believe that freedom of expression and pluralism are what makes this country great!

What flag? What are you talking about?

Yes but this is not a display of patriotism! It’s a coordinated campaign called Raise the Colours. Meant to send a message.

Google who is behind it.

Maybe that’s because these actions are accompanied by violence and intimidation and people are afraid to speak up ..not everyone has racists views. I hate it when someone assumes I’ll agree with their using phoney nationalism for veiled racism