Fucking flags

[xmaspud3]

I know this has probably been done to death on here and there will be lots of threads about it already but I cant be bothered to trawl through the site for them so here I am.

I’m so irritated by the England flags popping up everywhere. There has been an influx put up in my area over the last week, it seems to be increasing by the day. I don’t hate the flag, but I hate the fact it is being used to send a clear message by racists. People aren’t doing it to be patriotic they are doing it to be hateful towards those that they don’t feel ‘belong’ in their country.

I don’t want to see all of these flags in my area. If people are entitled to put them up then why am I not entitled to go and cut the fuckers down? And don’t get me started on the spray painting of public roundabouts and road signage by people who allegedly love their country so much that they are vandalising it at the expense of public money.

If I see one more person give a ‘big well done to whoever has erected the flags on xyz street’ on Facebook I will explode. Does anyone else feel ragey over it?

Ask the Windrush generation their thoughts.

You might be right!

I'm with you OP. If people want to fly a flag then they should buy a flagpole and put them up on their own property.
And I'd like to see the flags of all the other nations that are keeping our community and high street going. We have an Indian restaurant, a Thai restaurant, a Chinese take-away, a Turkish restaurant, the people at the nail bar are Vietnemese, the people that run one of the pubs are Irish, the people who work in the shops are from all over the place.

As for the spray painting on roundabouts and zebra crossings, that's downright disrespectful. The people who put them there go on about patriotism and then put their flag underfoot. They aren't actually doing anything to better their community or their nation. They're not joining initiatives to have cleaner safer streets, or better education for their children. They're not helping with any of the charities that help "our own", they're not volunteering to do anything for veterans, etc. They're literally cable tying flags made in China to lampposts and complaining about immigration.

The media has given Reform a platform. Even when they had no MPs. And they’ve been organising in communities. They’re targeting people online. It’s a deliberate strategy.

Most people couldn’t tell you what percentage of net immigration is people claiming asylum, which isn’t illegal or they’d be arrested. They think most immigrants arrive on small boats. Utter nonsense.

They think it’s the biggest problem facing the country. Because they’ve been told to think that. To look for scapegoats rather than challenge the real culprits. Same old story.

Anyone putting up flags or harassing people to make them feel uncomfortable and unsafe should be thoroughly ashamed. It’s embarrassingly, sickeningly vile and nasty. They should take full responsibility, whatever their political gripes.

The thread is a bit like the Trans threads when the TRAs descend.
Although they don’t swear as much.

I love to see our flags flying, it reminds me to stay proud of being English. Long May they stay flapping in the breeze.

In another week or so the flag shaggers will be bored. Then they'll go back to moaning about everything and everyone in general.

They are so jealous of the successes of immigrants that they have to put that success down to them being given handouts. Perhaps they should take a leaf out of the immigrants book rather than wasting their time painting flags on roundabouts, or setting fire to bins and intimidating asylum seekers. Get out there and take the shittiest jobs, take two full time jobs AND study at night after that. Squirrel away as much money as you can, then club together with other family members and buy your own home, your own car. That's what many immigrants do. But it makes them feel better to tell everyone that the immigrants have stolen their house, their car, their place in the NHS queue. While they are waving their flags about many immigrants are knuckling down, sweeping floors, cleaning arses and studying for a PhD.

Well said.

Well said .👏🏻

I could just about cope with idiots painting flags on roundabouts and zebra crossings in my town, but some twat painted a big red cross over a white dove which is part of a rather lovely and entirely inoffensive new mural. And we're in a town with no asylum seeker hostels and no significant minority populations. I'm afraid it's not made me feel at all kindly towards flag people.

Would you want to fly a flag if not for this?

The sticking a red cross on anything white is stupid….especially road markings!

Yeah I'm listening. And all I'm getting is one loooooong dog whistle. All the fucking time. Again and again from everywhere: the media to social media to forums.

I'm white working class. I know what it is like to grow up in poverty. I spent my formative years (5 - 10) on one of the worst council estates in Edinburgh. My mum and dad did a midnight flit to better their lives and do something worthwhile for local residents in NW London, only to be abused for being Scottish by the people we lived amongst. The people who hated everyone who wasn't English. Locals who were actual fascists, loving the NF and BM and doing Zeig Heils while pretending to be patriotic supporters of the flag and our troops. I still have family living very difficult lives, with very little money or opportunity. None of them - not one single one, is blaming immigrants for their lot. I'm just lucky to have escaped the grinding poverty of my youth.

Are you unable to comprehend what I'm saying?

No one is calling flag supporters Nazis ffs. 🙄
It's the sentiment behind the latest exuberance of flag flying.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Raise_the_Colours

In Sutton the Sound lounge has just had all its windows smashed. After the lady running it was intimidated by some of these flag shagging scum.

Of all places, Sutton is so diverse, I find it really worrying about where this is going.

Sutton grammar school is right in the middle of the town, a state super selective grammar. When my son was there it was stuffed with super smart BAME boys, some of them quite geeky.

A lot of the boys walk right across the Town to school. I wonder how they and their parents are feeling? It’s absolutely horrible

Your obsession with he flag threads is bizarre when you clearly find it so irritating 🙄

Do you think this is funny?

And then there's the woman who posted about burning immigrants getting a standing ovation at the Reform party conference.

You know full well that people aren’t worrying about bits of cloth.

I think you’re here as a wind up. You know full well the Swiss aren’t currently engaged in a campaign of racism via their flag.

I don't think this poster has any grasp of how dangerous this mentality is and just sees it is a bit of beer garden entertainment.

I don’t know about that.

In the years leading up to WW2 the nazis defaced public spaces with the swastika in order to signal their presence and intimidate.

They flew the swastika flag everywhere, communicating to everyone that they dominated those spaces.

A harmless ancient spiritual symbol turned into an emblem of fascism overnight because of the way it was used by the far right.

There are definitely some parallels.

I'll ask my mate, she's the daughter of someone who came over on the Windrush.

What do you think she'll say 🤔?

Yes, for football.

I feel really intimidated by the flags, as an EU citizen. It's like Brexit 2.0, gives me the same vibes and sadness. I can only imagine how asylum seekers, refugees and people with darker skin colour feel. One of my children said that they worry that I might get attacked. I won't stop talking to my children in my language in public, but I am more aware of my surroundings and who's there now. We fly flags in the country I come from, but properly on flagpoles on national days of celebration, and not to scare other nationalities living in the country.