Flag waving

I very much like the term, "Flag Wankers". I can see that taking off.

wish I was Australian/Scots so I wasn't appropriating cultural appropriation but anyway....

"they can take our saltire but they'll never take our satire"

hmm some times I think I work too hard at trying to laugh at stupidity :-)

Mr T said:

I totally despise the right for hijacking the saltire. The SNP hijacked for their ends of indepdence. What are the right doing with it

It is just a symbol that is jijacked by one group or another for its own ends as time goes on. 

What is important is what meaning we assign to the symbol. If you can think of it just as a national label and not associate with any particular splinter group then you take away their power to get to you and they are just a bunch of idiots waving a flag as it it gives them power somehow, much as happened with the SNP.

Steal their power over you by not caring about it would be my recommendation.

Iain I totally despise the right for hijacking the saltire. The SNP hijacked for their ends of indepdence. What are the right doing with it, nothing but anti immigrant bull****. Much the same as the protestants wave the union flag as way to show anti catholic feelings in Scotland. 

And the Scots right wing have joined the bandwagon:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyxqknx7jqo

The battle for Scotland's flag: Why the right has adopted the saltire

Fun fact - the Scottish flag is the oldest in Europe, dating back to 832.

It commemorates the crucifiction of Saint Andrew who brought Christianity to Scotland, so is another religeon centric sysmbol, but was primarily used to rally the Scots and French in their fights against the oppresive English regieme at the time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Scotland

Flags seem to be "claimed" by lots of groups at different times to act as a rallying symbol for their particular objectives and this will eventually shift to something else no doubt, just as it has always done.

The issue is the misuse of English flags in promoting an idea of Englishness that reflects intolerance, whiteness, hooliganism, thuggery, Islamophobia, criminality and racism. It is for one purpose only—to induce fear by sending a message that you are not welcome here. 

The intention behind correct and incorrect use of the English flag is not so difficult to work out. 

It's not England having a flag that many people object to, but the uses it's put to, the Union flag too. As a child of the 70's my associations of it are football holiganism, skinheads and the National Front, all of it violent and never in anyway positive. I'm white English and even as a teenager I felt it was divisive, not "my" England and proviked way more fear in me than any person of colour ever did.

Heaven forbid we have English flags in England. 

I do notice a lot of areas don't seem to have many people complaining when they line the streets with TQ+ flags. And no one seemed to complain when out local Town Halls flew the Palestine flag.

I was on my way to one of those hotel protests yesterday. It was in an area I'd never been to before so I had to go through some villages I didn't know well. I quite liked seeing various union flags dangling from lampposts. They looked nice in the sunshine. Ironically, some of those lampposts had special attachments for council advertising 'flags'.

On the subject of the protest though, I would have rather liked the far-left lot to come out with their St George flags.

Probably made in China, the ones here are made of some nasty synthetic that won't degrade properly and will add more plastic pollution to the environment, you can see the creases in many of them so they've obviously just come out of a packet.

I'm sure if the people who put up those flags got their way they would be the first to complain when they couldn't see a doctor, get hospital treatment, get care for a relative, buy food grown in the UK or access any other facilities provided by industries who have to employ a large proportion of non-UK nationals and still have vacancies they cannot fill.

I bet the flags aren't even made in the UK.

Illegaly parked cars are a nightmare, we have two free carparks across the road from the post office and chippy, theres a zebra crossing and zig zag lines and still they park on the crossing or on the lines, often because their bags of chips are to heavy to carry across the road.

... and two illegally-parked cars. I guess some laws are only for other people.

This is how bad this flag thing has become.   It's definitely organised.

A picture from yesterday.  I counted eleven flags in this one image.

You are correct. Groups like EDL and Tommy Robinson supporters. A lot of these types of people drive white vans.

I think I might have seen some of the people putting up flags the other night, it was about 1:30am and I was closing my curtains when I saw a white box van pulling quietly away from a lamp post with a flag on it. 

The flags are so high you'd need to stand on something like a box van to reach high enough to put them up. If people are going round in the middle of the night putting them up, then it suggests a fairly high level of organisation, more tha just a couple of numpties.

Well, at least many of is here could potentially disagree in helpful ways. I really like this community, although of course perfection is only platonic.

Yes the flag is being abused and used as a symbol of far right propaganda. I only used to see these flags when football was on. Now I see them all the time.

I was coming home from work on Monday and encountered an irate man shouting and swearing at people while waving a giant Union Jack. He was probably drunk or on drugs. There was no protest rallys that day.

He made me feel scared to had to go into a shop until he passed. I don’t like how the flag is being abused like this.

If anyone does that Trev, they are not worth talking too.

Sounds like my worst nightmare - having a bunch of people shouting lies at me and shouting over me whenever I try to speak.

The motivation of the people putting up these flags is obvious. Although they hide behind the concept of expressing patriotism, this does not wash. Displays of patriotic flag waving/flying are usually linked to an event of national importance, be it a memorial celebration or a major sporting occasion. No such is happening now. No, this incidence of flag flying is motivated purely by hate and is intended to intimidate. The hate is that felt by right wing extremists towards people who have done them no measurable harm: immigrants, the descendants of immigrants, racial and ethnic minorities, gays, trans people and the disabled. Why they hate is not obvious to me, but it is so. The clumps of flags attached to lampposts are intended to intimidate any and all of the people in marginalised groups. It says that 'everyone around here hates you and you are not welcome'.