Comment on NHS staff who visit patients at home say St George’s flags can mean ‘no-go zones’
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 1 day agoIt’s the national flag of England.
Both statements are correct.
It is the national flag of England. It’s also been co-optes by the right as a dog whistle
The ok sign is " just" a common hand sign
14 and 88 are just numbers
Shitheels turned this flag into a gate symbol.
Don’t blame normal people for not wanting to fly it now and assuming the worst if you do
In Spanish, “café” if just that, coffee. But it was also used as “Camaradas Arriba Falage Española”.
The Spanish flag is just the official flag… except when it has an Osborne bull in it or the dictatorship eagle.
I didn’t know that, thank you
It is the national flag of England. It’s also been co-optes by the right as a dog whistle
Then take it back.
The ok sign is " just" a common hand sign
This one? 👌 I see people use it all the time, especially Asians
14 and 88 are just numbers
I know, I passed primary school.
Thanks for proving my point? The whole point is so you can say shit like this
What point? I don’t know what you’re on about in regards to hand gestures and numbers. You made some pretty obvious statements.
That’s the thing with shit people.
You throw a million gallons of clean water into a sewer and you’ve got a sewer.
You throw 20 gallons of sewage into a swimming pool and you’ve got to drain and refill the pool.
Not necessarily. People use the internet for bad but it’s not a sewer. More good happens than bad.
The ok sign is " just" a common hand sign
You fell for a joke here, pal.
No I didn’t?
You obviously did. “OK means White Power” was a practical joke established at 4chan (well, where else could it be?). Unsurprisingly, many people can’t tell the difference between troll jokes and reality these days.
But please continue spreading the joke.
Then stand up and opposed it being used as an anti immigration symbol. Because after the BNP copted it. Any org using it as a sign opposing immigration. Is very clearly an obviously attempting to use that history to scare. Not as a sign patriot ideals.
What do you propose I do? I’m very not anti-immigration. I’m not pro immigration but I’m anti-anti-immigration. I think people should be able to come here with good reason and/or if it’s mutually beneficial
I raised some pride flags next to the flags around my area. It really kills the racist message. Somebody else has also gone round attaching a “No hate” sign to the bottoms of every flagged lamppost.
Unfortunately I’ve seen this happen before, in Spain.
The national flag of Spain, when used by an individual, rarely ever represents “I love Spain and all that it entails” but rather “I have right-wing views, I only accept the catholic religion, gays aren’t natural, and immigrants should go back to their own countries”.
I don’t know if it can be taken back to just be the national flag, but if it can, Spain hasn’t managed to achieve it in the 20 years since it devolved into a narrow political symbol.
Same exact deal in America.
The solution is to have the councils put it everywhere.
It depends on the context doesn’t it. Lots of people will fly the England flag or wear an England shirt during a football tournament, and all they mean by that is “I support the England team” without a further political meaning. But the meaning of the current flag-flying from lamp posts seems to essentially be “we don’t want immigrants in the UK” which can make the flags intimidating (which is probably the exact intention).
Here’s another example of context changing meaning. Churchill used to give a two-fingered salute (see picture below), and his intended meaning of that salute was that it was a “V” for “victory” in WW2. But of course these days, that same outwards two-fingered salute means “fuck off”. Context changes the meaning.
The outward facing V of two-fingers meaning offence predates Churchill by a few centuries.
Fair enough, but according to a couple of sites that Wikipedia refers to, Churchill originally didn’t know that the outward facing gesture was rude until he was told about it. If true then I guess his gesture was intended to mean “here is a V for victory” instead of “fuck off you lot” or “fuck the Germans”.
Is it about immigrants in general though or the people trying to game the system by pretending to be refugees, entering via the english channel.
Churchill’s “V for Victory” was flipping the germans off.
I’ve been to England a few times and saw people and buildings flying St George’s cross before this crisis, also had seen it used online in emoji form in bios, etc.
Very few people are gaming the system, but the ones that are won’t be caught because asylum seekers aren’t having their claims processed.
If this was your genuinely held concern you should be pushing for the government to allocate the resources to properly vet asylum claims and get all of these people processed appropriately.
I suspect you wouldn’t like that solution though because in the end it will likely remove less than a percent or two of asylum seekers
Very few people are gaming the system
I suspect you wouldn’t like that solution though because in the end it will likely remove less than a percent or two of asylum seekers
Gov.UK says it is 50%, or 55,700 people.
39% (43,600) of asylum seekers arrived on a small boat and a further 11% (12,100) entered through other irregular routes (on lorries, shipping containers, or without relevant documentation)
55,700 people with no regard for the law or nation entering during 2025 alone is deeply troubling.
Yes, but the thing is, people just don’t fly it here for no reason.
Unlike the USA, where it was so ridiculous that I played a game with myself called “Turn around and there’ll always be a flag somewhere in front of me” (it really is that insane, their level of nationalism/exceptionalism disguised as patriotism is wild),
…here the flag may be flown for patriotic events (e.g. World Cup), or flown by official institutions, but 99.99% of regular people would never consider flying it for any other reason, and it’s very rarely seen overall. This is normal.
National flags are generally meant to indicate nationality outside of one’s own borders to others around you (e.g. an embassy in a foreign land, or ships at sea). They’re not at all useful on home soil, so why bother flying one?
So, yes, it’s our flag (though not the version people fly that says ENGLAND in big letters in the middle - that’s just stupid). But the people that fly it are almost always bigots and weirdos that you want to stay away from, especially these days.
I see our national flag 🇬🇧 all of the time. There are a few around the house, some on apparel, some in the form of actual flags such as behind the photograph of the King and the Queen. In some places the council or volunteers put them on the lampposts every summer and people often fly them from their houses. We also have a flag box filled with flags for special occasions. It’s also incorporated in our instance logo and the logos of several communities.
I remember during the royal wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, people put up UK flags and USA flags on lampposts in an alternating fashion.
National flags are generally meant to indicate nationality outside of one’s own borders to others around you (e.g. an embassy in a foreign land, or ships at sea). They’re not at all useful on home soil, so why bother flying one?
This is blinkered. National flags are a symbol of the nation so they are useful for that purpose. Why are they flown at sporting events? Because people want to display their support. Displaying your support, or pride, at other times, doesn’t automatically mean you have some other agenda going on.
I think you should be able to see the contradiction here with how the union jack and the scottish and welsh flags are seen. I bet you don’t see them in the same way, because they’re not used in the same way - so this has nothing to do with “they’re not useful, so when they are used, it’s for bad reasons”; it has everything to do with symbols as language, and the meaning they have for us. And those meanings are inherently ambiguous.
There’s a lot of people confidently declaring what other people think on the basis of one thing that they do. I am always suspicious of that, and think everyone should be, because it’s really easy to fall into thinking that, since I don’t feel the need to fly a flag, everyone who does so must be fundamentally different. They must subscribe to this belief that would cause flag-flying - and every person you see flying the flag at a far-right rally confirms your bias. Every person involved in flag-flying who is interviewed and says they aren’t racist is lying, because their reasoning sounds hollow to you because it doesn’t motivate you to follow suit and fly a flag yourself.
But besides that, why shouldn’t a flag serve as a unifying symbol, instead of a divisive one? Why shouldn’t the English flag be one that immigrants feel proud to fly alongside the flags of their own backgrounds? The left always seems to give up every symbol as soon as the (far) right start using it, which hands over the power in every single symbol to them without a fight.
The swastika was once a religious symbol. What’s your point?
It is still a religious symbol. I was in China a while ago and saw quite a few swastikas in places. Generally they aren’t black, 45° and on a white circle with a red field and grafitti’d on a wall. That’s how you know when someone is a nazi. Someone flying their national flag from their house is quite normal behaviour. I’ve done it before.
So surely by your own admission you can see how a peaceful symbol can be taken over by bad people…?
Yes. But the solution isn’t to surrender it.
It still is.
That’s the thing with symbols.
In some neighborhoods, you can’t wear anything red [or blue] because those are the colors of the local gangs.
Back in the day, a lot of businesses had names like “Kooper’s Kustom Kreations” to let folks know who ran the place.
St George’s cross has always been generally seen as a flag of St George. Georgia uses a similar one and there have been other depictions of the Agnus Dei where it’s used as a “Victory” flag. If Kooper’s Kustom Kreations predated the KKK, it would also make sense. I doubt in this context that it did.
In England if there isn’t a national sporting event on and there is a st George’s crosshanging in your window there is a much better chance it means your primary hobby is skulling pints and harassing brown people at the pub with your mates than it meaning you’re just a huge fan of English heritage.
The UK has a flag that encompasses all the nations of the UK and hasn’t been co-opted as a hate symbol, the union flag. If you were wanting to show national pride just for the sake of it, it’s likely you’d fly that.
Yes. None of these are hard and fast rules, no, not everyone flying a st George’s cross is a nazi.
But maybe take it from the multiple people in this thread who live in England telling you what we all know this symbol to mean in certain contexts instead of trying to play some academic game
Maybe the English should all fly it then and take it back. Just like the other three countries in the UK where I hear flying your flag is normal.
I posted the comment before reading all the way through the thread.
You’re deliberately misunderstanding the situation.
Be better than that.
Yes.
echodot@feddit.uk 5 hours ago
Yes but that doesn’t matter does it. Because it’s not been used to signal patriotism it’s been used to signal to the rest of the world that there are racist arse wipe
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 2 hours ago
How come this suddenly changed? People have flown the national flags for decades from their house and weren’t racist
anothermember@feddit.uk 1 hour ago
It’s always been a sign that you’re a bit of a pillock to be honest, I don’t think it’s changed much in my lifetime.