Flying the flag for Britain!

One of the small decisions Gordon Brown has made in his, to date, brief spell as Prime Minister is one I heartily approve of. He has scrapped the years old stupid law that allows government offices to fly the Union Flag on only 18 days of the year. It is now allowed for any building to fly the British national flag permanently..and a good thing too.




There have been critics of this decision..predictably. There are those who said allowing the British flag to be flown from every building by anyone encourages the sense of isolation already felt by our ethnic minorities who see our flag as the symbol of right wing white intolerance. My answer to that is a rude one...total bollocks!

The fault lies within our society that we have allowed a situation to develop where we seem to have become ashamed of our own national flag. The British are so reserved about ostentatious displays of nationalism that we have allowed, through neglect, our national flag to become identified with right wing groups like the National Front and the British National Party, and done nothing to stop it.

The answer to this is to liberate it - allow everyone to see the Union Flag for what it is supposed to be - an all inclusive symbol of our United Kingdom with all its faiths, cultures, religions. Its a British flag not a Protestants flag or a white man's flag and I really don't understand how we got into this bind, but the way out of it is to fly it proudly - on every Office building - and let every British citizen realise that it's THEIR flag too.