Il Consiglio comunale di Birmingham recluta personale notturno per rimuovere le “bandiere non autorizzate”

No luck sorting out the bin strike going on for 6+ months, but they have money for this?

>Council leader John Cotton had previously issued a plea to flaggers to stop adding more.

>He said last month: “I want to be absolutely clear with with all of your readers. I do not have any problem with people displaying their patriotism.

>”I’m proud of my British, English and Birmingham identity.

>”I absolutely recognise the importance of the Union flag and the flag of St George as symbols of national pride.”

>But he urged people to desist from sticking them up on the highways: “In Birmingham you’re absolutely free to, and we welcome, the flying of the flag on your own property.

>”But please desist from placing flags on street furniture or anywhere else.

>”There are health and safety obligations we have to ensure, as the highways authority, are respected.”

I’m sympathetic to the health & safety argument, if I’m honest. If only from a liability perspective – if one of them falls off and lands on someone’s windscreen, the council are going to get slaughtered for not ensuring that roads are safe.

But I can’t see why they’re taking the worst route out of this. Surely the best response would be “we love the flags, but we need to make sure that they’re safe, so we’re going to go around and secure them properly”. I can’t believe that there would be a significant cost difference between sending a man up in a cherry-picker to remove it, and sending a man up in a cherry-picker to secure it. Might be the extra cost of some cable-ties or whatever method the council use when they themselves hang some flags up, admittedly – but surely the majority of the cost is going to be the labour and the hire of the cherry-picker, which will be the same either way?

It would be a big PR win for them, and avoid a future row – because fundamentally, the people putting these flags up *want* them taken down, because they will use that as proof that the council are anti-British. And what’s really going to screw them is they take down the Union flags and St George’s Cross, and then someone finds a Palestinean flag up on a street somewhere – because the council will absolutely be accused of using health & safety as an excuse at that point, and having a two-tier approach to waving flags.

I pass through the Western Boulevard on my way to work and the ones that were put up there were a bit too intricate and started to get knackered and worn out. A lot of them looked like they were about to dislodge & tumble onto the road (they had plastic rods in them). But last week it seems like someone went through the effort to take them down and put up fresh ones in a more practical manner.

My guess is the City council also acknowledges the safety risk some of these poorly installed flags pose on motorists and pedestrians. I think they’d be right to remove any that look genuinely unsafe in that regard.

I don’t understand, why are England Flags banned in England? What am I missing?

Can they recruit night staff for rubbish collections?

Priorities innit?

you’d think ensuring the city gets it regular bin collections restored and the industrial action sorted would be priority number one for our “public servants” but apparently for this “cash strapped” council time and money are no issue for the important task of taking down the national flags from a few lampposts. yes I know nanny says no you can’t have flags up.

use whatever ism or damn adjective you want but I would put down money that if these were LGBT or Palestine flags this wouldn’t be seen as such an issue. the LGBT zebra crossings in certain places tells me that. yes I know nanny said they were allowed despite the safety concerns.

I actually like the flags as I drive around Brum- particularly when I’m going to/from the airport on some of the longer roads.