“Siamo orgogliosi della bandiera”, esorta il capo della polizia di Manchester avvertendo del “pericolo di reagire a una piccola minoranza”

Someone desperately needs to hire a PR company on behalf of the St Georges flag and just encourage everyone to use it, and remove it’s negative power.

The flag represents everything bad the country has done and everything good the country has done. That’s how all flags work. The longer we obsess over it’s colonial past, or pretend that colonial past doesn’t exist, the longer it’s going to be a problem.

To me that flag should represent everything I want this country to be, everything I like about this country.

IDEA 1: Use it in conjunction with the Scottish and Welsh flags. Both of those are the same thing, without racist connotations. You’d have a hard time saying “that’s racist” if it’s next to the other two flags.

As long as it is flown in places that has positive connotations, it loses any stigma. During community events, litter picks, in schools etc. It is already fine during occasions like football, rememberance or Royal events as it clearly has its place. Not cable tied to lamp posts in areas with ongoing social problems. Maybe then the right will be forced to use more blatant symbols to show themselves rather than dog whistles. Maybe some will even take part in said events and reform themselves, you never know. “Patriots litter pickers” to show they love the country so much they want to keep the streets clean.

Potentially a controversial opinion (although I don’t see why it should be controversial, I am open to people respectfully disagreeing with me):

The Union Flag should have been flying from council building, civic centres, town halls, and civil service office block across the country for years. Perhaps sometimes alongside the national flag of the respective country.

In not doing this, and in not associating the flag with sense of civic pride, a vacuum has been created which the far-right has taken advantaged of.

If good quality fabric flags had been flying from government buildings for decades, I don’t think (m)any people would be going out of their way to zip-tie cheap polyester ones to lampposts.

I would tend to say I was British, rather than English, and my national flag in the Union Flag. Not that I am ashamed to be English or anything, but I have a British citizenship and a British passport, so that is how I would describe my nationality.

To me, the St Georges Cross is a historical thing, and is only really relevant to things that are specifically English rather than British. These days that is mainly international sporting events. But unfortunately, because a minority of sports fans don’t know how to behave, it is now linked to violence and xenophobia. And that has become such a prevalent link that I now assume that anybody randomly flying the flag is not doing so in good faith.

Either way, there is nothing good about painting a red cross on a roundabout or cable-tying a cheap flag to a lamppost. If someone painted a Union Flag on a roundabout, I could at least have a grudging respect for the effort they put in.

I’d wish someone would take most of these new flags because even ignoring the mostly racist context behind it, Flags only going half up a lamppost just looks incredibly tacky.

If your so prideful and want to raise the flag, get your own proper post aswell ffs.

Judging by what happened in our village the ‘danger of reacting to the tiny minority’, and taking down flags, is that they will plaster your details all over twitter and then you’ll get death threats and dog shit posted through your letterbox.