Worldflagshop News

Well said Eddie Smith of Chipping Sodbury
Below is an excerpt of an article in one of today’s papers……………….. If we all had this attitiude the World would be a much better place to live. Thanks Eddie

AFTER the full-scale celebrations that we witnessed both in this country and America on St Patrick’s Day, it’s great to hear that London will be celebrating St George’s Day with a week-long celebration to honour the historical achievements of England and the English.
Apparently, the whole city will be decked out in the red and white cross of St George, including the City Hall, and a series of special events including readings from Shakespeare, real ale tastings and English folk music concerts are to take place during that week.
Now we have a Scottish parliament and a Welsh assembly, the union flag is being used less and less by those countries, and we should also be flying our own country’s flag more and take pride in our heritage and help bring closer together all the different faiths and communities in our area.
I have yet to hear what Bristol City Council has planned to celebrate St George’s Day on April 23. Does anybody know?
Eddie Smith of Chipping Sodbury.

After the full-scale celebrations that we witnessed both in this country and America on St Patrick’s Day, it’s great to hear that London will be celebrating St George’s Day with a week-long celebration to honour the historical achievements of England and the English.
Apparently, the whole city will be decked out in the red and white cross of St George, including the City Hall, and a series of special events including readings from Shakespeare, real ale tastings and English folk music concerts are to take place during that week.
Now we have a Scottish parliament and a Welsh assembly, the union flag is being used less and less by those countries, and we should also be flying our own country’s flag more and take pride in our heritage and help bring closer together all the different faiths and communities in our area.
I have yet to hear what Bristol City Council has planned to celebrate St George’s Day on April 23. Does anybody know?

mmmmmmmmm………another interesting blog??? Cetainly this happened a few weeks ago. Just wondered has anyone seen any of these flags being flown?
Police in southern China have discovered a factory manufacturing Free Tibet flags, media reports say.
The factory in Guangdong had been completing overseas orders for the flag of the Tibetan government-in-exile.
Workers said they thought they were just making colourful flags and did not realise their meaning.
But then some of them saw TV images of protesters holding the emblem and they alerted the authorities, according to Hong Kong’s Ming Pao newspaper.
Tibet independence
The factory owner reportedly told police the emblems had been ordered from outside China, and he did not know that they stood for an independent Tibet.
Workers who had grown suspicious checked the meaning of the flag by going online.
Thousands of flags had already been packed for shipping.

Why have we posted this one? Well the article had a picture of an Israeli flag with a caption underneath it saying “Please support BBC impartiality by paying your £145 per annum TV Licence Tax”
Do you think BBC reporting is Impartial?

LONDON – England – In an effort to remain ‘impartial’ the BBC is going to play the Israeli national anthem at every news broadcast. In a further bid for impartial reporting, the BBC news logo will be offset in front of an Israeli flag from now on, according to the head of news programming.

Speaking from Tel Aviv, the BBC Director General, Yerachmiel Thompsonbaum, spoke of his disgust at being asked to broadcast a message of humanitarian aid for the dying thousands in Gaza after the Israeli bombing: “There has been a suggestion that we should broadcast a ‘humanitarian’ appeal for the thousands of people who are ‘dying in Gaza’. There is no one dying in Gaza, there is no proof of this fact. In fact we feel that everything is rosy in Gaza and there is no need to help people who are doing fine. British TV licence payers can rest assured that we, at the BBC, are dedicated to impartial reporting.”

The BBC has previously run appeals after wars in Africa and in the former Yugoslavia but has now drawn the line with Gaza’s Palestinians.

Instead, starting from tomorrow, there will be a BBC tribute to all the brave Israeli tank crews, bomber pilots, artillery and soldiers who reduced the Gaza ghetto into a pile of rubble and misery.

“I think the BBC is right not to broadcast the appeal. The BBC should remain impartial. I would be disappointed if the BBC changed its mind,” Feivel Goldberg from Golders Green, North London wrote on the BBC’s website.

BBC news directors have also been ordered to change the news logo so as to accentuate the BBC’s dedication to impartiality.

“The BBC news logo will be changed from Monday. It will incorporate the design of the Israeli flag and our news broadcasts will also start with the playing of the Israeli national anthem. Thank you for paying our huge salaries with your TV Licence so you can have an impartial news broadcaster,” a BBC announcer told audiences in one broadcast.

Apart from Patriotism – flags can sometimes be a very useful media of advertising – think on that one!!
Police raiding the homes of suspected drug dealers in Staffordshire put up flags to warn criminals they are monitoring their actions.
Officers raided addresses in the Chesterton area of Newcastle-under-Lyme on Friday and arrested two people.
They found what they believe to be class A drugs, cash and drug equipment at two of the addresses.
A man and a woman were arrested and bailed. The Operation Nemesis flags were put up at three of the addresses.
The raids were carried out in Lilac Close in Crackley, Cherry Tree Road, Palatine Drive, Sunningdale Grove and Spencer Place, in the Chesterton area of Newcastle-under-Lyme.
The searches were carried out by Staffordshire Police as part of Operation Nemesis to reduce the drugs supply in the county.
A 9ft (2.7m) high flag was raised above three of the addresses during the search to raise awareness of the operation.

Well well well what do we think of this one? ………. Is it right that the general public should be asked to take down flags flown at windows of their own homes. What next?
This is certainly a newsworthy story and comments below were made by an eminent law professor, learned politians and public figures. Do you think that the police have the right either here in the uk or anywhere else in the world to insist that flags are removed or taken down?
STRASBOURG, France (AFP) — Politicians and protesters in the French city of Strasbourg are up in arms over police efforts to stop the display of anti-NATO flags days ahead of a summit of the alliance.

“Scandalous and intolerable,” says Daniel-Cohn Bendit, co-president of the Greens in the European Parliament and a well known figure in both French and German politics.

“Completely illegal,” says Patrick Wachsmann, a law professor at the University of Strasbourg and a specialist in civil liberties.

Even the local authority for the eastern Bas-Rhine region has distanced itself from the police action. In a statement issued late Monday, it denied having issued orders to the police to take down banners displayed from householders’ windows.

The battle of the flags started when police officers started visiting the homes of local citizens who were flying flags bearing a rainbow logo and the slogan “No to Nato” from their windows.

Officers turned up at Christian Grosse’s house at the beginning of last week and told him they had received orders to ask people to take the flags down.

“It was my son who saw them,” Grosse told AFP. “They told him ‘Either you take it down, or we take it down.’”

His son did as he was told, said Grosse, “but I put it back up the very next morning”.

Grosse, a member of the local communist party, said several other local residents had received similar visits from the police.

Marie-George Buffet, the secretary general of the French communist party, has used Grosse’s experience as a rallying point, appealing to people to hang out the same flag all across France.

The police visits — and the resulting controversy — come against the background of moves to tighten security in the city ahead of the NATO summit planned for April 3 and 4.

But Buffet accused the French government of wanting to transform the city into a bunker.

Francois Bayrou, leader of France’s centrist Democrat Movement, has also condemned the police measures as an unjustified attack on freedom of expression.

“It is wrong not to respect peaceful freedom of expression,” he said.

“I don’t see what is wrong with reminding people that not everybody favours France being in NATO,” he added.

For law professor Wachsmann the measures are “shocking” and all the more surprising because they were not covered by any existing law.

If the authorities had in fact forcibly removed one of the flags in question it would have been a “grossly illegal” and liable to legal redress in the courts, said the academic.

Even the security measures setting up “red zones” during the summit that restricted freedom of movement in parts of the city were not covered by any existing law, he added.

Any Strasbourgeois could take legal action against the measures, which involve locals being issued with badges and being checked as the come and go from the zones, he said.

The city’s mayor, Roland Ries, told AFP earlier this month that the French authorities expected violent protests during the summit.

Security measures put in place for the April 3 and 4 gathering of the alliance’s 26 leaders had gone far beyond what he had imagined, he said.

“I really do think that there is a very real risk of seeing peaceful protests degenerate into violence because of hooligans and anarchists who will come from across Europe,” Ries added.

Political leaders will converge on the German town of Baden-Baden to mark the 60th anniversary of the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, before crossing the border for talks in Strasbourg.

Tens of thousands of protesters from around the world are expected at an alternative gathering and some of the organisers of that event have called for the right to hold peaceful protests during the summit.

Great story Colin Fernandez of the Daily Mail.
Lets get the whole of the UK from Land’s End to John O’Groats to be more patriotic.  Should we all take a leaf out of Old Boris’s book and fly the flag of our Countries, Counties and Towns? (Maybe I shouldn’t call him Old Boris!!)

The capital’s mayor said he would proudly fly the red and white flag of England’s patron saint from his City Hall office on April 23.

The Mayor’s endorsement of St George’s Day appears to mark an official determination to make English patriotism more acceptable.

In recent years, many local authorities have banned taxi drivers, builders and firemen from displaying the Cross of St George – often citing spurious health and safety reasons.

Mr Johnson said: ‘St George’s Day has been ignored in London for far too long, but I’m truly pleased to announce some fantastic events to mark this occasion.

‘We have much to be proud of in this great country. England has given so much to the world, politically, socially and artistically.’

A music festival on Sunday April 25 in Trafalgar Square will feature artists ‘finding innovative ways to express music that is inspired by English folk tradition’.

And as April 23 is also Shakespeare’s birthday, there will be an event commemorating the Bard’s work at the Globe Theatre in London.

Many councils have shied away from endorsing St George and the English flag over a perception that they were the preserve of far-Right political parties and racists.

St George’s adoption by Crusaders against Islam in the Holy Land has been a further obstacle.

But in recent years, English patriotism has become more acceptable, with the flag more likely to be associated with the national football team.

The news was welcomed by the Left-wing musician Billy Bragg yesterday.

He said: ‘I think it’s great that the Mayor is grasping the nettle. Good luck to him. If you don’t use the flag in a positive way then you leave it to be used by the far-Right and it will have negative connotations.’

Until the 18th century, St George’s Day was a celebration on a par with Christmas. But it fell out of favour.

Despite being the patron saint of England, St George is thought to have been a Roman soldier born in Turkey.

The legend of George slaying the dragon is believed to have been brought back from the Middle East by Crusaders, growing in popularity until he was canonised in the 1400s.

Last year, Gordon Brown flew the flag of St George over Downing Street for the first time in recent years.

But the day has not received much backing from government.

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