Mark Andrews: Fly the flag, but do it respectfully. Don't turn zebra crossings into a political battleground
I'm a flag flier. St George's Day, VE Day, the coronation, anyone who knows me will tell you how I love flying flags - outside the house, from the car, on my desk at work. For all its faults, Britain is still the best country in the world, and it seems churlish not to take every opportunity to make sure everybody else knows it too.
So, broadly speaking, I'm in favour of the idea of flying the flags from lamp posts - providing it's done responsibly and tidily. Along a main road close to where I live, matching flags have been neatly mounted on the lamp posts, and it looks great, a poor man's version of The Mall.
The problem is, some of the other displays look terrible. Small, mis-matched flags left over from football tournaments don't do a great deal to boost national pride. Then there's the political slogans: most people would probably agree that we need to stop the boats, but daubing it on a Union Jack or St George's Cross is disrespectful.
Finally, these displays require maintenance. I do hope the people who are jumping on the bandwagon now will be in it for the long haul, washing the flags when they become dirty, replacing them when they become faded, and reattaching them when they become loose.
My fear is that, six months from now, these grand shows of patriotism will go the same way as the roadside memorials, which begin as a moving tribute to somebody who has lost their life, but are left to degenerate into a pile of rotting flowers and rain-sodden cards.
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Then we come to the people painting the St George's Cross on road markings. Whoever thought that would be a good idea? Demonstrating your love for your country by putting flags where cars will drive over them?
The problem is, there is a precedent with this, thanks to those stupid woke councils that thought it would be terribly progressive to turn zebra crossings into rainbow flags. It's a bit rich citing road safety once you've done that.
The upshot of all this is that even our T-junctions, mini-roundabouts and pedestrian crossings have become cultural battlefields. Is there nowhere to escape from all this?
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In fact, come to mention it, wasn't all that Green Cross Code stuff a bit authoritarian? Stop, look, listen? Did Alvin Stardust ever give any thought to the feelings and lived experiences of the kids he was shouting at? They weren't out of their tiny minds, they were struggling with their mental health.
Of course, in a truly progressive society, Alvin would be encouraging them to sit down on the zebra crossing to hold up the traffic, preferably waving a placard for Extinction Rebellion or Palestine Action or something.
Just goes to show, you can never trust a man who wears gloves in the summer.
