St George's Day

[Bordoy 0]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4463541.stm

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Shopkeeper in St George's Day row

A shopkeeper has been ordered to remove his flags celebrating St George by council officials who say they breach health and safety rules.

Phil Moffat has been told the 20 flags hoisted from lampposts near his shop in Tuebrook, Liverpool, are dangerous.

Mr Moffat, whose shop is named Churchill's, says he will defy the ban.

Meanwhile, a Norwich publican has vowed to keep campaigning to make St George's Day, 23 April, a bank holiday despite losing his bid for an extended licence.

Tony Bennett, 48, has spoken of his frustration after he failed to persuade magistrates to extend his licence for a St George's Day event at the Otter pub in Drayton, near Norwich.

On Friday Mr Bennett will join fellow campaigners in presenting a petition to Downing Street asking for the day to be made a national holiday.

Fellow patriot Mr Moffat, who has flown the flags from the same lamp-posts for the last five years, was ordered to remove them or face a Å1,000 bill from Liverpool City Council.

He said: "It has really come to something when a proud Englishman can't raise a few flags to celebrate St George's Day.

"They have never caused any safety problems, and it seems to me that someone in the council is flexing their powers of political correctness.

"After all, Irish tricolours were flying from lampposts along Scotland Road and Vauxhall Road during St Patrick's Day."

'Clear danger'

But a council spokesman said: "We are not trying to be spoilsports.

"There is a clear danger to Mr Moffat himself and an obvious road safety hazard. The flags could distract drivers, fall off and hit cars or pedestrians and it could encourage others to follow suit."

In Norwich, magistrates told Mr Bennett they could not grant the licence for an extra hour until midnight because he had organised the event and therefore stood to profit from it.

'Double standards'

After the hearing Mr Bennett said he was "gutted".

He said: "Two years ago I applied for a similar licence to celebrate Chinese new year and I didn't have to jump through any hoops to get that.

"The Irish celebrate St Patrick's Day, and they get extensions across the country, so why should St George's Day be different?"

Mr Bennett was joined outside the hearing by a host of supporters including some dressed as knights and armed with St George's Day flags and banners.

Meanwhile, a survey of more than 1,000 adults in England found that 55% would like St George's Day to be a bank holiday.

While some 70% thought St George's Day should be celebrated, only 35% of those surveyed for online banner-making company thebannerpeople.com knew on what date it fell.

The company said the hospitality industry was losing the chance to make millions of pounds.

Managing director Gary Lasham said English people spent money on St Patrick's Day but appeared "frustrated" at the lack of occasion around St George's Day.

But he said: "The biggest losers are those in the hospitality industry who lose a fortune every year as the English fail to mark 23 April.

"Those that would like to see St George's Day celebrated as a national occasion should organise their own party."

Good on him, i hope he suceeded. I would defy the ban. No coppers said anything to me yesterday and there was a few around.

[Bordoy 0]

If I moved to (closes eyes and randomly point at a country on a map), uh, Bulgaria, would they stop celebration their national day (supposing they have one) and pull all the flags down just in case it offended me?

Of course not, don't be daft.

Would I be offended, being British, at seeing loads of Bulgarian flags everywhere?

No, not really.

What we need is some way to turn common sense into a drug so we can give all these politically correct idiots an overdose of it.

Like you say, the PC crew are a bunch of idiots.

[walker 0]

Hi ACF

My point exactly is that the nazis racist types stole the English flag and St Georges day. Typical of racists who are incapable of any form of educated or original thought. English people dont like facists and racist and we do not like them stealing our flag. We need to finish off the last of their hold on symbols of English identity.

Clearly racist facist types drove many real English people away from those symbols with a politcs that is completly alien and counter to being English. We need to continue to recover the English identity.

Like I said I did not see any of this political correctness that the moaning minnies are on about other than there own; in my town and at the local churches St Georges Day was celibrated.

Kind Regards Walker

[somebloke 0]

Lets watch people's reactions.

[ran 0]

http://www.swimport.com/flags/F144.JPEG

Lets watch people's reactions.

ain't that the flag of some scandinavian country ??

just kidding, don't lynch me

[EiZei 0]

just kidding, don't lynch me

You better watch out for any insulted scandinavians..

[ran 0]

just kidding, don't lynch me

You better watch out for any insulted scandinavians..

It was precisely aimed at them

Englishmen are just fair game

[denoir 0]

Lets watch people's reactions.

Bah, it's a ripoff of a Danish flag

Anyway, I concur that its quite silly to object against national traditional symbols. We have the same problem here in Sweden - mostly thanks to the social democrats and neo-nazis. The former have for almost a century tried to remove national signs from just about anything. Until very recently we didn't even have the national day as holiday.

The effect of that was that neo-nazis adopted the Swedish flag as their symbol and in a very fucked up way, our national flag became the symbol for racism. Fortunately it's getting better these days. We've begun taking our flag back, as the symbol of Sweden.

I would be unhappy indeed if I wasn't allowed to run naked on the streets, wrapped in the flag the next world cup, when we're going to beat France, England and Germany with at least 10-0 each

As far as "insulting minorities" goes, with friends like those who are objecting to the flag in their name - who needs enemies? I have yet to meet an immigrant who is insulted by the Swedish flag. On the contrary, most are very much surprised to the Swedish attitude to the national flag.

[brgnorway 0]

To turn things a bit around I'd say that noone where I live would be angry with (ethnic) norwegians celebrating themselves with the national flag. Unfortunately, some of the (ethnic) norwegians would be insulted if people with a coloured skin waved the norwegian flag. Pure racism if you ask me! Some feel like discriminating people of other origins if they live in our country because they "are not trying to integrate - or be like us" . Turn it around ant it goes like this: we don't like that you try to be like us - because we don't want you to be like us! "

A shitty world indeed!

A lot of people in Norway seem to have forgot the lession learned when the poor jews were waved goodbye from the harbour of Bergen on route to Sachsenhauzen. Lession learned indeed - my ass!

[LauryThorn 0]

Lets watch people's reactions.

Bah, it's a ripoff of a Danish flag

It looks like Danish flag to me, too. But I'm from Finland, not Scandinavia.