Thursday, June 21, 2012

Not my flag, not my country #2

I do wish the government would give up on its ideas to try and make me (and the rest of the UK) something that a majority of us think we aren't. Yes I'm talking about 'Britishness' something I believe only applies to recent immigrants and deluded politicians (along with occasional royalists)
Mail.
The Union Jack is to be displayed on driving licences under Government plans to 'reinforce a sense of Britishness'.
Currently, plastic photocard UK licences bear the European Union flag but no British national symbol.
But Downing Street and the Department for Transport say they will use the introduction of new licences in three years' time to change the design to include the British flag and possibly also the Royal coat of arms.
OK, back to the QM straw poll, when the jubilee was being celebrated there were two union flags being flown from houses on my estates I'm not sure how many cars had them, but it was in the single figures, if not none at all. During Euro 2012, there are currently seven Cross of St George flags flying on houses and fifteen cars (at least) have England flags fluttering above them and that doesn't include my own England fluffy dice either.
I'm not British, I refuse to be British other than as a description as to coming from the British Isles, it's not my nationality it's not my country. It's a made up catch all term used to describe the ruling class of the country, it had some meaning from before 1997, though the mask started to slip a little in Euro 1996 when at least we had one parliament to govern us. Now the Scots and Welsh (along with the Northern Irish)  have their own parliaments and we're ruled by a British parliament including Scot's and Welsh MP's who make decisions with regard to the whole of Britain and the UK, not just the bit of it called England. Nor do they usually even mention England, it's always 'this country' or 'our country' as if they are ashamed of England or the word England, yet when they speak of Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland they are always specific.
The people judging by my straw poll are as ever one step ahead of the political classes (at least) and this move will not help unite us, if anything it simply alienates the indigenous people of the UK even more.

1 annotations:

Andrew said...

Why not allow people to choose which flag (if any) they would like displayed on their driving licence? It seems to work with credit card designs at no apparent cost. It would also provide some interesting data.