In my 55 years of life, I had never until yesterday seen a flag which was a saltire on one side and a union jack on the other. Yet last night thousands of them were distributed free at the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony. I have been told they are being given out at the swimming today, and possibly at other venues too.
Such flags do not normally exist. They had to be specially commissioned, and somebody had to pay for them. Who paid for them? Is it public money?
There is no doubt why these unique flags were commissioned, and why they are being given out free at considerable expense. It is to provide TV images of Scotland combined in the union, and to make sure that Scottish medals are greeted with media images of union jacks being waved with the saltire.
In the context of the referendum, only a hardened liar could claim that these unique flags were commissioned without a view to the campaign. This is enormous hypocrisy by the unionists, who have been bombarding the media for weeks with warnings to Yes supporters not to “politicise” the Commonwealth Games.
The BBC informs us that “political flags” are not allowed inside games venues. So saltires with a Yes will be confiscated. The BBC report states:
Well hold on, some flags will not be allowed to fly. Political flags.
Both sides of the independence debate have agreed not to use Glasgow 2014 for political gain anyway.
But even if you wanted to, well, it’s against the rules.
Glasgow 2014 Venue Regulation 6.18 states that no flags are allowed to enter a venue – or the vicinity of any Games venue – if they are normally associated with causes, affiliations or organisations.
Nobody can possibly argue that, at this time, a Union Jack combined with a Saltire is not an image strongly associated with a cause or association. So the rules are being quite deliberately broken, and somebody is funding that breach and doing it on a massive scale. It is vital that we know: who is paying for these flags?
Actually I am not sure why union jacks are allowed in at all. The rules are very clear. If you try to take in a Palestinian flag or a Dutch flag it will be confiscated. Again, to quote the BBC:
You are not allowed, however, to bring the flag of a country not competing in the Games
The United Kingdom is not competing in the Games. So there is a very respectable argument that union jacks should not be allowed in at all.
What is absolutely certain is that the two-faced union jack and saltire flags are very strongly associated with a political cause or affiliation. If they are allowed in, then Yes saltires should be allowed in too.
An excellent book to read is ‘Mountain days, and bothy nights’.
It is about the early days of Scottish mountaineering, when the unemployed folk from Glasgow in the last century would head for the mountains to give themselves a reason for being. There is a character mentioned in the book who was a paid up member of the Communist Party. He was also a member of the Orange Order.
A few regulars on here remind me of the book.
Socialist to the bone until their precious UK state is threatened.
I might ask my friends at WikiLeaks what they can discover from the IP address 🙂
Craig: “Danny
Yes – you yourself arrived here from a link on followfollow.com. I shan’t give your email address as it is not a company one, but it does contain the word “blue”. I fear your claims that I misrepresented you…”
Why does it matter how I got here or what my email address contains? Why is that an issue for you? Does it make me less of a contributor? Are you once again jumping to conclusions?
Why not stick to answering the critiques that have been put to you? That’s the whole point is it not? Or is it just an exercise in bitching and name-calling.
I don’t know any Scottish folk that use the term ‘bitching’.
Danny
The point is that unionists were allowed to hand out obviously political flags aimed at referendum campaigning – paid for we know not how – while any pro-independence material was confiscated.
The Orange Lodge must be in session.
It’s gone affy quiet.
They are the flags of the nation.
Ask yourself how many people who waved one thought “Oh, hang on, this is a bit political”.
Regardless of who handed them out, regardless if it was a stunt or not, the problem (for you at least) is that those flags represent Scotland in the here and now. And if that has any coincidental relation to any political campaign then that’s just tough luck.
The rest of the world (or perhaps Commonwealth)can’t be expected to put life on hold until the bitch-fest 😉 is over.
Danny
Hardly anybody waved them. I saw only one in just hours of live coverage. But the BBC made sure they were edited in prominently to all the montages and news bulletins.
How pathetic. We should be thankful of the friendship between the nations of the UK, and that we’re not firing rockets at each other, not stirring up divisions about a two-sided flag that no one has to wave.
Maybe Herron is no longer head of PR at Rangers.
Although he is still named as such on the rangers site it seems he may have left Rangers about a year ago. Or at least there were stories he was leaving and he seems to have stopped contributing to the web site but I found no official leaving story from Rangers or in press.
“The nation” – is that not the point? Would a saltire paired with the EU flag pass muster?
Heron is no longer at Rangers. His linkedin profile lists his current work as: Editor of Commonwealth Games programmes
http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/lindsay-herron/1b/563/254
“Hardly anybody waved them. I saw only one in just hours of live coverage”
Excactly, a self deleting selfie that never was…
So the unionist freemasons who have Bibi’s same allures, i.e. sending football hooligans into battle on his behalf, have been handing out false flags, whats news…. indicating that the next, and last country to get its Independence, after Scotland, cutting loose from the lost empire of their dreams, will be England. Rejoice.
Everyone has got it their way, except the dooooh boy British, no fair voting system, no decision making locally, nuclear dumps forced on them, maybe one day they will even wake up for a week and write to their MPs.
What an amazing foresight with a double barrel shotgun in both feet, a joke if it weren’t forced on people.
I would advise to take these flags of these funny men with closed minds, men who love men, if they know the right handshakes that is, roll them up and put them in a bag. Once home one can explore the flags full heating value.
Yes Tom, no bombs or marching, NI is so quiet now, all the bigots have gone home, wherever that may be, and nobody gets beaten up or kneekapped anymore….
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/man-cleared-of-murder-shot-in-kneecapping.23987016
Fun part about those wee flags is that as the night goes on you see that more often than not the weans are holding them saltire out. Fairly pathetic propaganda attempt out thought by children isn’t something anyone could really be proud of.
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2013/06/8109/4
I am not Gordon Strachan, and am in no way affiliated with Rangers FC, but I have used an email address that purports to be connected to Rangers FC. Presumably this will post. It will not require me to click a link from my email to confirm my address…
My immediate question was the same: who is paying for this? Someone is, and I’d like to know. I think it’s probably the poor taxpayer, as usual.
But also, what’s with the banning of flags? It’s just a flag. If someone wants to make a political statement, so what? A question you won’t find asked in parliament, like so many others. I accept there are perhaps exceptions: Swastika’s are, fairly obviously, anti-semitic, and I’m not a big fan of those Unionist\Republican flags you see at an old firm game. However, why not bring in a Palestinian flag? Hey, even an Israeli one, if you are so minded. I personally don’t even think you should ban the stupid old firm flags. I do draw the line at Swastika’s, ’cause there will be Jewish people in the crowd, but banning all flags by rote is, on consideration, just weird.
This kind of petty bureaucracy was the hallmark of fascism, as I recall. The corrupt state reaching into every area of people’s lives, whilst the military were used to steal resources, and the police were given free reign to ‘keep the peace’. Just saying.
Sickening Herbert when BBC Scotland showed the Union flag during ‘My Glasgow’ – Yes the image conditioning is disinformation of the same flavor as that used to vilify Russia.
In truth, we all knew the unionists were going to politicise them as much as possible as soon as they gave their dire warnings that no-one should politicise them. They even had Hugh whatsisname during the BBC coverage of the opening ceremony going on about the only two small imperial territories that rejected independence in their referenda (no mention of the fact that there were also over 50 nations taking part who have taken back their sovereignty from the empire).
We had the new Minister for War prohibiting the Red Arrows from trailing blue and white smoke to represent the flag of the host Nation and we had the only opening ceremony in the history of the Commonwealth Games that didn’t include the host nation’s national anthem (unless you count the rousing rendition sung by the Scotland Team just before they entered the arena).
It’s pathetic, it’s childish and it is so typical of the whole two-face campaign by BT but at the end of the day, the people of Scotland are bigger than this and are sensible enough to see it for what it is – the last petulant squirms of a dying empire.
I predicted last year that the result will be a 62.5% YES 37.5% NO and I still stand by that.
Howard Kennedy
Well said.
Great Piece Craig
Very Obvious political goings on.
Here is a take on Some of it from A Thousand Flowers
http://athousandflowers.net/2014/07/24/glasgow-trolls-better-5-opening-ceremony-bam-ups/
And what the bbc would NEVER show.. on entry, the Sottish Athletes sing what the Vast Majority of Scots regard as oor National Anthem… From the talents and music of ‘ The Corries’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BiGV1QuBvc
Mighty as well Plug some more Corries Choons… My very bestest fave one is…Kismuil’s Galley….they used Mad instruments they built themselves –
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sPi51PdvcM
Pesky Librans…i wonder if Hughie the Greame is Better
However good an idea it may seem at the time, Nationalism is always wrong. Even Islamic Nationalism.
People are individuals and they follow their hearts, which is a good thing. Life is complicated because people lie.
Nationalism is manufactured by politicians to divert people from the goodness of their own hearts to worrying about the malice of power-hungry politicians and to whitewash filthy politician’s filthy lies with the over-simplified issues.
Scottish, English, Ba’athist, Islamist. All the creations of politicians who want people to switch off their brains and allow their pockets and their families to be rummaged. Scottishness is no more a key to enlightenment than joining the Liberal party. You are now a gambling chip in the roulette of politicians.
Take Palestine. Does anyone seriously believe that Israel does not know where why and when and how rockets get into Gaza? They know what every Muslim man and woman say to eachother in bed in Birmingham. Try assembling a rocket in your garden shed in Washwood Heath darlings.
They know who stirs up the Islamist shit in the schools because they work for them, and they know which members of staff are being intimidated because the security services and police pay the Muslims to intimidate them. It’s called Divide and Rule.
There is no burglary or break-in or radicalisation of children or adults which is not generated by the authorities using criminals or spies who are under obligation to them, for one indiscretion or another.
So how do you get hundreds of sophisticated fireworks into Gaza, and get an excuse for murdering 1,000 civilians and injuring another 2000 of them?
How do you get an armed group into the city of Mosul without anybody being able to do something? These Muslims who work for the enemies of Islam are no more Muslim than flies. They work for nobody but themselves, scooping a bit of food here and shit there.
Nationalism is for dumdums, so that the politicos can keep us busy trying to survive their crimes.
Indeed, Guano. Nationalism is a Patriot’s Game, to paraphrase the Irish lyricist.
Oh, Should I reference Ireland on the Scot thread?
Mea culpa.
Wow.
So many new trolls on this thread you just know Craig’s getting too painfully close to the truth.
Rangers? Theyve had so much fraternal advantage over the media and ‘ahem,columns of Scottish society there ought be no suprises.They are but another of the eternal fixes that will always be in up here.
And yett still the incompetent eejits went bust.
Snf. Snfff. Apocrine sweat. Smell the fear of the asskissing English pedo toffs. They’re afraid of losing their northern colony and their claim on the enlightenment and on independent thought and moral courage.
Fuck the English. The Yanks cast them off and so can you.
Jives
“Wow.
So many new trolls on this thread you just know Craig’s getting too painfully close to the truth.”
________________________
Does that also apply to the previous thread, chump?
This obsession with BBC coverage of Scottish independence is really tedious….and very boring.
The BBC is a service for the whole of Great Britain (and also Northern Ireland for that matter).
Why should it not show a bias towards Great Britain remaining as it is, if that is really what’s happening? Why should it propagandize for Scottish independence?
In Oz we have a telcom called Optus. They use the “Yes” motif to promote themselves. I’m sure you have businesses in the UK that use “Yes” as part of some kind of marketing promo. I’m equally sure that you couldn’t prevent anyone wearing a t-shirt that promotes a business, like CK or Coke, from attending CG events. No?
Yes, we have bad mobile coverage –
http://www.optus.com.au/