I'm pretty sure that the only reason some cars have two flags clipped to them is because the driver is too thick to realise they've already put one on the other side...

who covers all his windows with England flags every time a major tournament is on.

I shall refrain from passing judgement.
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Oh go on then... pillock.

at least for those over 30, below that I'd give a pass.

I'm not a great fan of flags anyway as in my experience they often bring out a sinister nationalism hidden behind the cheery waving. The Cross of St George should be given back to the knights and damsels, it looks better on a lance than tacked onto a chav van.

I always find our attitude to our flag quite unusual. As a glib class war type aside, it seems to be perfectly fine when displayed by rugby fans, but quite infra dig when it's those footballing oiks doing it.
More seriously, I've never understood why we seem to be so conflicted about it. I've lived outside England on several occasions, and never seen such a embarrassed downplayed reaction to a patriotic impulse elsewhere. In Wales and Ireland I can kind of get that half the point of celebrating their flag is exactly that it's NOT the English flag, but even after a few years in Japan, where they have just as strong grounds for post imperial embarrassment as we do, I never saw any of the kind of shame we seem to attach to flagwaving.

... bizarre, yes, but rather suspect (see post above from Sid Williams).

I'm not conflicted at all, of course.......but then I'm a Scot.

has just put up a full size flagpole to support his cross of St George! There goes the neighbourhood, etc.

England beat "Platinum allstars" 3-0 today. I didn't see it but BBC reports that;

Heskey headed "apologetically wide" unchallenged from 8 yards.

He then elected to pass to lennon (badly) when clean through on goal

Johnson gave away a penalty fouling after indecision

Rooney got booked for dissent (in a warm up? come on!)

I know this is a silly warm up acclimatisation thingy but it does look ominously as though England's mental demons are alive and well and about to send us home after some horrific gaffe / sending off / penalty miss.

Is how Charlie Brooker correctly described it in the Guardian.
To be honest once i see them flags,i hope they bugger it up once again

which you see in London, and probably elsewhere? I have already seen a couple of vehicles with Portuguese flags go by, and during the last World Cup, there was a fair variety of bunting on display round this neck of the woods.

It all seems fairly harmless - and no odder than people cheering a team they are watching on TV as though they can hear.

I think it adds to the gaiety of the nation, and I don't see anything at all hollow about supporting your team / band / country / favourite magazine via whatever medium you like, be it flag, poster or t-shirt.

Plus it annoys my parents. Bonus!

With a couple of notable exceptions, this thread seems to consist of stomach turning snobbishness (is there such a term....snobism?).

No offence to anyone who has posted here (plenty to Charlie Brooker though) but there has got to be a medical name for a condition that somehow attaches shame to a harmless display of support for one national team (e.g. England) and yet won't apply the same conditions to a harmless display of support for another national team (e.g. Ireland).

what is wrong with showing some patriotism during one of the worlds largest sporting events? Yes there is an element of commercial band wagon jumping but beyond that I find it quite uplifting to see a collective show of our nationality, not every George Cross waving patriot is chav or worse by implication. I saw a white van with George Cross flags being driven by Sikhs, now that was a truly wonderful sight. If Italy or Spain win a match will we be embarrassed or snobbish about the inevitable sight of those nationals showing support for their country? I doubt it, indeed I hope not.

I would be genuinely grateful if someone could explain to me why displaying the English national flag is necessarily a sign of "chavness" or stupidity. No-one else in the world that I know of feels like that about theirs - and even more bizarrely, I suspect that those who complain about St George don't actually mind seeing the flags of other countries on display.

to DC, Dave and Fraser.

It is a pleasure to see differing views on this topic.

by double posting this!

So every single person with a cross of St George on their car / van is:

- showing their "inner chavness"
- "thick"
- demonstrating "sinister nationalism"
- a "hollow patriot".

I must remember to look more carefully at the occupants of the cars that pass me every day, which up until this point had seemed mainly to be full of perfectly normal people showing their support for their country during what is - whether you like it or not - the biggest sporting occasion in the world. I'm obviously hideously mistaken.

Flags on the ole car seems to work for Lily & Brooce.....

here's a rabbit with a pancake on it's head

suggested we paint a big red cross on top of our white (she's a boy racer at heart) car. Guess it would save on petrol.

Can't see what's wrong with folk flying all these flags though - a proper English approach would be not to have one yourself if you disapproved, but to tolerate others that did. While of course lightly mocking them.

Bunny with a 'syrup'.

Milkybarnick touched upon this above, but surely a couple of flags on a car creates a fair amount of drag? When fuel is priced at an average of £1.15 per litre I want my car to be as aerodynamic as possible. Hell, I even put my window up!

'Anybody But England' T-shirts apparently. Do you think someone should tell The Daily Mail? I mean the football doesn't actually start for a few days so there would be time for a campaign.

flying flags from anywhere but why does it only have to be when football is involved? For those of us who can't stand the pigging sport its just like an invading army coming to rape our TV watching and pub frequenting for a month.

I've lived in the US for 16 years now and you see American flags everywhere - government buildings, offices, homes, cars... everywhere. It's no big deal at all.

Why has there been such a furor over the display of the flag of St. George? Didn't Morrissey get into a bit of a stir using one as a backdrop?

Would it be acceptable if it was the Union flag? Or are people just anti-flag?

when I first went to NYC I was amazed how the flags were everywhere. Here it only happens when connected with football otherwise its seen as an embarrassment. Is it just the old racist connection?

Oh and just on the chav thing - a house just a few doors down from 'The Fat Duck' eatery in Bray has been painted with a huge St George Flag recently and I'd hardly call that particular area particularly 'chavvy'

Although if its Heston Blumenhell's gaff then he is a bit common, what?

Personally I dont care about the world cup one jot but if flying a flag from your car reclaims it from the EDL / BNP ect then fly away .

What does tickle me is I simple have not spotted a British made car sporting one yet .

To those who look forward to this tournament I hope you enjoy it and if it cheers people up at this time well that cannot be a bad thing .

...but enjoy your flag and fuck (some elements of) the blind lefty class war. (Jaysus, I never thought I would say that.)
Mine's the Irish Tricolour despite my wife and daughter never failing to remind me' that I was born 'British'. I'm not, I'm Irish and my flag is the three bars - and there is nothing threatening in saying that.
This inherent belief in the green/ white/ orange apparently sees me placed in the Republican movement and all its recent sins. Do one, la. I have one flag and one anthem, but I won't attack others who disagree. They are, after all, only pieces of cloth and songs.
We have to reclaim the flags from the margins and make them more mainstream and there ain't anything more mainstream than the so-called 'chav culture' - criticisms of which are ultimately all about the middle classes looking down on others.
Mind, I'm still shouting for USA though. I'm Irish with an added 'We're not English, we're Scouse' element. Yeeeeoooooooow

It's a bit of fun and doesn't need psycho analysing. My huge cross of St George will be going up at the weekend and just because chavs and the BNP have allegedly assumed 'ownership' doesn't mean I'll stop having a bit of fun for the next few weeks.

Sure. Do what you like. Enjoy your football. Put up a flag. Fine by me.
I only find the display of the George flag a bit perplexing because I consider myself British first, English second.
It has little resonance for me. That's probably why I can't get interested in 'England' as a team. That and an almost total lack of interest in football. I'm not one for tribalism, and football seems more reliant on it than any other sport.
But have fun, really.

A house around the corner from me has had its entire roof painted with the England flag. As I was driving past in my car, complete with flag btw, my eyes were drawn to this incredible sight.
Being a Wolves fan in WBA territory, any other kind of football endorsing flaggery would likely lead to a need for new windows!

On a slightly different note, I find it tiresome that my complete lack of interest in the Olympics is shouted down, but it is acceptable for people to moan about football being on tv for a month.

We are back to that oik thing, I think...

...this outbreak of national pride isn't merely skin-deep, can we expect, for example, less litter to be dropped in the streets during the World Cup?

but I do wish people would take more care of them. It's great to see a white and red cross of St. George being flown but they look so awful after a few weeks when they're a dirty white, torn and sorry looking. There's probably a joke in that about reflecting the likely outcome for the team but my main hope is that people show both pride and respect for the flag.

They start singing the national anthem, and Rule Brittania that makes me cringe,I'm sure they don't mean to be offensive, but it's so ODD, I'm a fan myself, but watch fans in the pub , they just can't take defeat and behave badly.

I just got a call from my Canadian boss who is in transit in Gatwick. He got there a couple of hours early and decided to find a lounge to connect up and do some work. Having found one that cost £16 to get in, he was amazed to find it full of paralytic British holidaymakers (OK, I expect most of them were English)

"They're fuckin' oot of it before 10 in the morning, eh?" were his exact words, genuinely shocked (and this guy can drink, trust me!)

So I had to explain that "Executive Lounge - Entry £16" actually means "all you can drink for £16".

Gotta laugh.

"The government is worried that men's cocks are getting smaller. To find out how great the problem is they have asked all men with cocks smaller than three inches to put a white flag with a red cross on their car..."

Sorry, I thought it was funny.

On a more serious note, isn't one of the issues here about the appropriation of the cross of St George by racists? It's not something that might happen, as one or two posters here have suggested; it has happened. While I get the point about reclaiming the flag from BNP types, I'm not sure it works like that. Part of my unease is knowing that some of the people flying flags on their cars are outright racists, using the world cup as a pretext for proclaiming their alliegance. It's only one example, granted, but I have a solid illustration of this: one of the guys in a shop I used to live above used to wear white supremacist badges and T-shirts. I saw him driving around in a van during the world cup, with a flag on it. So in this case, I pretty much knew where he was coming from.

Does that mean all drivers flying flags are racist? Of course it doesn't? Was this guy the only one? Sadly, of course not.

EDIT: Can anyone tell us if this appropriation of the national flag by racists/racist parties happens in other countries, or is it a peculiarly British (or indeed English) phenomenon?

Her Motability scooter.

I can't argue with that.

Let people be themselves and I will cease to judge them but I wont be going anywere near a flag myself.

Enjoy the World Cup and we will win...

The URL of this post is http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/union-flags-cars-during-world-cup-....

A tiny error there, methinks ;-)

Just to echo some of what has been said above - the taking up of the flag of St. George in recent years has been remarkable to behold, although it is perhaps more strange that it was a rarity among England crowds for so long. Anyway, the memo has now been well and truly got by the greater English public! I don't have a problem with it - you can be sure that if Scotland ever qualify for a major tournament again (an increasingly difficult prospect with every passing year) you won't be able to move for Saltires.*

*BTW, In my youth, going to watch Scotland games in the late 70s / early 80s I remember the dominant colours as being red and yellow of the Lion Rampant rather than Saltires. No particular point, just an observation.

of the continual embarrassment that is Scottish nationalism and its tacky manifestations. Think yourself lucky that there is, as yet, no English equivalent of the 'See-you-Jimmy' hat.

rally round the flag

I don't know what I think about this.

I know I won't be sticking a Cross of St George flag on my car but I will be flying one from the flagpole on my balcony (haven't got a front garden).

I know I won't be wearing an England replica footie shirt.

But I'll have my cricket on ready for The Ashes.

I don't think it's snobbish not to like them, which has been suggested. They look cheap and tacky because they are - a quick google search shows they're about £2. Plenty of nice things cost £2, but would they look great mounted on your car?

Saying an "England Car Flag" looks chavy is a specific point, completely different to dismissing the St.George Cross altogether, a fact some people have missed entirely.

I would also agree though, that the claim of patriotism does feel a bit hollow if it only applies when a sports event is happening. If you're passionate enough to put up a flag, what are you when you take it down?

There was a story in my local paper the other day about someone "winning the battle" to have flags on their work-vehicles. Why do some people feel this sense of entitlement? I went to see Teenage Fanclub last week, as I always do when they're on tour, but I don't insist on the right to cover my work place in memorabelia. The whole idea baffles me.

What actually annoys me isn't the flags though, it's the people who drive around parping their horn to the rhythm of a football chant in busy traffic.

the bloody Prime Minister's doing it now. His gaff, at least... don't know about his wheels.

The majority of posters here (me included) now appear to be happy for people to do so but not do it themselves.

Perhaps we are a self selected group of automobile adorning flag rejectionists rather than snobs!

... chav nor sinister. Just naff.

Come on England.

Quite a lot of people have 'SoccerRoos' flags on their car, as well as the Australian flag. Nobody seems to be getting terribly upset about it.

I like flags.

if you ask me..What's wrong with flying your country's flag ? as someone said earlier 'fine for Rugby'. lighten up

car near me this morning had an italy one side and an england the other

fair play

jus got mine
THFC 5 on the back.

mmm isnt it, jumpers for goalposts

....from Jeremy Hardy in which he said he hated the World Cup because it "made England look like a loyalist estate". Frankly that's what I'd expect him to say. Every four years we have this festival where alternative comics are forced to line up alongside the rest of us while making it clear that they're not like the rest of us. The English intelligentsia have a problem that you won't find anywhere else in the world. They are really embarrassed by England to the extent that they think just about everywhere else in the world does everything better.

I don't fly St George's Flags because I'm such a patriot and snob that I think all overt displays of national identity should be left to nations who need reassuring about them.

Over the years the cross of St George has been appropriated by racists (and still is), waved around by football hooligans and worn by people that many people would cross the street to avoid, not out of snobbishness but fear of personal injury.

Dislike of flag flying has everything to do with not wanting to be associated with any of this and absolutely nothing to do with being embarrassed by England or a belief in its inferiority.

...if those flags weren't so cheap and tacky.

Says a lot about our country...

Time to put the house on the market.
Shame the property prices have just crashed round here, due to the f*cking flags...
:-)

...it's a bad look. A white background with a red cross. Horrible. We need a Paul Smith redesign. Or some paisley, god yeah, a paisley national flag! Take that Republic of Macedonia!

http://www.world-flags-symbols.com/_img_nations3/macedonia_flag.png

England supporter's St. George flag that was made in England?

From my office window today I can see a car in the car park with an English flag flying from one rear window and a Greek flag flying from the other.

I wonder which rabid English, right-wing, anti-European-but-pro-Greek party they're showing their support for? Or maybe they're just flying flags showing which countries their family will be supporting in the World Cup...?

The one and only point here is that you look a complete **** with nationalist flags suction-cupped to each side of your car.

Sorry if I'm out of tune with the zeitgeist.

or even a former Soviet Republic of Bulimia? Maybe they're more numerous in Yeovil..

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2010/06/soviet-republic-l...

I've told my kids they are like L plates to warn drivers that the other person is a bit of an idiot (one flag), deranged (two), utter cretin (more than 2).

... like the idea of flying a flag from the car during the World Cup. Shame on them for not realising how nationalistic, chavvy and naff they are being.

by eating a packet of Haribo football mixture. *burp* I feel a bit sick if I'm honest

last night, pre match, I could hear people trying out their horns - old fashioned bike type and air horns - and trumpets. I was thinking it would be a long night with our 18 month old being wakened by singing, chanting and tooting from the nearby park and back gardens.
Never heard a peep after about 20 to 8.

Nothing to do with patriotism, chavviness or snobbery. I just don't like driving behind fluttery things, as I find they catch my eye and distract me from more important things.

But have you noticed how the obsessive and knowledgable football fan does not tend to drape himself in such garb? He may wear a very obsure England away top from 1972 under his jacket or a top from a Ukranian league side, but no way in hell would be paint his face or wave a flag.

Yet he will be a big fan. He will be the authority on how a game is going and why certain things aren't technically working at half time - but he will watch in silence. Like the comedian that watches and enjoys another comedian but hardly cracks a smile.

The face painters and the flag wavers are essential, even if they do not follow the game and know very little about it. Without them, there is no fun.

half mast on mine