Flag-flying not in any way encouraged by rich and powerful as a distraction
It is monstrous to claim certain powerful people want to divide us so we won't notice how much they're ripping us off
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The Barrie Hudson Column
Barrie Hudson is a known quantity when it comes to writing words. Sometimes he even spells them correctly. In fact he has been writing words in the Swindon area for more than two decades. First of all for the Swindon Advertiser and then for Swindon Link and now for The Ink. Here are some of his words…
Help the millionaires and billionaires by hiding the real truth under a flag?
You may, like me, have noticed rather more England and Union flags displayed lately. Some fly in private gardens and others rather more publicly, including from bridges over main roads.
I’ve even seen pictures of the Cross of St George spray-painted on mini-roundabouts and in the white bits of zebra crossings, although speaking personally I would be reluctant to place a symbol I claimed loyalty to in a place where it could be begrimed and disfigured by tyres, feet and the perhaps even the odd animal or bird who happened to be caught short.
As far as I can gather, the flag-flying (and the flag-placing-on-the-road-to-be-made-filthy, come to that) is largely in response to dissatisfaction among certain members of the public with the way immigration to this country is handled. That, at least, is what it says in certain quarters of the national media, and what is being said by certain senior politicians from various parties, including one which was in Government not so long ago.
The gist of what many of those those commentators, all of them coincidentally very wealthy and influential people, are saying is that what has been happening is an entirely spontaneous expression of grass roots outrage, and definitely not something that the very wealthy and influential people are encouraging in any way, shape or form.
They - the very wealthy and influential people, I mean - are also saying that to suggest the protesters are in any way led or influenced by nasty right wing elements with wider and more sinister agendas of their own is a monstrous slur. Furthermore, the very wealthy and influential people insist, the protests and flag-flying are an entirely legitimate response to a scandalous issue.
This is in spite of some of those very wealthy and influential people having spent years in Government, during which they completely failed over the course of more than a decade to deliver anything even remotely resembling a decent, logical and compassionate immigration and asylum policy and instead made a complete pig’s ear of the whole thing.
Some of the other very wealthy and powerful people defending and encouraging the flag-flying would like to see, among other things, the effective abolition of the NHS and the re-imagining of 10 Downing Street as something resembling the Trump White House but without the comedy value.
But that’s another story.
As with so many things in British political life, the whole situation has left me feeling bewildered. You see, I can’t for the life of me think of any other contentious issue in recent years which has prompted so many very wealthy and powerful people to encourage the public to fly flags, paint them and take to the streets waving them.
For example, here is a list of things I would deem pretty scandalous from the news agenda these last few years: