Flagging Support As we get near to an election, you often find the local paper full of pictures of councillors. This phenomena works on what counterbalance calls the 'principle of beans'. That is: if you say "beans" to someone, the chances are they will reply "Heinz." So it is with elections. The easiest way to get elected is to become a 'household name'. Hence you see all sorts of silliness to get names and pictures into the papers. And, as they say in racing circles - "They're off!"
John Coombes appeared in last Friday's 'Gazette' wrapped in a flag of St George, proclaiming that St George is not being taken seriously enough, because we are too afraid of political correctness, and this, together with the introduction of positive discrimination, has broken our nation's spirit - because we are fearful of being branded bigots.
He is also suggesting that people should come up with events that could be held between now and St George's Day on April 23rd.
Now, can you think of a better way to keep your name in the news, and your picture in the paper?
Take a 'small c' conservative area, wrap yourself in apparent nationalism, and make the initiative run almost right up to the election.
Brilliant strategy. Beans overflowing everywhere.
Drawing our attention to the 'Gazette' article, one of our readers said it made them sick to see someone who had done so much to destroy our local democracy associating himself with the freedom and democracy of the English colours.
He actually
said the Commissar should have been wrapped in the Welsh flag, (suggesting he is more like the dragon than St George), but we weren't for insulting our Welsh friends with that idea.
But we found the idea appealing when our reader asked us to look into what is really going on.
So we did.
Apart from the obvious electioneering publicity, what we have here is evidence of the confusion that frequently surrounds the Commissar. Most especially on this occasion, his complaint about 'political correctness' is entirely off target. His misguided support for the flag of St George is, itself, symptomatic of one of the more recent forms of pc, which he has swallowed hook, line and sinker.
The re-education of the British nation in the guise of political correctness is well under way. Our children are now taught such a sanitised version of history that in the space of a few generations, the concept of British nationhood will have gone altogether. If you want to understand this more, read "The Abolition of Britain" by Peter Hitchens, it's all there.
Wrapped in his St George's flag, the Commissar contributes to this process by confusing nationhood and religion.
A nation exists when a politically organized body of people falls within a single governance. So the nation is a creation of a Government, (or Sovereign), and bounded within the territory its military controls. So a nation has borders, and nationality is a state that is conferred by a monarch or a government. It is nothing to do with patron saints like St George.
The patron saints generally predate what we understand as Government, and exist (mostly) through canonisation by the Roman Catholic Church (though other churches also claim the right to create saints). The word itself comes from the Latin word sanctus, which translates to "consecrated" or "holy" and a Patron Saint is someone presented to believers as a role model whose life was worthy to be imitated.
Based on the course of their lives and the circumstances surrounding them, these saints serve as "patrons" of certain peoples, places, things, and occupations, as they intercede for us before God.
In the case of England (and also - though not often referred to in Britain - Canada, Catalonia, Ethiopia, Georgia, Greece, Montenegro, Serbia, and the cities of Ljubljana and Moscow, together with a multitude of other causes, and even illnesses), Saint George is the patron saint.
George was born around the late 3rd century, and rose to hold the rank of tribune in the Roman army before being beheaded by Diocletian for protesting against the Emperor's persecution of Christians. He was canonised in 494as a saint by Pope Gelasius I and became universally recognized as a saint sometime after 900.
An English holiday in honour of St George, to be kept on 23 April, was declared by the Synod of Oxford in 1222; and St George became acknowledged as patron saint of England by the end of the fourteenth century.
His colours of a red cross on a white background probably dates back to plain white tunics worn by the early crusaders, and was adopted for the uniform of English soldiers probably in the reign of Richard I. Freemasons also consider St. George one of their primary patron saints, the connection probably going back via the Knights Templar.
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The other former countries that make up The United Kingdom had their own patron saints that gave rise to their own colours.
In Scotland, Saint Andrew, (one of the original Twelve Apostles and a brother to St. Peter) became the patron saint. He is also the patron saint of Greece.
In Wales, Saint David dates back to 1120, when Dewi was canonised by Pope Callactus the second.
In Ireland, where Saint Patrick was never formally canonised by a Pope, he is still widely venerated. By the seventh century he had become a patron saint of Ireland, and the foundations of Irish Christianity were attributed largely to him
Each of the patron saints - including St George - were creations of religion, not of the secular nation state - which only a monarch or government could create.
So whilst St George is our patron saint, and the red and white colours are associated with his patronage of England, the flag of our nation is not his red cross, neither is it the colours of St Andrew, St David nor St Patrick.
Our national flag is the Union Jack.
After the Acts of Union 1707, the flag became
"the ensign armorial of the Kingdom of Great Britain", the newly created state.
The current Union Flag dates from 1 January 1801 with the Act of Union 1800, which merged the Kingdom of Ireland and the Kingdom of Great Britain to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
This new design added the red saltire cross of Saint Patrick's Flag for Ireland. This saltire is overlaid on the saltire of St Andrew, but still beneath the cross of St George. To make it clear Ireland was not superior to Scotland, the Irish cross was made thinner and half covered by the saltire of St Andrew.
Curiously, no law has ever been passed making the Union Jack the national flag of the United Kingdom; rather it has become one through usage.
Its first recorded recognition as a national flag came in 1908, when it was stated in Parliament that "the Union Jack should be regarded as the National flag".
The Home Secretary made a more categorical statement in 1933, when he stated that, "the Union Jack is the National Flag".
The Court of the Lord Lyon, which has criminal jurisdiction in heraldic matters in Scotland, confirms that the Union Flag
"is the correct flag for all citizens and corporate bodies of the United Kingdom to fly to demonstrate their loyalty and their nationality."
But in the last few years (starting before the recent devolution of powers to Wales, Scotland and possibly Ireland), we have seen the diminution of our national flag, in preference for the colours of the former countries.
Our view is that this is part of a wider move to abolish the nation state known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in favour of sub-national regions that will (eventually) become the nation of Europe (remember that nationhood is something that can only be conferred by a government).
To achieve this goal, an early move is to use political correctness to blacken the name and status of the nation, and then as John Prescott tried, you begin to create regions within the nation, with the intention of granting sub-national powers to expand them at the expense of the nation itself.
That process stalled when it became clear that Regional Government would not be accepted by the people of the North East, but devolution to the former nations is progressing steadily.
Another step is to revise the teaching of history to minimise or remove references to empire and commonwealth and the great achievements of the British nation.
So the process in well in hand, and the politically correct Commissar meekly
helps it along by draping St George's flag about himself.
In this he demonstrates that he is either ignorant of history, or his professed dislike of political correctness is entirely false.
Given that St George is also the patron saint of Moscow, we can't help wondering if the Commissar wouldn't be better off there. Certainly our own democracy would be better off if he was, and we did not have his detested politburo cabinet system running local government in Fylde.
He complains that St George is not being taken seriously enough; that we are too afraid of political correctness; and this has broken our nation's spirit.
There are those amongst us Commissar, whose national spirit is, and will never, be broken. Nor even dented. Those who recognise the national flag as the Union Jack. We are those who will not be taken in by political correctness, but will stamp on it whenever we see it.
Dated: 26 February 2007 
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