Someone’s making the gammons a bit cross

I woke up and went for my usual Friday morning ritual of making coffee and visiting “X” (which has become even more of a cesspool than it was when it was called “Twitter”) and then had to immediately visit the Guardian web site to check whether I had accidentally taken too much Benalyn and fallen asleep for over a week, only waking up in early April – a kind of modern-day Rip Van Winkle. I hadn’t, so could only assume that the hysteria I was reading on “X” was at least in some part entrenched in fact, and not some elaborate April Fool’s Day joke.
 
It seems that, in the land of my birth and former citizenship, the place in which poverty, unemployment, and misery are rising steeply, in which raw sewage is dumped in waterways and possibly used as a deterrent to migrants, in which – oh sorry, I can’t go on, too depressing, you get the picture – well it seems that after the endless toll of misery and upset the current Conservative government has inflicted upon the nation, finally something has roused the nation out of its torpor. What might this be, you ask? The refusal to abide by international law? The prospect of imprisonment for peaceful protest? The deportation of impoverished and terrified asylum seekers to Rwanda? The idea of Penny Mordaunt becoming the first dominatrix PM? No, none of that, I am talking, of course, about the English Flag (which must be capitalized in text so as to show its importance to a certain type of Englander). Or rather, a certain portrayal of the English Flag, as has placed in 2cm x 3cm size on the back of the English football shirt by the team’s kit manufacturer Nike. For someone has Messed Wiv’ the English Flag. They have Changed Da Colours of the English Flag. They have insulted the Great St. George the Englishman and by extension, every Englishman and Woman. Because nothing gets a Gammon redder in the face than insulting an English saint. Or, of course, the English Flag.
 
The flag, in case you have missed this tsunami of tutting, this maelstrom of madness, this deluge of dander, has been changed from a red cross on a white background to a mixture of red and blue and purple and possibly fuschia. The idea is that it is a throwback to the training kits worn by the England team that won the world cup in 1966 (the last time England won anything) – it is a “playful” incentive to the team to perform well in the upcoming Euros. It might, I suppose, just “might” be seen as one of those “’orrible” inclusivity things, supporting LGBTQ rights or equality or whatever the Gammons least like at the moment, but to be honest, it is hard to tell what they are objecting to as the gnashing of teeth tends to block out the sound and the foaming at the mouth makes lip reading impossible.
 
Now, were you to not care much about this issue but were nonetheless being pressed for a comment, you might, at a stretch, wish to point out a few things. First, given the context in which this is taking place (I refer you to the beginning of my second paragraph), it may seem to be a little trivial. It is, after all, only a flag (sorry, a Flag). England isn’t really a country (there, I said it!) but a part of a country. St. George wasn’t English (he was either Turkish or Syrian or possibly both – and I cannot be bothered checking this out so you’ll have to take my word for it or prove me wrong – so it is hardly an assault on Englishness (and besides, there has been an ongoing smear campaign against a much more potent symbol of Englishness, the Princess of, erm, Wales, driven by exactly the same people who are pushing this campaign for the Flag or against the Flag or whatever it is now). And, of course, the English Flag has been manipulated and altered to suit pretty much everyone’s needs for about as long as it has been a symbol of the country. Look at the GB news logo; the 2012 Olympics tracksuits; the England football shirt in 2010, FFS…
 
If your head hurts as much as mine does, which it might well do if you have made it to the end of this sentence, you might just want to ask yourself the following question. Who should be offended here? The troglodytic nationalists whose foam-flecked “gammon and gout” features are contorting with anger as I write? The poor members of a putative bisexual movement who had nothing to do with this but have seen their flag co-opted by a bunch of marketers charging £125 per shirt?
 
England and its media never fail to impress. I’ve been chuckling over this all day and am about to settle down to a pint of real English ale from George Beer & Rigden, whose own manipulation of the Flag can be seen in the extra. Thanks Nike.