r/Wales • u/welshconnection Anglesey | Ynys Mon • 6d ago
AskWales Welsh Flags..
A few months ago there was a spate of putting up flags around the country, in England and in Wales.
Here on Anglesey it was tne same, the welsh dragon started popping up on lamposts around some towns and looked quite colourful and cheerful. The people who put them up must have gone to a lot of trouble to get it all done.
But now :( after a long winter and a hot summer they are a mess, they are ripped to shreds and just rags flowing in tne breeze. Basically, making the place look rough and scruffy. Whoever put them up should have either replaced them with new ones or removed them altogether.
Is this the same in your area, or have they been removed or replaced ? I know it was supposedly a sign of “patriotism” type of thing but even so ..
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6d ago
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u/Foundation_Wrong 6d ago
My husband a genuine Plaid Cymru voting Welshman has put a proper flagpole on our house and we are proudly flying y Draig Goch and it will be replaced by a new one when necessary!
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u/Mountain_Shake_9521 6d ago
Nah, welsh people have always loved to fly a flag with no sinister motive
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u/liam--2020 Wrexham | Wrecsam 6d ago
Still up in Wrexham looking the exact same. I'm all for flying the flag properly but not a shitty Chinese one bought in bulk hung up with cable ties. The council refuse to touch them too which I understood to begin with, but not now.
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u/Neverbethesky 6d ago
And anyone daring to take them down gets named-and-shamed, doxxed and bullied online by these so-called "patriots"
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u/crucible Flintshire 4d ago
I like the irony of it potentially meaning “foreigners not welcome” yet the flags are tied to lampposts by a football stadium owned by an American and a Canadian…
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u/Neverbethesky 6d ago
They're put up by right wing agitators under the guise of "patriotism" but literally everyone outside their circle see's it for what it actually is, which is "fuck off anyone who isn't white or christian" - their Facebook groups are awash with bullying, racism, homophobia, transphobia, and women-hating.
The irony is that the majority of these groups exist in border towns, the majority of them don't speak Welsh and they disappear VERY quickly as you get into the actual heartlands of Wales.
I hate what these groups are doing to our flags. It's not just Wales either.
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u/Zounds90 6d ago
It was never a sign of patriotism it was bullying by bigots, who aren't known for cleaning up after themselves.
They'd rather leave the taxpayer with the bill.
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u/Charming-Jelly9185 6d ago
Some of the flags on Cwmbwrla roundabout in Swansea look so tatty. Don't want our flag being turned into something associated with the far right.
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u/TreasonableBrowser Môn Mam Cymru 6d ago
Fucked off to uni while a lot of bunting and decor came up (Anglesey too) but when I came back it was more to do with eisteddfod yr urdd than any xenophobia, in fact I saw a few renditions of Mistar Urdd littered around too
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u/welshconnection Anglesey | Ynys Mon 6d ago
Yes , that was quite recent and all in goid fun with the villages decorated with bunting etc. All taken down soon after the event was over.
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u/PITSTOPYT Swansea | Abertawe 6d ago
Luckily Carmarthenshire and Swansea Council have removed them near me
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u/Cpnths 6d ago
As more or less a recent immigrant from Lloegr, the Welsh flag hits completely different from the St George cross. I see it as a friendly, welcoming, proud and progressive symbol, in contrast with the one you can more easily slap onto a mini-roundabout with a bit of red paint.
If the Welsh Neo Nazis think they’re making people feel as uncomfortable as their English counterparts are (or they do when they go on their field trips there), they’re sadly wrong.
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u/Crully 6d ago
C'mon, be real. Nobody with more than a couple of braincells to rub together gets upset about someone else flying their national flag. Just came back from Greece, and there's Greek flags everywhere, shops, houses, beaches... Nobody looks at them as anything other than a flag of the country they love.
You can be patriotic without being a nationalist. But if you get upset and start trying to take them down, or suggest it's problematic, both get upset, and rightly so. You could go to any other country in the world, and if you told them their flag was upsetting someone (or more likely it could upset someone), they'd think you had a screw loose regardless of them being a leftie or a rightie.
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u/celtiquant 6d ago
But we also know why these flags were put up on lamposts — they were not meant to signify “welcome to England, share what we have”, it was to say “keep out, fk off home you illegal immigrant”.
I’ve seen places on England with flags on lamposts. They’ve made me, as a proud Cymro, feel extremely unsettled.
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u/Crully 5d ago
So a visiting English person comes to Wales, and sees a red dragon flying, do they see it as a "fuck off home English people", or what? I think people read too much into it all.
Sad when we're like the only place in the world that gets upset about a national flag. Literally no other country gets as upset as the left here about it, the flag doesn't belong to the right, and if the left didn't get so pissy about it, it would be a total non issue.
Lets he honest, how would you feel if a bunch of English people started complaining about the Welsh flag over here? You'd likely be (and rightly so) incensed, and fly it harder, bigger, and prouder, regardless of how you really feel about it. It's a self fulfilling prophesy, the more the left cries, the harder the right goes on it. And it's frankly a nothingburger, both side are dribbling idiots and we're all worse off for even having these conversations about it.
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u/Mysterious_Floor_868 4d ago
I've never been to any country outside of the UK and Ireland where I've seen cheap Temu flags cable-tied halfway up lamp posts. And I've been to 35 countries.
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u/OkScheme9867 6d ago
I heard that there was some evidence that the first people putting up flags were being paid by Russian provocateurs.
From there it spread as a trend online
I guess having caused their division the Russians moved onto the next thing. Or maybe the money channel was stopped.
So now the people pretending to be patriotic have moved on to the next thing?
Taking down ulez cameras, threatening to burn down immigrant hostels, putting up flags, these people are always very angry then immediately on to the next thing
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u/CCFC1998 Torfaen 6d ago
Not seen many up around here to be honest. The odd one on some bridges that look a bit tatty now but not that many. It has been very noticeable when I've visited my girlfriends family in Essex how many more England flags have been put up there
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u/Honk_Konk 6d ago
Just came back from Poland. Polish flags everywhere and none looked rough. Also patriotism is looked upon favourably in Poland. I wish it was the same here so that those flags could have been maintained properly.
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u/Wrong-Insurance701 5d ago
oh no, in my area they are all tattered, including massive stickers of the flag on bus stops, which have now faded from sun and ripped from wind and rain, because the people who put them up don’t actually want better for the country, they just want to feel like they are
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u/Dense_Imagination984 6d ago
I don't venture outside of my little village much here about 10 miles from Swansea but I'm happy to say there are multiple Welsh flags on every street and they're always well maintained. It's a joy to behold every day :)
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u/welshconnection Anglesey | Ynys Mon 6d ago
Which is as it should be and Im glad that it makes you happy and puts a smile on your face, as I was when I first started seeing them popping up. But now , not so much..
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u/Dense_Imagination984 6d ago
Oh I know it must be awful to see them going to ruin. From what I read on the other comments sadly they weren't hung lovingly but for the (big sigh) far right. Wales thankfully doesn't seem to have as a big problem as the rest of the UK afaik and fingers crossed it stays that way. Take it easy.
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u/Pristine-Ad6064 6d ago
I'm in Scotland and my local council went and pulled down all the ones on their property as it's illegal
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u/chippirates 1d ago
In Anglesey alot of it was done for the eisteddfod this year. And the occasional nationalist
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u/welshconnection Anglesey | Ynys Mon 1d ago
Yes , I know, they were cleared up soon after. I meant the ones that went up before last winter on lamp posts , roundabouts etc..
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u/cunninglinguist22 5d ago
it's the same whenever any community decides to put stuff up on public owned infrastructure. where i live there are often ribbons (and the cheap, plasticky kind too, yay) on every other lamppost for some facebook cause or other, and there are constantly birthday signs on bridges over the road. but does anyone take any responsibility to take these down again? no, the council end up dealing with it when they blow away and become rubbish.
as for those welsh flags, do you know if they were put up by reformers/gwlad supporters? in an equivalent way to the english/union flags put up to deter/intimidate foreigners? or were they put up by the opposing side, to counter the union flags? i was never sure so didn't know what to make of them. normally seeing welsh flags around makes me happy and proud but without knowing if racsists were responsible and misusing the flag to intimidate people, i couldn't feel the pride :(
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u/deleted_from_society 5d ago
That always reminds me of Porthmadog. I’m pretty sure the town put up proper cloth flags up for the Eisteddfod but now the dragon is standing on yellow grass. I suppose with the hot weather we’ve had that’s fitting
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u/wibbly-water 6d ago edited 6d ago
Which is precisely why this isn't something done by the council etc.
Flag poles and flags made out of sturdier materials have ways of avoiding this - and even they require some maintenance.
The "patriotic" groups who shove cheap nylon flags on random lamp posts and deface street signs and then just leave not caring about the maintenance show their true colours.
They want the token glory of doing the easy stuff but will not be there for the community when it actually needs support.