Fly the EU Flag if You Are Happy to Accept EU Funding Mr Pickles.

This storm in a teacup is silly on my country's part

Surely one should fly the flag of an organisation that funds projects in this region. It is just common courtesy to show where such money comes from. Well that is what I think anyway. I say this because of an article I read which is below. I can't believe we are getting so blooming silly over flying the EU flag. We are part of the EU and, on this occasion, are receiving funds. Why cause a row over this? What purpose does it serve to get so bloody minded on such an issue? Fly the EU Flag Mr Pickles - you are accepting their funds. 

British people are surely better then this? There are far more important things to resolve then causing a stupid row over flying an EU flag which we are part of. The EU are funding your management projects Mr Pickles!

Once we English got paranoid with a Scottish King that came south and told us he was going to form a union and a new flag. We objected against that union and its flag too. We don't today - most of us do not know of its history but love the flag anyway.


When I look at the EU, I see a lot of well meaning people who want to build a better Europe for all people of all European nations. They get things wrong sometimes, but must continue to try. Pointing out wrongs is correct, but portraying the EU as a bad undemocratic body is very wrong and it seems that we, in the UK, always want to portray the EU in a bad way. Why? It is beyond me. If there is one issue I can't help getting vexed about; it is this desire to always pick an argument with the EU over the most trivial of things. We Brits seem to do anything to covert anti-EU feeling.

We are better off in the EU as a bigger and stronger body of 500 million plus Europeans on the world stage. This does not stop Brits being Brits or French people losing their identity. Germans are still Germans and Italians remain too. We are all in the EU and should be learning how to come together in crisis. The UK is sadly lacking here and I wished it was not so.   

 

 

 

A row over the Government being forced to fly the European Union flag took a farcical turn last night after Brussels offered to pay for a new flagpole if it complied with the demand.

The Mail on Sunday revealed earlier this year that Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles was furious after being told that he faced being fined under new European Commission rules if he did not fly the EU flag continuously outside his office.

 

His headquarters currently has two flagpoles: one permanently bears the Union Flag while the other has been used mainly to display British regional emblems.

 

The Cabinet Minister said the demand showed a ‘deep sense of political insecurity’ and called on the European Union to ‘grow up’.

Mr Pickles is currently obliged to fly the flag – a circle of 12 golden stars on an azure background – for a week each year, starting from Europe Day on May 9.

 

But under the proposed change, drafted by the European Commission and due to take effect within the next two years, the flag would have to fly permanently outside any organisation which managed development funding from Brussels.

Mr Pickles wrote to the European Commissioner for Regional Policy, Austrian Johannes Hahn, to protest about the demand to use it to fly the EU flag.

In his reply Mr Hahn replied: ‘I thought flying the [EU] flag all the year round would be a great pleasure for you.

‘In that respect, I would finance a third flagpole’.

Last night Tory MP Chris Heaton Harris said: ‘With the euro in meltdown, I would suggest that the EU had more to worry about than what flag flies over Eric Pickles’s department.’

European Commissioner for Regional Policy, Austrian Johannes Hahn has offered to buy Mr Pickles a flagpole so he can fly the EU flag permanently.