Union Jack flag

400 years old today

 

And long may it continue to do, Richard!
Says it all that a Scottish king had to give the UK a decent flag.
Pity that Wales has no representation, though Ireland does (the Red X). Wales has been considered part of England since Edward Longshanks' day.

 

While it is often called the Union Jack, its official name is the Union flag.
Its unofficial nickname coming from the fact that the Union flag was always flown from the jack mast on Royal Navy ships.

The original

[ 12. April 2006, 04:27 PM: Message edited by: redcoat ]

 

ah, very good..

 

Happy Birthday.

 

Very interesting.

 

And no Wales...


I watched a program from the BBC i think it was, which examined the relevancy of the Union Flag in todays era of 'devolution'

 

The Jack is one of the most striking flags out there, I never realized is was created out of a cross-breeding of three other flags. Interesting indeed.

 

Thanks, quick someone give Blazkowicz a free flag.

 

I'll be expecting one in the mail shortly Richard!

 

i have to say one thing that angers me so much to the point i start to rant and rave (at which point the wife usually walks away lol ) is when i see a union flag been flown upside down.

 

eh?

 

You are not alone.
My old man's blood used to boil too.
We went to an Aldershot show when I was small & all the little plastic Union Flags for us kids to wave were upside down. He went on about it all day.

 

Za Rodinu.

if you look closely at the Union flag where it joins the flag pole you will see that the red diaganols are off set a little. when the flag is the correct way up if you look at the bottom left hand corner veside the flag pole the red stripe should have a wider white stripe above it, back in the days of old when troops would approach a fort or emcampment ets if the flag was flying upside down with the red stripe above the thicker white stripe it was a warning sign of distress.

http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/geography/unionjack7.html

the easy way to remember is the saying, snow lies on top of blood.

 

Precisely! I looked at the link you sent and yes, the flags there are not symmetrical. However Richard42's image on the top of this thread is symmetrical in the horizontal plane, so it makes no difference if Rich's flag is upside down or not! That's why I was puzzled.

Doing a Google image search for Union Jack showns a number of them, assymetrical, some of them upside down I like this one:

http://www.blands.co.uk/acatalog/IP2162-L.jpg

 

well there are some flags that i would happily stand to attention to at the lowering of each night

 

It would also appear on the flags of more Nations than any other symbol.

So how do we get rid of it??

 

You don't have to get rid of it. Considering the ethnic make up of the country, by this time you could do something like



I'm sure you would please a large sector of the population (the loonie left?) and gain brownie points in many places elsewhere.

Also, instead of "Rule Britannia" you could teach the Brits to sing "Appease the you-know-whos"

 

Bit mixed up, all of the Pakistanis are in England, I'm 13,000 miles away.

 

Sorry, I thought we were speaking about the Union Jack, not the ditto cum Southern Cross.