00:00National flags are a symbol of a country that represents people, its landscape, sports teams
00:08and more and more in recent years, a level of politics. Across the border in England,
00:12there's been a conscious move by some groups to fly their national flag more.
00:16In bars of Birmingham, and now spreading to other areas, you'll see streets once void
00:20of flags, now lined with St George's crosses. The group says it's about being proud of your
00:25country and your heritage. But others have said that there are right-wing undertones to the idea.
00:31I'm here in Newport, where you don't see that many Welsh flags flying, asking whether we should
00:35be more proud of our national flags, particularly a Draigoch, the Welsh dragon, and if they'd like
00:40to see it flying more often. Yeah, you should be proud. You should be proud of where is your flag?
00:47Well, I do think so, yeah. We should be more proud of where we come from. And yeah, okay,
00:52it's all right to display where you're from and be proud of where you're from. But in the same
00:57rights as we are the UK, we have our own pride. We have our own identity. And displaying our flag
01:04is showing and identifying and saying, listen, this is who we are. This is where we come from.
01:08This is our history. And this is what's built up to this point. So I do think it is important
01:14that we value each other's flags, really.
01:17Really, they should have clawed back the English flag for the English years and years ago. But
01:26the thing is, a lot of people didn't like to put them up because they thought, you know,
01:34we can't have any of that because people look upon me as being a bit of a this or a bit of
01:39that. Then all of a sudden, we have this thing where they were stuck on a side of cars, a front
01:44of cars, one English flag either side. Even other people around here looked at them on
01:52their cars. And you thought, great people are respecting their flag and all this like.
01:57Especially if my parents are Italian and I was born in England and yet I live in Wales
02:01and I've been here since I was seven. And I do support the rugby when it's on for Wales.
02:07Yeah, it is a tricky one. I think it's important to be patriotic, but also you must accept other
02:14people's, you know, opinions. And because I think that's the biggest problem in the world,
02:20isn't it? We should all get on with each other and be peaceful.
02:24They take it a bit too far, don't they? Some people like my opinion. It's up to them if
02:31they want to do it. It's up to them.
02:32There's nothing inherently political about a national flag, but at the same time, countries
02:37are by their very nature political. So is it unfair that moves to fly more English flags
02:42across England are being met with mixed reactions?
02:44Most of it's got nothing to do with nationality. You know, they're just blaming something when it's
02:50convenient, you know, so I try not to be honest. I try not to even bother with it at some point.
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