I’m having trouble believing this is true.
OK, I’m lying. Due to many recent developments, I’m not having much trouble believing it at all.
Armed cops patrolling Heathrow Airport have been banned from wearing tiny Union Jack badges in support of British troops.
Top brass claimed the tie-pin badges – which cost £1 with proceeds going to the Help for Heroes charity – were offensive.
But one officer asked: “How can the Union Jack be offensive?
“This ruling is even more absurd coming this weekend on the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings.
“We must be the only country ashamed to display our national flag.”
About 100 officers in the Metropolitan force’s SO18 Aviation branch, which patrols Heathrow, bought the inch-square badges.
Seventy per cent of them served in the Forces and many have children fighting in Afghanistan.
Another cop said: “We’re wearing the badges with pride. Most importantly, they are to show support for our soldiers at war.
“Nobody has put out orders to remove rainbow symbols that gay and lesbian officers wear. Why discriminate against us?”
A statement from the Met said: “The dress code states only approved corporate badging may be used”.
National scale epic fail.
Epic fail. Indeed. We our failing our OWN memory tests. As a Vietnam vet, I remember the flag burnings of the ‘Nam era, the fact that I couldn’t drive through certain areas of my city without seeing inverted flags hung in the windows (to mention just ONE desecration of our Standard).
Then we had this past election, when Obama refused to wear a flag pin on his suit jacket lapel, and when someone jacked him up about it, wore his own logo, which his staff averred was just as patriotic, then put that logo on his airplane’s vertical stabilizer instead of the US Flag which normally adorns that area of a patriot’s aircraft.
Now, we have the situation where the wearing of the flag decal on your person means you are right-of-center politically, and it shouldn’t. It SHOULD mean that you are proud to be an American, that you believe in the Freedoms that are guaranteed here, and you respect those who have fought and died to keep your Nation and those Freedoms secure.
EVERYBODY should be wearing that flag pin, but NO, if you are left-of-center politically, you CAN’T wear it and still be true to your politics.
Comes the Un-Do, there WILL be some unhappy folks to be dealt with.
…oh, and a suggestion for the Brits: each of those rozzers who is still patriotic should chip up a fiver into a kitty, and announce said kitty as a reward for the first police Admin bloke who will purloin a copy of those orders with a superior’s signature on it.
Said orders should be published on the Internet (email it HERE and I will publish it if you think it’s a State Secret), and the RESIGNATION (not retirement, RESIGNATION) of that rozzer-in-charge DEMANDED of PM Gordon Brown at Question Time in open Parliament.
I lived over there. Fifty-five years ago. It was a “whole ‘nother country” then…
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article6501720.ece