Carrying a flag?

In Daily Wales is a report of the Minister of Transport in London announcing that all British (not UK) Driving Licences will in future carry a Union Flag to show how we are all in one nation!! This excludes Northern Ireland. I am not sure how this will go down in Scotland. I think the saltire may be seen as SNP by some. Maybe a lion rampant would be chosen if the Scots ever vote for independence? The reaction in Daily Wales is, not surprisingly, cross. A couple of folk are planning to make little dragon stickers to cover the union flag. If any of you are heading for 70 or are learning to drive, I thought this might interest you

Ahem. That’ll be me! :wink:

The photocard has to be renewed every ten years, so it will get us all sooner or later.

Apparently they can’t make different cards for the different nations for cost reasons. Except, of course, they already do - mine has Welsh text on it, the English version doesn’t. I suspect the introduction of the Union Jack was a crude populist idea to counter the presence of the EU flag (required to enable drivers to cross borders without having to prove they can drive). I know people are seeing this as a massive Unionist conspiracy, but I suspect that it’s just the usual ill-thought-out, knee-jerk cock-up - they just forgot that the people on the periphery might object.

4 Likes

I think with #indyref on the horizon when this was discussed/decided, it’s a little more deliberate than the usual ‘eh? what?’ approach.

No-one involved in the decision, to my knowledge, has been willing to share what the cost implications were, so I suspect that bit is just a lie.

2 Likes

Maybe. Normally I’d suggest that they’re not that clever, but this is a particularly petty and stupid innovation, so perhaps you have a point this time. :wink:

And normally I would strongly incline to agree with you… :sunny:

I’m glad so many of you agree with me that this is petty and likely to annoy. I still have heard nothing about it in Scotland. I may actually send a letter to The National, but I only get to read it twice a week, so may have missed the subject. Also, flags up here have different connotations.