Please Burn The England Flags!

I will freely admit I am a patriot, I love my country, I respect the monarchy and I respect the flags.

The title of this blog is not asking everyone to grab their nearest cross of St George and set fire to it, but to set light to the tautological flags.  Those that have the word England across the middle of it.  We all know that the N in PIN stands for the word number, and should not call it a PIN number as that would be a Personal Identification Number number.

The red cross on the white background already says "England", so why write the word across the middle of the flag?  We are the only country that does it, I have never seen "USA" written across the Stars and Stripes or "France" across the French Tricolore.

Why?

Is it that our country is so apathetic about teaching our population about the flags that represent us?  Thanks to Doctor Who we were all reminded that the flag that represents the United Kingdom is the Union Flag, when not on a ship.  Why do we not teach our children the flags of foreign nations and our own.neighbouring nations?  As a child I was taught the evolution of the Union Flag, the four flags of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales (For the Welsh dragon, look in the middle of the Union Flag).  I was taught a few of the neighbouring countries, the red, white and blue vertical stripes of France; the horizontal arrangement of the same colours said "Netherlands"; red, yellow and red of Spain and so on.  Does this happen in schools today?

The flag is the descendant of the coat of arms of the lord of an area and then the arms of the king.  For when the king was not on the field something was needed to give the troops to follow.  So all the troops knew that they were fighting for the right side, they had to know their flag.

So again, I say burn all the England England flags.  If you want to look stupid, fly them on your car or in your window but my recommendation is that you burn them!

Funky Mango's Musings: The Impossible Girl (spoilers) #DoctorWho #Spoonie...

Reblogged from: Funky Mango's Musings: The Impossible Girl (spoilers) #DoctorWho #Spoonie...:

Last night was the season finale of Doctor Who. I  thought it was one of the best episodes for quite some time, certainly the best of the season. But it also got me to thinking. A major theme was losing and gaining control - both for the Doctor and his current companion, Clara. And that's also a huge issue for spoonies, people with long-term illnesses that cause crippling fatigue.

The baddies in this episode were the Whispermen, who kidnap the Doctor's friends Clara, Vastra, Jenny and Strax to lure him to the one place he must never go: his grave, on the planet Trenzalore.

When we become ill, it's as if we've been kidnapped and taken to a different planet. We are snatched away from our everyday lives, held hostage by the limitations of our conditions.

There is no body in the Doctor's tomb. Instead there is a time tunnel, made of scar tissue from all the Doctor's travels through time and space. The villain of the piece, the Great Intelligence (hammed up wonderfully by Richard E. Grant) enters the time tunnel, aiming to split itself into fragments scattered throughout the Doctor's timeline and corrupt it absolutely, undoing all the good he's done.

Clara follows it into the time tunnel in an attempt to reverse the damage. Things take place around her. Previous incarnations of the Doctor run by. At first she feels out of control. She has no idea what's going on.

Gradually she works out her purpose. The Doctor is always there, though not always in the same form. She can recognise the best thing for the Doctor to do: she saves his life.

It's the same for us. At first, everything is confusion and feeling out of control. Fatigue, pain, brain fog. But gradually, a pattern emerges. We work out what to do. How to live our lives in the best possible way for ourselves and those around us. Maybe we're not saving the Doctor (or maybe you are?) but in our own way we're time lords, pacing and resting so we can do the things we really want to do.

We're the impossible girls and boys. We learn our purpose. We regain control over our lives.

We're spoonies. 

Posted by Funky Mango at 09:27