What Will It Say?

How do we stop the Welsh flag being hijacked for ugly reasons? I would hate to see it mired in right wing racist connotations the way the English flag is. How is it stopped though?

Who can say? It's speculation as to why they're up. If it is anti migration sentiment then the Welsh aren't exactly making it clear unlike the English so it's a bit pointless if that's the case. You think the English tactic is apelike aggression whereas the Welsh would adopt a more covert approach. With thousands of Welsh what... secretly hating certain populations enough to put up a few flags but not enough to explain what the flags mean? I'm not worrying yet. It could just as likely (or more likely) be pushback against the English 'Raise the colours movement'. The Welsh don't exactly love it when England start throwing their weight around. Union Jack's spotted along Monmouthshire roads though.

A thought provoking article. It's likely the flags which have recently appeared in Penrhys are there in support of the pathetic 'raise the flag' campaign. Plaid should have done more over their 100 years in existence to have taken political ownership of our flag. The unionist parties of so called Welsh Labour and even the oxymoron entitled Welsh Conservatives have made more use of our flag on their election placards. Now the true scum (even worse than the Tories, I never thought that was possible) Reform UK are using our flag. An English nationalist party using our flag, unbelievable!

I think everybody should fly the flag. I think we should write croeso above the dragon too. I also think it's time that we stopped tolerating union flags. They are something to be ashamed of, not revered.

I noticed flags new flags halfway up lampposts on the Loughor bridge whilst driving from Llanelli to Swansea and wondered why they had appeared - I too had that uneasy prickling down my spine. Until now, I never thought that Welsh pride could be equated to racist hatred and I don't see any reason to let them make it so now. The Welsh ARE immigrants!! I doubt there's a country in the world that doesn't have at least a few of us roaming about. Many countries have huge , long term Welsh communities (and no, I'm not just talking about Patagonia). There's a reason why one of the more sought-after universities in the USA is called Bryn Mawr! There are Welsh communities in Japan. We go everywhere and then everywhere comes here - often tracking down family trees to towns they have never seen but have heard of in family legends. I moved to England for 20ish years and, when I moved back to Wales I had friends come to visit. They couldn't stop talking about how amazingly friendly absolutely everyone in the entire of Llanelli was - EVERYONE!!!!! As far as they had experienced (and this was different friends on different visits), every single person in the whole of Wales was kind, welcoming, friendly, helpful and just generally super-nice. This is the Wales they believe in. I'm not about to let the smooth talking liars of Reform convince people who are just poor, tired and fed up of nothing going right that the reason for their problems is people fleeing violence and horror. We all know the reason wages are low - rich people want you to be poor because it keeps them rich. Why are there no council houses? Thatcher encouraged people to buy their council housing at a discount, then the interest rates inflated to a point where no ordinary people could possibly pay these mortgages. They all got evicted by the banks, who sold the houses off cheaply to rich people who had cash on hand to pay for these properties, which they then rented back to the families at twice the rent they used to pay. At the same time, councils were prevented by government from building any new council housing. None of this had anything to do with immigrants What about the NHS? Well, in the last year and a half I've been hospitalised 4 times and all but two of my consultants have been immigrants to this country, and about half of the nursing staff. I'm incredibly thankful for all of them as I have been uncomfortably close to death at least three times. Instead of USING up the NHS, immigrants are actually PROPPING UP the NHS and, because they made that choice, I get to be not dead - which I prefer to the alternative. We MUST challenge the narrative. When people claim that immigration costs this country money we must point out that immigrants actually financially benefit the country. They rarely claim benefits, they rarely commit crime, they tend to push their children to work hard at school and to be well behaved because they value the security of being here, away from whatever nightmare they left behind. When they claim that immigration waters down Welsh culture, tell them that Welsh culture was built on mingling with peoples of many nations from the tribes of Scotland and Ireland to the north and west, to the peoples of Europe and beyond to the east and south. Not only did we trade with them but we occasionally lent warriors to go and fight on behalf of others. Our habit was to be open-minded and multi-cultural even then. Reform are making promises to help the steel works and reopen coal mines and it's all nonsense - they are making up things they think Welsh people want to hear. What about jobs for the future, not jobs from the past? What about electrifying the whole of the trainline as far as Carmarthen, or even Milford Haven? Or does nothing exist past Cardiff for Reform too? The flag, and the culture have to stand for a Wales we can be proud of and that is not one that blames it's problems on the desperate and war-torn.