Birmingham Didn’t Ban Your Flag - They Just Need to Change the Lightbulbs
Inside the Culture-War Battle Where Street Maintenance Becomes “Labour hates Britain” - and Why It's Just So Much More Boring Than That
Flags.
People can get very passionate about them.
And on this subject, to a very large extent, I do actually get it.
I grew up in a country where we swapped one flag for another in a single, history-laden leap - the old orange, white, and blue South African flag lowered for the last time, replaced by the now-familiar rainbow design. Even though I was but a cub at the time, I can still remember the drama.
For most of the country, it really was jubilation - the first flag that actually represented them, rather than one that existed as a daily reminder they were second-class citizens. For others, a small minority, it was grief, or at least a deeply sulky form of nostalgia. That orange, white, and blue banner was a security blanket for an old order, and its disappearance forced a confrontation with change many weren’t ready for - and to be honest, some have never recovered from, thirty years on. But c’est la vie.
That’s the kind of flag issue I understand being emotional about.
What I will never quite understand, though, is the way the United Kingdom can take the dullest, most pedestrian health-and-safety note about a flagpole and spin it into a full-fat national emergency. The now-all-too-familiar “THEY'RE BANNING OUR FLAG!!!” outrage cycle has almost become a bit of a British tradition now - endlessly repeated, stubbornly unkillable, and almost always built on… well, nothing, really.
This week’s version comes courtesy of Birmingham.
A group calling themselves the "Weoley Warriors" went out - ladders, gumption, and cable ties in hand - and positively festooned lamp posts across certain suburbs with Union and St George’s flags. Hundreds of them. Funded by about £2,500 in donations, they called it a “patriotic outpouring.”
The council’s response? Remove them. Why? Because, as it turned out, attaching things to lamp posts without permission is against council policy, it poses potential safety risks, and in this case, the lamp posts are due to be upgraded with new LED lights.
That’s it.
There was no secret socialist memo from 20 Rushworth Street banning the St George from public view. No Marxist vendetta to protect the proletariat from the sight of patriotism. Just the same boring rule that says you can’t nail bunting to a motorway gantry or hang a flowerpot from a traffic light.
But within hours, the story had been given culture-war steroids and shoved into our eyeballs by the usual suspects. Labour-run Birmingham City Council was “banning” British flags. Outrage quotes from Lee Anderson and a few Tory councillors were dutifully printed. Palestinian flags were mentioned - because of course they were - in a neat little attempt to turn a mundane bit of street-furniture maintenance into a battle for civilisation itself.
I sometimes find myself wondering if editors know just how utterly absurd it looks from the outside. A council says, “sorry, guys, that’s against the rules, we need to take them down to do electrical work,” or "your flag is unfortunately flapping straight across a traffic light and people might have accidents," and BOOM! within two paragraphs it’s transformed an op-ed by an angry Daily Mail columnist about just how much "Labour HATES Britain", and if they can come for your flags, obviously you'll be thrown into jail any time now just for saying you're English. The facts are still there, somewhere down the page, but the framing makes sure almost no one will get that far.
And that's the important bit.
Most people don't read the small print of the completely innocuous council statements1 - they read a headline from their favourite tabloid, see a photo of a forlorn St George’s flag, and hear the very angry quote from an MP who is not known for subtlety and detail. And when all of that is screaming “attack on our culture”, that's obviously the story they are most likely to absorb.
Publishers are not ignorant to this. They know full well that the nuance - the boring bits about LED upgrades, bylaws and safety regulations - can be safely tucked away right at the end of a story when everyone has already made up their minds, or even more sneakily, hidden behind a £4.99-a-week paywall, where only the most determined readers will ever find it. The outrage is free (and delicious), the context costs extra (and is tedious).
The public reaction is depressingly predictable. There’s a tone that comes through - half-outraged, half-adolescent - out in the replies, usually reading something along the lines of: “Our national identity is under attack! By socialists! Churchill is spinning in his grave!”
You do your level best to explain that it’s got nothing to do with the symbol and everything to do with where it’s been stuck - more than likely thanks to some arcane bylaw buried in a dusty folder somewhere - and suddenly you’re the villain. A traitor to your country. Probably a puppy-kicker who sneers at the working class for sport. In their minds, the council could be taking down an illicitly attached Union Jack to install a life-saving defibrillator in an abandoned phone box, and it would still somehow be “anti-British.”
And we’ve been here before.
Last summer, during Euro 2024, there was an immense tabloid furore about England fans “facing fines” for flying the St George’s Cross from their cars. Everyone and their uncle jumped on board, right from Stephen Yaxley Lennon to Joe99876 from Nuneaton bemoaning the great assault on civil liberties. The suggestion back then, surprise-surprise, was that the authorities had decided patriotism was punishable.
The truth?
You can fly whatever flag you like from your car, provided it’s secure and doesn’t block your view. There’s literally a whole page on flags and mascots on gov.uk where the limitations are discussed and it’s made clear that:
“…it is not a specific offence to fly a flag on a vehicle and the majority of vehicle flags currently on sale are legal.”
But the guidance includes words like “derogation” and “European Directive” followed by a string of numbers, so it is left on its own in its small, neglected corner of the internet.
The police are completely unbothered by what’s on it - they care whether it could accidentally decapitate a cyclist when it comes loose at 70mph. But “please secure your flag so it doesn’t accidentally cause a pile up on the M2” doesn’t exactly sell papers or drive traffic.
“You could get a £1,000 fine for flying the ENGLISH flag on your car!”, on the other hand, does. And that’s why we’ll keep seeing these stories - not because there’s an actual campaign to stop you flying your flag, but because they’re cheap, easily digestible and quick to produce in the never-ending churn of culture-war content.
And if it was just in pursuit of that ever-elusive click, that would be semi-excusable, but the problem is that the anger they generate is real enough.
People do feel strongly about national symbols, and the idea of being told you can’t display yours triggers a sort of reflexive defence posture. And that’s precisely why the framing is so dishonest. If you tell someone, “You can’t attach anything to this lamp post without permission”, the most likely response you’ll get is a bit of a slightly annoyed shrug. Tell them “they’ve banned your flag” and you’ve got yourself a headline, a phone-in segment, and three days of Facebook comments about “not being allowed to be British anymore.”
The overlooked point is that the rules are almost always applied consistently. Councils don’t want any unauthorised objects strapped to their infrastructure - whether it’s a flag, an advert, or a giant inflatable Minion. You’re just as likely to get a fine for having a seven-foot pole bolted to your Ford Focus with a St George’s flag fluttering on top as I am for plastering the front of my Mini with precariously attached progress flags. And in both cases, they’d be right.
Councils and traffic authorities have to think about maintenance, safety, and liability - boring, unglamorous, entirely apolitical considerations. But overlook them, and you’re inviting things to break, people to get hurt, or massive costs if one of my progress flags comes loose and stabs someone in the shin.
The sensible thing to do the next time you see a “banned flag” headline is to pause to ask a few simple questions:
Where exactly was the flag in question?
Was the reason about the symbol, or about safety and location?
Is this rule applied to all flags, or just this one?
And, probably most importantly, who’s telling you the story, and what’s their track record for treating nuance like something contagious?
Because I promise you, the real answer is almost never “there’s a grand plot to erase your identity.” Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it’s “I’m sorry, but we can’t change the lightbulb with that massive cable tied there without potentially electrocuting ourselves.”
So, that’s my bit, and that’s the smoking gun in this week’s “Labour bans British flags” saga.
Not a Marxist plot.
Not a secret handshake between the council and Hamas.
Just a very dull, very standard list of reasons why you shouldn’t cable-tie things to tall metal poles.
Of course, that won’t stop the next headline. Somewhere, sometime soon, a bit of bunting will come down, a lamp post will get a fresh coat of paint, or someone will be told they can’t strap a three-metre mast to the roof of a Vauxhall Astra, and the whole outrage cycle will spin up again.
And when it does, you’ll already know the likely truth: it’s not about the flag. It’s about the lamp post. And the only thing at risk of being banned is common sense.
Full Statement from Birmingham City Council:
Improving street lighting to reduce energy use
Published: Tuesday, 12th August 2025
The city council is improving street lighting by upgrading streetlights to energy-efficient LED lighting.
This will reduce energy use and carbon emissions, and lower maintenance costs.
Work is due to begin imminently, and lamp columns need to remain free from attachments so work can be carried out as quickly and safely as possible.
Lampposts and other street furniture need to be protected which is why highways staff across the city removed around 200 advertising banners and flags that had been attached to lampposts since the start of this year.
They take down attachments from lampposts routinely, including advertising signs, bunting trails and flags.
People who attach unauthorised items to lampposts could be putting their lives and those of motorists and pedestrians at risk.
We continuing to do this every week and would ask that staff doing this work are allowed to continue this work unhindered.
Placing unauthorised attachments on street furniture, particularly tall structures like lampposts, can be dangerous (see below) – that is why the council always has to ‘stress test’ assets around any formal events or celebrations.
The Risks
Falling debris:
If a lamppost or its attachments fail, debris can fall on people or vehicles below, causing injuries or accidents.
Electrical hazards:
In some cases, lampposts may have electrical components, and attaching items could potentially interfere with these, creating electrical hazards.
Obscured visibility:
Flags attached to lampposts can obstruct visibility for drivers or pedestrians, increasing the risk of accidents.
Weakening of the lamppost:
Lampposts are engineered for their specific purpose, and adding extra weight or stress from flags and attachments can cause them to weaken over time, potentially leading to collapse.
I would imagine that the fact it was LED lamp replacements just adds to the conspiracy. 'Globalist Net zero madness means you're no longer allowed to be English'
God, this is so depressing. Not you, of course, Bear, your explanation is as always, delightful! It's this continuous round of lies and more lies and the 'politics of fear' and all the things being thrown at us by unscrupulous politicians (if 30p Lee even deserves the label) and their equally unscrupulous owners, the media barons and tech-bros that is so wearing day after day. I had to write a synopsis of Orwell's 1984 and one of Animal Farm last night for a project I'm doing - such a strong (and scary) reminder of the levels to which some will stoop to gain and maintain power. They should be required reading by all.