A motion is to be put to Causeway Coast and Glens Borough Council tomorrow night in relation to the flying of the Union Flag from Council Properties.
The motion, which was put forward by Alderman Hillis, proposes that the flag fly from Civic Centres and former Council Chambers (Coleraine Town Hall, Portrush Town Hall, Portstewart Town Hall, Ballymoney Town Hall and Roe Valley Arts and Cultural Centre) for 365 days a year.
The motion also proposes that it fly on Working Days, Designated Days and other days at the discretion of the Council’s Chief Executive from Council Headquarters at Cloonavin, as well as Council Admin Centres (Riada House, Limavady Council Offices and Sheskburn House)
The proposal is supported by all Unionist members of the Council.
The UK government have for many years had a guide to flag protocol in the UK which, based on the behaviour of people in Northern Ireland including our elected representatives, is not a best seller in this part of the world or may have been banned decades ago along with Lady Chatterley’s Lover. The guide designates days for flying the Union flag and other flags on government buildings and the vast majority of local authorities on the UK mainland follow this guide when flying flags on their buildings (town halls, civic centres etc). As Northern Ireland does not have a flag protocol one would expect that we should generally follow the UK guide, as we are in the UK, or publish our own protocol. I know that people in Northern Ireland are very contrary and this ad hoc approach to flying different flags in different parts of a very small country is presumably what we want as we keep voting in children to continue with this fiasco. The problem is that over 97% of the UK population do not live in Northern Ireland and when these ‘fleg issues’ appear on the national news over 97% of the UK population do not know what we are on about (again). You should not ascribe this to thinking this is because people in England, Scotland and Wales are ignorant. Essentially they just think that we must be on easy street as we have really nothing much else to do but spend a ton of time and money on the issue of flying a flag on a building. Recently these same people, who provide half of Northern Ireland expenditure, have begun to ask if they should not be taking some of that money back as we are squandering it on frivolous issues and they don’t have that sort of luxury. Really people is there not someone we elected who can do a little bit better than this?