World Cup Blog | Max Brockbank Flagging Up Your Allegiences subscribe to TIME Printable Version email this story Max Brockbank: Read all his blog entries

Posted Monday, June 26, 2006: 2.02BST
Travelling up and down the streets of England and you'll be in no doubt where you are: there are Crosses of St George EVERYWHERE (okay, so I could be in Portugal perhaps, a nation which also has the Roman-Palestinian Christian martyr as its patron saint, but bear with me, this is going somewhere). The red cross on a white field seems to have been thoroughly reclaimed from the extreme right, even if nationalistic sentiment blurs things a bit at the edges.

I say up and down the streets of England, but here and there — like the corner of south east London where I live — the rules change slightly. Here is the ethnic and cultural melting pot all the sociology text books talk about, put into practice.

Drive down the streets of New Cross or Peckham or Camberwell and you are just as likely to see Polish flags or Trinidadian flags, Portuguese flags or even the odd Brazilian pennant. My own neighbours, who proudly celebrate Turkish roots, are presenty flying the England flag from their front fence. Two years ago, during Euro2004 it was definitely a different story.

By far the most prevalent non-England flag around is that of Ghana. I'm not sure if this is because Ghana seems to be doing okay and so is picking up a band of well-deserved well-wishers from other African-Caribbean nations (of course it could be that we have tapped into a secret stash of Scotsmen who would rather be seen dead than sport the flag of the Auld Enemy).

However, one thing I have noticed is that — more than any other sporting standard bearers — Ghanaians seem to be hedging their bets. In a reasonable number of examples you will see the horizontal tricolour of the Republic of Ghana flown alongside the Cross of St George. The Ghanaians I've met around here appear distinctly proud of their adopted home and so it seems quite natural for them to select England as an each-way bet. Another one in the eye for the rabid right.

Two more things about the rash of flags, especially those stuck on every other car. First, I'm slightly puzzled about the need to print the word England across the horizontal red stripe: this seems almost tautological, akin to jars of peanut butter that bear the legend: WARNING — THIS PRODUCT MAY CONTAIN NUTS.

And finally, I wonder what all this flag waving is doing for the environment. Someone has worked out that every flag attached to a car is increasing its drag by the equivalent of $2 per hour of driving in extra fuel burned. If England do make it to the final, that's around $80 per flag — and most people have two of them!

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