Metropol

As an amateur vexillologist, I heartily recommend a visit to this site

http://flagspot.net/flags/

for all your flag trivia needs.

Regarding the NI situation, there IS no official flag for NI apart from the Union Flag. The St George's cross defaced with the red hand of Ulster ceased to have official status in 1972. However, because it is the most identifiable symbol of the region, it continues to be used for things like the Commonwealth Games.

The flag of the Province however is slightly different:


A long argument has been going on on Wikipedia as to which flag should be used to represent the Irish rugby team, which of course represents all four provinces. The Rugby League team use a four-quadrant version

whereas the union team is now, finally, represented by the official flag of the IRFU

Before this argument was settled (and some say it isn't now) the Irish rugby union team was represented by a blank space, or occasionally a green shamrock on white field.

This boring post was brought to you by Alexia at the end of a very long day in the library on Public PC number 6.

nidave wrote:

Ben wrote:

nwtv2003 wrote:What's with the Union Flag? I always thought it was the good ol' Union JACK...

I think it is only meant to be called Jack when it's flying at sea.

The Union flag is indeed only referred to as a Union jack when flying from the jack staff of a Royal Navy warship.

Interesting, didn't know that, thanks for the info.

Although that still isn't going to stop me calling it the Union Jack, that's what I've always called the flag.

The "Red Hand of Ulster" has been seen in the past few decades as a loyalist emblem, but shouldn't be. It is on the badge of the Tyrone Gaelic team and as you can see in the previous post it is the emblem of the province of Ulster.



The red hand on a St George's cross is officially the "Government of Northern Ireland" flag; though it could be argued that Northern Ireland hasn't had such a government since 1972.



We also get a strange hybrid flag here; combining the Star of David with the Government of Northern Ireland flag; I am more annoyed by this flag than most others as it makes an assumption that all loyalists have an affinity with Israel and that all republicans associate themselves with the Palestinians. It's way too simplistic to make such a comparison. There is a six-sided star at the centre of the Govt of NI flag, this though represents the six counties of Northern Ireland and has nothing to do with Israel.

Here it is, flown in it's usual position, on a lamp post. I suspect it may be the only flag never to have actually flown on a flag pole:



The part of the Union flag that represents Ireland in it's broader sense is the diagonal red stripe, St Patrick's cross. Why that isn't in a flag of Northern Ireland I'm not sure. It would seem to me that a diagonal red cross with red hand couldn't offend anyone, but then this is a place where people will get up at 6am and drive 30 miles in order to see something they consider offensive...

More on NI flags here... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keith ... lags_issue