Scottish independence: a possible silver lining

There’s been some silly speculation recently about how the flag of the United Kingdom would change in the case of a Yes vote in the Scottish independence referendum on Thursday. One suggestion printed in a number of newspapers was this monstrosity:

The yellow and black parts are taken from the flag of Saint David, patron saint of Wales (which isn’t currently represented on the Union flag, being a subordinate principality of England, not a constituent nation of the Union).

Now, obviously this is never going to happen. It would require a) Scotland to vote Yes, b) the remainder of the United Kingdom to choose to change its flag, which isn’t necessary, and c) for us to choose this ugly variation. Of those conditionals, the first is the only one which seems within the bounds of plausibility.

But if they were all to come true, and we ended up with this hideous flag, at least there’d be one silver lining…

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Pub bans soldiers to appease Muslims? – Exposing a neo-Nazi lie

A story is currently doing the rounds that the Globe, a pub in Leicester, has banned all British soldiers out of respect for the local Islamic community.

I first saw it shared on Facebook via a post [no link, I don’t want to support it] on a blog called the Daily Bale.

That the story is completely spurious should be obvious with half a second’s thought: how many teetotal Muslim customers is the Globe likely to have, causing tensions with others?

It takes less than 10 seconds of investigation to confirm that it’s complete rubbish, via an announcement on the Globe’s Twitter feed.

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