A flag is basically a sign – a symbol or image intended to impart some sort of message or information to the person viewing it. In the case of flags, that symbol usually represents a country, nation, area or place. As Ferdinand de Sasseur famously pointed out, the relationship between a sign and what it symbolises is arbitrary, so flags have no relationship with the places they represent: the Union Jack does not look like anywhere in Britain; the American flag doesn’t look like anywhere in the USA. Changing what a flag looks like won’t alter the collective personalities of the community it represents in any way. Why oh why, then, are so many people getting so uptight just because a sportswear company changed the colours of a flag on the back of the collar of the English football shirt?

It is a tiny detail which nobody will notice, but judging by the furore it has caused, you would think it was the end of the world. I was listening to people phoning in to talk about this issue this morning, and they were saying all sorts of things about it being an insult to our national identity. How ridiculous! After all, the Saint which the cross on the English flag supposedly represents, Saint George, never even came to Britain, but was Turkish! Yet the people phoning in were speaking as if someone had just spat in our collective face.

Of course, the sportswear company in question could have made this change just to cause some upset and attract some media attention, which is why I won’t name them; but I nonetheless find it staggering that people are getting so furious about this. FFS it’s just a flag you cretinous, nationalist buffoons!