After flipping through a book of flags yesterday I think I settled on this as my favourite. It's the flag of the Marshall Islands (motto: Jepilpilin ke ejukaan or Accomplishment through joint effort. Nice). The Marshall Islands were the site of much American atomic testing and are one of the most irradiated places on the planet apparently. I don't think they've got much going on and I'm sure I'll never visit. Still, top flag.Design-wise my runners up were Kuala Lumpur and Brazil. Maybe I'd have rated the Union Jack higher if it wasn't so familiar. It's a pretty good flag I think. Once upon a time I thought it'd be quite a good money spinner to make handkerchiefs of all the flags - they'd look really good and people would have got obsessive about having all of them (well, I would). But then I got to thinking about all the nutters who'd take offence over people blowing their noses on their beloved fatherland's emblem.
surely Danny Wallace's 'Kingdom of Lovely' flag was in with a shout eh?!
ReplyDeleteP
I like Abkhazia. Not so much a country as a de jure independent state, but I like it anyway.
ReplyDeleteI was mad on flags aged 8 to 10, and Brazil was a fave but Morocco and Mexico more recently..
ReplyDeleteApparently there's a correct to hang the Union Jack or else it's upside down?
Piley - I'd forgotten about that and had to look it up. I think I read about him going to Sealand. Call me old fashioned but my idea of a flag doesn't include pixels.
ReplyDeleteST - I find the hand a bit creepy. Like it's a severed hand or something. And didn't the Orcs have a white hand as their emblem in Lord of the Rings? So, all things considered: pretty cool.
Mondo - Yes, I've heard about hanging the Union Jack upside down as a way of signaling that all is not well - typically employed by subalterns in forts on the North Western Frontier. Still, a handy trick to have up your sleeve but I've looked at the flag this way and that and I'm buggered if I can see a difference.
If anybody blew their nose on a finish flag that would be ok for me. But if a real fin saw it he would proboly kick the person. Finland has a very patriotic feeling. The American flag is nice I think,. I like stars. I thought about beeing a fisher man but I get so sea sick in the ocean.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad to hear you've such a relaxed attitude towards your flag - I think there's something deeply wrong with people who get worked up about such things (and nationalism in general really). I agree the Stars and Stripes is an excellent looking flag, just a bit used to it though. I seem to remember reading somewhere that it's based on George Washington's family coat of arms.
ReplyDeletedoesn't it predate George Washington? The earliest version had the 13 founding states represented as stars in a ring in the top left-hand corner with the red and white bars on the rest of the flag as today. I think the 13 stars replaced the union jack in that section of the flag, but otherwise the same design as had been used to represent the colonies. I could be wrong though. It is a good flag. Let's burn it.
ReplyDeleteLooking it up on Wikipedia - they definitely ripped off the East India Company flag. The article does mention the Washington coat of arms, but that theory seems a bit redundant when faced with the East India thing.
ReplyDeleteThe flag with the stripes and the stars in a circle (the 'Betsy Ross') looks like a merger between the USA and the EU - who knows, it might come back into fashion?