“Money does not grow on trees” (From Croydon Guardian)

“Money does not grow on trees”

3:22pm Friday 18th April 2008 in

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The other standard quotation is "Turkeys would not vote for Christmas".

I am beginning to wonder if that claim is still true.
Everyone seems to be in favour of a reduction in their tax bills.

However, it seems a very high proportion of our society are unable to see the simple connection between what they want or allow their politicians, local and national, to do and the size of their tax bill.

The question posed in the Local Guardian on-line edition a week or two ago was "Should public buildings fly the Union Flag?".

At my last look, of those who responded, 91.5% voted "Yes", 3.8% voted "No", 0.3% "Did Not Know" and 3.8% "Did Not Care".

How can this be? Flag flying, in line with traditional British reserve, is what was, until very recent years, regarded as something only to be done on very special occasions. Flag flying, domestically and on motor vehicles, is a relatively new practice in England.

It has been primarily associated with sporting activities. It has involved, in particular, the very late assertion of their nationality by English who had not seen the need until recently to follow the assertion of their nationality practiced by the other three home countries in flying their national flags.

I suggest that the majority of respondents could not have thought this issue through but have responded from their hearts and not their heads.

The population of Wales, who have no component of the Union Flag to represent their country, will not want to fly it.

They would prefer the Welsh Dragon Flag. The population of Scotland, who do have the Cross of St Andrew's in the Union Flag to represent them, will prefer to fly that flag alone.

In Northern Ireland, in their particular situation, flag
flying has for too many long sad years been controversial.

Encouraging flag flying at this time in our islands' history is most unwise to say the very least.

Being a tax payer of the older generation, who learned from hard experience "that money does not grow on trees", the last thing I would wish to do is to encourage our spendthrift national and local Government politicians to waste yet more money. There would be thousands, probably millions of pounds, of hard earned tax payers' money squandered on flags and flag-poles, overtime to public servants to raise the hundreds, probably thousands, of flags at dawn and lower them at sunset, frequent flag renewals, staff training in health and safety when flag raising and lowering, and lessons in which way up to fly the Union Flag.

Then there would be the cost of the very many hours our politicians would spend arguing whether they should fly the Union Flag or another national flag.

Added to that would be the cost of the time our public servants would spend deciding what size flag was appropriate for each and every building and where each and every batch of flags should be bought following an expensive tendering process.

From every viewpoint a totally hair-brained idea.

And yet the majority of Guardian readers who voted seem to want to have their hard earned money spent in such an unnecessary way.

They cannot all be public servants who might stand to gain, can they?