Getting under the skin of the europhiles

Getting under the skin of the europhiles

It seems our little attack on the EU flag has the European Movement scurrying around to help defend Local Authorities flying the 'advert for a political project.'


The European Movement's website has posted the following:



The Latest on the EU Flag

Latest attempts to intimidate those flying the EU flag cite "Section 19 of the Local Authority Guidelines". In fact, there is nothing here to suggest the flag shouldn't be flown.

These attempts to intimidate those flying the EU flag seem to rest upon a flippant referral to “Section 19 of the Local Authority Guidelines on Publicity”, which purportedly asserts that such activity is an abuse of public money.

Upon closer inspection, it is clear that the cited guideline does not affect the flying of the EU flag.
The details - Please click here to see the Code in full.

The set of guidelines is called, in full, the “Code of Recommended Practice on Local Authority Publicity”, and, according to its introduction, it “sets out principles of good practice to ensure that local authority decisions are properly made.”

The introduction to the Code states “Local authorities are required by section 4(1) of the [Local Government Act 1986] as amended by section 27 of the Local Government Act 1988 to have regard to the Code in coming to any decision on publicity.”

The relevant passage is the conclusion of Section 19:

“local authorities, like other public authorities, should not use public funds to mount publicity campaigns whose primary purpose is to persuade the public to hold a particular view on a question of policy.”

This is not in any way relevant to the question of flying the EU flag :- The EU flag does not advocate a view on policy, therefore it cannot hope to persuade the public to take on a particular view on policy. Regardless, the primary purpose of flying the flag could only be to make the public more aware that the UK is a member state of the EU, and this is plainly a fact, not a view.