#SwindonsSundaySermon: Operation Raise The Colours is the least patriotic thing you could do

One thing we have learnt about Keir Starmer — aside from him being the son of a toolmaker, some forty four times  — is his willingness to abandon any semblance of a socialist principle to bring the Labour Party in harmonious alignment with establishment interests.

Starmer is also particularly fond of a freebie or two. Well, more freebies than ever other Labour leader combined since confused, angry dinosaurs wandered across Swindon’s infamous Magic Roundabout, paint pots in hand, at a Reform UK rally.

Believe it or not, I’m not going to go on about Keir Starmer, this week, because this flag fondling nonsense in the form of Operation Raise The Colours is far more entertaining than Keith the dulcet ringworm.

Let’s start with a note to the flag-fancying Reformerisers. Swindon doesn’t have an “immigration problem”, but we do have beautifully diverse communities that makes the town tick along quite nicely, thank you very much.

I should also mention, oh gullible follower of snake oil Farage, Swindon is in the northern part of a landlocked county called Wiltshire, so trim your trotters, take yourself and your intolerable intolerances to the White Cliffs of Dover, and practice some paragliding without the bit that makes you effortlessly glide.

Don’t gasp, comrades. Just contribute to their train fare to Dover because jumping on a GWR train tends to cost an arm, a leg, a kidney, and for them deluded fuckers, any chance of a trip to Istanbul for a fresh head of hair

I can picture the placards now…

“We want are cuntry back”

“BREXIT MEANT BREXIT”

“The Ministry of Defence has spent more than £8 million compensating survivors of historic child sex abuse committed by military personnel or on military bases since 2017”

Okay, perhaps they’ll give the last one a swerve as it doesn’t fit in with their own hateful, intolerant, right-wing agenda.

Operation Raise The Colours. Really?

If people want to display a flag in their garden, or take part in “Operation Raise The Colours”, they have every right to do so. But this show of ‘patriotism’ has absolutely nothing to do with a deep and profound love for Britain and everything to do with bigotry, division, and hate for anyone that wasn’t born in Britain.

What’s patriotic about stalking refugees in their temporary accommodation? Explain it to me as if I am five-years-old, because terrifying people in a supposed place of safety for the sake of clicks, likes, follows and ultimately, subscription fees, is a pretty fucking hideous and depraved thing to do, in my humble opinion.

Britain’s substandard, dated infrastructure, appalling public services, and successive Tory governments of both a red and blue persuasion cannot be pinned on a small rubber dinghy containing trafficked humans.

How naive and incapable of thinking for themselves must a person be to believe all of society’s ills are stored away in a shit Travelodge on the M4?

It will be the same gullible individuals that fork out forty quid for a Reform FC football jersey. I’m surprised Farage doesn’t know you can buy perfect copies of any football shirt from China for around £7.

Real patriotism

The Canary sponsors a real grassroots football team, right here in Swindon. Great Western FC are a proper community based football club, with players from every background imaginable.

This coming Saturday, ‘GWFC’ have organised a match with a local refugee support charity, the Harbour Project, and their team of refugee footballers, Harbour FC.

The charity itself aims to be a family for every individual who seeks asylum or is granted refugee status in Swindon, and to help them to rebuild their lives.

Harbour provides advice, support, practical help and friendship, which gives the man, woman or unaccompanied child the best possible chance of a fair hearing, a fair outcome from their asylum claim, and a fair future in Britain.

That makes me feel so much more patriotic than giving Farage another few quid for his retirement pot, if I’m being honest with you.

While Farage, Robinson and everything that is wrong with NHS dentistry services are looking to incite hatred towards refugees, the Canary-sponsored Great Western FC are working with local refugee charities to support their vital work in our communities.

Stop the flag shagging

If you want to waste £40 on your own little piece of racist memorabilia for the equally racist Operation Raise The Colours, be my guest, and when you are bored with it you can hang it up next to your justice for Lucy Connolly onesie and that musty smelling brown shirt.

I struggle to see the patriotism angle with this flag thing. It’s nationalism.

Buying a Chinese-made flag that’s dedicated to a dude born in Turkey on the say so of an Australian-owed tabloid just doesn’t make me want to bash out a few lines from God Save The German King with the ancestral links to the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, if you get where I’m coming from?

Aaaaaand breathe…

Featured image via the Canary