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So from your picture the "Top of the Pole" is to the right? and if that is the standard way that means the Aussies got it wrong!

And then there is the small matter of 75% of all the teams being based in ENGLAND!

connollyg wrote:Flags normally have an obvious top so that they always get hung the right way up, but most people don't seem to even know that the Union Flag (aka Union Jack) is not symetrical and has a right and wrong way to be hung (Broad white diagonal on the top nearest the pole).

Now the flags on the podium are hung as a banner, so are there rules in how flags should be hung in this way. Is the logical top of the pole to the left or to the right?

In this picture of the podium in Australia the Union Flag is hung one way and the German and the Russian flag the other, So is this dissing the Union Jack or the German and Russian Flags?


Sorry couldnt work how to put in the image

Well, if you want to be that pedantic about a flag, you could also only call it by its proper name, the union flag. It's only a jack when it's on a boat (or on the Tower Bridge in London as it is registered as a vessel, not as a building).

I'm only joking with you mate...

@manchild
May I say you're a dreamer? Call me old fashioned but.. I refuse to root for vodaphonies and fizzy drinks.

feynman wrote:I always enjoy seeing animations that show the European borders ebb, flow and twist over 2000 years. How late the German city states snap into a country. The utter impermanence of supposedly fixed and intransigent borders. Contrast it with how tightly some try to cling to those imaginary lines drawn on maps, as if they have always been there, as if they actually exist in the real world as opposed to only in people's minds.

And of course so many of our current problems are due, in part, to arbitrary lines drawn on a map by the European powers (quite often we Brits sadly) in the early part of the C20. The Middle East is a good case of this. Lots of tribes/traditional groupings suddenly thrust together as a country.

Pandamasque wrote:I refuse to root for vodaphonies and fizzy drinks.

Corporations generally try not to kill their customers, it's not profitable in the long run.

Air Asia doesn't launch airstrikes on Virgin Atlantic. Puma doesn't send suicide bombers into Reebok stores. Red Bull doesn't employ spotters to guide artillery shells lobbed into crowded marketplaces.
Without option to resort to crude compulsion, closed borders and the violence of the state, corporations instead have to compete by being constantly better than their rivals, by offering better choices, by better serving their customers.

The murder and mayhem, the repression and suppression, that's largely restricted to governments and rebels-that-want-to-be-governments. To nations, anthems and flags. To fostered and orchestrated resentment and fear of "the other".
The democracy of globalization and free-trade, the billions of individual tiny referenda that occur daily by unique individuals is far superior to the archaic xenophobic nationalist state and it's mythologies.

Vodafone (and rivals) mobile networks in developing nations will easily do more to liberate more humans from poverty than any nation-state or flag has done for them in the last two centuries.
For that I'd salute a Vodafone flag long before I stood for any nation's flag.


Why 21st century globalized F1 still feels the need to wallow in such an old-fashioned, outmoded, unhelpful idea as nations, I do not know.


You are supposed to be proud of your achievements, your own achievements, that's the point. No-one had any say in where they were born, I don't see how you get to be "proud" of that.

Vettel was on the top step Sunday because of his individual talents and his multinational team's accomplishments, not because of his birthplace.
Austrian and Thai money paying an English designer and a French engineer for a German driver.
There should have been a Red Bull flag flying to celebrate that, to celebrate that individuality and that diversity.

OK this is turning into a political thread, can somebody please lock this?

It's just not the place for that kind of discourse.

Just_a_fan wrote:[And I'd rather they showed country flags rather than sponsor flags, that's for sure, even if for no other reason than motor racing started out as a nation-against-nation type of event. It's part of F1 history, you see.

raymondu999 wrote:So if I'm understanding you right, it's more like the US and it's states? Except this is only 3 different entities?

As others have said it is more like Italy before unification in 1859.

It would be like the USA teams racing under confederate or union flags.

England, Scotland and Wales were soveriegn states that joined in a union after a few battles and marriages.

Germany and Italy don't use the old sovereign state flags due to the turmoil of modern revolution and war making it too painful to go back to the old ways.

Perhaps the better comparison would be with the UK and the German empire that included German, Austria, Hungary and a few others.

The thing is that the UK (est 1606) hasn't had a full on modern revolution to forge a modern state, compared to the modern European states forged in the turmoil of the 19C.

bot6 wrote:OK this is turning into a political thread, can somebody please lock this?

It's just not the place for that kind of discourse.

pft - you've only been here 3 weeks!

Sit back and enjoy the conversation.

Just_a_fan wrote:And I'd rather they showed country flags rather than sponsor flags, that's for sure, even if for no other reason than motor racing started out as a nation-against-nation type of event. It's part of F1 history, you see.

Gold Leaf, John Player Special, Elf, Parmalat, Canon, Marlboro, Benetton, Mild Seven, Vodafone, Red Bull that's a greater, glorious, better, more significant part of F1 history than dressing up cars in specious "national" colours.

This thread will be packing up shortly and moving to the wonderful Off Topic section of F1T. But that doesn't mean it won't be locked when it arrives, just behave and discuss respectfully.

connollyg wrote:So from your picture the "Top of the Pole" is to the right? and if that is the standard way that means the Aussies got it wrong!

Pardon me? I did not understand.

Could you point us to the picture where the flag is wrongly presented in the podium, please? I have not been able to find any.

What I mean is that, as you stated, the correct way to hang the flag is like this:



Any other way to present it is lesse majesté (goes against dignity of the other country) or borders on it.

I'd guess (I'm not sure), that if hanging from a bar, like in the picture I presented, then the top of the flag, where the bar is, is the equivalent of the pole, so it seems that in that picture is correctly presented.

Anyway, to avoid the risks, I would always present flags horizontally, given the fact that some persons can be offended if a national flag is improperly handled or presented and I have a lot of British friends.

There have been pretty funny happenings with national flags in sport ceremonies, so this wouldn't be the first.

In Colombia, President Valencia greeted President De Gaulle, after a long speech emphasizing the common ground between the two countries, Colombia and France, with a heartfelt "Viva España"!

No one other than the President of South Korea was photographed with an upside down national flag, waving happily at the Olympics starting ceremony. It appeared everywhere.

The red half of the Ying-Yang like symbol goes on top.


As for songs, I remember this one:

When I find myself in times of trouble
Mother Mary comes to me... la, la, la... :-"

I humbly believe that this thread is part of, or is related to a Formula One race, so it wouldn't be proper to move it to the off-topic subforum. If some posts have to be erased because they are off-topic, so be it.

Actually, with all due respect, if any of you think that a post is wrong, please, use the report button (the little triangle with an admiration sign on it), please.

It's like the proper display of a flag: it doesn't mean you're against/for anything, but you are showing respect for other people.

That is more important when you feel angry by something but you can overcome the anger and allow other people, ehem, like conolly and me, to keep threads interesting and to the point.

So, conolly, let's see the picture. It would be almost news worthy to have a picture of the British flag wrongly displayed at a GP.

@bot6 But i did refer to it as the Union Flag! with a (aka Union Jack)

@ciro

Looking at it again if the logical top is to the right then the Union Jack is right and the other two are wrong. Whatever they should all be pointing the same way.

Uploaded it to Picasa web, it should be here