Flag murder
Oh my god not a flag!!!
The Metropolitan Police has appealed to the public to help it identify a suspect after three painted Pride flags in north-east London were vandalised for a third time.
The incident, which happened outside Forest Gate railway station on 19 July, is being treated as a homophobic and transphobic hate crime, the force said. It follows previous incidents of damage on 23 and 26 June outside the same station.
Det Insp James Rush said the force would “not tolerate these disgusting, inexcusable hate crimes in Forest Gate”.
Do the police ever say they will not tolerate these disgusting, inexcusable hate crimes against women? Do the police even mention hate crimes against women much?
Det Insp Rush said: “We stand with the local LGBTQ+ community.”
Do the police ever say they stand with the local women community?
Not that I’ve seen. Maybe they’re too busy with flag crime. The BBC certainly is.
Is burning the Union Jack a crime in Britain?
Colin, it’s perfectly legal so long as the person burning the flag either owns it or has the owner’s permission.
Now, painting flags on the ground on public land such as roads, pavements (sidewalks), pedestrian zones, etc. definitely is illegal without specific permission from the council if the paint is permanent or semi-permanent: it’s graffiti and therefore damage to public property, which makes me wonder whether the police checked to see if the painters of all of the vandalised Pride flags had permission to paint them in the first place, because otherwise they should be investigated as well as those who painted over them.
Sort of underlines my point. It could be that some people are just fed up with all the pride graffiti, not because it’s pride but because it’s graffiti.
“Hate crime”? It’s an inanimate object fergawdssake.
Meanwhile these idiotic mofos haven’t solved a single burglary in “more than 150 neighborhoods” in THREE YEARS.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/07/15/met-police-burglary-suspect-failure-identify-channel-4-disp/
Add me to the list of people wondering quite where to draw the line between graffiti and official… pavement art? I also wondered when the police have ever called it a hate crime when other political or social messages on pavements have been simply painted over but I guess we will never know, because only the Rainbow People get official-pavement-graffiti levels of support. And also also, I don’t get why anything would be painted on the ground in order to support or promote it. If burning a flag is a gesture of disrespect (or “hate” if it’s a pride flag), then what do you call it when people tread chewing gum and cigarette butts into it?