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UPDATED: A little car accessory for #GE2015? [Shinners, look away now! – Ed]

on 28 March 2015 , 1:16 pm 28 | 1,735 views

I love the enterprise that General Elections often bring out on the net. Now that we don’t need to have a paper version of the road tax disc in the front windscreen David Storey of StoreyTech has come up with taxdiscposter.co.uk. From a local point of view, Alliance, the SDLP and the UUs seem to have missed the cut.

And, erm, Sinn Fein might be wishing they had too:

ge2015-vote-sinn-fein-80x80_med_hr

 

 

Can’t see David shifting too many of those… Update: And, relax… [Looks like we did a good thing! – Ed]

ge2015-vote-sinn-fein-80x80_med_hr-2

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  • chrisjones2

    Surrounded by Brits. That is shocking. I must complain though – shouldn’t the SF circle be closer to 33% of the area

  • Turgon

    Might it be worth having a larger version of this disc and seeing what reception a car with it on gets in various areas? Purely in the interests of political science and no you can’t borrow my car.

  • Catcher in the Rye

    Gerry Kelly saw one of these on a PSNI windshield and famously attempted to grab at it once

  • Jay

    Vote SF. Block out the Brits. Seems legit…

  • Robin Keogh

    Fealty, you are a brat !

  • chrisjones2

    Is there an austerity version made of tissue paper that goes a sort of pale green when exposed to sunlight

    🙂

  • Korhomme

    The SNP has the same background….something not quite right there, either.

  • siphonophorest

    .

  • Jay

    You’ve obviously never heard of Gregory Campbell. That man is hilarious! Toilet paper and youghurt!! You could not make it up, I swear I’ve never seen a wordsmith like it before in my life!

  • siphonophorest

    .

  • chrisjones2

    He aspires to be a stand up comedian

  • PaulT

    Is it me or is that fairly poor quality work (even by British standards) I mean the makey uppy ‘cross of st patrick’ seems to be turned a few degrees anti-clockwise, no wonder Fleggers bulk buy union jacks from a factory in China, the local stuff is appalling

  • Am Ghobsmacht

    PaulT
    Are all flags not ‘makey uppy’?
    What makes the St Pat’s Cross any more makey uppy than say the yellow Ulster flag?

  • barnshee

    Shows how far behind this lot are “tax” discs are no longer displayed

  • siphonophorest

    .

  • Reader

    No, that is deliberate, and can be seen on the full flag. One of the white lines on the diagonal is a full cross, whereas the other is just a dividing line between the red and the blue, and is therefore thinner.
    That’s how you can tell if the flag is upside down or not.

  • PaulT

    er the yellow is actually gold, the gold background and red cross is from the DeBurgo/DeBurca/Burke coat of arms (I’m one myself) the red hand is from the O’Neill family. The crest (I think) is to separate both elements of the flag as heraldic rules forbid separate crests/flags being connected/touching. Pretty much as per Readers comments above, the various crosses on the union flag are not allowed to touch.

    So the Ulster flag is constructed from the family crests of it’s two ruling families, so defo no makey up.

    Only martyred saints have flags and St Patrick died of old age and hence hasn’t got a flag. If he did qualify for a flag than I’m fairly confident that St Patricks Blue would feature in it.

    The Cross of St Patrick was created for the Order of Saint Patrick, nothing to do with Saint Patrick, Ireland or Christianity, so IMHO a makey uppy flag

  • PaulT

    Oh I know that, but the proportions look wrong, although that may be an optical illusion

  • Am Ghobsmacht

    “So the Ulster flag is constructed from the family crests of it’s two ruling families, so defo no makey up.”.

    Or to put it another way it’s ‘made up’ from two of Ulster’s ruling families.

    “Only martyred saints have flags and St Patrick died of old age and hence hasn’t got a flag”

    St David died of old age too, he has a cross/flag.

    “The Cross of St Patrick was created for the Order of Saint Patrick, nothing to do with Saint Patrick, Ireland or Christianity, so IMHO a makey uppy flag”

    Allegedly, but no one is sure.

    But we are sure that one of the key members of the Order was a Fitzgerald.

    Are you really convinced that the Fitzgerald’s family crest was just by coincidence the exact same crest/flag of the order that he joined/potentially helped to found?

    When the Fitzgerald’s founded St Patrick’s college Maynooth in property that they owned and decided to use the saltire for that institution (and subsequently numerous St Patrick’s cathedrals and schools around the world) was it really the saltire of the order rather than a familial homage that was utilised?

    That’s a remarkable coincidence (and unusually modest in aristocratic terms) is it not?

    This chap is quite level headed and as he’s not a professional historian I can’t quote him as proof BUT it is a further addition to the gallery of ‘coincidences’ regarding the flag and Geraldine contribution.

    http://samsflags.blogspot.com/2014/03/st-patricks-saltire.html

  • mickfealty

    Amended design now included.

  • mickfealty

    Ball not man Robin, old chap. Under ‘pressure’ from Slugger, David has squeezed out a new more appropriate design.

    [All things come to those who wait!]

  • Robin Keogh

    I wasn’t meaning to be on the attack, my comment was in Jest as I thought the thread was merely a bit of humour

  • PaulT

    From the Wiki entry for the Flag of St David

    “The history of the flag is somewhat obscure, though it seems to have emerged at the beginning of the 20th century. One theory is that it was developed to”

    Sounds like they took the colours associated with St David and made up a flag, thats another example of a makey uppy flag

    Although, unlike the St Patrick flag, it does appear to have some support among the Welsh and was created by the Welsh.

    From scanning your link (thnxs for that, it looks worth a fuller read later) it appears that the use of the Cross of St Patrick and it’s creation is 100% English/British, and it’s only usage outside of the UK is some CoI churches in Ireland.

  • mickfealty

    It is and it was… 😉

  • Am Ghobsmacht

    Indeed Paul, a flag has to be invented at some stage, the Irish tricolour was ‘made up’ at some point as was the Newfoundland tricolour just like all flags.

    I do recommend Sam’s blog, he seems like a good egg and not overly biased.

    But going by his blog and what we know the idea of it being an English invention seems a bit far fetched:

    a/ (From Sam’s blog) “Several atlases and flag books in the late 17th and 18th centuries show a red-saltire–on–white flag for Ireland; including Paulus van der Dussen’s (c.1690), and Le Neptune françois, a marine atlas published in Amsterdam in 1693, where it is depicted with the legends Ierse above and Irlandois below — Dutch and French for “Irish”. Jan Blaeu’s 1650s atlas has a saltire on white for Ireland, which is hand-coloured red in some copies.

    A 1785 newspaper report from Waterford states about ships leaving for the colonies that:

    “Upwards of forty vessels are now in our harbour, victualling for Newfoundland, of which number thirteen are of our own nation, who wear the St Patrick’s flag (the field of which is white, with a St Patrick’s cross, and an harp in one quarter.)”

    ”

    b/ I mentioned earlier that the Fitzgeralds were quite high up in the Order and therefore influential, we can’t dismiss the idea that the Earl of Kildare transplanted his crest in a similar fashion to how your ancestors partly transplanted part of their crest to the Ulster Flag.

    “and it’s only usage outside of the UK is some CoI churches in Ireland.

    ”

    Not true, St Patrick’s seminary, Maynooth (setup by the Fitzgeralds) uses the flag.
    Indeed, I was lead to believe that the St Pat’s cross is an official flag for the Catholic church in Ireland but I won’t commit to that assertion without some proof.

    As a consequence of this you’ll find the St Pat’s cross being used all over the word in Catholic schools and Cathedrals that bear the name St Patrick eg. St Patrick’s diocese in New York or St Patrick’s schools in Australian, Canada, the USA or Ireland etc:

    http://web.cecv.catholic.edu.au/schools/schoolinfo.asp?searchfor=E1073 , http://reg.gg.ca/heraldry/pub-reg/project-pic.asp?lang=e&ProjectID=228&ProjectElementID=821, http://www.abbeycbs.co.uk/colleges.html, http://www.breastplate.org/ , http://homepage.eircom.net/~stpatbns/, plus there are a few GAA clubs that have the saltire on their crest e.g. http://www.lancashiregaa.co.uk/club.php?id=8 BUT we can’t assume that it’s a St Pat’s cross per se for the rest of them: http://www.stvincentsgaa.ie/aboutus.aspx

    And again, here’s another of Sam’s blogs: http://samsflags.blogspot.com/2014/11/development-history-of-irish-flags-pt7.html the bottom photo shows the flag being flown by St Pat’s Catholic Cathedral in Armagh.

    The more I look at this the more I believe that St Pat’s Cross is getting the historical treatment similar to that which Orangemen reserve for Pope Alexander VIII (and his support of William) or the London bankers & merchants who brought about the ‘coup’ for William (it ruins the ‘Glorious Revolution’ image).

    Nationalists don’t like St Pat’s Cross, Orangemen don’t like the Pope or the idea that the Boyne wasn’t about ‘Popery’ ergo everything gets swept under the carpet.

    Ho hum.

  • PaulT

    yes but as I keep pointing out it was the flag/banner of the Order of St Patrick, it really doesn’t matter how often it is flown it doesn’t change that fact.

    Perhaps if you can show how it became directly associated to St Patrick, and by who we might get somewhere.

    You see, all the examples you give of flags all have a bone fide origin except for St Patricks flag (even St Davids has some anchor)

  • Am Ghobsmacht

    Yes, it became the symbol of the Order of St Patrick as well but we can’t verify that the flag came to be just because of that order. A vexilogical chicken-egg-scenario so to speak.

    Couldn’t Fitzy have sponsored BOTH the Order’s crest and the flag?

    What do you consider to be bone fide origin?

    All flags have a point where they don’t exist and then they do exist, what singles out St Pat’s cross for exclusion?

    I mean, if I was (somehow) to name the green and white saltire the ‘St Columba’s Cross’, have it registered as Northern Ireland’s official flag does it then not ‘count’ as a flag?

    Does that mean you don’t recognise St Piran’s Cross?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Piran's_Flag The flag came about centuries after his death (and he wasn’t martyred either).

    You said that St Pat’s Cross seems to be a purely British invention, but you can’t back this up.

    I can’t say with any great certainty either that it was the Fitzgerald’s who ‘sponsored’ it but if they didn’t then the level of coincidence is quite incredible.

    IF evidence came to light that it was a Geraldine implementation would you then accept the flag as bone fide?

  • PaulT

    There’s been a fair bit of giggery pokery with Saints, Irish Saints brought Christianity to Britain but are largely written out of History, replaced with St George and Andrew.

    St Patrick was one of several missionaries working in Ireland, he worked mostly around Armagh.

    There is evidence that St Patrick is actually a montage of a number of these missionaries.

    Ireland has other much more important Saints both nationally and internationally that are overlooked

    The first St Patricks parades were British soldiers.

    I’m more of a St Brigid person meself, but recognise the value of St Patricks day to Ireland and the Irish