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The Union Jack always reminds me of a very odd TV series I watched sometime during the eighties which was called - I think - Knights of God. IIRC it presented a future time in which the UK had been taken over by some fiendish totalitarian religious freaks, and Our Heroes in the story were on the run from them, for some reason. Being essentially a fine example of Crap Underbudgeted Brit Sci-fi, the future dystopia involved a lot of running around in woodland. The title sequence featured a burning UJ. I have fuck-all idea what that meant.
It also reminds me of the Union Jill, a multi-coloured (but mainly brown - see below) flag to replace the UJ, which was designed by crusties (hence - lots of brown: all fabric exposed to crusties for a long enough period turns brown) to be waved at protests against the Criminal Justice Bill, a piece of fascist legislation which went a step closer to turning Britain into a Crap Underbudgeted Future Dystopia for real.
By association, it reminds me of GM's ace reverse flag, which I think should be adopted immediately. Newcastle Utd fans sometimes wave around a totally black and white UJ, and that has some appeal, though looks a bit fasceeest to me, even though the red/black, Nazi-connotation flag Grant designed doesn't.
Finally, the UJ reminds me of Britains, a British (no shit, Sherlock) toy manufacturer who made odd metal figurines and plastic horses and vehicles during the 70s and 80s. They made yer usual politically incorrect stuff: cowboys and indians, various soldiers, and a wonderfully PC series of 'Crusaders and Turks' which I think ought to be revived, if only for pure irony value. They also made very odd sci-fi figurines and vehicles, which were what I liked. The fun was in working out what the fuck they were meant to be. As far as I'm aware there were no little accompanying booklets explaining who the aliens were, or what sort of futurist society the humans inhabited. Perhaps, in the simple, dualistic universe the Britains designers inhabited, aliens were just another bunch of weird-looking foreigners one had to kill. Like indians. Or Jerries. Or Turks.
Years after I'd grown out of playing the 'but what's the spaceship for?' game, however, I discovered an interesting postscript to my childhood japes, in a book of women's memories of Greenham Common. Apparently, while imprisoned for disturbing the peace (Thatcher and irony - ships passing in the night...) the peace protesting women were forced, as part of some prison labour thing, to make toys for Britains. So when I was a kid, I was playing with toys which were the very embodiment of the repressive regime I would come to despise. Weird, eh?
So, that's what the UJ sets off in my freewheelin' mind. Religious tyranny, crusty protesters, Invisibilism, and jingoistic alien-bashing.
Oh, and Big Daddy, of course! How could one forget Big Daddy! |
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