Our George is no chav

In my obsessive trawl through the Sunday papers on-line (beginning with the News of the World, followed by the Sunday Mirror, then the Observer, the Sunday Times and if there's time the Sunday Telegraph. My left eyelid does not stop twitching until the ritual is complete, family know not to approach) I found this article by India Knight, who writes about subjects that interest me - class, kids, sometimes France - and found myself not agreeing with it.

She confesses to find the flag of St George distasteful and common, and doesn't want it hanging from the windows of her house.

I would love to see the opposite of what happened to the Burberry label happen to our flag. In short, something associated with sink estates and the far-too-common man becoming a mark of refinement. We need to see the flag hanging from both the football terraces and the terraces of Kensington and Chelsea with equal pride, and displayed in the windows of houses in the posh end of every town. We need to see Prince William wearing St George cufflinks. Why not? We are the only country in the world that has an embarassing flag. No other nation does this to itself.

On St George's Day in 1995 I was working as a reporter for a regional newspaper. I was often sent out on jobs noone else wanted to do - and it fell to me to pop across the road to Tesco's and lurk about outside questioning members of the public about pressing issues of the day. I had to ask ten people if they knew what holiday it was that day. Not one person knew.

Maybe one of St George's people saw the article, because since then St George has got himself an agent and St George's Day is back in the national consciousness. But there still remains the small problem of the logo...

The solution is for poshos to take over the flag of St George in the same way that they are so good at taking over other things. Glastonbury and Cornwall come to mind.