I watched yesterday a news report of an enormous Union Flag covering the building of the old Chesterfield Council apparently causing some controversy with council officials.

They wanted it taken down as they regarded it as advertising.

The Union Flag has never been issue for British patriots, but it seems it touches a raw nerve when it comes to politicians be they national or local.

I live in France now and one little trick I play on my British friends when they visit us is to count the national flags, not the Tricolour but the Union Flag.

I then ask them over the same weekend to do the same in the UK and see if they can exceed it, they can’t.

Some of my wife’s relatives took up the challenge and counted 104!

I slightly cheated on that one as there was a British Film Festival being held in Dinard, near the channel port of Saint Malo.

If you visit many of the World War cemeteries you will see the Union Flag flying proudly alongside the Tricolour.

I would also point out to my friends that the Tricolour is flown on every public building alongside the EU and town flag in virtually every town.

I have noticed recently the inclusion of the Ukrainian Flag.

There are French cemeteries where the Tricolour is flown too, apparently you are still French when you are dead.

Go to Paris during Bastille Day and you will see a similar size flag as that in Chesterfield fluttering in the breeze under the Arc de Triomphe.

It is not just France, go to the USA and you will soon identify what country you are in. The Stars and Stripes dominate everywhere, public or private buildings.

I have encountered the hang-up as an entrepreneur running my businesses. When I ran a chain of convenience stores in the East Midlands our head office was opposite the Trent Bridge Cricket Ground. I noticed whenever there was a Test Match on being beamed across the world you would only know there was a game on from two small billboards stuck on the boundary wall outside the ground and the tv cameras on their elevated platforms.

I thought it would be a good idea if we displayed flags outside our office on the first floor above our store. So, in March I approached the Rushcliffe Borough Council to have planning permission for three flag poles erected below our first floor office window. The centre one the Union Flag, the one to the right of it Saint George’s, and to its left the National Flag of the visiting team. The next Test Match was in August. When I asked when the permission would be forthcoming so I could brief the building contractors I was told September!

Then came out the ‘Grandad Speech.’ I told the pimply council official that if my Grandad, who had fought in the Great War at most of the battles in places like Mons, Ypres, the Somme, Dardanelles with stints in Egypt and China during the Boxer Rebellion had thought some council was to stop his grandson raising the flag he would turn in his grave. The flags are going up and if the council tried to stop me there would be every media channel watching me in the way of them failing to bring it down.’

I might have gone a bit over the top when I told the official, ‘Sonny, go back to your office and have another think about it.’

I phoned Kenneth Clark the local MP told him of my problem, and he smoothed ruffled feathers with the Council’s CEO.

That was thirty years ago and still our politicians don’t get the message as on many issues the electorate are concerned about!