Roche Limit

With the Football World Cup starting soon in Qatar, lots of fans will be dusting off their little plastic national flags to clip to the doors of their cars to show support for their teams. You must have seen them around, little flags with the cross of St George fluttering above the side windows.

OK, so I object to anyone flying our national flag who feels the need for the word England to be printed across the middle. It smacks of the far-right Little-Englanders protesting the arrival of refugees from war zones on the basis that they want to take jobs that should by all rights be left vacant by born-and-bread Englishmen. But is there a better reason for banning the flags flown from car doors?

Flags are not very aerodynamic, and cause drag, making the car burn more petrol than normal. It amounts to one to two percent more drag than normal, so over the couple of months before and during the World Cup in Qatar each car with a pair of small flags will, on average, use an extra five litres (or a gallon) of petrol.

If a million cars in England (almost typed the UK there — but no-one in Scotland will be flying the Cross of St George!) had two flags each, that amounts to five million litres of petrol spent dragging flags around the country’s roads.

Banning these silly little flags would have the same environmental effect as shutting down a large power station for five days, and save British motorists over five million pounds of expense. It is enough petrol to fill two Olympic sized swimming pools. This might be OK, since swimming pools are shutting down due to the current cost of heating them, but this oil has better uses if it must be drilled from the ground at all.

It will only have a miniscule effect on global warming, but with the cost of living crisis in full flow, a few quid saved would be worth something. So what is holding the government back in these days of austerity? Stow the flags in support of England!