"Blog post - some Napoleonic blogs" Topic

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Anybody notice the big error on the British Union flag on Ebay?

auction

Good spot but most people don't seem to know how it's supposed to look.

This chap is supposedly English.

An inverted flag is meant to be sign of distress.

I cannot think of any reason an Englishman would be feeling such a sentiment right now…….helps that I do have an Irish passport and have for 65 years.

No now I look again, even upside down it is still wrong. The staff side is right, the Fly side has the X wrongly shown. Tricky unless you know! The odd thing is that the real, correct, version simply looks crooked (the flag not the country…..)

Remember every feature of the flag represents the united members of the United Kingdom. It has looked subtly different in the past and…who knows?

But does it not still have the + white cross, lost a few centuries ago😋?

I know of no white cross other than St Andrews cross which is on the Union flag, always has been.

The red cross of England was on a white ground. It remains as a red + with white edging. Long back the Saltire of Scotland (white X on blue ground) was incorporated, Finally the red X of St Patrick was added, (actually early in the Napoleonic wars, so both versions seen) superimposed on the saltire. The snag is that the red X is slightly offset, so all too easy to accidentally show the flag inverted, as I first imagined here. Wales do not feature.

The flag above is also wrong in the relative proportions of red and white on the +. Red too broad, white too narrow.