thanks for your comment even though I beg to disagree with DC and his flag waving crusade.

I wonder what sort of PR that would entail but in my opinion Government isn’t doing enough with this thing they call “integration” whatever that means

You have asked some interesting questions. It’s great that the government has a vision of how culture should look or what it should embody. But I do not like the notion that an event’s cultural significance or worth is determined by the racial makeup of its audience. To me that is political correctness gone overboard. My concern is that events should not be exclusive or prohibitive and that everybody should be able to attend. If people choose not to attend, however, that’s another matter. Maybe in this case it’s a question of making classical music in general more accessible or better understood so that people want to go to the Proms. Maybe it’s about better promotion of the event to ethnic minorities.

I think we also need to see things in context. If you have watched or attended the Proms you will see that flag waving actually occurs on one night - the last night. It would trouble me if the waving of the flag was accompanied by racist chanting, but it isn’t. The Last Night at the Proms is a pretty celebratory and high spirited event. I am not particularly comfortable with the Union Jack because in my mind there are a lot of negative connotations carried with it. However, I’m sure there are (non-racist) English people who feel proud to carry it and I personally feel they should have the right to do so, so long as it’s not done in a manner of exclusion or in an environment in which it is intended to be a symbol of division or negativity.

Do I agree with David Cameron’s comments? Well, as I’ve said above, I’m unlikely to be one of those walking around with the Union Jack in hand. The flag does carry connotations of racism and imperialism with it in my mind. I like you am not a big fan of flag waving, flag references and so on. But it does matter to some people, whether or not I like it. Do I agree with Cameron that it would be good for the flag to be a positive symbol of Britishness? Yes. That would entail a great deal of PR work in order to change the perception of the flag.

If so, I think Mrs Hodge is entitled to question whether public money is being spent in line with the Government’s vision of ‘culture’. Personally i am not a fan of people who wave flags, people who wear them, people who salute them, people who have flagpoles in their garden, people who burn them and politicians who even refer to it in passing.

On a flips side this is David Cameron’s response:

“I think Margaret Hodge is wrong. I think we want more things where people come together to celebrate Britishness and more occasions when people think the Union Jack is a great symbol of our Britishness, rather than sniping at it,”

Now Lola, tell us if you agree with this statement.